Oh! And one more thing.

- Aether creatures should deal minor damage to one module at random on a hit, rather than every single one of them.

Agreed, but they should deal more module damage than they do to the one module they hit.

Two more suggestions:

- CONFIG SHIPLOOK OFF should prevent any messages other than a single line ' glides to the .' while locked into stations other than command.

- Gnome ships should show up when you are within a 100 room radius with either GRID SCAN or GRID HAIL GNOMES.

It's weird that we have three commander skills that give a nifty bonus at the cost of flying slower, but no skills that make you fly faster with some nifty cost. Like, something that makes you fly faster but take more damage, or fly faster but makes turrets less accurate, or fly faster but take constant module damage to the command chair (or random modules) or something. Overdrive!

There should be a "ship info here"--the equivalent of an ih command--to see all the creatures and ships in an area with ID codes.", unless this already exists. How do you target, for instance, another gorgog when there are three attacking you. How do you know the "short name" of the ship that is in your area.

Either that or there needs to be a better help file for this.

Yeah.. I'd like a way to know the short name of a ship so I can do something to it when it flies by. Some aren't that obvious.

One other thing I noticed during the anniversary hunt...

I setup a covey with Richter and his team. While there were both on Frostica and Crumkidvia, they apparently could use Shipt, but I was stuck back in the ship, and I could speak but not hear them. I dunno if that's a bug or intentional, but I assume as long as the ship was docked the people inside the ship could communicate with those outside both ways, not just one way.

Yes. That's a great idea. The empath doesn't usually care about what's going on out there, just what he needs to heal. That's been a complaint from day one, because even if you're flying slow, it spams the hell out of you.



You could speak over it, and we could hear you, but not respond.

There is one - SHIP LOOK INFO

I am officially stupid.

Do want to know more about that covey thing though. I think at the very least the "away team" should be able to have a two-way communication with somebody locked into the empath grid.

Okay, this is really starting to grate on me.

Aetherspace is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way through the Serenwilde to the Glade of Champions, but that's just peanuts to aetherspace.

(apologies to Douglas Adams)

Finding gnomish traders in aetherspace is absurd. Especially since they randomly teleport to a random location in aetherspace every couple months, as far as I can tell. Looking for gnomes, even with widescreen and an antenna arti, takes 4-5 hours to find a ship.... maybe. It's really irriting to me how hard it is....

There really should be a skill to scan for gnomes, preferably in Empath. Even just a skill that tells you "There's a gnome trader in the region!" where region is widely defined. As is, you could be like ten squares away from a ship and not know it, just sailing by tangentally looking for a gnomish vessel and never find it.

Edit: I was misinformed about the hitpoint issue, please disregard this post (though feel free to modify the ideas to balance them, as I really like the idea of redundant critical systems and increased turret capacity

I personally feel that the cap of the number of certain modules is extremely limiting for small ships. Large ships are extremely limited when compared to small ships: they lose significant amounts of speed for marginally increased hitpoints and the ability to have more holds/energy collectors, yet they are only as effective as small (5-room) ships in actual combat. As such, few people actually create large ships, as there is little benefit gained from a large ship for such a high cost. Larger ships should have greater capabilities:

Command Chair - Extra command chair every 100 rooms, only one command chair can be locked at a time to prevent conflicts. New command chairs must be at least 10 rooms away from any other command chair to function. Adds redundancy to large ships so that the destruction of a primary command module does not render the ship helpless.
Empathic Grid - Extra grid every 50 rooms, multiples can be locked to increase healing of modules and hull damage. New empathic grids must be at least 10 rooms away from any other empathic grid to function.
Turret - Reduce normal maximum number of turrets to 2, extra turret every 15 rooms.
Ramhead - Extra ramhead every 75 rooms, essentially creates multiple entry points into a ship. Must be at least 10 rooms away from any other ramheads to function.
Shield Orbs - Extra orb every 75 rooms.
Energy Collectors - Leave as-is.
Cargo Holds - Leave as-is.

This would essentially allow massive ships to be stronger than smaller ships, though it would requre literally millions of gold in order to actually make such a ship.

I think these ideas are all bad ones which would unbalance aethercombat if it ever occured.

I find Avaerin's size to be a massive advantage over a five room ship. It has triple the hitpoints - that means a lot when attacks do fixed damage. In normal PvP, your target's max health effects how much damage you deal, which helps dampen the effects of people with absurd amounts of health. Since this is not present in aether combat (as far as I can tell), every point of health is a real boon.

Also, it seems that the ships regen and the healing rate of the grid are both based on the ship's max health, but I could be wrong about that one.

If you Distribute power to the command chair, the ship will move about as fast as a smaller ship without the distribution. This plus lag really negates the biggest disadvantage of very large ships.

Ah, I was misinformed about the hitpoint issue, I was unaware that the gains for each room were actually significant. Disregard my previous post, then.

I kind of like the bigness of Aetherspace though Shorlen, I would think finding them is half the challenge...

And besides, I remember similiar complaints about finding certain bubbles, until everyone got scripts and stuff to find them.

Love,mimi

Er, I don't think Shorlen was complaining about the size of aetherspace at all, just that finding ships is a little too random at the moment. Imagine that there were two little gnome guys who could be found randomly in any room of Prime Lusternia, in any area.

That's kind of a comparable level of difficulty with finding the gnome ships amid the vastness of aetherspace. It's hard to fully grasp unless you've been out in it.

And no, there weren't similar complaints about aetherbubbles. Nor can you use scripts or systems to find gnome ships.

Aetherbubbles have these little compass things that say "Aetherbubble to the southeast!" and such. With gnomes, you could pass right by them and not even notice.

Since I haven't actually encountered any other ships (or gnome ships) in Aetherspace at all, do they actually show up on the map, like with other @ signs or something like that?

Aye, they show up like another ship. You can't hail or interact with it other than via the trade system though.

One other thing (I keep forgetting!)

- Allow Empaths an illusion-like skill so they can send text directly to either a targetted crew member or all crew members. Make it prefixed with some string so it can't be deceptive... "You sense the presence of as thoughts rise unbidden in your mind."

It is incredibly hard to communicate the wares output when I'm the only one who can see it and conveying it over channels is very messy.

I was getting a bunch of those little compass things for things that I didn't think were aether bubbles near the Facility, but I was piloting alone at the time and didn't really feel the need to investigate and get eaten alive by the critters. So perhaps they're much easier to find now.