How about rebuffing the experience slightly but putting in a mechanic on the turret/command chair/empath grid which gives you mental fatigue.

Mental fatigue makes it harder for a player to maintain/use their empathic link with the algontherine, as mental fatigue increases more and more command failures start to occur, at higher levels maybe players could also be unlocked from their module randomly. That would certainly keep people on their toes.

This would only affect aethercraft related skills, so unlike insanity it won't make playing the game any harder and like insanity would decrease the longer you were not locked into a module. It would have to be time based rather than on how many commands you enter, otherwise pilots would become fatigued too quickly.

Maybe make it so that more aethercraft skill means greater resistance to mental fatigue?

If you went with this idea, aetherhunting would still be very worthwhile, but it would prevent people sitting for hours on end in aetherspace just botting away.

Afflictions will just be cured via systems, just like bashing afflictions are.

If you really want a revamp of the aether system, make it dynamic. Have parts of space territorial and require alliances to be made or risk being hunted by the local overlords. Toss in space pirates, allow for conquest of aether-outposts and squabbles over aether territories by individuals and orgs. Maybe have quests require knowledge of other languages which you can only get by travelling to x spot, etc, etc.

Maybe make the beasts (except dragons) secondary and perhaps turn aetherhunting into space bounty-hunting, ie hunting down pirate ships, boarding them, fighting inside the ship, etc.

Just a handful of ideas, but the point is unless a lot is done to make the area interesting - and there IS a lot of potential to do stuff, just read a sci-fi book - making bashing harder, easier, give affs or ranged attacks...just results in it being another type of bashing, either one that's subpar and ignored or one that's better than other types and hence used a lot.

Your other ideas are awesome and would be a nice addition.

But just dealing with this point, astral bashing in groups is considered abovepar and until recently regular group hunts would occur up there, these weren't done excessively though because the insanity mechanic makes it more difficult. Thats the reason I suggested "mental fatigue" it would keep aetherbashing abovepar but make it only usable a few times a month.

While interesting, that would probably tie up our coders and designers way too long to justify anything so elaborate.

Why add yet another stat and instead use endurance and/or willpower?

Oh, I was just throwing out examples. My point is that adding in afflictions, ranged attacks, etc, only change the difficulty of the system, while still keeping the system itself very much the same. Bashing is bashing is bashing.

It was pretty hilarious I have to admit- I chose the -wrong- time to let nature call. I came back and was like LOLdead. Everyone expected me to run her into the ground for it too heh- she's lucky she's a good daughter! I didn't understand how an OOC issue lead to a chasm IC, but it's no sweat really.

Perfect and probably a hell of a lot easier for you guys to code. Drain willpower, once it hits 0 you can no longer pilot/empath/turret. Trackers could find employment on aetherships lighting fires all over the place. The city/commune with the chessboard would also get a huge advantage but its still a simple solution to the problem.

Reduce willpower drain based on skill level though, would need to be suitably high that even Demi's/Ascendants would reach 0 WP after 2 hours tops.

Eh? The higher your level at aethercraft the slower you gain willpower? You mean lose willpower?

Right.

Of course, alternatively, the algontherine could have its own endurance level. The lower the endurance, the slower it becomes, more damage it takes, etc. It recovers its endurance by not moving. Recovers at double the rate if docked.

That also works, and levels the playing field more too. These are all things we can't code around either.

You could also sell algontherine endurance arties to give ships long hunting. Base endurance on ship size too?

Not a fan of this idea if endurance is used on movements. It would make exploring Aspace really frustrating.

I envision heading to a far bubble and back a couple times, as some quests do have us do a multitude of times, and getting stuck in the middle of nowhere with no endurance. Not cool.

Endurance and willpower are not really good mechanics because they can be circumvented in various ways.
Aethership endurance and willpower is also not appropriate because every org has a bunch of ships and would just change over.
Afflictions makes it a pain in the arse for smaller people or just people without good systems. We don't need any more of that!

You would need a new aetherspace fatigue attached to the characters.

EDIT: Ignore Original.

Shiri is absolutely right. Too many ways to circumnavigate both of those systems. Hadn't thought them through. Suppose its back to the mental fatigue or similar idea.

Well, you rest up until your algontherine recovers!

Anyway, lets say (for the sake of argument) that the ship willpower is 100*hull, i.e., a ship with a 2,500 hull would have 250,000 willpower. Let's say a movement reduces willpower by 1. Thus, you'd have to move a LOT before it makes a difference. However, blasting with guns, using the empath grid, special pilot maneuvers would drain a bit more.

On the other hand, using player willpower may ultimately be more streamlined. Would allow flying with a backup crew to rotate positions.

Earlier, I went out to trade some goods I had with Ione at empath. It was a bit difficult with just a pilot and an empath trading. There were a couple of ships that we had to do fly by trading, making several passes to even see what the wares were, let alone get a trade off, while taking barrage from two or three beasts. Sure, if we had gunners, that would have made things much easier by clearing the beasts and then trading. However, beasts will pile up next to the ships from the traffic, and if 20 to 50 beasts are next to a ship, it's going to make trading near impossible. Would it be possible to perhaps set up a safe zone right around the gnome ship, so the empaths can have enough time to actually look at all the wares, and make reasonable decisions, without needing to worry about healing the ship simultaneously?

What Razenth said was true about the 20 tons worth of dust. I set up ruptures to clear the beasts around a trading ship before the changes were in affect, and collected 23 tons. If the average beast gave .5 tons of dust, that was roughly 56 beasts. 56 beasts with ranged attacks firing upon a ship while trying to trade makes me shudder.

How can they be circumvented besides the odd artifact/regen room?

It would only take one arena spar to fix the 0wp problem and as defs are not necessary in aetherspace people wouldn't mind dying to get back up there. I hadn't thought that through until Nejii pointed it out. Same goes for ships, most orgs have at least 2+ ships they can use at any time meaning people could just rotate ships.


Other ways to fix the willpower problem include dying and conglutinating, liching, the chessboard, vitaeing. The experience loss is so low on these forms of death, people would happily do it just to get back in aetherspace, since they'd gain their loss back in 5 minutes.

I like this idea of adding an endurance factor to the ships themselves, as well as the arti to increase endurance and increased endurance per room. I'd say that you should shoot for an endurance-artied ship with lots of rooms, about 1500-2000 hull?, being able to hunt for three hours or so. Then go down from there.

You could keep the increased experience this way, limit the crazy level-jumping somewhat, increase arti sales somewhat, and increase the need/desire for more ships, all at the same time. Aetherhunter Group 1 jumps in their prize ship, Ship A, and hunts for three hours. The ship gets tired, they go home, and a member of the group has another ship, not quite as good. They jump into Ship B and manage another hour before it gets tired, too, and they go home.

Make endurance come back at about half the rate it's spent when docked, half that when just holding still, and don't make movement use/require endurance.