I'm in agreement with all of this, actually. Ilaveuse, Pelas, and I have formed the core of a fairly regular aetherfaring party as of late; it's not terribly hard to find people if you've got a commander willing to fly (not terribly hard), an empath willing to empath (even easier, if you assist them in starting), and access to an aethership (the hardest of the three absolute requirements). Also, a lead gunner (decently easy) helps. All it really takes to gather a crew is to seek out a big friendly person like Raguel to lend you their aethership, get a captain (in our case, Ilaveuse), find an empath (Pelas, in our case), and ask over CT if anybody wants to be a gunner. It's a great way to meet the circle 30-somethings who come along, since few of the stronger people ever really want to, and level isn't an issue for aethercraft skill- it's a pretty universal skillset, and a great way to make new friends. The only rifts come when you get too many people (We had six gunners once... Ugh), but if they can siphon you're good, or if it's just an extra person or two. I don't really think finding a crew is the hard part- the hard part is finding an aethership, as they cost millions of gold to make efficient.

I personally like the empath idea. Whenever I look at aethercraft topics I always get the feeling that I made the (possible) wrong choice with empath skills since everyone seems to cheer for gunners. Thankfully I don't think I've ever seen someone really cheer for a gunner. I trust the committee will its best to make us using giant living space ships to fly around in fun again.

I also support the slave circuit idea, and that if it needs to have more than one person I agree with Vashner's possible suggestion, or at least something along the lines.

I think one of the made reason for this could be that a turret is probably the easiest module to use, as you only one one target to deal with. Using the grid is probably the hardest to some as you have to watch the hull and the modules (about three to five other modules at time, depending on your crew.)

Not to shoot down your metaphorical aethership, but as Lendren said before, this 'slave circuit' idea goes against Estarra's idea for aetherspace, a place to encourage teamwork. Besides, is it really that hard for the rest of the world to find a crew? I know in Seren it took us a few days to get a decent crew together, and after that we started to get flooded with people. Hardest to find is the grid, but if you really can't find an empath, offer them a double share of the gold. I really don't get why people are complaining about getting a crew together- it's easier than you think, just give a holler over CT and don't be picky.

but without a empath you can't trade dust (in which the gold goes to the empath.) so the empath somewhat controls the gold for the crew.

...because you couldn't use the specializations, outside of your own. Did we read my post? Someone piloting a ship with a single person working with slaved modules could never stand against a three person crew on another ship, unless the first ship was a single room, super speedy ship.

Yes, but how often do you hear/see two ships fighting each other?

The point is not that it'd be more efficient; the point is that it'd be against (What I recall being) the purpose of aetherspace, to be a place where you -had- to work as a team. Also, most of the people I fly with aren't specialized- they're fifteen lessons or less in, and they do just fine after five or ten minutes. all I see this doing is encouraging people to not put the effort into finding a crew, since it'd be several times as profitable.

I will once again point you to the fact that aetherspace is not widely used, and it's essentially a game unto itself. Unless the players running this committee help to implement some kind of a huge change (...like this idea), I'm not sure we're going to see ships zipping by each other. I've put forth my idea, and if it doesn't get implemented and aetherspace ends up being used a lot after the changes, then hey, I'm happy. If it still doesn't, I'm going to come back in a few months and say I told you so.

See how much I don't know about computer systems: I thought the thread was about the buying and selling of slaves before I clicked on it and began reading.

I was actually thinking the same thing. >.>