Hmm. I wonder if we couldn't offer some extra benefits to aethership owners when they pilot. A little extra experience, maybe. Passive power reserve generation? Stuff like that.

You'd probably have to extend it to when the aethership owner is manning any module, since some might prefer to empath/turret. Plus, then there's the problem of deeded and city manses. Ilyarin, for example, owns, what, 7/8 aetherships through Celest now?

I regularly have my crew siphon up 25+ shadows and then just kite them untill they die. It's no effort at all and I can even do it with 50% power to the chair. On the other hand, if we didn't kite them we couldn't even take 1 shadow.

It is true that it is perfectly possible for a siphoner, gunner or empath to simply make a set of triggers and then not touch the keyboard at all. It annoys me when people do this, to the point where I will dock and ask them to stop.

Aetherspace experience varies depending on how you are doing it. If you go ahead and link up dozens of aetherbeasts and dodge them without being hit, then fighting them is about astral level experience with much lower risk. If you only link a small number at once, then it isn't nearly as much. Same risk, though.

My suggestion would be to give aetherbeasts ranged attacks that Worble or Murkle modules but do no damage. Silentrun could be changed to prevent these ranged attacks against your ship(in addition to it's current effect), but would drop for a few (8?) seconds if you fired a turret. This would increase the difficulty of aetherhunting proportionally to the number of aetherbeasts currently being hunted while also allowing people who aren't hunting right now to pass aetherbeasts by without being crippled by potshots.

I still say we just plain need more variety in aetherbashing. Even with the above, which wouldn't be a bad way way to go, options are limited. Either you're taking no damage and occasionally curing one of two afflictions, or you're taking crazy-go-nuts amounts of damage. Edit: Or just imploding immediately.

I really do feel that the rewards/danger thing needs to be a top priority. You run the risk of making real bashing a thing of the past at the top end and causing issues that come with such sort of 'invite onry' sort of activites that would welcome some in and push others out. This occurs no matter what, it's part of human sociology, but with the aethercraft situation we could end up very easily facilitating the established people with noted 'cliques' and the proper means taking full advantage of Aetherhunting where if it is truly superior in any fashion (Read: Faster way to pump out demi's for your org.) we'll be pushing away newer players, could very easily turn regular hunting into a somewhat 'Outcasted' existance for those not able to participate.

I feel a key here is perhaps keeping in mind that we want Aethercrafting to be rewarding, fun and to be worthwhile doing. This doesn't mean it needs to be faster experience gains.

Ah, i see that this week its aetherhunting that is going to be the downfall of Lusternia and the cause of mass irl suicide of it's players. Its nice that we are giving conflict quests a break this time around.

Because seven lessons and needing to type REPLY I'll go! to respond to the constant cries for more crew makes an activity exclusive, right? This is perhaps the exact opposite of what's true. There are more seven room aetherships than there are willing crews. Eventually, though, people will start to gravitate towards this sort of thing, and there will be more opportunities, not fewer, and that's sort of what people want to nip in the bud. It's great that people use it, but it would be better if getting equal gains compared to bashing required people to at least work as hard as they do while bashing.

I've never heard a public call for a Glom aetherhunt. Ever.

I did, two days ago. On CT.

Sounds like ranged attacks are needed.
The medium sized creatures should have the hardest ranged attack. tiny creatures shouldn't have any (so solo pilots can avoid those areas) and the dragons should have none.

But I still think there should be a cool down period for turret fire.

Oooh maybe require regular maintainence! And put the REPAIR ability in Forging to good use!

Heh

That's part of the reason I'd like to see some affliction-type situations out in aetherspace. As it is, from what I can tell the only reason you'd NEED to put more than a dozen lessons into Aethercraft is if you want to participate in ship-to-ship combat. Something I doubt very much comes up too often.

For example, the idea to have those serpent things do a melee hit where they wrap around your ship. Now your turrets can still kill it, but it's blocking them with its body so that every time you fire you hit your own ship with collateral damage. Unless you have the Repulsion ™ gunner skill at Fabled rank that attempts to knock'im off. Or the empath has the Surge ™ ability at Mythical that burns a little power and fries the sucker till it 'splodes.

Stuff like that would add a lot more flavor to aetherbashing, would add elements of strategy from non-pilots as well as require those non-pilots to pay attention to the game if you do it right, and it would restrict aetherbashing to those who've invested in the skill by making low-skilled players much much useless in various situations. Then you could actually make the whole thing worthwhile.

Nice! :thumbsup:

Also, I wonder if XP gain should be modified by the amount you put into the skillset as well.

No thanks; I don't want to have to turn down all my nubs or look for that rare Fabled Empath just to take a ship out.

And make it more fun? I'm having the time of my life. So are all my nubs who'd usually take forever just to level up. I don't see how adding all this fancy stuff is going to make aetherspace any more appealing at all. In fact, I'd expect it just to go back to the "no one touches it" version. Or you know, the only people who could go up would be all those Demigods who don't need it, and the people who do need it get stuck on the ground because most of them are never going to have the lessons to get high enough in Aetherspace to be useful.

I go back to Talan's idea. The original concern was experience. Too high? Lower it. Don't put in any additional artificial crap.

I agree. This is a case where the simplest solution is probably best.

Could I make a suggestion? Two things, one, allow people to pull power BACK out of ships, that way if you accidentally put too much in the chair, ect, you can just tug out. Maybe make it so if anyone other then the owner of the ship tries to pull out, they only get half power effieiency?

Two, Powerplex Module? Allows you to slowly(And I mean slowly. Maybe 1 Pwr per hour) Restore ship energy passively? That way a rogue can still use their ship without risky astral runs, buying power, or a 250cr artifact?

If that's the case, I don't think it's worth it at all.

That was a fun trip you took me out on, Razenth, but I made far less gold than I would have on my own(10k I can make in about fifteen, twenty minutes and I don't even know all the good quests), and while the experience was better that's mostly due to my poor connection keeping me from fighting tough stuff, which would probably yield even better gold.

So. It's dull, it's repetitive, it's pretty much a pass/fail (so many things nom on little ships), it's worth less than bashing, it requires a lesson and gold investment, it requires a 'crew' of competent people to make sure it works as best it can.

I don't see the point.

You can 'catapult' to 70 hunting, sure, sort of, but doing this without any danger is a problem. In fact, if it's so mucher better as Tresol eludes to here, I believe it could raise many issues. The main problem is people keep saying minimal investment minimal investment. If you're getting good XP with a minimal investment one has to question how well ships that are manned with highly skilled/aptitude members are doing, likely too well if it's so easy to do 'good' for nothing invested essentially. And hence brings about my earlier point, if this is a situation where you can eventually put together 5ish people that are a known good crew, which would get exorbitantly higher rewards due to their crits/skill level these players will eventually start shutting out those less then ideal members because it's simply not the most efficient situation for themselves specifically. That is if the gains/speed scales properly with your own abilities. If the low end is good, and the high end is just 'good' as well, obviously that's not the situation and just adjusting the low end as Ixion said should be done.


I'm just saying I guess that if it is perceived as really good XP now, once people start really rolling with it, figure out the nuances and becomesecond nature at the Aetherhunting really good will become awesome, which is potentially a bad situation.

How much more crit do you get with Aethercraft rank? Unless it's a whole lot, the 'minimal investment' is good enough to make it not matter much. I'm a mid-low rank and I was starting to crit at two percent. By five I had regular crits happening.