I don't like the idea of changing the size benefits/drawbacks. It really isn't too hard to determine a size of a ship that will have decent speed and a decent hull strength. And I have to be honest, this idea seems prompted more due to the fact that you have a large ship than any real *need* for it. I agree with Lendren in that it would make more sense to have more reasons for ship to ship combat to spark the desire to build bigger ships.

Random thought.

Make it so rather than going to an aether bubble and sitting around there to claim an item, make the item pop into aetherspace and you claim it there. Same thoughts apply for the ground mechanics in that beasts are going to be drawn to you on a random basis due to your claiming. Presto, instant ship vs. ship combat and usage of aetherspace.

Hmm, I don't quite understand the 'item popping' idea... what sort of items appear and how would one know where and when they will appear? Could you elaborate on that? It does sound interesting though!

As for the penalties for large ships, I believe that the system is not balanced. Yes, I have a large manse that became a large ship, so I have a bit more insight into what those large ship penalties are like. Before the last set of changes, my ship was excellent for hunting high-level creatures because of the high hull strength and extensive upgrades, while small ships obviously also had the advantage of never needing to be hit. I did want a large, protected ship - choosing high defense and capability for high-level hunting over just being able to travel places and not be able to engage in those most challenging scenarios.

Unfortunately now that the relative difficulty of creatures has changed, the defensive properties of a ship have become irrelevant. The advantages of a small ship have not changed, because they can still completely evade hits - a 2-4 room unartied ship will probably now be able to hunt any size of creature where a highly developed one cannot. In addition, that small ship can also travel blindingly fast to their destinations, giving them an edge in utility purpose as well as aetherbubble conflict mechanics.

The advantage of a large ship in SvS combat is against a small ship, but I highly suspect that should windows of aetherspace conflict be developed (and they hopefully will be!) cities, communes and clans will pool resources to develop flagships for those same people to use that for the remainder of the time use small personal scout ships for hunting. The 'advantage' will more equate to a minimum ship size beneath which combat is not viable or attempted, as there's no reason that you cannot simply switch over your crew to a bigger algontherine when you know that's where you're headed. Given that unlike hunting, conflict mechanics are very likely to be along organizational lines, the usefulness of a large personal ship is greatly reduced as you may as well join the nation crew on the nation ship, since the nation as a whole will be committed to what you're doing.

I have to reiterate, the current system of advantages and disadvantages between large and small ships is not balanced, and there MUST be shared usefulness across all personal (SvE, utility and SvS) and large scale nation (SvS) lines for all sizes and types of ship. I understand that speed seems to make sense in differentiating small and large ships to our experience, but it is too essential to aetherspace to be the domain of one ship configuration only. Can you imagine if the smaller your physical size the faster you tumbled, walked, teleported, etc, as well the more attacks you dodged? The idea should be that extremes of size give both advantages and disadvantages for sure, but ones that do not invalidate your ability to engage in half the game. Especially if the size is proportional to cost and investment, which is the case with aetherships.

She's talking about Domoths.

Great way to take a mechanic, require everyone learn a skill to even think about participating, and stack the odds even more in the favour of numbers (more crew == more ships for the armada). It's a step in the wrong direction for fixing Domoths.

Ah, I'll have to leave that then, I did start trying to understand Domoths but then I realized it sounded like the wizgame and not worth worrying about for most of the playerbase... is that right?

Stage 2 is open to everyone, but is fought on aetherbubbles at the moment. That's the stage she's talking about for this as well.

Your dislike for anything regarding aetherspace is well known. The idea has nothing to do with fixing domoths. They're pretty much fixed. If anything, it would actually make it so more people could participate without the high entry requirements of participating in standard combat scenarios that currently are stage 2 of a domoth battle. The fact that someone was a level 30 person who was not tri trans and was on nexus would not significantly impede their ability to make strong contributions to the battle. Especially if people are trying to field large armadas. Someone does not have to have significant lessons in aethercraft to be able to make a contribution. This applies especially to the turrets.

It's a suggestion to easily increase the chance of ship to ship combat.

Hmm, if it was just general 'get the item for something', I'm not sure it would necessarily introduce ship combat, would it?

I can imagine it would go something like, crew jumps into smallest ship with collecting module available, speeds off to site, if they're the fastest gets item, fuses back safely to dock or flies around the vastness of aetherspace so no-one can find them until the timer is up.

If it were multiple items that appeared over a period of time, and it was the group that collected the most, would that work?

Heh, no, it's still really not fixed (closer than it was, at least)-- that idea just takes it further away. Further, I already mentioned the exact point you made-- you're making it more about bodies (more ships) than anything else. But each of those ships still requires that the main participants learn a completely unrelated skillset (and quite a bit of it!)

Elryn: It's an item that spawns and you have to camp at for a certain amount of time depending on a few factors.

Nope. Not really true. More bodies != more ships and as I said, you don't have to learn a ton to be effective unless you choose to be a commander or an empath. Two people per ship. 3 if you decide you need a transcendent combateer for some reason. It does equal the potential to field more ships but it doesn't automatically mean it will be. And regardless, it doesn't matter unless your point is that more bodies playing a large role in success in phase 2 is actually a problem with domoths.

No, in stage 2 you have to "claim" the item. Which takes anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour depending on ascendancy status and seal possession.

Making stage 2 more about bodies being a negative in my opinion is, in fact, the point.

(And I'm not really getting why you're saying it doesn't take a number of people investing in a completely unrelated skillset when your example itself has a number of people, growing at a pretty decent rate as more ships are added into the mix...)

And... 15 minutes? The fastest should be 30 minutes.

Hmm, personally, I'd prefer aetherspace conflict wasn't predicated on the combat actions of level 100+ players before it could happen.

I also think the argument about forcing people to invest a few dozen lessons in an 'unrelated' skillset is a bit superfluous, given that just to survive generally you have to invest in Discipline, Resilience, Magic, etc... any number of unrelated skillsets.

Well, it's pretty much been shown that people aren't going to do it for the "fun" of it. They aren't going to do it for nexus battles. You could be reasonably assured that they would do it for domoths. I have no thoughts that this would actually be implemented but it would get people fighting in aetherspace.

It's more than a few dozen lessons, especially if you're the pilot or the empath. Further, you've already got complaints that it costs too many lessons to be able to get all those other skills-- and the whole aetherbattle combat is a very minor part of Domoths. Changing that is not going to help Domoths in any way.

Won't they require a demigod or ascendant to participate? Otherwise they can't really win, just try to negate someone else from winning? That just makes me all kinds of uneasy.

Given the frequency of domoth battles, I'd say regardless of the demigod/ascendant requirement it would still spur far more aetherspace battles than we have currently.

Yeah, but I'd prefer that aetherspace conflict was introduced that was rewarding to everyone, and not just a demigod-level activity.

I'm hoping that if the issues with the SvE side of aetherspace are addressed (size penalties, shields, NPC attacks and experience), then new aetherspace challenges can be introduced that encourage competition over that SvE side of things. I don't really like the idea of yet again making aetherspace function as a little side diversion (ie, fly to point x in aetherspace to continue your quest, or just walk/transverse/shard there, or shoot monotonously at a construct to have a little effect on the battle, or whatever). I'd rather that the whole kit and kaboodle was -in- aetherspace, from start to finish.

eh, as awesome as a concept as Aetherspace is, and it REALLY is very cool, I feel like over the last few years Lusternia has sorta gone, "Oooh, new shiny feature!" implemented it, and gone onto another... Aetherspace, nexus worlds, 2 more guilds to continually update with Envoys, several new areas, Domoths... Let's not get into quests that freeze up! We got a lot of features to work with and improve that I believe are more pressing. (Nexus worlds? When do we get a new History of the Elders?), and frankly Aetherspace is a pretty low priority, in my mind.

Fair enough, but since implementation it has never really reached its potential, and there have always been more pressing issues that have diverted time away from aetherspace development. I really think we need to stop, assess the system and tweak it to be worthwhile, interesting and rewarding, and then move on to the next shiny thing. Monks have had their day (or year)!

I think that was a pretty valid criticism nine months ago, but not so much now. Since the introduction of domoths, almost all the development has been in revamps and repairs and rebalances, with very few major new things going in.

Really, I think a lot of the sense of "new shiny feature" we're seeing is just Estarra having had all these ideas in her original vision 5+ years ago, and us just only seeing bits of it as they come to fruition. So it's only natural that we'd keep seeing stuff as new development, but from the viewpoint of the developers, this is just them gradually rolling out (out of necessity) what they would have liked to have had on day one, since it was planned from then, at least in the broad strokes.

(Though I'm sure some of those things aren't. Domoths, for instance, seem to have come out of the change-of-plans that followed the first Ascension and it not going quite how it was hoped it would. My guess is nexus worlds were also a reaction to desire to replace some of the conflict-quest things with opportunities for conflict that weren't such a drag. But I bet aetherspace was, at least as a kernel of an idea, in Estarra's thoughts since before the beta.)