Well, it does three things. It lets us:
1) Not worry about losing it next Weakening, letting us have a bit of a breather.
2) Lets us set our own time for deconstruction / rebuilding instead of going off of the Weakening time-table.
3) Doesn't give power to a destroyer.

Other than that, it's exactly as if it was destroyed during a Weakening. Frankly, I think there should be a bit of a power loss for it being destroyed while damaged (as I said, %age based on how damaged it is).

i personally don't mind either way. Honestly...in my opinion every org has enough power that we really will never ever use it all up unless we destroy every construct and rebuild them asap every time. that's the only thing we really do that actually uses up a significant amount of power. It's good for you guys cause of those things you said and it's good for us cause now I don't have to worry about if I'll be awake for it, if others will how many people can I rally, what stuff do we need to fund again, and the goal we had set out from the start was accomplished.

Yeah. Everyone wins.

We've made these changes largely based on your feedback, so hopefully the Nexus World battles will be more manageable now. The mini-weakenings are designed to provide more frequent opportunities to raid (with less serious consequences for the nation being raided).

Also, it was pointed out that an org can still remove all the funds from the Ministry to destroy a damaged construct. Obviously, this is not the intent! I had thought that guards cost a gold upkeep and so draining the Ministry funds would cause a nation to lose all their guards as well (a very compelling reason not to drain it), but it appears that I was mistaken on that. Do you have any thoughts about a reasonable mechanic to prevent this from happening?

Is there any plan to continue reviewing bombard? What with slurries now doing even less for the same price as the original healing (expensive kegs and 100 ingredients, most of the cost going into the kegs), bombard is even more of an issue.

Frankly, given these changes... well, I'll withhold comment until we see how things go. This'll give a lot more chance for alliances (defensive and offensive), which may or may not be what's intended.

Still, I'd like to know if any changes are planned for Bombard, because wasting an hour of everyone's time to watch a few ships just bombard every 10 minutes is incredibly boring and off-putting, and causes enormous amounts of frustration.

Just as a reference for others: Mini-weakenings will occur every 15 hours (Moon goes through all signs in 30 days, but both opposite/conjunct count).

EDIT: And seem to last 2.5 hours.

I had no plans to review bombard. However, I'm not opposed to taking a look at it, either. What's the issue with bombard?

Thanks for the clarification.

Further ideas: Make Colossi start at 3,000 health instead of 10,000 (they aren't going to survive from one Major Weakening to the next anyways). REMOVE the "Colossi get slower as they get more damaged" thing (it's essentially a non-issue at the moment anyways). Give the experience gain to those who focus negatively on a colossi when it's destroyed, and when an operator destroys a Colossus. Essentially, trying to give both sides the same reward for participating.

4180h in one weakening's pretty difficult to pull off (900 from sparkles, 280 from a keg, and 3000 base), but at least it's a lot more plausible than 11180.

Allow nations to destroy their own constructs, whether by the old way or by the cheatish way, but make it cost them 3x as much as it does when it's destroyed by an enemy nation. It's always better to allow people to be dumb and pay the price, than to try to plug all the ways they can find to be dumb faster than they can find more.

Why not just use the mechanism you stated? If you want it could even be an upkeep as small as 1 gold per guard. That wouldn't put much of a dent in the nations' coffers while still producing the desired effect.

Bombard is ~400 damage each strike (closer to 450, but comes down a little bit with focusing). Usually 6 strikes per ship, an average of two ships per bombard. That's 4800 damage in one hour of Weakening (closer to 5400), and takes 4 people to do (2 per ship). Could be 1 per ship if the combateer docks, lets the others off, undocks, and then goes to fire. Focusing does VERY LITTLE-- 10 people focusing seems to bring it down about 30 damage.

Assuming that the 20% decrease in kegs is due to about a 20% raise in times between Weakenings, kegs will heal approximately 1750, assuming the Construct was not damaged to begin with. Otherwise, kegs will heal about 1400.

Now, you have a base damage level. Take your two combateers and put them in ships to bombard, with your other fighters on the ground. Build a construct, and you're going to easily counter the sparkleberry curing (as well as wiping out a few of the kegs). This is mostly just a review of the damage done by it.

Now getting into the part that makes it a huge frustration:
Bombarding by itself outpaces healing. It doesn't require that anybody set foot on the ground. Bombarding is often done by two ships, meaning you need a minimum of two ships yourself to really have a chance (especially against massive tank-ships). Fully crewing two ships means that you leave essentially no defenses on the ground.

This means that a defender has to choose between defending the ground, or defending the skies. An attacker can decide on one, the other, or both.

Most of the time, a bombard-choice by the attackers results in an hour of sitting there, watching the attackers just trigger the end of one bombard to start the next. There's nothing you can do. You can't just leave, because you need to be there to feed sparkleberry into the thing. You need to stand there to watch for a decision to try a ground attack. Nothing that the majority of defenders can do matters a whit. A huge amount of focusing essentially does nothing.

As I said, it leads to a huge amount of frustration and anger.

Could leave 200 gold in the Ministry, then... I think he's trying for a more permanent solution.

Actually, at first, I was thinking this was a silly idea-- there's no actual "loss" for someone destroying your construct, except the 7-day rebuild wait.

However, if you were to make the rebuild-time something like 15 days if you destroy it yourself or let it be destroyed by not paying for it, that's a much more significant amount of time to be without the benefit (and more expensive to rebuild, as well). Maybe even lower the time it takes to rebuild if destroyed by an enemy to 5 days or so.

So let me get this straight.. let's say we deactivate the Crypt of Urlach. Do all the Geomancers who now have lich suddenly un-lich?

Given the way Lichseed works, I don't think so. They'd still have it until they died once (no suspect given)-- and then they wouldn't be able to get it back for 3 hours.

I'd imagine Moonchilde and the similar Celest-skill would be stripped immediately on deactivation, though, and probably the crow eggs would all decay as well.

With this update (while much appreciated), I believe we indeed need to revisit the fact that lichseed will not fade at the end of the day (or however long), unlike angelic aura which will. FURTHERMORE, while they won't be able to reacquire lichseed, which is well and good, how does it make sense that those without necromancy remain a lich?

I don't care which it falls, just as long as it's equal. Either let the angelic aura (and whatever other organizational defences from constructs) stay until death, and have us not be able to get it again, like lich(seed), or make lichseed drop, like angelic aura et al.

Food for thought. Or a dead horse being beaten. Your call.

Lich >>>>>> 5% damage reduction and faster shielding. I'd be perfectly happy losing mine in exchange. There would be virtually no point in disabing the Crypt if this is the case.

That's incorrect. When a construct is disabled, the Moonchilde and Angelic auras will simply have no effect (but they will still exist). Similarly, a crow egg will still function, but you won't be able to acquire a new one (and the same holds true with the Lichseed defense).

Hmm. All right.

Given the way it's set up, it appears that you would use disabling for the little constructs (mostly Cosmic / Ethereal / Elemental defense) and major battles for the bigger constructs (Crypt, Angelfont). The Moon Altar would be a gray area, I can see wanting to disable it in certain situations. The question is whether or not they'd occur near enough to a minor weakening to work.

I'd hope nobody would waste time disabling the immolation construct, but we'll see.