As fate would have it, I fell upon my own Aethership. Now I am considering taking up Aethercraft, perhaps as an Empath in for flavor. My reasoning was that, as the sole crew member on a small ship I would be able to cloak the vessel and use it for travel, exploration, and... other things that you can do...


I wanted to hear experienced and idealistic player opinions.



Is Aethercraft prevalent enough amongst the player base that I would actually be able to find companions, or am I better off taking the commander specialization into my own hands?

Is it even feasible to pilot one of these fellows (and reap the rewards) without a full crew?

Do the benefits of Aethercraft activities, in your opinion, make the skillset worthwhile?

Is there anything you would like to add?



Thanks.

As for this question, I usually pilot without crew at all (and I'm only Adept in Aethercraft) and I've never had any problems with the aetherbeasts. Except yesterday when a terrible lag made me blow up the ship...

I'd be one of those idealistic players.

You may have trouble finding a full crew, but again, depending on what you want to do, you may not even need one. With everything built around people being able to do things alone, it makes finding a group of people with different skills difficult.

As for the rewards, that's a toughy. It depends on what you are going for. If you plan on using the ship to take you to different aether bubbles for quests, then you're set. Anything more than that might prove difficult.

I chose the commander specialization, although I like the idea of being an empath, because it can be difficult to find crewmembers who want to go when you do and for the same amount of time you do.

I basically just use my ship to flashpoint to a few aetherbubbles (one of the great advantages of being a commander) but I don't explore much because my ship is too big (therefore too slow) to outrun the aetherbeasts if I dawdle. Nor can you siphon energy solo.

You can't? Poo.

I'd suggest commander over empath if you plan to be flying alone... flash points are terrific for exploring. With groups, a good and skilled empath is really nice to have. ( Mihewi & Myrkr)

Solo pilots in small ships are probably more common than full-crewed ships because aether-bashing, while fun, is nearly useless as far as getting experience. People seem to mostly use the ships to get between the bubbles for the good bashing/influencing/questing, sometimes raiding. Also to trade particles.

In Glom, we will usually use a full crew for trading missions, and hunt a bit (for the gold from trading dust, not the xp) and to get our pewpewpew rations in. From what I've seen finding a crew is not hard.

As far as reaping the rewards, Everiine's correct, it kind of depends on what you mean by rewards. You won't be able to aetherhunt without a full crew, but there are other uses to being able to fly as mentioned.

Aetherspace is fun, and the investment to participate is tiny. I think it's a terrific feature done better here than I've seen elsewhere, but it could do with some serious attention paid to it to get it working a bit more. It's fluff though, in the scheme of things, so as far as worthwhile goes... that's for you to judge. I enjoy it enough that I don't think my ship or the lessons spent were a waste.

By yourself, all you can do is pilot and go places, and hope to outrun stuff. For that, your specialization doesn't matter hardly at all; Commander will make you a little faster at Master and then a bit more at higher skill levels, but not enough to tip the balance. Except once you get flashpoints, Commander is the only choice for using a ship just to get places: it's like a three-point paradox puzzle for aetherspace built into each ship. But if you're not going to get high enough to get flashpoints, your specialization won't matter without a crew.

With a crew, what matters is whether you can get the other people you need. In this case, Empath is a strong choice because when ships don't go out, at least in Serenwilde, it's for lack of an empath (or of anyone willing to sit on the grid).

That said, the ship's owner is often the pilot just because the pilot is the captain and it makes more sense for the pilot/captain to be the one calling the shots, and thus, the ship owner. Thus, ship owners are usually Commanders. There's no reason it has to be like that. If you're an Empath ship-owner you'll need a Commander to go out and do anything other than fly around, but then, if you're a Commander, you'll need an Empath just as much.

To actually go out and kill things and trade in their dust, you will need at a minimum one person on each of three modules: chair, grid, and turret. More people on turrets is better. They don't have to be specialized, that only helps make them better. Anyone who's at Master Aethercraft can certainly run any module effectively enough for basic aetherhunting, provided they're willing to do so. But you need three people minimum, period.

(Extra people beyond those 3-5 are required for energy siphoning. The best aetherhunting is with a group of 6 people. Also, trading in particles is a real pain without an extra person to stand by the aetherhold, because once you put particles into the hold you can't get them back out, so you'll want to only put in what you can trade, which means unlocking and moving to the hold and then moving back and locking again, by which point the gnome has moved on...)

Is that a show-stopper for you? If so, become a Commander and plan only to use aetherspace as a highway to get to places, not as a destination. If it's not a show-stopper, choose whichever specialization appeals to you, and bonus points if that's Empath.

This new question of mine is regarding aetherships themselves.

Does a large Aethership having any sort of combat advantage/disadvantage(s) in PvP battles?

big ship = slow = bad
you get a little more hull strength, but the speed loss is not balanced to the hull strength, imho

So a lot of moving goes on in these battles?

Aetherspace is more of a hit-and-run place, sort of like a real fight. You don't just sit there and shoot, you move, evade, and shoot.

The movement disadvantage of large ships is mainly in PVE. In PVP having more hull is pretty nice. You do hit and run a lot as Alacardael says, but the enemy aren't chasing you perfectly at max speed and depending on who has to sit there you can hover in and out of range fairly well regardless of ship size.

That only goes so far though, making it TOO huge would probably still be bad.

I wouldn't mind aethercrafting, but I don't think I can handle it. Even with maps off seeing the words go by so fast is making me sick (I am having issues anyways that increase the effect of said movement). Is there any way to make it less spamy when you are flying a ship?

Gags and highlights? Not looking?

Actually tried the not looking thing...was hard because I was trying to talk to Kira at the time (which doesn't work really well when you are on a ship I've found).

I am not sure how it works, and I could only conceive of doing it myself on Z/Cmud, but I think it's possible to create a mini-window with triggers to induct important information like aetherchannel says or combat summaries, that deletes the old information after they register so many.

The issue your having is client lag. Aetherspace makes a lot of text, very fast. If you use a fast client, it'll pop up instantly, and seem like nothing is moving. With a slower one though, the nauseating scrolling appears.

So what's the ideal number of room to aim for considering how many things you have to add into the ship? Just wondering, as Tau owns a two-room aethercraft we were thinking of building up.

Same question. I am sure someone is going to answer with "one room for each module", but for those of us building Borg Cubes, aetherstations, and New Shallach â„¢... what is the border between still-effective and excessive?

Well, for an aethership that can do reasonably in battle, you need the commander chair (1), the empath grid (1), three battle turrets (3), a shield orb (1). If you want, you can also add an energy collector (1) (needed if you want to go power collecting in aetherspace) and an aetherhold (1) (mainly for storing auronidions when aetherbashing).

All in all, 6-8 rooms for an aethership. I've tried driving around in a 10-room aethership, and it's still reasonably fast but I think it had an artifact to speed it up.