Why are you crushing his hopes and dreams?

...what, why?

That is a complicated question! I think part of it is they didn't fix flashpoints and the changes to nexus weakenings weren't strong enough. I haven't really considered all the other factors.

Sorry about the dream-crushing!

Psh, there can be no dream-crushing on this day. I'm too buoyed for that!

(Plus, seeing all these familiar faces is so wonderful, I miss you guys!! )

It's always good to see you drop by!

No empaths, still.

Shiri will say it's because everyone still wants to be a Commander for flashpoints, and he's probably right to some extent. But my clan is full up of Combateers, and still few Empaths, none of them active. So I think Shiri's theory goes only so far. Someone who's active enough in Lusternia will probably end up Commander, but that doesn't say why the less-active and younger folk gravitate towards Combateer over Empath, and I think that's simple to explain.

Running a turret while hunting requires two commands, it's obvious when to use them, and there's two other combateers to take up the slack if you slip up. But even with an Empath command available to cure the most badly harmed module, being an Empath still requires learning too many things all at once, especially when you throw trade into the mix which for some reason puzzles people no matter how it's explained. And if you screw it up, the whole ship implodes, and no one wants that pressure.

Sure, you and I know that it's easy stuff to learn, but the young folks don't. By the time they're ready to climb that learning curve they're probably also ready for Shiri's theory and will jump straight to Commander.

Just a few days ago I started another stab at trying to revitalize Seren aetherspace efforts, both in my own clan and with the new regent. Then I found out that my two newest recruits had never really intended to stay, they just wanted in long enough to learn a few things and then out. I was very disheartened. They'd even been talking about which one would end up being an empath.

Avaer, go make a Seren empath and you'll have all the aetherspace you can shake an empath grid at. That's absolutely the only thing SongSparrow lacks. Don't let Nejii discourage you.

In Glomdoring, the situation's a little reverse. There's a couple of commanders and two rather active empaths (myself being one), along with one relatively active combateer.

Aetherspace isn't lost in Glomdoring. It just lacks enthusiasm. I can't speak for Serenwilde, but, all hope is not lost with Aetherspace, Avaer. You just need to know the right place to look.

I trade particles for spheres all by myself because I cannot pay attention to anyone while I'm piloting and I cannot bear to ask anyone to suffer through the boredom that is riding along aimlessly scouting for gnome ships, some of which like to hang out near the void with black dragons so good luck trading with them because when was the last time you really out ran a new black dragon?

There's no enthusiasm in Serenwilde either. Part of that is because, most of the time, anything that happens in Aetherspace just doesn't matter. And most of the time, the only thing people hear about aetherships is that they implode. There's just no draw to Aetherspace, and not a lot of reason to go out to the bubbles.

Aetherspace was up at one point and now it's back down again. The biggest change now is that you are expected to actually aetherhunt like you do, bashing. Unfortunately, without a really heavy investment, the average hull cannot even stand against dragons. Dragons are only a sub par astral as well. Current theory in my opinion is that a 15 million gold investment could do dragons sufficiently. However, I can only imagine how slow that is. I've flown ships with just 2000 hull size and not being a commander, it is ridiculous. The commander bonus is still obscenely beneficial in addition to fusion. I really can't think of any way to fight tendrils without investing over 15 million gold, completely artifacted modules and an whistle to bring a ship to astral.

The release of Domoths as well as bashing on bubbles being considered 'safer' or more 'available' along with the 25% exp increase bonus on bubbles also contributes heavily towards the commander discrepancy. If you don't know about Domoths, the big thing is that every domoth requires spending an hour on an aether bubble randomly chosen between a variety. The participants must stay there for minimally 30 minutes (two people can currently do that at a specific domoth for each), then many may stay there for 40 minutes, but the base time is 60 minutes. This stage of Domoth can last up to three hours as others are able to interfere and compete. Domoths are done on a daily basis and arriving at the aetherbubble ASAP can literally make or break the battle for it.

On the plus side, critical hits have finally been introduced for turrets with the frequency and power being based on combateer skill level. This was a good step to encourage aetherhunting as well as Combateer spec. Also, experience has constantly been tweaked.

Overall, aetherspace is still far from being a regularity outside of fusion. The next most common thing are flights to trade in particles to auronispheres, followed by the small groups of people trying to keep aetherspace hunts alive. All in my opinion of course. I'd like to experiment with the current aetherspace more (I was gone for a handful of months myself) and see if we can't make more improvement lists of to do things so that when there is finally time to improve aetherspace again, there will already be some ideas.

Now that it's been pointed out to me that critical artifact runes help Combateers, there's another thing directing people towards that! Maybe Regeneration Runes could help Empaths similarly, to balance things out a bit? (Commanders don't need any more help.)

Hmm, I wonder if the seeming lack of empaths is more a function of demand than actual skillset appeal? As in, a specced Empath is really only far and away needed for ship-to-ship combat, while in PvE (if this is still true) any spec can do basic healing/repair. (I think the Empath spec is already the most rewarding and exciting, and having tried the other two previously can't help but come back to it!)

I wonder... in combination with the Imperialism idea, what if there were stray non-aggressive Fae, Angels and Demons that appeared on the Ethereal and Cosmic planes and which enemy ships could attack and capture in their holds, to perform similar quests to the existing power conversion ones or even keeping them in attackable aetherspace prisons? If the entities are within a nation's sphere of influence in aetherspace, they would be invincible, so the idea would be to make sure your borders remain defended as much as possible both on the plane itself and in the aetherspace around it.

That's probably not the ideal solution, since it really is only duplicating an existing mechanic, but maybe something similar in concept would provide enough of a sense that aetherspace does affect both nations and the 'real world' sufficiently enough to encourage fighting over it's benefits and rewards. I'm thinking on the fly out loud, do any of you have some alternative suggestions?

I'm really interested in aetherspace, but it seems limiting in that you need a crew with a lot of lessons in aethercraft to be effective even in hunting.

Would that be a correct assessment?

Generally you need all members of the crew to have around Adept Aethercraft skill to hunt individual creatures (up to Modules for the chosen empath). If you are just getting into Aetherspace, this is really all that is essential, assuming things haven't changed that much.

Higher lesson investment means that hunting is easier, quicker and safer beyond that point.

Aetherspace needs to undergo a fundamental change if it's going to draw people back again. Right now, the risk is much much higher than any feasible reward it could possibly give to anyone. The reward used to be quite balanced, but a flaw in the code (shooting through dead space), caused it to be seen as "too easy", and then after that, they simply made the worthwhile mobs absolutely impossible to fight at all. it's disappointing, as I always loved the idea of aetherspace, but I'm not sure it'll be looked at for a long time.

It was still massively popular after that fix. There was then a further massive nerf to aetherspace mob exp a couple days afterwards, causing me to gain like 70 essence per mob (your average weevil is worth 21, for the non-demis.)

What mob was that? Is hunting dragons feasible, and if so, what sort of essence do they give in a standard crew?

What a fantastic ability Demigods have in being able to quantify experience!

Hunting dragons is really hard; mainly during the abuse period, to measure how much we could get, we tried tentacles which gave well over 8,000 each IIRC. I believe tentacles just give a few hundred now, I don't know what dragons give (in fact I don't know what they could give the first time since I don't think we ever fought any...a couple seconds of lag on the commander means your whole team goes down, and only rarely can you survive a single hit because your chair will be gimped, resulting in more hits.)

That part really does need to be looked at, admittely.

tendrils are the best experience and I would say dragons follow that after. Nejii gave some numbers that are probably the most up to date. If we really want to get the xp back on track, we honestly just need to get the raw data. I would say the average ship size is between 1500-3000. Which I'm positive won't stand a chance at a heads up attack against dragons or tendrils. We'll need a base experience gain. We'll need to test and make sure that experience gain is equal for every crew member in the 5 main modules. Before it used to give experience to a ship and divide it amongst crew members. Essentially that experienced was made to be given equivalent to all crew members locked in instead of dividing. Energy collectors now receive a substantial amount less than the 5 main modules. Also, need to test the various damage attacks given by beasts, specifically dragons and tendrils to show difficulty to reward/risk relation.