These are just some ideas for the future. I'd like to try and talk to envoys about them, but obviously there's lots already needed to be done and those take priority. Not to mention, coders are probably busy with monks and all, so I'm hoping just to record these and maybe spark some ideas from others and then when the monks are done and coders have some freetime, maybe they can implement some of these ideas as well

I find aetherspace a lot of fun. I also feel that a lot find it boring and monotonous after awhile, but I think that most will find it fun at least the first time. The basic skills are the first three you get so the cost of entry is like two levels gained worth of lessons. Krellan's family has been working on a ship and going on trips and more people are starting to give it a try and liking it. And they continue to since they're lower level and they actually gain experience and enjoy the crews insanity.

It really tones down for higher levels though. I've posted already how a group of gorgogs in aetherspace is = to gorgogs on the prime gorgog cave, except in normal situations it is split 5 or even more ways because it's split amongst the crew. I think it'd be really helpful so that everyone gains the original amount of experience is worth, or just increase the experience of all creatures by 5. So when a crew hunts a group of gorgogs, they each gain that 707 essence for one gorgog on prime in the end after either the split or just giving the original value (whichever would be easier to recode).

Another plus I can foresee from something like that, would that when you make aetherspace more of a viable bashing ground (I already find it more enjoyable than bashing alone for exp day) you increase the interest and I've heard of people wanting their own ships too. Ships are fairly expensive and that's good, they should be expensive for a monster ship. But the more interest, the more people you'll have flying, the more aether battles will happen and more people will be willing to fight in space during the weakenings.

The next thing I wanted to address was some things Avaer/Elryn touched on. I didn't agree with all of his points, so I'll only talk about the ones I feel are important to change. Mostly on the commander skillset being greater than all others. I believe that some of the admin have stated they want Nexus worlds to be the main focus of conflict? or a big focus anyways. I know they didn't say anything specifically about aetherspace, but I'm going to assume they want aetherbattles to happen on some level. With the numerous advantages and utilities that commanders have over other specs, it's going to hinder the goal of increasing conflict or focusing conflict here.

The main problem is that commanders have all the utility bonuses. They have increased speed. But this is perfectly okay by me since all the specs have speed bonuses, I'm just listing really. They have flashpoints and can fuse, which is an instant escape as well as easy travel to bashing grounds. The trans skill also acts like an instant escape since it's basically tripleflash for a ship along with increased speed movements.

I don't know Empaths utility very well, but I'll list what I know. They get faster module balance, they can synch ships so that they can fuse to another (but only commanders can do this), they can scan the area, and they can distribute module powers. Distributing powers can be risky since it's only from turrets, grid, chair, and shield orb. And if you go under 100%, they malfunction on chance as if that module were damaged. So really, it's only safe to distribute from the shield orb or an empty turret.

Combateers get faster module balance and various power intensive abilities that afflict as well as bombarding. The biggest problem with combateers is that the power is shared for the entire ship. Because of this, generally combateers cannot use their power and the power is saved for the Commander in case an instant escape is needed. The second biggest problem is that it misses, quite easily too. It misses as easily as regular shots miss. Wasted power right there and then the other 4 modules have less power to use. Anything someone would try using takes 5 power or 10 power or 8 power. It's really only enough for one module to use. Why risk it on a chance shot when another module can use it guaranteed?

I think most people take commander for flashpoints, combateer for bombarding, and then people take Empath because it's necessary. Empaths are the druids of Lusternia.

My first idea was to give everyone flashpoints. Make it a common aethercraft skill. Then to make it so that there is still importance for commanders besides the awesome speed bonus, give them the ability to make more than just the 3 flashpoints, increase it to say 5. A variation of that would be to give fusion to the aethercraft skillset, and then flashpoints only to commanders. This way everyone can USE flashpoints, but cannot set them and mess with a commander's flashpoints.

As I've been writing this, I realized that fusing would just become the trueheal of aethercraft and everyone having that would be kind of crazy. So to polish it off, make it so that one can only fused if the ship is at full hull strength (and/or undamaged modules). This means that the trans commander skill would be the best means of escaping during a dangerous battle and not just anyone could do it.

Not only would this change encourage people to take up other specializations, but it would help with nexus weakenings. The biggest problem with nexus weakening battles is that they are scheduled. The reasons why is pretty valid, but the drawbacks and the current system could be improved above to make it not as much of an issue. In Furien's topic about Serenwilde and conflict, he rants about the latest Glomdoring major weakening and Serenwilde not going because they don't have a commander to fuse.

Now most people would say, they could've just flown there. But how many of you want to spend ten minutes flying a monster ship there? There wouldn't be a commander for speed bonuses, and you assume strong ship, because it's either a precaution or you expect them to bring ships to fight back. After that, you risk waiting 60 minutes of sitting and whatever insane converstation you can come up with. Then you have to fly back. Commanders save a ton of time. People are only willing to invest so much time into sitting and it's the fusion skill that makes or breaks it. Sure, I've seen Celest fly, but they actually get fights. Mag is militant and would be forced to defend no matter what. Seren and Glom aren't, so they can sit back if the other side is merely bombarding. Plus Glom's has a literally choke point for it's defense, but that's not really part of the argument.

Now even if fusion isn't made publically, at the very least, the instant escape ability of fusion should be changed to require the full hull strength and/or module health. I say this because obviously every commander isn't gonna want their skill nerfed even if they'll still have faster flying abilities than everyone. There's also going to be a lot of people saying to just buff the other two skillsets to make them more attractive. I think it'll be hard to make it more attractive than fusion or even as desirable. But also my creative skills are on par with my paragraph separating skills. Anyways, thoughts and comments? Hopefully some good ideas too.

While going on another aethertrip I've come up with a suggestion for Empaths. The distribute skill is actually not entirely as useful as it could be. Out of the 6 modules that you can transfer power from, only the shield orb is safe to do so while aetherhunting. Any module that is under 100% (meaning that power was transfered from it) will malfunction and act as if that module were damaged. It's relative to the amount of power, so you really can't afford to transfer power from anything other than the shield orb. It would be better if you could transfer power from the ramhead, and collectors, but I can understand reasons for not wanting to enable that. Another potential solution could be making it so that they don't malfunction at under 100%, while still decreasing the effectiveness of the modules. To clarify further, modules under 100% already work less effectively. Grids repair less of the hull each time, turrets do less damage, and the chair moves slower.

Originally posted by Krellan:



Put these in my aethership/craft topic! I need them in an easy to find area so I can push them through my envoy slave/puppet when he runs out of ideas that I like. Or just sometimes after the New Years when they revamp the current system.

I've come up with another idea to make aether battles more interesting (hopefully anyways!). Any input is good. Except from the bush. Shrubs don't think well, fool!

Hrm, first I'd like to say my viewpoint of most aetherbattles tends to be turret fire fire fire fire fire while the grid heals the hull and the chair may use power related actions. Maybe some ruptures are preset, maybe they fly around. If others feel this isn't how most fights go, please say so. I also mentioned before that I feel the shared power is a problem that limits the possibilities of aether battles.

So the idea is to give all modules a 10 power prompt. The exception could be that the turrets share a 10 power prompt, unsure how difficult this is to code. The misses would be okay if all the turrets had 10 power they could use individually or together. If it was shared together, hopefully some of the power costs could be looked at, like moving from 8 power to 5 power so that they had two chances to fire instead of one and the one missing. The grid would have it's own 10 power, and the chair would as well. This makes it more difficult to get back into the battle because of the lost power, but it also makes there to be more need for power in collectors, and more power used from the nexii or drawn for vortexes maybe, or even siphoned from ships.

No more ranting and ideas about aether combat and put it here! The rants thread gets way too big to look these ideas up in the future.

I think it's probably better if power is shared (that is a good system and encourages teamwork to some extent) but if power regen is made quite a bit faster.

Ramming is pretty unviable right now. It nearly never works, even on a heavily damaged ship. Could it be made better?

we tested ram.. my ship had 900/2150 damage.... got rammed and still no breach. it's kinda worthless and it's better to just shoot the damn ship. As for the rest of this... I like krellan's idea about having turrets share power and the other modules be seperate. It's frustrating for the gunners to never be able to use their skills because "omg the pilot needs to spiral!" and i's very unfair for the commader to get all the attention.

I agree, and said it somewhere else already. It would prolong battles a bit, and give a chance for more varied skill than getting the first shots off and hoping for less misfires than the other ship. As an empath, all I've ever gotten to do (with little exception.. I do remember one battle where I actually had the chance to use clarity, but it was because both sides were afflicting and not just going for damage) is heal the hull and hope they die before we do, as the damage always outpaces my ability to heal the hull, even as a trans empath.

An improvement to healing would definitely make things more interesting.

Well damage is supposed to outpace since you have only grid and 3 turrets. I'm hoping for shared power too. Not only will it give other crew members a chance to use power feats, but I'm hoping it helps encourage and move away from the simple hull blasting.

Hrm. We should also test ramming on other ships and get more info on it. Then figure out a nice solution. Otherwise, why have a useless module? I'd don't have a ramming module on my ship or I'd do it. Also make sure the target ship that you're trying to ram is the same ship you use. One ship stays the same, and you try to ram other ships. Then you need to use one same ship to try and ram a variety of ships so we can figure out what determines the probability.

Damage outpacing doesn't make it that enjoyable though, since when you get blasted, you just misfire all the time, which is frustrating. Plus it's frustrating for the combateers to miss all the time, especially on their power feats. So the grid should probably be able to outpace just raw blasting, I'd think. That would require it to be sped up and made more effective, and turrets to miss less. Hopefully a stable-ish equilibrium can be reached.

Can't be too stable... remember that you DO need to destroy the ships, Shiri

Edit: To add something a bit more constructive... I think that ship healing needs to be modified abit more in that it should be possible for a trans empath to perhaps be able to heal more than one module at a time for a power cost. This would make empathing easier, but also have the restriction of a hefty power slump. Hopefully, though, the modules will have their on power

"able to destroy the ships" is what I meant by stable. It's -kind of- stable now, but in a frustrating way. I think it'd be better if there was less annoying missing and less annoying misfiring (due to empath grid being unable to do anything) involved.

Well, after reading some of this and doing more thinking, another possible change idea is to make it so damage doesn't touch the modules. All master aethercrafts can target modules. Why not make use of it! This combined with powers for other modules will make more and more skills viable to use. No combateers to afflict with malfunctioning? Then target modules first. Target the grid so they can't cure and target the hull at the same time. As much fun as I get from just blasting the hull pewpew pew. Pew! Pew! I realize eventually it'll start to decline in popularity and get old by people not as simply as amused as I, especially if these aetherbattles increase in frequency.

Plus it becomes less annoying when aetherhunting. One attack ripping into the hull won't damage every single module you have.

I like that idea Krellan. It would give reason for a little more strategy when attacking and possibly free up empath resources a bit. Having to heal every module in the ship every time it's hit is just a bit much. I like the independent power on the modules as well. That would *definitely* make things much more interesting. I'm a greedy commander and I want that 10 power to spiral! Since spiraling has saved our hides more time than I can count.....

I think you misread Revan's idea. I'm fairly certain he said there would be a power cost to that. So it wouldn't necessarily be everytime. But maybe at the start so you can continue to focus on the hull. That or I misread. Either way, with a power cost, that could be a neat skill to have.

And is spiral that trans skill? the tripleflash like one? plus increased movement speed or something?

and wooo aetherspace is growing! And I'm on a hot streak with ideas!

Anything to free up the Empath's hands is fine by me, honestly.

FYI, we have a laundry list of aetherspace updates we want to do (mostly courtesy of Aetherspace Guru Elryn) but we just have had too much on our plate to be able to get to it. If you want us to consider anything else, bullet point lists with brief suggestions go a long way. See the Previous Aetherspace Thread.

Awesome! I couldn't find that thread. I wish I had come up with some of these when Elryn was still here, he was going hardcore with his aetherspace changes. Though, some of the stuff I thought was a little unnecessary like replacing flashpoints, but other stuff was really good. I figure by New Years, or when the discussion on this thread dies down for a few days I can run through it and sum it all up in a list. That's when I'm guessing you guys will have started to lighten your load a bit anyways.

This is the list of Avaer's ideas that Estarra pointed me to so you don't have to click the link. I'll just add them here. There are some very good ideas here. I kind of prefer my solution to fusion/flashpoints rather than the wormhole idea, but please read and comment!