REFRESH ME (or REFRESH OTHER GUY for avatars)

Arena dying I think?

EDIT: Also, this has the effect of making it like Astral insanity, except instead of recovering it by prime bashing or chatting to people, you have to afk sleep/meditate in a manse room.

I agree with Shiri. As mentioned aetherships are often shared by an organization and it would suck for the next crew to have to wait for the ship to recharge.

As long as somebody in the crew has to be active I would think/hope that players will moderate themselves and chastise botters. If I went aetherhunting regularly I would try to avoid people who did nothing. Maybe give the pilot the ability to unlock crew from modules or eject them out of the ship

Aetherspace fatigue seems like a good idea. If you've been firing a turret continuously for hours on end and are not bored out of your skul you are either an excellent candidate for assembly line work or a robot. Also because you need a large crew to hunt effectively somebody will eventually have to leave the realms, most hunts will probably be less than 2 hours and you could give somebody else a turn.

There's gotta be a better way than what's been suggested.

Nerfing XP more won't do--> people would abandon Aspace.
Insanity building can be overridden with reflexes---> Useless when no risk to characters individually.
Endurance/WP on a ship OR char isn't a good fit--> In addition to my last post, we don't need more mechanics that caters to demi/ascendants (Yes I said it), it can be worked around, and rather boring to be blunt.

This may be too much work to code but it would be cool if Aspace combat was like a giant kraken attacking a ship where you'd have to blow off it's tentacles first that were attacking the ship and the crew would have to combat the tentacles that landed in the ship while the crew kept attacking the kraken itself.

Anyway..so what can be done realistically?

Timers on things are always a good restriction. How about putting a cooldown mechanic into place like a water cooled machine/engine/gun for the turrets? Once the turrets overheat you have to wait XX time until they cool off? I find this less boring and it would let ships explore and travel at leisure and unfettered, too.

Um insanity building can't be overcome by reflexes easily. Especially when the command chair starts failing 4-5 times in a row, or the empathic grid especially with ranged attacks. It would effectively limit the time available.

The other option is simply a new version of willpower/endurance "aetherance" or somesuch. Could just be a number based on proficiencies and skill levels which counts down to 0, once it hits 0 you can no longer use command chair/empathic grid/battle turret. This wouldn't be reset on death etc.

1) How would an endurance factor tied to ships be worked around, other than just having more ships?

2) I suggested some things along this line (Such as making serpents and such wrap around ships making the turrets deal collateral damage to the ship as they're blocked until the gunners use some kind of repulse skill high up in Aethercraft to get them off, for example) but no one really responded, so I guess it isn't seen as a good idea.

I'd rather Aetherspace be made more interesting by a few new aetherbeast mechanics like that, but failing that I'll go with limited use of ships.

Limiting time hunting doesn't really fix other issues though, such as the extremes of success and failure there. I don't like at all that there's no real medium between easy hunting and horrific death which can happen rather instantly. Perhaps this is just my opinion, though it seems to explain why no one likes to pilot and its the only position that takes a good amount of work to do.

Well, along with my original suggestion I added that we should adjust that. Make dragons still do crazy damage, but even they shouldn't do more than 1k or something.

Keep range-hitting at something like half the damage of melee hits, reduce melee damage, add ship-based afflictions like the serpent entangling I just mentioned, speed-reducing drag, forced movement/direction changes, ship blackout, etc.

Your average lone element/gargantuan/etc would remain about as they are now, no challenge at all. Get three, four of those bad boys and you should be sweating. Much more of a jump from pwnage to getting pwned.

NEVER Read anything that makes your screen scroll up to where you can't see current action, while iytha is flying. I scrolled down like 5 seconds after and was like WTF?

We can definitely close the loopholes on gaining willpower (and endurance?) through the arena and dying. Chessboard and artifacts are fair. Problem solved!

Regarding having multiple ships, I'm really not that concerned if people want to purchase lots of ships to rotate through them.

I think you'll be adding a new dynamic to Lusternia if you start removing death as a way to recover willpower/endurance. Just how much of an effect that will have on combat I don't know - but it would suck to be in a raid situation and have someone completely drain your endurance/willpower then kill you, effectively preventing you from defending for 20-30mins. Probably not very likely but certainly possible. Something to think about though.

The ships are already out there for people to rotate through, I doubt any organisation would have to buy more ships in order to keep at least 1 crew flying at all times if you went with the alongtherine endurance idea, so it really comes down to whether you want people to be able to sit on aetherspace for 2 hours afking/not paying attention, come back, switch ships and repeat.

EDIT: Yes, endurance is recovered on death too!

EDIT2: I wouldn't really support the idea of not regaining willpower/endurance on death - seems a little harsh in all honesty - in normal play the loss of defenses/experience is enough of a punishment.

Why don't people like piloting? It's almost the only thing I've done in aethercraft. It's fun.

I'd like to see a combination of all of this.

1) Put experience back up a bit. I believe there were two recent downgrades to it? I'd say go back to the level we were at with that first one.

2) Add aethership endurance. It drains whenever the ship is being used (In motion/modules being used), is increased by an artifact and hull strength, recovers when not in use (1/8th loss rate at rest, 1/4 while docked). Aim for 3 hours being about the limit on a large artied ship. Moving does NOT require endurance.

3) Change up aetherbeast melee and ranged attack damage. Aim for a dragon being able to do no more than about 1k-1.5k melee and other beasts going down from there, with ranged attacks always being about half the damage of melee hits. Increase attack speed slightly.

4) Add aetherbeast-aethership afflictions. Entangling, drag, forced movement, concussion(random chance of players being unlocked from modules, except pilot), blackout(can't see hull strength), power drains, etc.

5) Add skills to Aethercraft at various points. Repulse- skill so gunners can unentangle the ship, Drain- skill for siphoners to target whatever might be causing drag or forced movement or whatever, Barrage- skill for gunners to go into a defensive mode with a good chance of shooting projectiles down before they hit the ship, etc.

6) If siphoners actually do receive reduced experience, change it to give them the same as everyone else.

7) As suggested by someone else before, make SilentRun so that one-room ships and such are completely invisible to aetherbeasts.


Effects:

1) You make time in aetherspace more lucrative again, but more limited as well. This keeps people coming back to it without draining Prime of all its population and replacing it with hordes of demis by next Tuesday.

2) You make aetherbashing much more intensive and interesting. Sure, you could still code it all, but what can't you automate? Here at least you might need to make judgement calls. Does the empath heal the hull, or trust to the defensive gunner and get the siphoner healed so the ship can be cured of drag? Hmm.

3) You make all the roles worthwhile/interesting. Pilots remain the same, with the most options, of course. Now, though, gunners can shoot ranged attacks out of the air(Keep one on defense all the time with a reduction in offense, or all three can go defensive if you're just trying to run a beast gauntlet/blockade) or blow entanglements off, siphoners can suck the power right out of substances/creatures that aetherbeasts spit at you that are causing ship afflictions which makes them healers of a sort. Empaths remain the same but their job becomes slightly more complicated as their priorities will change based on the situation.

4) You encourage people to continue buying/building ships. Now just one or two decked-out city/commune ships just won't quite do it for the serious aetherbashing crews.

Edit:Forgot two
5) Adding necessary skills for gunners and siphoners later in Aethercraft make it so that you still CAN bring along newbs with twenty lessons invested, but they'll be next to worthless for most encounters. Hope you're just bashing gorgogs or something.

6) Aetherbashing is no longer QUITE so extreme, where you either are in no danger whatsoever unless the pilot disconnects, or beast hitting=ship imploding.

My two billion cents.

Editedit: Also, fun thought which probably will never happen, but it would be neat if aetherspace could have its own bosses. Then make them ignore tiny two-room ships. All the regular giant aetherships draw its fire, pound on it, take its poundings, etc. The the two-seaters fly around as fighter ships, adding damage where they can.

Your idea of fun and my idea of fun differ wildly.

Personally I like figuring out things which have never been figured out before (see the method of escaping the toilet in Eris' temple) or killing supermobs using only 2-3 people or completing really difficult quests.

Piloting and Bashing are two of the things which depress me most in the world.

I would have thought piloting would fall into that catagory. Dodging things is a rather tricky process if everything goes to :censor: and a ton of mobs are chasing your ship, and I love that challenge when it comes up (I -might- try to secretly provoke it).

Just to make a comment about the "getting close as a crew" I'v actually found out it grows into a fight fest with people just throwing words back and forth and bickering..... not that I care cause I'm enjoying the ride, but just saying.

I second this statement. I'm divorced IC due to aetherhunting and tempers, was an impressive argument!

Eh Liam, most the arguments you see are just bored blatherings. I'd actually be worried if we -didn't- provoke each other and go a bit overboard (pun, ha) with our remarks given the endlessssssss hours at a time we're cutoff from the planes and crammed into one ship together.

Tis sad but true.

More afflictions -> More complication -> More complication for new players in an already over-the-top world when compared with other IREs -> Bad

Ways to stop complete and total automation is okay, just don't do it by throwing a wrench in the aether-gears.

stopping automation isn't going to happen. Nexus allows such functions, zmud allows it, Mush allows it. Automation isn't something you can stop by game mechanics... it is a client mechanic. All this talk about "automation needs to be stopped" is silly and pointless because of this fact. The focus should be on something else, really. There's only so much you can do to make aetherspace difficult. Focusing on automation just makes it so you have to complicate things and waste coder time and energy when really, it's a fruitless endeavor in the first place. All of the solutions I see proposed are bad solutions due to their extreme severity, lack of implementation, or ease of circumventing. I'm not saying I have a solution myself, however I do think the mindset you are all putting forth is the wrong one.