Hi all,

We believe that the Nexus World battles are currently a bit out of sync in regards to the difficulty of destroying a construct, the length of battles, and the length of time between battles. Therefore, we are going to make some adjustments to either the damage done to constructs/colossi, the length of time between battles, or both.

What we would like is constructive player feedback on how this system is working out, and what we can alter in order to make it more fun and more realistic to destroy a construct (we feel they're too hard to destroy right now).

It's definitely too hard to destroy a construct. Chances are people want to go have a construct battle just to kill the people, and the construct is a bonus.

Colossi can't even be destroyed right now, since they decay, so they don't even need sparkleberry upgrades.

It's a delicate balance, certainly Morgfyre.

While I'm rather enjoying the bonuses of the Crypt, I think the constructs should be a minority aid and not the majority overwhelming and unbalancing force they are now.

Due to the design of the nexus battles, making them any more frequent or having the attacks do a significant increase in damage would probably drive us nuts. Upkeeping them and fighting them is enough already.. So as a solution perhaps something else can be implemented that can damage constructs.

A simpler solution would be to just remove the healing sources (sparkles/cooks) from the construct entirely. I doubt they were meant to exist 100% of the time and not being able to heal would ensure such.

I agree with Ixion's idea, as it would definitely make the battles more worthwhile as the main problem was not the damage being done to the constructs. (We actually brought the Crypt down to shaking; Celest) The problem was that the Magnagorans had ample time to heal between weakenings. Our efforts were all but wasted by the time we could bring along another assault.

just last weakening, Seren had the room the entire time I think and supposedly had the tree scroll locked and such and basically we were winning. we even bombarded. for the entire day we were at that construct pounding on it and it got to ominously shaking. basically this says that without defending a construct you will not lose it in one weakening. this is no defense at all. which I suppose is fine since we can't all be around to defend. I don't know the opinions of whether or not they should be destroyable in one weakening or not. But let's say it's not able to. How about we take away the kegs of nutrients. it takes away annoying upkeep for everyone, so it's one less thing to worry about with all the construct raids. On the attacker side of it, it gives us a chance to destroy a construct more because there's a lot of time inbetween. I think bombarding takes way too long still or does too little damage. I still would need someone else's opinion though who's operated and seen a bombardment attack. As Yevah said, I'm also worried about how healed the wyrden tree will be by this next weakening already.

Oh another idea to make these more feasible is to allow teleporting across bubbles. It's already too hard to destroy a construct, but the attackers have a ridiculously hard time to get there and back all the time. it'd be much better if they could teleport back and actually have a chance to attack. It may not be so hard with Mag/Celest, but they don't have demesne+choke they can set up while waiting for everyone else to come back. that alone destroys a lot a people it's ridiculous.

As to removing healing constructs all together, I think it is a bad idea. If you can't heal a construct after someone has given it a sound beating then there's really no point in going back and defending it later. Healing being reduced might be a good ideas if constructs are coming up completely healed after getting smacked around quite a bit, but taking out healing all together make missing a single defense terrible. Not all of us can be around for those 4am weakenings.

Teleporting between nexus worlds is a big no. We have aetherships for a reason. If you have any skilled captains, have them set flash points for your ships or have someone take the ship back after you have a collossus up so you have a ship to go back in if you die.

A minor change that I think may have been overlooked when the time between Weakenings was doubled: the decay time of colossi. A colossus will almost always decay after a single weakening, so doubling the decay time should fix that little problem.

If constructs are left in this near-indestructible state, then their benefits should be greatly reduced. Either strong constructs/minor benefits, or weaker constructs/major benefits seems nice enough to me.

Teleporting between nexus worlds is absolutely necessary. Flash points don't work like you seem to think. Only a trans (or nearly) commander can use them, and then only if the ship wasn't stranded by them, you know, dying. We don't have THAT many trans commanders - even the time we had 3 of them around got a bit ridiculous, and it takes sooo long actually moving without flash points. It makes the defender's job incredibly easy if they can kill even a couple members of a group because then they just can't get back. You can't expect everyone to have trans commander.

The healing thing probably doesn't need removed, but lowered would be nice.

I thought the point on Nexus World was to bring conflict into aetherspace and make it a feature of Lusternia that is used more often. If you can teleport to bubbles, all aetherspace is going to be used to is one initial journey over and maybe some bombarding. Then defenders need to man a ship to kill bombarders who can just teleport over to help their allies on the bubble when they are finished being dead.

That still seems a better setup than it is now.

One thing I had been talking to Fain about was increasing the damage a construct/colossus can do, while looking into a way to reduce the (extremely tedious) sit there and watch someone bombard for an hour thing. He had suggested a 5-minute Construct skill that could cancel one bombardment. Thus, if you used this to cancel one bombardment, you'd give a Colossus 5 minutes of free attacks on you. You wouldn't actually use it in a ground battle... but is it a deterrant to just sitting there in space. And ground damage does need to be upped a bit (bombard damage does not).

I'll take your word on that. You operate most the time anyways. What do you think about teleporting? Again in my opinion not being able to teleport screws things up a lot. It's one shot or it's over. Mag's all can lich for two shots. everyone else can vitae for it, but again you're left defenseless with no power after vitae. I mean I know Mag/Celest has camped out and defended the aetherdock and both sides have beaten it. but both sides have also gotten absurdly owned raiding right into a demesne and a preped group. There's more rooms attacks now too with rainbow maelstrom. not only that, but those two sides didn't have to deal with choke. and choke makes a demesne, particularly a druid demesne much more potent. Shamarah and Ciaran do it over and over and even laugh about it on the forums how they just choke and meld and watch everyone die. it's an absurd defense that the only way we have a chance of getting by is if we were able to teleport back and forth. Unless of course the only time we're to raid is when you have no shadowdancers or now druids. But then everyone whines and moans about that.

Surely it should be a 10 minute or even 15 minute skill that stops bombardment. One bombard can be stopped with another ship, and given some of the ground defences people can master (choke + demesne, god) it can quickly become impractical to do anything -but- bombard. Making a skill that cancels bombard twice as fast as bombarding seems like a pretty terrible idea.

Bombard is 10 minutes. A 5-minute skill can only stop one, if two are started at the same time-- so no, "surely" it wouldn't take longer than a bombard, or it'd have no effect at all. Further, you've already demonstrated that it's possible to get past and mount a ground attack. This skill would allow for the stopping of *one* bombard, so if you're doing 2 or 3, it's not going to help a whole lot (or make it 6 minutes or something).

My point is that an attacker *should* have incentive for a ground-attack and for trying for it above and beyond the "oh my, let's sit in aetherspace with a beastly ship bought by Elryn's credits and just bombard with it and a few friends" which has been common for so long. (By the way, 1 aethership doesn't stop a bombard if the bombarding ship is sufficiently powered. It's been tried.)

I still firmly believe that ground damage should be and increased and there should be SOME limitation on bombarding-- my original idea to him was that subsequent bombards beyond the first ship start doing less damage, but he returned with this one instead. I know you disagree, but it's not exactly balanced that an attacker can decide to do ground OR air OR both, and a defender has to be able to defend both at all times. Lessening bombard's strength still leaves that choice for an attacker without completely removing it, and allows it to have tactical use, without simply being the "only thing used for multiple weakenings in a row".

okay no offense to getting past. but we got destroyed even getting past, getting past it only a few do and the rest die, then the few that get past it die. As for the bombarding, you guys don't even try. yes if we're full crewed we beat one ship one on one. try multiple ships. Yes I prefer ground assaults being the main form, but choke+demesne is an absurd defense just like choke+guards as shamarah demonstrated earlier in his rave with choke+bulls. though i suppose that was a case where they were used offensively. if we could teleport back after dying from the nexus world or aetherway, id' be all for groudn assaults constantly.

oh and as nejii said a single ship can stop bombardment quite easily.

If you crew multiple ships, you leave the ground *completely* open to an invading force, btw. That's what I just said. Not sure why you glossed over it.

but you can leave one druid, it's not hard. one druid plus choke demesne equals a win. and what are they gonna do? focus on the construct? like that does -anything-

Empaths also have the ability to have people conglut back to the ship instead of back to your prime nexus. Not sure how high up that is, though.

I've been in a number of construct battles, but I've been too lazy to go on the forums and honestly post opinions and ideas. However, the following things concern me:

The main thing is that the battles currently COMPLETELY favor the defensive side. There is no argument to this, the only logical one is Bombarding, which quite honesty, is a boring and cheap method of damaging a construct. Sadly however, it's currently the only way to really do any damage to them.

Another way that these battles favor the defensive is that they can just die, conglutinate, and immediately come back to attack. Whereas the offensive either has to find someone who can fly over there, or just do nothing while what little of time and people the offensive has.

The whole "scroll-lock" premise completely favours the defense. I could sit in the Moon Altar all day and just keep scrolling Glom's colossi and they would not do a single bit of damage to the Altar, probably.

The fact that fighting anyone who knows two cents of operating defensively can completely destroy an offensive.

Here are some ideas that may not coordinate with one another, but can provide some general suggestions:

1.) The most extreme but perhaps one of the most effective would be to do away with scrolls, gears are fine.. but scrolls hamper any hope of the offensive doing anything

2.) Colossi need to do more damage. By the time the next weakening comes, the Colossi will have decayed so it really doesn't matter how much the construct is damaged. However! A suggestion would be to allow the offensive side to shrink their colossi back to it's smaller form. Also, being able to add upgrades while the colossi is tiny would be time conservative.

3.) Allow for 'Teleport Colossi' (only during the Weakening) which can let an offensive group recoordinate even if they're routed once.

4.) STOP LETTING SHRINES HIT PEOPLE INSIDE COLOSSI, kthx

5.) This is something that could change colossus battles completely, but why not try to integrate a deep wound system for both Colossi/Constructs? There could be different effects for damaging a specific part and upgrades could perhaps give an upgrade of some sort to them.

6.) Make colossi battles quicker, if you don't want to increase the damage they do. Right now, they're dreadfully slow and boring.

That's essentially it for now, I know I had some more ideas but perhaps this is just some stuff that could be considered or thrown under the chopping block.

EDIT: 7.) Knew I forgot something else important, but if the person who is activating the colossi gets interrupted by other means. Don't let it destroy the colossi please? Just let it destroy the process of raising it. They're costly to make in comms and power, and it destroys an -entire- offensive when it's destroyed. No es bueno.

DOUBLE EDIT: 8.) I need to stop forgetting stuff. Anyway, make it possible so that the offensive has more than one way of entering the Nexus World? All it takes for Glom, as an example, is drop Choke, grab all their defenders and camp out at the portals for us. Destroys any hope of us getting back in there, sadly.

3) Use an empath to conglut back at the ship docked at the nexus world. I don't know why we are so averse to using aethercraft skills.

4) Stop letting people terror/rage coven from inside a colossus (unless you can terror/rage from inside rooms, dunno much about the skill) if you're also going to not let shrines hit people inside a colossus.