I thought the same thing, but at the same time, that would encourage smaller groups of higher skilled fighters to take them down more often.

High Attack Damage=best discouragement for raiders at the moment, if you don't have around 12 people, there is no way you're killing anything.

I bolded the section that is incorrect. If you effectively meld Celestia, it isn't possible to break AT ANY POINT except at the Pillars.

Wouldn't that involve going through the Pool though?

12 people? You aren't taking Gorgulu down without 25-30. When we had 25, there were 56 total deaths to get him shielding and then a few more to finish him off.



No. If you meld the entire plane (except for the Pool of Stars), the only break points are at the pillars.

Aha, you're right, there are diagonals. My mistake.

I very much like how Celestia/Nil raiding is right now. I

The issue is with the Demon Lords/Supernals.

HP should be buffed up a huge amount on both so the battles take a good ten minutes instead of ten seconds. Damage should also be lessened to fit with this change. This would make it easier for defenders to..well.. defend, rather than be able to do nothing over what is currently a very very short fight.

- The designs of Nil and Celestia need to be brought in line in terms of defendability.
- Guards at the Nexii on both planes should be limited OR summoning into the Pool should be disallowed. It is too easy for any number of people to get yanked into guards and mutilated, which can destroy any offense.
- Supernal/Demon Lord battles should be lengthened, but made substantially less devastating in the short term. Supernals/Demon Lords should call for help at the beginning of the battle, and give warnings over CT at certain intervals. Ideally, attackers should be able to take their attention off the Supernal/Demon Lord for short periods of time to repel defenders.

And I am sorry for my earlier, overly negative post, I discovered the thread while I was ticked over something else, and my initial response was colored by my existing frustration. My point still stands, though, that I do not have high expectations of this thread.

No, I am not. Magnagora can start breaking right at the Megalith, and hold those rooms and keep advancing, as they have done. On Celestia, you have to cross the whole hostile demesne, possibly fighting pits along the way as well. Moving in a tainted demesne also involved rubble, stonewalls, and knockdown. By the time you get to a break point, your group is broken up, and the raiders are right on you. If we do succeed in breaking the demesne at a point, and die, the raiders can usually remeld the section Celestia without fear of being beckoned or radded to the pool. I stand by the statement that Celestia is easier to hold, and Nil is easier to recover, and this makes the designs fine.

EDIT: Nevermind, Narsrim's right.

I pushed the quote button on your original post and got the edit instead. He is indeed right.

Since some of what I want to say has already been brought up, I'm gonna keep this simple.

- Buff Supernal/Demon Lord HP and nerf damage. Like others said, it would feel far more epic if these fights took 5 minutes, instead of 5 seconds. Their HP right now is about what? 50-100k? Needs to be bumped to at least 1 mil.

- Please, please, please, fix the imbalance between cities and communes. This includes a lack of a commune nexus conflict quest, and lack of cubix exits on Ethereal. Give us ways to hurt the communes, and we wouldn't have to keep beating on Nil!

- Please do something that makes it so Celestia raiders can't immediately kill defenders at the Pool while they're recovering equilibrium from transversing. Can't remember how many times I've been killed while off equilibrium by either Ixion tackling me into their group, or by a boulderblast or staffcast en masse coming from north of the Pool. Please fix.

Conning should work on an enemy nexus, except you need 5 people to cone not just 3

Last time I checked there were 4 pillars. Last time I checked 4 is considered multiple. Choke has a very nice radius, currents often sweeps you into guard as you move to a pillar to break. It was quite correct then- nothing has changed.

Pits can be used in the same manner on both sides- Moot point.

Are you honestly comparing rubble stonewalls and knockdown to currents and whirlpool on celestia? I hope that's a joke.

Breaking up groups? Not a single skill exists that is better for group dispersal than currents, period.

You never have to step within 1 room of the Megalith on Nil to keep an airtight demesne there. On celestia, to get to any of the four wings, you are forced to step withing rad/beckoning distance of one room from the pool. That much is blatantly obvious.

Thank you for proving my point for me. If huge numbers are needed to overcome the damage scaling, and huge numbers are harder to come by, then that fact helps reduce the frequency of raiding.

If the damage scaling is reworked and HP increased it will be possible to smaller groups to take them down, smaller groups of devoted fighters, who, lets face it seem to have nothing better to do then raid 24/7 sometimes.

Myself, I'd much rather prefer the once a week UBER-RAID-OF-DOOM then daily raids of 5-6 people killing the outer-planer creatures.

Maybe HP should be increased, but I, after various people pointed out to me that reducing the damage scaling would increase raise, don't think that their damage should be reduced.

I'll have to read this entire post later, but to break the demesne on Nil, you can break the rooms southwest/southeast of the Megalith, and then one north of that, and after that you have to go through the demesne to the pit entrances, and then through the entire demesne all the way to the back to break the back portions. So no, you can't really just move through and break with ease after a few rooms (which don't even matter, because you still have 75+% of the plane melded).

I agree, besides with Celest's ability to Sacrifice, Ressurect the fallen, they can always come back to fight without having to regroup off plane thus making it easy for them to take down anything without the problem of going back up and start from scratch.

And I agree with Ixion, Celestia is definitely easy to defend, sure it's hard to break as well but to be able to meld the entire plane, you have to walk near the pool full of guards and celestian/aquamancers who are ready to beckon/rad.

Nil definitely has its problems, as Ixion said, once you hold a demesne, you can get to any of the four pits without going near the nexus, sure we're able to break but only two rooms and that's it, currents is an ass cause it splits group not to mention needle rain where it'll strip most defenses even the Protection granted from a protection scroll which leaves you very vulnerable to its effects. Don't have waterwalk? You're screwed, caught in the middle of the whirlpool? Definitely screwed.

So I'm with this change (hopefully, the conflict stays).

Yeah, but with beckon/hailstorm, why would the cityfolk need to be in the same room? I guess communes have treelife for the same thing, a way to hurt people without being in the room with the avatar, but communes get murdered by hexagrams during the fight since their only way to fight effectively at "range" is to be in the trees above the combatants...

Kind of why I like my "economics of war" idea. Changing the challenge levels is more of a short-term fix. You want to reduce the conflict levels naturally by making natural or logical consequences for a long-term war.

My original idea of floating weakness times would limit times of conflict, but give less choice. The "power cost" idea will work because it gives the players the ultimate freedom but if they choose to be 24/7 raiders they will soon not be able to raid.

This will also prevent these creatures from having to be "buffed" all the time, one thing I see people complaining about, or from gods stepping in to help the weaker team. It gives others a chance for victory without having to be the top-ranked combatant. It makes wars a lot more fun, because to keep it up you either have to limit your attacks, or you can go bug-fugg crazy for a short term period. It keeps griefers from hurting the orgs since it requires those beings to be community bound, and forces them to plan. It adds strategy to tactics.

To finish your list:

- To get anywhere on Celestia, one must step one room away from the nexus, allowing currents and beckon to pull you into the nexus and people to hailstorm/choke while safely protected by guards. This is not true on any other plane, except perhaps Etherglom, but communes have fewer deadly skills in this situation.

- When Teleportation skills were removed, it was not done in a balanced way. Cities kept two powerful teleportation skills - Empress and Beckon, and Celest kept Currents, whereas Communes have none. When it comes to defending Celestia/Nil, this provides them with a large advantage over other orgs. This is compounded on Celestia by their centralized nexus location for beckoning and currents, and by their access to the Vapours affliction for hiding Lovers tarot so they can move a few rooms to their nexus and use an Empress before their target recovers from the blackout enough to realize they've been lusted and reject.

- If reflections provide defence against Supernal/Demonlord attacks, they shouldn't. If Nymphs pacify Supernal/Demonlords, they shouldn't.

- Anyone who attacks a demonlord/supernal should become enemied to Nil/Celestia, and the denizens there should be aggressive towards enemies. It's absurd that someone can attack a Demonlord but not kill them, and then use a Demonlord to get to the group to where Luciphage lives.