I think a lot of good candidates recognize that the economics don't really play out well in their or the organization's favor. An org just spent 1 million power on you. Why? What benefit do you bring to that organization? The only direct clear benefit you bring is participating in the domoth system. And within that system, your primary goal as a VA is attaining crowns so your whole org benefits.

As a VA, the maximum length of any benefit you get for your org is going be 6 days if you happen to have a seal and get the corresponding crown. For most VAs, the maximum length of your blessings is going to be 3 days. Now getting a crown as a non-seal bearing VA is going to be time consuming. If all conditions are optimal we can say 30 minutes for Stage 1, only an hour for Stage 2, and another 30 minutes for Stage 3. Two straight hours of work for the Sceptre, another two hours for the Orb, another two hours for the Crown. So that is 6 hours of time each time you want to give a blessing to your org.

Now let's take into account essence expense during this time. If all goes well, a TA spends 1,080,000 essence on getting a crown blessing. If you bash astral you can usually get about 400,000 essence or so for every 2 hours of bashing. So that's going to be about 5 hours of bashing to make up for what you spend on the crown. If we assume you get some essence from the creatures you kill while trying to get it, let's knock that number down to 4 hours of bashing to make up for it.

So we have an estimate of about 10 hours of work for a VA to attain a non-seal crown blessing for their organization. This assuming everything goes smoothly.

How often could someone be reasonably expected to do this work? What is a good return on the orgs power investment into this person? Once a week? Once every two weeks? Once a month? Keeping in mind that you would get this blessing for 3 days usually, would having an org blessing for 3 days out of every 14 or 3 days out of every 30 feel worth it? What is the true expected return on the investment?

This is something each org would have to determine for themselves. Regardless, there is some expectation of something. Most people who understand that and understand that they're not really all that willing to have a significant portion of their time tied up in domoth activities are usually the ones you would most like to raise as a VA as they have a true understanding of what it entails and they actually would feel some responsibility to the org. Those who leap at the chance and really, really, really want it are usually the ones that either have little concept of what they're getting into or are going to use VA for their own purposes and have little interest in their responsibility to the org.

Having more than one VA does not really change the responsibility factor but does lessen the burden. If there are two of you and you each get a crown every month, well the city has a benefit 20% of the time instead of just 10%. With another one of you, it also makes the whole system easier. It's a heck of a lot easier to do all this with other demigods and ascendants there backing you up.

I don't think we need any artificial constraints on raising Ascendants, the power constraints are enough, but I think most orgs should have a very clear plan on what they expect of any candidates both before and after Ascension. It is something of an impasse really. Orgs are hesitant to raise a VA (and people are hesitant to be raised) when there is the possibility that this is all they'll get. Admins are hesitant to remove the cap until people raise a VA and we see how it plays out.

How to solve that? I don't know. Give orgs a trial run on VA? You get to raise someone so the system can be tested out. At the end of a month there's a review. The admin decide at that time if they will remove the cap or not. Either way, the org has the option of removing the test Ascendant and getting a full refund of the power they put in. Or they can just keep them and move forward in the finalized system.

Nice post,

Minor correction: the length of control over a crown is actually a little over 12 RL days for an Ascendant who has the seal. It's 6 RL days when the seal is possed by a Demigod, or if the Ascendant doesn't have the corresponding seal.

Other than that, I have no quibbles with what you said. I think the best way to test the system is to let our current Demigods and Ascendants hash it out. A number of Demigods have a great deal of personal essence, and aren't going to be doing much else with it. Meanwhile, Shuyin and Ilyarin are almost certainly going to start competing for some of the Seals- maybe even against each other. Fun!

A Vernal Ascendant will never be able to get 12 days. You have to have Ascendend through that Seal to get that bonus. As a Vernal Ascendant by default would not be a True Ascendant, it couldn't happen.

EDIT: Oh! And there has already been a fair bit of activity. Life, War, Nature, Knowledge, and Chaos have all had at least one challenge. We'll see how it goes.

Correction: The length of the blessing for any Ascendant is 3 days, as anyone else. If they have a corresponding seal, it is doubled. If it is an ascendant who ascended through that veil, it is doubled again.

Ah, ok, I misinterpreted that section. I thought an Ascendant with the Seal would be considered to possess the realm.

Just a though, what if city leaders could initiate a city wide referendum at any time to "withdraw the power" from a VA? Like, Celest raises Nerra to VA, then I go inactive. They hold the referendum and naturally it passes. I would lose VA status and they would in turn recieve 500k power back? That way cities can at least have -some- insurance. this would also happen if the VA leaves the city/commune, of course.

Hm, I think, if a VA leaves a city, he/she should automatically lose VA. After all, their powers are tied somewhat to the Nexus of that city or commune, right? It makes sense that renouncing the Nexus (in the form of leaving the city), will cause them to lose their "link" with VAness. Not sure what the compensation to the city would be, if any, but if 1/4 the game's population put their trust in this one individual and that individual decided not to want that trust anymore, it only makes sense they would lose their special superpowers.

That's already (supposedly) the case.

Having no limit on them means whoever gets power fastest (that seems weighted to communes who can get it from totems but I could be wrong of course).

A vernal is essentially Demigod +1, it is kind of silly to raise a demigod to vernal when you could keep the demigod AND get a vernal.

Do we really need endless demi + vernals around? The only saving grace right now on ascendants is it takes them forever to reform. Some people dont need worry as much about death though.. right Ilyarin you truehealer you? Trueheal, ascend.. or trueheal cubix! It is insanely easy in some cases to not die if you have the right skills.

Honestly Domoth just seems to be a reward for whoever has the most demigods (especially ascendants) as well as a team 'event'. Celenwilde would not die if only Magnagorans Demigods who had the essence to stay in the domoth realm came, and Glomdoring often seems independent. The standing brought on by events that seren and celest shoudl always be pals has made it harder to find a common factor. Celest and Magnagora are fairly equal, Glomdoring and Serenwilde in group to group are not. Serenwilde simply put has more, and even 3 novices spamming lash and vines with one moondancer could take out 2 Glomdorites in a group. Weighted say 3 and 3 for population weights of 10 and being generous giving magnagora 3, that leaves glom at 1 or so? 6 to 4 is not a balanced event, and I firmly believe the domoth blessings (other than nature really..) will unbalance things worse.

On another note... making ripple and flux stronger? plz no We have been talking about removing em and they can get a buff!?

Ok I feel better, time to check chicken... AGAIN

Malarious, I really don't understand what you are saying by throwing around numbers which I really can't follow. It seems as though in the end you are complaining about a system which makes power matter to an org--but why is that a bad thing?

I don't think the domoth blessings will appreciably imbalance the game. However, if there's a blessing you think may be imbalancing, please feel free to offer alternate suggestions. I've said over and over, we're open to tweaking the blessings.

Malarious just seems to be saying, "It's unfair that Celest and Serenwilde are always working together!"

I don't think it'll always be that way, though. Something will happen and Serenwilde will start fighting Celest again. Always seems to.

I would really like to see this it allows the chance of people who might not be the first choice to actually have a chance at ascension. (lasairn: you are all now required to spend your lives gathering power to raise saran )

To those concerned about orgs raising bu...cket loads of ascendants, with full sands xion nets... 250? power a repop, water and earth are less I believe. Etherseren/glom nowhere near that much and have the extra work required. Nexus worlds too. A ship with the siphon module might net more but I wouldn't know how much you could reliably gather in an hour. 1000 or something is the max you can hold before going back.

So... I'm going to estimate it up to 1000(per ship) and 1000 if your org hunted out every essence spot (we can make up the difference with linking ) it's what... 500 hours of consistent work? 4 hours off 21 days of non-stop gathering?

Yes my numbers are likely off, but to raise vernals quickly you would need that much work and if the entire org managed that... good on them

If you want to institute a form of vernal population control, why not throw in a steep gold cost as well? Ie, to raise a vernal, your city/commune has to put together a very powerful magical artifact that happens to require a lot of comms. This way, not only will power be a limiting factor, but gold will too, and I think it's much harder for an organization to raise the gold quickly, unless there are a lot of credits sitting around for a sale.

I'm only suggesting this in half-seriousness, by the way. The Pool definitely does not have the power to raise a lot of vernals, nor does the current growth level suggest that Celest can suddenly "work a lot harder" and get the extra 1 mil in a short amount of time. But, if you really wanted to allow for more than one vernal while putting some sort of limiting factor...shrug, make it take another resource.

I think that power's more limiting than gold, really, depending on how much gold it costs at least.

Gold also limits other expansions, such as aetherships, games, construction, events, etc. Do you really want to cut down the ability for your organization to purchase improvements if they want to?

Are there even that many upgrades cities and communes could buy to begin with? I guess you can always use more shops, but...

(Saran: You're neglecting a lot of passive power things there.)

Thinks like the gas lamps in Magnagora cost gold. New areas, gold. Executioner-type thing, gold. New denizens, gold. Etc. There are tons of upgrades that you can ask about and they all cost gold. The only real limit is your imagination.

Power is much more limiting than gold. Unless you want to bankrupt the orgs and as Xenthos pointed out, that would really suck. I too have visions of dozens of Ascendants running about ordering the peon masses to peel grapes for them and what not but that seems very unlikely to happen. The game has been open how long? 3 years? And the average power level is around 3 million? Granted, if an organization really wanted to focus on power gathering, they could probably cut that time down but it's still not going to exactly be ...fast.

The point being, more requirements to raise VAs are not necessary. One million power should suffice to keep the population low if the cap was ever removed. The biggest concern would be if the cap was removed right now we would instantly have about 7 more active Ascendants trying to build essence. Them actively participating in the domoth battles wouldn't really be a bad thing to liven things up.

Um... average is nowhere near 3 million, I'd say.

Average without Magnagora?

Okay. Maybe a bit closer.

Probably around 2.5 million-- I'm not really sure what Celest and Seren are at right now.

Also keep in mind that the orgs got a bunch of free power from the constructs for a while, and now they're severely limiting power growth again.