Thinly veiled my left toe.
But yes, I agree that smashing a construct in one round unopposed is not happy, nor is too many rounds, because then it all feels so futile. I give Catarin thumbs up for the wait and see approach.

Ah, you guys are too quick for us! We have been testing bombardment and haven't released it yet--though I thought we might before the newsletter came out! Let me explain.

Bombardment is a high level combateer skill. It takes significant time to set-up a bombardment of a construct or colossus, during which time the ship cannot move or dock. Thus, the ship has to sit in aetherspace over the aetherworld and be subject to attack (or lose the bombardment). The ship can obviously do anything to defend itself except moving or docking. There can only be one bombardment per ship. On its own a ship would be hard pressed to destroy a construct. If someone was in the construct healing with sparkleberry, the construct most likely would end up not losing any health. Multiple ships, of course, might have a better chance, assuming they were no ships opposing them and there was no one around to sparkleberry heal the constructs.

Even though it would be rare for constructs to die to bombardment save with an armada of ships and a bevy of high level combateers, one or two ships could certainly make all the difference as support fire to a colossus battling a construct.

Yes, according to our statistics, it would most likely take multiple battles to take down a construct and, as pointed out before, they can only at best partially heal between battles. It should be noted, however, it is possible to greatly heal a construct during the nexus battle periods if they are not attacked (i.e., if you attack a construct and then skip the next world battle, the construct could very well be healed to full--assuming the construct owners are on their toes).

Estarra, I would just like to say that this is one of the coolest things in IRE. The ability to have that sort of multi-level combat should make things massively incredible. Thank you for all the work you put into designing these systems, even with all the flack we give you on occasion, we really do appreciate it. And you've officially just totally rekindled my love for this game.

didn't feel like quoting. But this is to Catarin and her saying novices and such can't compete. They actually can have an effect. the more people from and org who are ungraced and in a corpereal form (i think those are the conditions) the better overall or stronger attack (not sure which) okay I decided to be not lazy and look it up in the middle of this.
"The number of citizens or commune members who are in the same room as a construct and colossus (but NOT inside it) and are loyal to that construct or colossus will increase the power of that attacks. ((grammar!)) This does not count if the citizen or commune member is graced or out of phase or otherwise in a noncorporeal form."

So members count and whoever said it leans towards the defenders I agree with since getting to someone else's nexus world is harder than the actual organization to get there. so even if a couple raiders were killed the defenders can spring back in more easily.

Also I wanted to address something about the future bombardments. I thought aether whistles were actually sold in the artifact shops, but I guess they are not. I don't know about flying so I don't know where things are in relation to each other specifically how close the nexus world dock is to the aetherplex or an organizations dock. But the concern is that aether whistles should be sold so that if someone does take a group to bombard then the defenders will want to have an aetherwhistle to summon to the dock so they can just launch from there? Or maybe the point is you're trying to make it harder for the defenders and slightly more balanced by incorporating the bombardment. Anyways I'm thinking they should be sold in the shops since they've only appeared in auctions, though I'm not sure of the price. I for some reason want to say 150ish credits. but anyways that's just my opinion.

I don't know which shop you're looking at, but they've been sold in the ship artifact shop for quite some time.

Newbies aren't going to help as much if they're going to die in a single hailstorm, but they can be put to use in some cases.

Seal in Commander should prevent bombardment as long as the sealing ship is intact and in place.

Couldn't the ship simply repulse the bombarding ship and knock it a room away, thus canceling the bombardment?

True, assuming you have skilled combateers.

While true, dragging novices to an opposing org's nexus world to sit still and probably die over the course of an hour isn't really fair to them. I know they want to help, I certainly know I did as a novice, but at the same time they're not going to be much use, and it will cost them a lot of experience and US a lot of trouble trying to rescue them if something goes awry (as oft do the best laid plans). So, novices can -technically- participate just as they can currently -technically- participate in raids as they are now, but not really.

Perhaps if the room attacks were scaled down if the "victim" is below a certain level? :iono: It certainly wouldn't let novs just take on mages with no fear, since staffcast/etc would still make them into pulp paste, but would also allow them to have a more active role in raids and colossus battles as the room attacks would not make them go BAMSQUISH.

I second this. Estarra your ideas are truly awesome. Introduction of aethercraft will make the conflict take on a new dimension than just merely raiding I think. When can nexus worlds build anti-aircraft turrets to shoot down the aetherships?

My concern was how accessible is this new type of conflict to newbies. Judging from Forren and Catarin's response, though newbies may be able to enhance the power of a colossus, they die easy just like in raids and are therefore usually moot. Maybe give newbies a free conglut on a nexus world during this time period, to encourage them to join?

Also, in the sake of feeling like an attack or healing has done something, should construct have powers based on the percentage of damage they have? For example Black Crypt down to 33% health, means it can only give out a certain number of Lich seeds per hour.

Just throwing ideas. Again, I haven't experienced any of this firsthand

Hmm. I just had a thought. Someone mentioned earlier about a novice introduction to aethercraft. Why not have a nexus construct that produces small fighters for novices to mount an air defiance against bombarding aetherships?

Also, can you ram and board another aethercraft?

The repulse skill in combateer really needs to be looked at. Seal is a mythical skill for commanders and repulse, a rather low skill for a combateer, essentially makes it worthless. You can repulse and immediately dock as you're not using the command chair balance to repulse. Seems a bit off.

Nexus world battles aren't designed for newbies/novices. The main point is to create an organizational conflict system that will replace raids, which have little benefit or reward and that can happen at any time. At this point, our concern is making the system balanced and functional. While it would be nice to include newbies and novices in the sytem, right now it is not a priority--it's not efficient or practical to try to make one system be the answer for and do everything. That said, if anyone has any practical and simple ideas (I know Catarin did) to include newbies and novices, feel free to post. Again, I want to emphasize this system is designed specifically for experienced players and we certainly have no intention of diluting it just to include the inexperienced.

Seal and repluse are being looked into.

Karmic Nirvana - A construct that halves the cost of karma blessings for the organization that raises it. Costs per day would still be the same. Additionally, you're now allowed TWO of the same type of karma blessing. The second one, however, costs the usual 50%. Thus, if I had 100% to start out with, I could potentially get myself 4 blessings (if I was willing to whore the karma to keep them up), of I could get my self two blessings, and a repeat of one of them, adding up to 100%.

Lets hope that not all the experienced players are out fighting constructs, so some are left to do things with the noobs.

Well it's only about an hour every three or four days. I think the novices can find something to do during that time.

Sounds to me like we are in a current phase which may not be pernament.

An hour every two or three days seems a good spacing of time. The hour part maybe needs to change but we'll see.