Yes, I know, I just made a thread about these-- but that thread simply had one idea, and wasn't intended to be an overall analysis of some of the positives/negatives associated with such battles.

First of all-- they have extraordinary potential. They allow forces to pit against each other in epic battles that can change the face of power within the Basin of Life. However, they also have issues.

Positives:
1) While at first I was somewhat concerned about numbers involved in this, I've found that it is less about the numbers. This leads to a different negative which I will outline below, but numbers are not completely essential, and it is possible to involve yourself without a numerical advantage, either on the offence or the defence.
2) They have an awesome potential, as I mentioned above.
3) They encourage folk to get more involved in aetherspace, which is also a significant part of the game (and becoming more so).

Negatives:
1) These battles heavily favour the one with the advantage of surprise. That is-- whomever is there first and gets the setup, is most likely going to hold the sphere. This is due in large part to how the bubbles are set up-- there is no safe spot upon them anywhere.
2) These battles are far too frequent, for the high-strength high-importance constructs we have.
3) A colossus operator does not really care about the health of their colossus. It is possible for a colossus to just go all-out offensive, and not even bother with reading scrolls. This gives a large advantage to the attackers, as if the defenders go all-out offensive, their Construct (a significant investment) will be quite rapidly destroyed (see the Moon Altar). I'm not sure how to solve this one.
4) You CANNOT install upgrades except during a weakening. This led to the Moon Altar's demise. This should be a relatively easy fix-- allow upgrades to be installed whenever.

What I would like to see:
Two levels of Constructs.
- First, keep the current Construct formula for the Off-Plane protection and the "Org Specific" constructs.
- Second, make a smaller level of construct. For example: Make the Immolation/Hunting constructs cost something like 5000 power and 25,000 gold to build. A small number of commodities (some corpses, etc. etc.). Make it so these constructs *cannot* give positive power. Further, make it so that their destruction gives the *full* power cost to the organization that destroys them.
-- In line with this, make a second level of "Colossus" (perhaps call it something else), that costs perhaps 75,000 gold to create.
-- This miniature colossus and mini-Construct should both begin "pre-equipped" with all upgrades, except for the poison cube. Poison cubes cannot be installed, and they have an unlimited amount of Sparkleberry. Further, the wait to reconstruct a mini-construct should be 2-3 days, instead of 7, and a small "Colossus" could *not* attack one of the Major Constructs.
- Allow for two types of Weakenings. The "small" weakening would occur at the current rate, about every 2 days (and let the mini-constructs battle). The larger weakening would occur at a much slower rate-- one for every two of the smaller. A small schedule to demonstrate: Monday, a lesser weakening. Wednesday, a lesser weakening. Friday, a great weakening. Sunday, another lesser weakening. Etc, etc.
-- This would allow for an opportunity to involve and play with this addition to Lusternia, with a lesser degree of emotional investment / concern. It would also slow down the "important attacks," reducing the *need* to involve yourself (though likely there would still be a fair bit of pressure to defend, there is less OOC attachment riding upon the outcome). The intent is to make it more fun.

There's likely more that I've forgotten, but I'm trying to put together a comprehensive list of positives/negatives, and some ideas to change things.

So a lesser weakening would allow a fight between the lesser constructs and lesser colossi, and a greater weakening between greater constructs and greater colossi? Burnout is still very much possible as the onus is still on for people to go up to defend.

Yeah, it would be. However, I'm not sure that the weakenings are going to be slowed down across the board, so I'm offering an alternative-- which would still allow people to participate, but the "big battles" would only be about once a week (and there would be less incentive for the little ones. Just 5000 power or so for a success, versus 30,000+). Hopefully, these openings would be taken advantage of less often, while still being a possibility. (Though perhaps the cheaper mini-colossus would make it more common-- 75,000 gold for 5,000 power's not that bad an investment. Hmm.)

While a lot of the points are valid, this seems pretty complicated for the problems it addresses. I'd like to see a few simpler changes that address the weaknesses you point out.

1. Make clear signs before a weakening that one will be taking place soon. We have the astrologers giving us dates but a few flashes in the sky or the nexuses blurring a bit starting at two days before the weakening would make it a bit more obvious.

Also, as was said way in the beginning of these battles, it is going to turn into several hours of prep time and fighting over position on the nexus world and then the hour of actual weakening. Make it so the nexus world is sealed off for a half an hour before the weakening. All melds are wiped out. No one can enter. Then 5 minutes before it starts, it's reopened.

2. They are frequent. It's quite possible they are too frequent. If we're switching to this being the primary conflict then maybe it's not too frequent. It's hard to make a firm statement on the frequency since this is a new system and a lot of the efforts being put into it thus far have been spent figuring it out which is tiring. If it still feels this tiresome after another month, a change is needed.

3. This one is tricky. I disagree with your assessment of the all offense approach but the basic problem remains the same. The attackers can just keep creating colossi if theirs gets destroyed. They can have one sitting a room away, ready to walk in when the first dies. The simplest solution is to have the wreckage of colossi prevent another one from entering the room. So if a construct defeats one colossus during a weakening, another one can't attack it. And perhaps the wreckage would stick around for a little while so if a construct destroys a colossus, it gets a weakening where it can't be attacked by that method. Giving attackers a great deal of incentive to not just sacrifice their colossus and to think twice before engaging it in combat.

4. Yeah, just install upgrades on constructs whenever. It's just weird that you can only do it during weakenings.

Tying some threads together - put the flashes in the sky at the same time as the 25 minute lockdown on the nexus worlds. That's the signal to commence preparations, with actual skirmishing starting in aetherspace maybe 10 minutes before the weakening. Not much point to it, earlier.

Add another flash or portent when the lockdown ends. Alternatively, to preserve the value of Astrologers, only give a flash or portent when the lockdown ends, 5 minutes before the weakening itself, or even only as the weakening starts.

One option on the all offense problem would be to put sparkleberry/scroll on unique balance, as it is ordinarily. Neither side would then have an advantage in neglecting their healing to go on the offense.

If colossus/construct operators prefer to have the strategic option to do more damage in exchange for taking more damage, then leave it as it is, and use Catarin's idea about the wreckage. Let the wreckage decay as rapidly as the colossus would ordinarily. As I recall, that means that if your construct takes down a colossus on the weakening it was deployed, that construct would be safe for the next weakening. If your construct takes down the colossus on the weakening after the deployment weakening, the wreckage will be gone by the weakening following that. If anyone has hard data on colossus decay times, I would be glad to hear it.

Additionally, wreckage would give more meaning to a defensive victory. If you crush an offensive, you also make the targeted construct immune for the rest of the ongoing weakening as well as the next. If you win a victory at any time, you at least immunize the construct for the rest of that weakening. Given proper healing, a one-weakening victory over a colossus nearly guarantees a full-health construct by the time it is vulnerable again - giving construct operators a reason to skip scroll and go for the kill too.