On this note, how about we implement gun safties, which will damage but never kill the target craft? I don't think that'd be too much of a nightmare to code and would certainly allow for some combat practice assuming you don't go chasing after aether creatures immediately afterwards.

Or code Mercy, which can be engaged by the Empath. Basically, the guns will automatically cease operations when they (automatically) detect that the enemy ship's hull is about to be breached. (in red)

This combined with a construct that keeps aetherspace creatures away from the dock for a certain span of distance would basically create an arena.

Honestly, perhaps creatures should not be near the dock anyways. Say the nexi or the nexusworlds radiate so much power the drive them away.

Or something.

Oh, definitely. It's frustrating to launch my aethership and find up to four tendrils of Kethuru waiting to tear me apart.

it does suck how completely expensive all of this is as catarin I think said. 300 credits for another skill when so many are focused on their own. Though of course if you don't have a good crew you could always try to ram and board the other ship. then you need a manse. good ships easily cost a million or two and you'll want to increase the hull. and then it's all the shift artifacts and diamonuts. I just worry that it might end up looking like a good crew and ship will end up costing another 2000 credits. though 1500 of that is divided 5 ways for each member's own skills. but still it might end up relying on a specialized 5 person crew and coudl be hard for others or some of the people without trans everything to get.

Wish it's easier to target things, had an aethertrip awhile ago and everyone is having a hard time targetting one even though I gave them 5 seconds to do so.

I don't know if this was suggested yet or not, but benediction is always a huge power drain on Celest I think. Making it cost 0 power would be a pretty sweet construct effect.

ANNOUNCE NEWS #763
Date: 3/24/2007 at 5:19
From: Estarra, the Eternal
To : Everyone
Subj: Guardian Constructs

New constructs have been released which are designed to help protect the
planes associates with their respective cities or communes. There is one
guardian construct per plane; thus, cities have access to two guardian
constructs (cosmic and elemental planes) and communes have access to one
(ethereal).

Enjoy!

Penned by My hand on the 25th of Dioni, in the year 172 CE.

Hrm, wonder what those do. And how will it be used to defend.

I'd like to know that as well. Someone should post 'em all. <.< >.>

Obviously it enables to use colossi on your respective planes defensively, yes.. erm defensively.

Those are indeed some sweet constructs... which Bards and Warriors will love especially

We're kind of putting all the eggs in one basket here. By painfully forcing the focus of conflict to be on the nexus battles it is pretty much demanding that the nexus battles be engaging and interesting enough to satisfy all who are interested in this kind of conflict.

So far I have not noticed them to be so. There is not a feeling of "This would be a fun little diversion". It is "We HAVE to do this because if we don't, x, y, and z." will happen which won't be good on both the offensive and defensive side.

On the offensive side, unless you actually take down the construct you get absolutely zip for your efforts except for a lot of headache and a big bill in power and commodities and I have already noticed the negative effect it has on people even wanting to log in during the times the nexus worlds are weakened. When you lose during a normal raid, eh it's no big deal. Few herbs and you probably at least took down a couple of them or a few of the mobs they protect. If you "lose" during a nexus world battle as I said before, you have nothing to show for it. You mustered a large portion of your population, spent time gathering all the parts needed at a large cost of commodities, jetted on over and when it's all said and done? Eh.

I can't speak on the defensive side much but the only thing you get out of the battle is keeping your very expensive and pretty construct and perhaps wasting your enemies time and resources. It's pretty much the same situation of being forced to defend as any other raid.

So suggestions (related to the inherent problem and just the battles in general):

1. We all know when the nexus battles are going to be. Can we please put the worlds in flux for the 15 minutes prior to the battle actually starting, which would at least prevent anyone from stepping on the plane in that time period and preferably wiping out any melds there as well? We've already seen it and it is very quickly going to force raiders/defenders to show up a long time beforehand to get their melds and such set up. When you can't even set foot on the nexus world due to the preparation they did two hours before the battle even started it quickly starts turning into an endurance test.

2. Some sort of incentive to participate in the battles even if your side loses. It would be rather difficult to code but could be based on did you kill an enemy of your nation on the nexus world during a weakening, did you kill a citizen of a nation on their nexus world during a weakening, were you on the nexus world while your colossus/construct was beating on the enemy, were you on the nexus world when it won, etc. Perhaps it would be some sort of esteem/honor system that boosts your nation in the eyes of the villages giving you more power/comms or making your constructs cheaper to build/maintain, or needing a certain level of esteem to even get access to some of the better constructs. Or even it being on an individual basis where the more battles you participate in, the more kudos you get that maybe grant you individual honors or maybe the gnomes really care about such things and you get to go to them and buy some interesting resetting items or buffs or what have you.

3. Since normal envoys aren't exactly going to be jumping up and down eagerly in order to help implement aetherspace changes, can there be a special envoy for aetherspace? Or should we just have an ongoing forum thread about it?

I like putting conflict into the Nexus Worlds, but the idea of then taking it away from Ethereal/Elemental/Cosmic is...disappointing.

I wish I could elaborate more, but that's really the idea, in a nutshell: the plane fighting doesn't need to be squashed for the sake of the still-largely-untested nexus world fights.

I know there's a "beg you all" thread, but not many seem to be reading it, so I'll post this here, since I don't think telling people to not use the constructs is the answer anyway.

I can't really test it, but I'm being told that the level 3 regen for having a construct doesn't stack with racial regen, which means one of the main bonuses is useless to viscanti on earth and nil. Now I'm also told no one chooses viscanti these days anymore, but thematically this seems like a pretty serious oversight to me, it should be a bonus of equal use to all races and sides. Giving Magnagorans even less of a reason to choose viscanti disappoints me a bit even though I'm not magnagoran or viscanti, and is a reason I don't like the regen idea.

EDIT: Kinda redundant for merians and faelings too. All in all regen just seems like a bad choice from what I can see.

Craptastic


Thanks for disproving the theory that the game is biased towards Celest... I mean, no power trueheal is so f'ing bad it's worthless

Recall that the same was said that the game is biased towards Magnagora when the crypt was released!

If it turns out to be overly unbalancing, we'll of course revise it. BTW, we were wracking our brains out trying to figure something unique for Celest and had several multihour long meetings with Celest to figure out what would be something they can use and are willing to pay for.

Again, we'll be monitoring how it goes, though obviously it's not quite as ridiculous as they can trueheal for no power whenever they want.

We appreciate your and the other admins' work, but this is probably abit too much ( despite what the players of the members of Celest may say).