As I said in the other thread, make larger ships with larger crews yield more of the aforementioned reward. The larger the ship, the larger the crew - these larger crews are the ones at the biggest level of guilt regarding afkbotting if only by sheer volume of people involved. They have more siphons to sit on and leech EXP, etc etc.

If this hasn't already been addressed - Ease up on the damage and afflictions the slivven do.

As it is, you need a very high level to take them and a lot of supplies. A six or seven person hunt can be grounded and unable to do anything because none of them are demis or strong enough. Eliron's level 90, and even with bardic songs and illusoryself to absorb damage, he can't kill slivven quickly enough to keep a ship clean. Add in aeon, stupidity, broken limbs, recklessness and the other host of afflictions, and slivven hunting's honestly so horrible for so little reward that I left the game during double xp because I was too frustrated to want to hang around.

Possibly give people locked in modules some way to see their own health so they can fight while locked, or give those hunting slivven a better reward.

I really need to get a on a ship and see these things. There are some wild claims about the strength here. Illusoryself is a bashing tool on retarded levels of awesomeness. Not that it has anything to do with kill speed. If a bard can't kill fast enough, get a monk or a warrior. Or get multiple people.

Floating in aetherspace near the void still isn't spawning vortices. Same deal for elem air. Slivven spawn rate also seems rather high still, if it has been touched to begin with. Counted roughly 5 slivven in 6 or 7 attacks.

At this point, almost tempted to ask for a skill that can spawn a vortex.

Interestingly, I spawned about ten vortices in a few minutes (running around while my crew killed the worthless critters chasing us), but then spawned no more over a period of an hour and a half to two hours (whereupon I went to bed). Furthermore, the vortices that I did spawn were vanishing at the time I left, with no more being made to replace them.

So it seems that the rate at which vortexes spawn is actually pretty high ... but the cap on how many can be spawned is low, and takes a long time to refresh.

Effectively means that if a ship beats you to it... you're screwed. I noticed the same thing, went to another place and spawned roughly 10-15 vortices in about a minute, then nothing for quite some time... not to mention karibideans starting to appear after the first hour or so, and on untouched vortices at that. So if those decay in 2 hours, then nothing spawns after that... well, ahunting has become much more difficult than it used to be, slivven aside.

To me, this just sounds like you're one of those people who AFKs it all.



Man, I don't recall having this much trouble with killing a single slivven.

Actually spam is a valid concern for pilots due to the map and having to move frequently. Though if they make it big enough (eg the size of the map), keep the input required short and make it in to a bright but not painful colour we should all be fine.

Also slivven can go easy or can go hard. As a demigod warrior I have killed them in 2 hits but other times I have needed a minute or more. And if the ship is getting hit several times that can be very very annoying.

Personally I think damage wise the Slivven should be adjusted to dream leech or starsucker strength. Do away with the room wide attack and replace it's afflictions with healthleech and breaking limbs. (or if you absolutely want to keep room attacks give us the ability to see the normal prompt while locked in to a module)

-edit- erm I forgot I am used to my own ship, I mean the size of the map when you have Antennae installed on the grid

Noooo. Healthleech mobs are incredibly annoying to hunt. It basically turns hunting into a luck-based mission.

so cure the healthleech?

err I see the confusion now, I mean the affliction not the dream leech like restore

Purely damage wise I'm, I'm pretty sure starsuckers can do more sometimes. The only reason they're ever difficult to kill is health leeching.

Yeah, the healthleech affliction ain't bad. But mobs who restore health to themselves with some attacks are very annoying to hunt, since a health-leech attack can basically push you back to the beginning.

Slivven aren't exceptionally difficult, they're mostly just annoying.

I was doing them naked with no system to start, just with a couple macros for quicksilver, sipping, attacking, and firstaid. They only hit for about 700 damage naked and undeffed. The main problem is the health leech - even the aeon spam isn't that horrible (though, it should be single target, not room wide).

Their spawn rate might need to be fiddled with a little (I haven't been out recently, so I'm not sure how bad it is now), but keep in mind, that's very much dependent on your pilot. Personally, I don't get hit that often, and stopping for a few seconds to kill one or two slivven after every dragon, while irritating, is hardly something to start a riot over. If you have a pilot who's stacking up armies of slivven every time you drag something out of a vortex, maybe it's time you got a better pilot?

Ideally, they should be a bit of a nuisance to kill for a level 70 - 80, but not really difficult. I don't think you need extra rewards for dealing with them - they're already worth reasonable offerings, go make your god happy. I don't mind the idea of having some way of designating certain people who aren't locked into modules as the Slivven Patrol or something, so long as they're only gaining experience for the aether monsters if they've fought a slivven recently.

In regards to making aetherwill impact the pilot and empath, they already do, sort of. Willpower is going to drain based on how much work you have to do. If you're just flying around in circles like crazy, trying to dodge an army all the time, you're going to drain willpower. If you employ tactics where you spend a lot of time sitting still, then you'll probably never run out. And the empaths willpower will drain based on how much you're getting hit - which is even more true now with slivven, because once you get those on board, the empath is either constantly healing, or modules are starting to fail until the problem is dealt with. If you make willpower so harsh that the people who aren't mind numbingly incompetent are draining at a rate comparable to the turrets (who's job is pretty much steady, no matter what tactic you employ in your hunting), then the people who don't really know what they're doing are going to be drained of willpower at an insane pace.

And ultimately, it will fix nothing. They'll just install more siphons to have more backup crew waiting to replace the people who are running out of willpower faster. It won't result in ships being out for any less time - it'll just make the ships slightly bigger and tankier.

You seriously can not miss a bot check on Ndk. It is your whole screen, the whole thing. Gigantic out of place ascii art. It always starts with the same line and repeats itself three times before the time-out. If you can't make a linear trigger or somehow catch something that *is the size of your whole screen* then you are probably afk'ing anyway.

You also have a time window in which to complete your answer. If people are that concerned, it could be a full minute. As far as the Ndk policy goes, you can actually miss two of them and still be alright. You do, however, get a small xp/gold reward for completing them. In the even that you screw up three (fairly obvious at that point that you are botting) you get punished.

If you fail one, the next one comes up in a shorter amount of time, probably to make sure they catch you if you are gone for a leveling session.

@ixchilgal the entire using shockwaves should not be required for lesser hunting (gargantuan, elemental, normal prime aether creatures) and they do tend to give a lot of Slivven so the spawn rate should be adjusted to that type of hunting.

As for awillpower If I refrain from using glide I can constantly move without significant willpower loss, but this was intentional to allow exploring so it should remain like that, since you have to manually move to stay within the rules your real life willpower drains after a while.

Even when I'm being chased around in circles by monsters, I don't get hit very often (probably more than when I'm doing shockwaves, yes, but usually I'm too spammed out to see - suffice it to say, while doing circles, I've never come close to dying unless I've lagged). If you do start getting hit too much...run away. And really, it's a horrible, spammy way of doing things that quickly burns you out. After just a few minutes of it, my eyes water up, and I can't keep going - which is the main reason I don't bother with anything but dragons.

But sure, the spawn rate needs to be tweaked a little - I'm not saying they're perfect right now, but the whole concept of them does the job very nicely. And ultimately, if you don't like them...thank the people who have been botting. And then thank their crew for allowing it. And then go hunt them down and blow their ship up every time it leaves dock in retaliation for the inconvenience they've caused you.

Either you are very lucky or different creatures have different slivven spawn rates.


To be honoust if I really wanted to afk I could regardless of slivven (especially with dedicated slivven hunters) so I am not sure that in the long run it serves the purpose they wanted. However if they somehow give slivven hunters easier access to aetherbeast xp I am all for it, I love the entire running around killing them, more so then I love any other stations on a ship.

I still do not understand how they impact afk crew members. Heck you do not even need more than one person awake, just move, shield, unlock, kill, and repeat. Or am I missing something about the mechanics of them that forces all of the crew to be awake?

A captcha is just about the most depressing thing you could do. You finish a day of classes/work/whatever and head home to mud. Your girlfriend sees you solving CAPTCHAs for 3 hours and thinks you're out of your mind.


I would just shrub aetherbotters for a month. If it continues to be a problem, permashrub one or two players to make an example of them. Eventually we'll all live in fear and think twice about botting.

The one time I've been in aspace so far I quickly mocked up an autoturret system because it sucked pretty bad. I wasn't afk, but it was still a simple bot script. I don't see any problem with captchas there. I'd be rather more annoyed with them in the middle of PvP, or trying to quest, or standing around chatting.