That's part of the focus thread!

This is about changing aetherspace commerce and dust trading. Anything at all to make it easier would be nice. A price listing would reduce repeated travels to every ship. We still don't even know where to find every ship other than just flying all over the place. And if you happen to find cheaper prices somewhere else you'll have to backtrack every time. The merchant ledger allowing you to see all ship prices makes perfect sense because this is essentially it's job.

The bit about making things more balanced referes to ship versus ship combat. Killing aetherbeasts is balanced, assuming you can get a crew together.

And a slight thread rezz on my part for a thought, probably in here somewher earlier on.

Pirates. You know, just random ships that are pretty much the same as monsters expect it could be like,

"A small merian frigate" < - or some other boat name I don't know
"A tiny furrikin dighy"

etc.

I don't know, random thought so I could have the fun of snickering about 'sploding a boat. That won't kill anyone, really.

I'm hoping one of the coders can answer this either Fain, Morgfyre, Estarra or anyone else who has actually spent time to discover this. But my question is when do the trade wares price list for each gnome ship change? I have personally heard it changes every weave. But nonetheless, even if it changes every in game month, there is a problem with the frequency. It's not a huge problem by itself, but aetherspace commerce and dust trading is a problem because there are several annoying variables. There are so many ways this could be addressed and I implore one of you to read this and reconsider how this works. (I'm assuming the lack of response lately means other no change imminent, not read, or on the 'to do later list'). First, I'll list every possible problem I can think of that adds to the frustration of trading.

1) Gnome trading ships' price lists change once every 24 or 25 hours.

2) There are many gnome trading ships each with varying buying and selling prices. All which must be visited to make efficient trades on dust and items. This often leads to -revisiting- ships to get the best price for the day or saving and repeating the next day cause all the prices will have changed. Ships are all over aetherspace, so there is not one central area to do this effectively at.

3) Aetherspace dust decays in aetherholds. Particles do as well. I'm not sure of the rate. But I personally noticed over 20 tons missing from a trip I went on yesterday at night around 5:30-7pm central and I checked today at about 1 pm central. So assuming is was the earliest dust collected maybe at around 6 pm yesterday, 20 tons decayed in 19 hours.

4) Because Aetherdust decays, people are forced to trade for bad prices because not everyone has extra hours to go searching for every gnome ship.

5) Because Aetherdust decays in aetherholds faster than they do outside, people leave dust in space

6) Aetherspace bashing requires you to fly around or hide behind a 'wall' to even have a chance to survive. (this by itself is not a huge problem but leads to problem 7)

7) because of #6 and #5 aetherspace dust is lost because it's a huge map with several rooms and no marker

8) there is no marker for aetherspace dust on the aethermap, so people have become reliant on spawning creatures and shooting from behind a 'wall' The reason for this is so that the aetherdust is all in one or two locations that are easy to find and remember.

9) Aetherspace dust and particles drop when ships implode, but trade wares stock do not drop. I'm almost positive they are just lost forever. I say almost because I experienced it happen first hand, but it was not recently. It was back when Zia was still around and before she was even Serenwilde Commune leader. That's months ago and there could have been some change I don't know about. But anyways, I'm under the assumption that all non glacerial dust an auronidion particles completely vanish from aetherholds upon implosion


These are several variables that all lead to the problems with aetherspace trading. There might be more that are escaping my mind at the moment. Others feel free to add. While not all of them are technically problems, the number of variables combine to a problem. If even just a few of these things would be addressed, many of us would be very appreciative. I'm happy to say I've actually come across other ships while in aetherspace myself. So thank you for all the current changes already, they are working!

Here are some various changes that would help improve this system. Others, feel free to comment/add.

1) make it so that aetherspace dust does not decay in aetherholds or increase how long they last. This could be made the same for auronidion particles as well

2) Make gnome trade wares such as cankered oil, gingerbread powder, etc. to not disappear when the ship implodes. Alternatively, make it so that the wares drop into aetherspace where the ship imploded and make them scoopable.

3) add a symbol on the aether map that represents dust. If this is too much because of rooms with tiny amounts of dust (liek gorgogs/pyrinnes that drop .2 tons) then make several symbols that each represent a ranged value of glacerial dust. For example: % - this can represent 0-10 tons of dust ^ - this can represent 10-20 tons of dust and so forth.

4) add the ability for the Merchant's Ledger artifact to be able to LEDGER and allow it to see what an empath would see from that ship when using grid trade wares. It makes sense, since that is the purpose of the artifact.

5) Add a public price listing that may be viewed when you READ or PROBE