What if there was a way--a ritual or something, or maybe a regular cosmological event or the like, that prevented any planar travel for a period of several months, that made it only possible to traverse the planes via an Aethership? In other words, giving people a reason to partake in Aethership combat.

Perhaps this could be a limited barrier--maybe something that blocks any travel from a specific lower plane to a higher one. Say a barrier between the ethereal and the elemental, or a barier between elemental and cosmic, cosmic and astral, or prime and ethereal. This distortion barrier would prevent anything but aethertravel from working. Even a cubix would not be able to penetrate this barrier--it could still be used to get places, but they can't walk up through the barrier.

The barrier might be strategically placed based on an org's needs. For instance, if say Celest set it up, Celest might decide to protect Celestia by placing the barrier up to protect the angels. Or they might get revenge on Serenwilde by placing it on prime, blocking Serenwilde's access to the Ethereal. The only way to get past it is to use Aetherspace.

Maybe this could be tied into the proposed Nexus Worlds or Wild Nodes or both! Maybe the winner of Wild Nodes can use the power of the nodes to access a Nexus World on the appropriate section of Aetherspace (or choose not to do so). This would give communes an RP-reason to participate. If you want to take down the barrier, take down the nexus world--then wait for the next Wild Nodes event.

Or maybe there could be a cosmological event that every three months out of twelve a barrier automatically is setup between the lower fulcrux and the higher. Or something like that.

I don't think the best way to encourage aethership fighting is by taking away large parts of the game world for large parts of the population.

Maybe it'd be better to focus on more positive methods of reinforcement, like putting things out into aetherspace that must be fought over to get.

That'd be pretty horrible if the links between alligned planes broke down (water, celestia) (earth, nil) (serenwilde,etherwilde) (glomdoring, etherglom) you'd have the whole mud angry at you.

I don't see them limiting cubix's either, so any big raids that happened, would still ignore the ships, or just wait for a better time.

I still think expanding more and more in aetherspace is the answer, and we'll have to see once nexus worlds come out.

Actually, the one thing I forgot to say was that my idea would not prevent a Nexus from working for its native users, so you could still always have Magnagorans get to Nil or Earth, Celestians to Celestia/Water, etc. (Since the nexuses break laws), so it's more a defensive move than anything else. I didn't see it so much as offensive rather defensive.

So you are essentially disabling the "nexus" skill in planar temporarily? That only hurts the communes, and maybe paladins/ur'guard if they don't have any other city members around.

Also you said: Or they might get revenge on Serenwilde by placing it on prime, blocking Serenwilde's access to the Ethereal. Which would seem to say this idea would effect the nexus from working for it native users.

Edit:Don't get me wrong, I am all for workable ideas that get more people into aetherspace, I just don't see this as workable, unless it's very short, like 1 hour at most, and then, would that be enough to encourage more travel... most likely not, unless someone was raiding during that time, in which case, it's more of a griefing tool because defenders couldn't get there, if it's a defensive tool, then the raiders would just pick a different time. If it's to prevent commune members from getting to astral to hunt, then it's just a pain. As I said, doesn't seem workable in any form.

Edit:Edit:Unless it was a discretionary power to hold all non-natives to that plane, Example: Celest raids, serenwilde seals off travel from or to ethereal for non-natives, celest members die to avatars and can't tesseract back up instantly from the Pool to their point-man, the raid fails. A catch-all for planar travel seems a bit much, we have no catch-all skills in lusti, there is always a way to weasle yourself into or out of an area. And, again, in that situation, it would only work once, after then they'd just use a ship, and the power wouldn't get used.