You all are correct. This is not the ideal option. Unfortunately, I don't know if there is one. With that said, this was the best and easiest-to-monitor method of ensuring that a construct does not go down in one weakening. The point is this: It was never, ever intended that a construct could be taken down in a single session, MUCH LESS with as much adroitness as Xenthos has shown (for which I thank him, of course). I wish that the system came out perfect from the beginning, but there were too many variables to test, and too few people to test with. As such, we realize that we continuously need to tweak.

Catarin: I don't understand most of your post.



There already is a maximum to both the effect of people present and the number of people who can focus, so I assume we're agreed here.

Currently, it really IS dependent on the number of ships bombarding. Bombardment will do less damage as well, I apologize I forgot to include that in the post. All damage, across the board, is reduced. So, not much has changed, just the scope.

As for the rest, you're essentially saying we should cap damage. Well, I don't quite see a difference between capping damage at a specific number, and lowering total damage done. Essentially, you're saying, both ways, that you'll only do a certain amount of damage. Couldn't, even, lowering damage done equate to a reduction of the damage cap? Realistically you're only going to do so much damage. It sounds like it's just another way of saying two things.

I'd be happy to consider lowering the amount a construct can heal between weakenings. We'll be looking at the number to reduce it to over the next few weeks/months. The numbers during design are never run perfectly, they have to be tweaked. I apologize that I overshot and estimated damage a bit high, but I have no interest in limiting the number of ships that can participate at this time.

I would agree that watching the healing between weakenings will matter significantly.

A full weakening's worth of unhindered colossus offense, taking into account the slowing as it gets damaged by construct counterattacks alone, should outpace construct healing both with sparkleberries and with cooking, though not by too much. Catarin's idea of it outpacing healing by ~25% of total health seems like a place to start.

We do need to get some numbers on how much sparkleberry for a full weakening and cooking in between weakenings can be expected to heal. How many successful offensive weakenings should be negated by a successfully defended weakening, where a colossus never gets emplaced? One? Two? All of them? I am inclined to think that a one for one negation is enough - if you win on defense as often as you lose, your construct more or less stays at full health.

That leaves focusing and bombardment, by either side, as how you tip the balance. The new colossus balance slowing gives bombarding and focusing defenders more of a purpose, as they now simultaneously degrade the colossus' offense while doing damage. Over a whole weakening, that additional slowing should translate into either less damage to the construct, net of healing, or even a net gain to the construct's health.

However, having the colossus slow down as it gets damaged does present a real problem for using a colossus across more than one weakening. Instead of acting as a beachhead, and preserving some of the advantage gained in emplacing it the first time, a colossus will now act as an impediment: something to be removed to get a proper colossus into position. If it gets slow enough when badly hurt, I could easily envision a construct operator slowing it, using sparkleberry, and never attacking, knowing that the replacement colossus would just be more dangerous. One solution would be to have colossi decay between weakenings. Another might be to permit between-weakening healing of colossi, too.

As a side note, you might consider weakening bombardment again and making it one bombardment per turret, instead of one per ship, as well as finding something for specialized empaths to do. Hail constructs/colossi, at the least. Heal them? Give a bonus to bombardments by letting your construct/colossus operator call in shot corrections?

As it is, if a fully specialized crew is bombarding - and while that isn't terribly often, it's moving more in that direction - only one combateer and sometimes the commander can have any direct involvement in the process.

what is the maximum number of people that can focus and what is the maximum number of people for standing in the room to empower a construct/colossus cap off at?

The essential point of my posts is that if we focus too much on it not being able to be taken down in one weakening, we're going to end up with it not being able to be taken down at all. Modifications based on the outliers (an atypically strong offense, or an atypically weak defense) doesn't necessarily take into account the real scope of the system and what an average encounter is like. The more we stretch the process out, the more it slips into tedium for the attackers. Long drawn out sieges sound good on paper but in practice it's really not that entertaining.

And that's kind of what it boils down to. Is this conflict system fun for both the attackers and the defenders? There is a satisifaction when things going well but I'm really not sure the fun is there. I don't look forward to weakenings. It's just another thing I have to do.

Maybe once the kinks are worked and things are working as originally intended, the entertainment aspect of the system could be looked into.

24 hours of nutrients seems to give ~500 health to a Construct. A sparkleberry heals 15 health per sparkleuse, and seems to take ~1 minute to be able to use again.

A weakening is every two days, plus a couple hours (this last one was pretty much exactly 2 days, ugh).

So that's 1000 health from two kegs, assuming they were in the entire time, plus about 900 from the sparkleberry.

A Colossus can still (easily) outdamage that, assuming the scrolls get fixed.

Yes, right now bomarding without resistance is pretty boring. And to be honest, the empath specialization is seriously lacking. The combateer specialization is pretty clearly the absolute best one for ship to ship combat. Which is expected but the extent that the other two specializations pale so drastically in comparison maybe wasn't intended. Which is why some sort of envoy process is needed for these things. Most envoys are not going to "waste" their spots suggesting aethership changes.

I've said this many many times in the past. We need a dedicated Aethercraft envoy. No envoy in their right mind would put up an aethercraft suggestion as one of their two suggestions per report when there are normal skills to be fixed. I know some are getting up there, but we really need a dedicated voice for Aethercraft, especially if it is to become the next big center for conflict in Lusternia.

Any thoughts on this for you Admins reading?

I think the issue for the Admins is the exact same as the issue for the Envoys. If they set up an aethercraft envoy, it means they have to do that much more coding between putting those reports into action. Should they take time away from normal envoy reports to fix aethercraft stuff instead? I think the reason for the envoy report limits to begin with was that they can only fix so many things at a time, I think adding an aethercraft envoy would just bog them down more, so they get less actually accomplished. I would say that they probably don't want to spend time with an aethercraft envoy specifically for the same reason that none of the other envoys wants to spend time with aethercraft skills. 'No coder in his right mind would work on aethercraft suggestions as one of the two suggestions (other than big bugs) they get to implement this month...'

That wouldn't make sense. If they do not wish to spend the time tweaking aetherspace than they would not do things which increase the focus on aetherspace.

I don't think it's that they don't want to spend the time. I would guess it's more that they don't want to spend as much time. Aetherspace is important, but not nearly as important as normal combat balance. If their coders have time to finish, for example, 35 suggestions every month, and 32 come in from the normal envoys, and 8 more from aethercraft envoys, they can't implement everything - at least 5 have to be left out. Most likely, combat suggestions will be addressed first.

On the other hand, if aethercraft is important enough for the envoys to spend their own time and slots on, the admin then have only 32 suggestions (including aethercraft suggestions) and can implement all of them, while still having time to throw in a few tweaks of their own. In this case, the most important balance issues are addressed, as are the most important aethercraft issues, without the admin having to choose between them.

erm no, Aethercraft is a highly advertised future of Lusternia, it's also a relative new one and thus should be getting more attention then skills like knighthood or athletics. Just like bards should right now be getting more attention then other archtypes.

This is especially true since they are essentially forcing people to participate in aetherbattles.

Perhaps instead of keeping an aether envoy they should just for a limited time put 1 extra envoy slot open that can only contain aethercraft tweak proposals.

Why would there be 8 from an aethercraft envoy? They would just have two slots to address the larger issues of aethercraft....

If aethercraft is really more important than a lot of skills right now, why wouldn't the envoys just use their existing slots for aethercraft reports? I would say either aethercraft is more important (and thus envoys should be willing to use their slots on the more important aethercraft issues), or balance is more important (and thus admin should be focusing more on existing envoy reports instead of extra, less-important aethercraft issues). Either way, I don't think a new envoy would take care of the problem.



I was assuming an envoy for each org. Even if we have only 2 aethercraft suggestions each report cycle, they will most likely be very large suggestions that will take quite a bit of time to develop. Simpler things (i.e. 'allow only two ships to bombard at once) wouldn't be so bad. Large things (i.e. new skills to make empaths more useful during nexus weakenings) take quite a bit of time, and they're likely to have to sacrifice some of the time typically spent on normal envoy reports to get them done.

You can suggest Aethercraft suggestions to your Envoy, the Envoy will in most cases at least note it down. On a report they don't have so many suggestions that are absolutely necessary to go in right that moment they can choose to place it in.

This is a random idea for weakenings (not sure where else to post it):

The IG day BEFORE the weakening happens the organization could choose to use this power. It's a nexus power and it would drain a considerable amount of power (10,00-20,000 perhaps?) however if used it would 'distort' the nexuse world during the coming weakening and ensure they could not be attacked. For fairness perhaps it should also make it impossible to construct a colossus for that org during the weakening then (or bombard, or in any way attack a construct of another org).

The idea behind this is that if an organizatin -knows- their construct is close to falling, knows they are going to be attacked at the next weakening and -knows- they don't have the people to defend it.. they can choose to pay this instead. This is as much an option to keep constructs alive as well as give people a break if they need it. However, the (power) cost should be steep so it couldn't just be used each and every weakening.

EDIT: Especially if the weakening is going to occur at a crappy time for your org or something else is going on that would keep you from focusing your attention on the weakening.. etc.

I do not like this idea, essentially you are robbing your enemy of their win. They have put a lot of gold and power into damaging that construct, people have perhaps repeatetly died and then the weakening when you are going to get rewarded for all this effort they just invoke this power and fully cure their construct...

Perhaps. It's just that the idea of another forced periodical repeating endless 'conflict' irks me a bit. And I believe it quickly burns the people out too if they are attacked each and every time. This gives them an alternative. It's going to cost them but they could basically choose to 'set out' one time.

EDIT: And where did I ever say it would fully cure the construct... it would give it more time to heal yes, but it's not going to explicitely heal it. Maybe it could even stop the healing of the construct or slow it down. Just not meant to be a miracle cure to almost dead constructs but rather to give them a better chance to choose their own time and place for the battle. And as I said, the power could only be used -before- the weakening. If they realize during it that it will fall, it's too late.

unless they changed it without announcing you can fully cure a construct in one weave you are not beeing attacked + kegs each month (2 months before the weakening you invoke it and 2 months after you fish keg + one weakening sparkleberrying without opposition)

and there is a very simple method of not having endless conflict it's called "do not have a construct"

And I suppose if you are tired of raids / defences you should go rogue since you don't have to have a guild / commune. Point taken, thank you.

That's a horribly inapplicable analogy and you know it.