Per the AB file:



If this isn't working then bug it and I'll get it fixed ASAP.

No, it's my mistake. When I see pilot I immediately think "Commander," though I guess to a small degree my worry still applies. If purchasing an aethership were in the reach of every single Lusternia player (Within reason and with adequate effort), then I would be very much for a solo aetherspace environment (In fact, I'd LOVE it). However, the cost of purchasing a manse and then all of the materials for an Aethercraft just seems to be a bit too much just to restrict it to solo play. Maybe I'm just not the type to endlessly bash for a million gold (and thus not able to imagine how difficult it would be to do in Lusternia) and am severely underestimating one's ability to acquire a ship, but eh..

It isn't my business what people do with their gold (whether it be gained through selling credits on market or bashing), but I'd just hate for the once group activity that I loved to turn into something that only those with big pockets can do. Something so vast and with so much potential shouldn't be kept to such a small portion of the game's population.

That would be a flux serpent, cloier and pyrinnes, compared to Cosmicfireing Finks. Each of those aetherbeasts require several hits. A fink required (for me) one cosmicfire. I could kill 6-10 finks in the time it takes to take out one of those aetherbeasts with one gunner. In other words, I would get far more experience from just clearing out Newton. Maybe things would've been different if I was hunting black dragons, but they're too far away to make it worth it.

Besides, it shouldn't be compared to low/midbie hunting. It should be compared to highlevel hunting. It should be gainful for those who are above level 70. That was my point.

I don't think there are any tendril things now either. I only find dragons and... scyllus? in the void.

Yeah, all of what you're saying is understandable and true. I was mainly curious about what you were hunting.

Like you said, Aetherspace should be viable for all levels. I just hope it stays crew-friendly in the process, but I can understand the complaints coming from that vein as well.

Oh, uh.. as for ideas, um.. I like the idea of having more general happenings in Aetherspace, like the quest ideas that were mentioned earlier. How many bubbles exist in aetherspace now anyway?

Yeah, I would want aetherspace to be better for hunting in groups. That is, hunting with a crew of only two should take me 10 hours to get from level A to B, hunting in regular PvE should take me 8 hours, and hunting with a crew of four-five should take me 6 hours (rough numbers). Give a greater return for greater participation, such as... say don't spilt the experience when you're hunting in a group.

As for bubbles...

Frosticia
Cankermore
Xion
Dramube
Crumkindivia
Moon/Night
Facility

I think that's all of em. A total of eight. Out of all of them, I only visit Crumkindivia and Xion regularly. Crumkindivia because it's the best bubble for hunting and gold compared to difficulty (in my opinion) and Xion because it is all kinds of awesome.

Bombarding critical hits, maybe?

Perhaps a data point to help, I never use credits to get gold though I do have access to skills and artifacts that sped up the process. I was able to buy a one room ship just from the proceeds from hunting for exp in a few RL months. If someone was focused on just making gold they could do this faster.

I obviously am a ways away from having a "real" ship but at this point there is no reason for me to invest in one. Celest has multiple people with full ships which I could act as a crew member on if anyone ever bothered to take one out. In fact I am better served by just having a 1 room ship for moving around faster as it is all I use it for.

So I think aetherspace is well within any serious players budget. In fact if you compare it to the rest of the game it is not that bad. Take all the general skills and guild skills people spend credits on and spend that on a ship instead. The problem being of course that the ship is no where near as generally useful as the skills you gave up.

I think the main reason why it is seen are too expensive at the moment is because you do nothing in aetherspace, and it is a crazy cost to just gain access to Xion.

While we are on ideas...

What if a commander had a skill that would let them swap a crew member for someone who is on a dock. Make it cost 10 power and both people need to ally each other. This way if you are out on a trip and someone has to go you can grab a replacement for them without having to return to dock. It does not even have to work across planar boundaries, though that would also be nice.

Also with the changes to flashpoints (and keeping in mind I still think everyone should have access to them) I think the limit should be 3 per plane, not total. Using Xion as an example if you are not a demi-god with a whistle you basically need to burn all three if you want fact access. 1 for Xion, 1 for the elemental->prime and 1 for prime->elemental. I think most just do Xion and Water/Earth dock and then deal with flying into and out of the elemental plane manually.

I do not have any experience with ship<->ship combat so I have not suggested anything in that area. It does seem to me though that other than weakenings and perhaps some domoth battles you would never see a ship to ship fight. Aetherspace is huge and unless you just get randomly lucky you are never tracking down another ship.

Personally, I'm not fond of the 3 gunners : 1 empath ratio. It coerces the use of the dreaded Spiral, as well. More importantly is that it's impossible to outheal- you don't even have to use any of the Combateer skills to kill them, just keep pounding and pray that you luck out. Since you can't outheal all of them, it basically comes down to which ship has the most hull, power in their grid or shield, and luck. Likewise, with the current system, being struck comes progressively worse and harder to heal out of- the chance of the grid sputtering out and failing to heal your command gets higher as it gets damaged. In the heat of a fight, you can't reverse that, just spam heal grid (and lose extremely vital hull/shield points) or heal hull/shield (and allow your grid to get worse).

Also, on the same matter with Empath, you have to reconfigure your aliases for each ship you come across because you have to GRID REPAIR MODULE ######. Specific numbers for each module. Being one of the few Seren empaths, it can be very frustrating.

The other issue has already been mentioned often here- there's not enough motivation for us to go into aetherspace at the moment. As for constructs and weakenings, I can't remember the last time Seren bothered to attack Glom or Mag. Mag just drops mines all over their dock, making it impossible to get to when you're losing 25% hull and damaging all systems every room you move. Glom's just a defensive stronghold with shrines, demesne, choke(!).

True story, Morgy is on top of those bugs like a fat kid who dropped a piece of candy.

Empath repairing modules I believe already had an alteration so that you can now grid repair modules (unsure on syntax) and it will just heal the most damaged module. It was a while ago so i don't wanna dig up the post. Plus I could also be wrong, but i'm 90% sure.

Okay, came up with more idea/suggestions/critique. Couple good things is that aetherships/modules are available for gold and it's really only like 7 lessons to be able to use the basic modules which is great. The high cost of combat outside severely limits what the average player has to spend on aethercraft. Heck, I've got 12 trans skills at the moment and I'm only at fabled in combateer. Then you changed bombard to be lower and there's no reason to learn more because higher attacks= power attacks which is saved for the commander to use.

Even if you do not allow separate power for each module, no one's going to try something tactical like use power attacks to disrupt all modules for 8 power when there's a chance to miss. I believe this chance is higher if you are further away from the ship, but it's still a chance that is significant.

I agree that aetherbeasts should be worth more. This is important by the way. I've posted this elsewhere. Essence gained by a single gorgog in the gorgog caves was equal to essence gained by a swarm of gorgogs in aetherspace. I killed this swarm solo so it was not even divided amongst a crew. Absolutely absurd especially cause there are no critical hits and you generally want a crew, which means this would get divided.

I think the base experience from killing all aetherbeasts should be multiplied by 5. One more suggestion I have concerning this is that the first constructs implemented, the ones for all orgs that give the benefits of immolation being free of power as well as a 25% experience bonus for hunting in an aetherbubble, I believe these constructs should have an added benefit that allow a 25% experience bonus for hunting in aetherspace.

More ideas as I get them, I'm reviewing the old threads right now.

I looked up one of my old posts- http://forums.lusternia.com/index.php?s=&a...st&p=459320
I'll also c/p the contents below.

Essence before (last 4 numbers) 3668
Essence after 4381
Gain of 707

Me killing a swarm of gorgogs solo
That's like the same as killing one single gorgog on prime. not to mention, normally this is divided by 5 people minimally.



This should show you the problem with experience and aetherspace.

As Enthralled put it well, aetherspace is only used to travel. Adding more bubbles will only make it used to travel more frequently. Fusion being in a specialized skillset will end any attempts at aetherspace battles. There are people who still like to Spiral, shoot, shoot, shoot, heal and repeat until one ship blows up. But the separated power prompts for modules should also be considered.

The xp gain is something I will look at.

I agree that sailing the Aetherways is mostly a means to an end (travel) right now, and that it could use some more interesting mini-games than bashing. It already has gnome trading for one, but it would be interesting to see some others. Does anyone have ideas they want to suggest for a cool and interesting Aetherways minigame?

More reward for interaction with aetherspace would help a great deal. I agree with Krellan that increasing experience gain by a factor of 5 would be a good start. It's hard to get a crew together. It's expensive to get a full ship. Doing so should be worth it. Would it level newbies quickly if they participated? Yes. Is that a bad thing? No.

I don't like the idea of having little one-man ships you can hunt aetherspace with. That's kind of missing the point and if you want to solo hunt there are already plenty of other options.

Each module having its own prompt power would make ship vs. ship battles far, far more interesting.

I am in favor of more bubbles as well though. Someone willing to put in the effort should have good places to bash out in aetherspace. And yes on standardized routes of some sort as well. Flying is not exactly difficult but it would open things up more to people that have trouble with it.

But, honestly, for aetherspace itself, a hefty increase in potential experience would likely be a good enough start.

Odds are, your ship is too fast for your fingers

constant scavenger hunts set up by the gnomes.

Fly around aetherspace and you can find gifts that are valued between 0 and 100 credits. Only one gift exists in aetherspace at a time. (all of aetherspace) Each time a gift is collected, a new one pops up somewhere. (need a scoop to collect it)

randomized scavenger hunts.

notes found in the library from the weevils give aetherspace coordinates. Fly to that coordinate to find a prize, or a gnomish aethership with really good prices. (need a scoop to collect it)


Lost gnome brigade:

Fly around aetherspace and rescue the broken down ships, when you rescue the ship you get some mobiles to join your ship and hang out there. Highly interactive mobiles that is. Sort of act like pets you own for a short time in your ship. They don't leave till you take them to the aetherbubble they are looking for. Some neat prize when you get them there.


Bascially, just do something that wins people prizes, and treat the vastness of aetherspace as a sort of lottery system.

I guess eight isn't bad, but I'm going to be completely honest and say that I've never been to a bubble due to the fact that I go to aetherspace to hunt aetherbeasts (that and I don't have regular access to a ship). Hoooowever! I'd love to see couple of smaller, flavorful bubbles as well (A family home, a little farm of tamed beasts, etc) ranging from about 10 to 20 rooms just so they're worthwhile exploration, but small enough to have that cozy feel. Quests on these small bubbles would be fun to see and most likely would be the main draw to them, aside from any RP tidbits they may have to offer.

(>_< I meant to post this a few hours ago)

And a big yes on Daganev's lost gnome idea. It's a bit like the pilgrims, bards, and scholars that we all love to quest with. I'm not too sure about the interactivity of the mobiles since there isn't too much you can do with mobprogs in that regard (Well.. there is, but it would be quite a bit of extra effort for a simple "fetch and grab" quest), but the general idea is great.

I'm really not keen on the credit items, however. Not even if they're temporary and extremely rare! Some sort of quest item would do. Perhaps something that the trade gnomes need so you don't necessarily have to go out of your way to deliver it. If we did have unique items for player use, I would want them to be extremely utility-based and very temporary.

One of the biggest problems with Aetherspace is that it's WAY too BIG! You probably have over 5 million little square boxes for aetherspace... and your ship is one solitary little box. How is one supposed to seek and destroy an enemy ship? The size alone accounts for 90% of the ranting about how long it akes to get to Aetherbubbles. I think if you shrunk Aetherspace, it'd be alot more user-friendly.

Also, people bring up a good point: Ships are expensive. There needs to be a very high incentive to purchase and use one whether it be more experience (I like the idea of increasing experience for larger crews), or more profit (make aetherholds hold more dust, or vastly increase the prices of aether-comms). Remember, a ship with (let's say 5) aetherholds would net about 150k on a 3 hour trip... split that between 5 people (6 if you have someone leeching in a cloaking cube)... that's less than i could make on a 30 minute kephera run. And let's not forget the extra hour it takes to find all the gnome ships scattered about to compare prices! Wich brings up another point: Maybe all gnome ship prices should be identical so you don't have to run around a 5 million room area.

You need at least two price tables to make trading work. 150k for 3 hours of work by 5 people is crazy. I think the effort of keeping 5 people together for 3 hours should warrant a exp/gold premium. Not even coming close to the exp/gold/hour you can do solo in the UV is just sad. Has anyone else tried to work the gnome traders for gold?

I think it would be interesting to see NPC ships that were more than just glorified shops. You can set up full quest lines with ships acting as the NPCs.

It would be cool to attack an NPC dock of some kind. You would have to get past a mine field and a ship and then dock and attack on the ground. Probably beyond the scope of the coding effort you would wish to spend on something like that though.

A race might be interesting, though you would have to disable flashpoints, or have multiple classes.

Having to fend off NPC attacks on your home dock (or perhaps cosmic/etheral dock). If you do not kill them your org losses some power, if you do kill them you get a boost. You would need to give the org a fair amount of warning before hand though so they could get a ship ready. This could even be expanded into a repeatable quest where you could launch an NPC attack against another org and claim a portion of the energy.

Everyone loves pirates, perhaps some rogue ships have been attacking the gnomes and you can collect a bounty by killing them. You would get some vague clues on where to search from each gnome ship (like a hotter/colder type thing "They were just here!"). You could be rewarded in gold or perhaps reduced prices from the gnomes.

You can make more than that in 3 hours. Especially if you hunt dragons. But when we were actively doing it we could net 100k in about an hour easily enough on ethereal level creatures. The crew wasn't really kept around for either the pre-hunt pricing at the gnome ships or the post hunt selling. Honestly you only need one person (commander with silent run) for all the buying/selling type actions. Of course, that's not really all that rewarding.

But the different pricing is interesting and usually rewards the effort put into finding them. There is a fair bit of tedium involved. What might help in that department is the Facility having a price list that shows the current price tables for all the ships so you can price your route fairly easily and know you're getting the best deal without having to actually track down every single ship. Maybe some way to actually locate the ships' general areas as well.

Yesss agreement.

Standardized flying would be nice. I've personally only bothered to learn to fly around the 4 org prime docks. The main reason prior is that if I got lost, I could not fuse back and people can be lost for quite a large amount of time. Now I have demigod and a whistle or even just demigod would work since the ship could just implode/run out of power and end back at the plex.

Though I should probably agree on the vastness thing, something tells me not to. I kind of like the largeness as it adds to the idea that aetherspace is indeed a huge and potentially limitless place. Toning it down may take away from that. To make it more user friendly, I'd suggest some sort of psuedo-flashpoints to known bubbles (I.E. The ship has traveled there once in the past or something.) and that transportation should probably have restrictions, such as ship power cost, some lengthy cooldown/"charge" time to stop it from being spammed for rapid teleportation, and maybe even require full hull strength or being within a certain range of the bubble. I guessing the current Fusion skill already has something like this in place, but I don't want to assume. These requirements may even be over the top, but if the basic idea has any merit then well.. yay. If not, oh well.

Bubbles, as large as they are, should be easy to get to and shouldn't require the use of regular flashpoints if Aetherspace is to get busier. I can't imagine it working out well when aetherspace grows more in the future and doubles (or more) in the number of bubbles it has, but I may just be exaggerating again. Either way, the bubbles seem to be more for solo play (or small bashing groups) so I don't see the problem of offering quicker access when the player has already shelled out X amount of gold to get a working ship and has already been to the bubble.