Add somewhere a quest where a novice / young person can go into a trip into an NPC controlled aethership and see a bit of it, even if its' not interactive (or the newbie is just asked to perform simple actions non related to skills that won't cause damage). Then give the newbies some tips on how to get into aetherships with other players without purchasing their own? Or add an interface for people to rent themselves as Aethership crew? I am not familiar with aetherships myself so my apologies if this makes no sense.

Puzzle Pirates does something similar with the army, and the jobbing interface. Works fine and if the novice messes something up he doesn't have enough power to cause real damage.

I know of at least a couple persons who came to see Lusternia because "It's the only IRE game with space ships" and left soon after discovering that ships wouldn't be available for them unless they invested a pretty amount of money or social power. Maybe if they had been able to "test" them soon enough they would have stayed long enough to see what else lusternia has to offer.

Absolutely! *highfive*

I also imagined Aiakon saying, "Everything is happening as I have foreseen it. You will now witness the power of this fully operational battle station!"

I would buy a ship just to be able to rent it out.

Losing power stores and geting stranded would not be an issue for me, as I would get myself a whistle, and have a powerplex gem. Renting out my ship would be something I would really like to be able to do.

This is already pretty feasible. The Blacktalon own a well-equipped guild ship, which anyone of GR3 can pilot, and it sees a lot of use (limited only by the guild's small population). I'd never consider buying a ship myself, but I've had access to this one whenever I've needed it. Maybe more orgs simply need to invest in org ships...

I really, really, really like the aether taxi idea. The only reason I don't go to aetherbubbles more often is that I hate piloting so much.

Yep, it's feasible now and most orgs do something similar. It's just the issue of investing public funds in what is in actuality a privately owned manse/ship since it has to be in a player's name. If that player goes inactive or can't get into the game for whatever reason, it's difficult to keep the ship up to date. Plus it would really suck for someone to just run off with the org's ship.

I thought that was going to be a help file in game/in the search function, not its own lil' section.

The taxi idea is a really good one. It would cut down on some of the massive downtime it takes to go to and fro in aetherspace (as already mentioned). I dont think it would take away from the ships already owned, or discourage people from spending credits and buying their own. People who can afford to buy a fully customized aethership are going to do it or not, taxi services aren't going to discourage potential buyers I think.

I don't like the taxi idea, unless it's the reward for a moderately challenging quest.

Contrary to popular belief, aetherpiloting is actually extremely quick. Anyone competent can make it to an aetherbubble in far less time that it often takes me to find a Nihilist or Geomancer to take me up a plane so I can get to astral.

With waypoints etc, it's even quicker.

I don't want to see aetherbubbles made -that- easy to access. Though I support alternative means of getting to them so long as they are sufficiently challenging - as above.

Then wouldn't a five-minute wait while "taxi'ing" be fine? If it's that fast to go there normally, there's still an advantage to a pilot with their own ship-- especially since they can decide they want to turn around.

I would hope that a taxi idea would be EXTREMELY expensive, like 2,000 gold per one way trip.

The renting of aetherships is the best idea I've heard in a long time. That would be perfect. There are lots of people who don't have enough gold to buy their own aethership but would love to rent one and explore aetherspace. I can see a fleet of tiny little ships accompanying a few larger ones on a raid, which would be neat too. It would be awesome if this was implemented.

Ok. -Now- I'm getting Star Wars images in my head.

Yea, I agree with Aiakon about the taxi idea...we paid so much for an aethership and all its little special accessories, and then a feature comes along that allows people to just jump to a bubble for far less cost? No please.

If you made the taxi service a reward for a difficult quest, maybe. But a gold payment for the taxi-ing would either be: a) so cheap that it would take many many taxi rides to justify economically buying your own aethership for transportation purposes, or so expensive that the very people you're trying to get to the aetherbubbles can't afford it.

Renting out an aethership already seems fairly feasible to me...just set privs to allies only, ally the customer and let him/her take off...unless you wish to charge by time, which could be difficult to measure. But for a lump sum payment, half at beginning and half at end, or with some sort of collateral, and perhaps a fee if you find the ship devoid of power at the end (meaning it imploded, most likely), renting seems quite possible.

Which doesn't take into account that some people have absolutely no desire to deal with aetherspace itself in general, which means quite a fair bit of content is inaccessible. However, if tooting around in your own ship is easy and quick-- why not allow an alternative that takes longer, has limited locations (so a ship is still required for raiding purposes, for example), and while it has a lower initial cost, that cost remains while an aethership doesn't have any further expenses?

Dr Aiakon prescribes cans of murphy.

Cans of Murphy have already been shown to be both unuseable and undesireable.

Now that I think of it, this is actually one of the reasons I've been looking at Imperian more and more. I really don't like the focus on aetherbubbles and other planes. Maybe it's just me, but the world feels pretty small.

Who gets to be Lando Calrissian?

"Hel-lo, ladies. Welcome to my aethership, where the ride is as smooth and refreshing as the bottle of champagne you'll find under your seats."

Hmph. Adventure. Excitement. Champagne. A jedi craves not these things.

Besides, another role, want I.

I know it's hopeless to think anything productive may come out of a forum thread by now, but...