I'm interested in soliciting feedback on the most recent Nexus World battle (the first since the revisions), and hearing in how it worked/didn't work. I realize there was some deal of confusion over what was going on, and will take that into account. Let me also say that a few changes were made already:

- The bug with conglut not working is fixed
- Bombard room damage is more random now (as opposed to instant death), but still highly dangerous
- The area messages to the Nexus World about bombard are coloured, similarly to the aethership messages, to give an indication of how far along the bombard process is.

EDIT: I've added a poll question regarding colossi.

It's been suggested that there is no point in trying to kill a colossus as a construct operator (or, conversely, trying to heal your colossus via the sparkleberry upgrade) as they are impossible to kill in a single weakening, barring heavy bombarding. Note that colossi currently have health equal to constructs.

What do you think about the idea to decrease colossi hitpoints, but also increase the amount sparkleberries heal them, such that they might need to occasionally heal themselves and also flee from battle to avoid being destroyed by the sturdier constructs (which could then give chase)? If you have any other thoughts or alternatives, I'd love to hear what you guys think.

Please note, as well, that if colossi were made more vulnerable that the cost of creating one, in terms of comms/power, would also be lowered to account for the potential need for more than one.

That's awesome...

Anyhow, I think it went well and with the changes you just made, it'll turn out even better. It was really fun and I suspect more people will want to get involved in them.

I think aside from a lot of us not really knowing what was going on regarding the bombard, that it went pretty well. Those changes were the only things I thought would be good.

I'm in love with Morgfyre

Pity there weren't more beacon style items, though. Not that beacons would be much use (Really, who's going to sit in a room with one?), but stuff that allows more military style stuff. Or maybe a change to beacon so that a bombard, a much weaker one, goes off instantly and obliterates the beacon? Give people a bit of "wtf just happened?" as troops storm in.

Very nice change to bombard, bravo as well as the earlier change to remove the balance loss penalty on damaged colossi. The balance loss, in particular, was a major detractor from ever mounting a ground offensive. I think a similar change could be put into place for jinson jolt as well (though it would obviously do much lower damage).

Additional changes you may consider are:

1.) Allowing an empath to stay in contact with ground forces using covey if the aethership is hovering above the dock.
2.) Colossi should probably take twice as long to decay compared to now. Currently, they can only last one major weakening so there is no reason to preserve its health.
3.) Change the construct/colossi cloak upgrade to be an active defense that has to be replaced once every minute. The way it is now, there is no reason to use the poison gas attack if a construct is upgraded with it. This way an operator would have to decide upon spending a balance to use gears and avoid being slowed down or using the cloak to prevent a poison gas attack.
4.) Have debris from construct/colossi do a random amount of damage on some folks standing near it during an attack. Regular shielding and dexerity would stop this. This would improve the atmosphere and add another interesting element to the battles.

I updated the original post and added a poll. Please read my edit to the initial post before voting.

He is mine!! Leave em!


I wasn't there (sorry had to put ball joints, and tie rod ends on this stupid vehicle, so I couldn't make it) But from reading Morg's initial post and edit. I especially liked the idea of the collosi part with "flee from battle to avoid being destroyed by the sturdier constructs (which could then give chase)?"

It sounds fun!

What kind of lower cost / higher healing rate / decreased health are we discussing? If the cost is lowered, I don't really think the healing ability needs to be increased (depending on what the numbers are, of course, this could very easily change).

42.

(Aka, I don't know right now, and would be subject to testing/tweaking, but let's assume a drastic reduction in health and large increase in healing such that you would be required to flee and heal from time to time)

In my experience (dunno if it was changed), you never have to use sparkle cubes on colossi. Reducing their health by a bunch but upping their healing would definitely make combat away from the mindset of 'who cares how much we get hurt, just do as much damage as possible'.

Out of curiosity, do these bombard changes encourage aetherspace battles?

I'm curious if the Phaetan's operator noticed anything going wrong during the fight with the Altar actually. I'll check my log thoroughly again but it seemed to me that... my girdle just wouldn't drop and the Phaetan was permamently aeoned after I did it just once.

Girdle is supposed to wear off after a while yes? Like it always used to. And it just wouldn't go down. Same for aeon, it's supposed to wear off after a while even if they don't have gears to nullify it and I am 100% positive that throughout the whole battle it did not on the Phaetan!

Actually, the girdle did wear off naturally whilst Veonira was operating and then few times after I took over. Then it just stuck whilst the Phaetan had to get theirs going again constantly.

Yes.

I haven't really seen the mechanism yet: does it bombard everyone on the ground unless you shoot down the bombarding ship, or just everyone in the one room as the colossus? If it's the latter, all they have to do is break off from focusing and move a room until it's resolved when it gets near the end of the timer, right?

It bombards everyone in the same room as the construct. If you pay attention you can just move. But the having to move at all changes up dynamics of ground battle and it also gives more incentive for defenders to actually bombard the colossus. Bombarding everyone the ground would put way too much emphasis on aetherspace.

An organization could in theory ignore the bombardment but given that bombard is much easier to get and orgs can field more ships with bombarders than they used to be able to, ignoring an organized bombarding effort seems unwise. Especially if you stagger the bombardings properly so they would be leaving frequently and their focusing efforts would be so sporadic as to be ineffective. Which of course goes both ways with defending and attacking, assuming colossi are used.

From my perspective it will encourage more aether battles but then again, Celest and Magnagora have not really suffered greatly from a refusal to battle in aetherspace. There were battles from the start of Nexus Conflict and I expect they will increase in regularity and importance.

I'll take your word for it unless it happens that I experience otherwise then. The one problem we came across previously is that it most of the people we have who know bombard in Serenwilde are also valuable ground combatants, so every one of us we spare (if we assume we pilot solo and accept death if someone comes to shoot us down) is another one less to try and overcome the choke squad down on the nexus world.

Chat at me in game if you like to discuss some of the tactics we've used that have been successful.

Huh. Maybe I'll do that sometime.

maybe I should start a Serenwilde aetherfleet program