Given the truly absurd costs in terms of essence to even reach par with what they were before, this thread is for brainstorming new ways for demigods to finance these changes.

OFFER CORPSES TO
Hey, demi's have fanned their divine spark, why can't they gain essence directly like the big 'G' Gods?


CONSUME ESTEEM
Similar to the above, but consumes the esteem placed into an object to fuel one's essence stores.


Both of these not only up the RP aspect of demigod as a step closer to the divine nature, but also make it possible for demis who can't A-bash ridiculous amounts of time and don't have the audacity to hunt while AFK actually have access to the nifty powers.

While I'd love those, it'd basically vastly increase the essence gain from hunting/influencing. So I think it's a no-go, unfortunately.

Just reduce the yield on conversion. It'd make sense, really, considering demigods probably can't handle their divine essence anywhere near as efficiently as true gods.

The biggest point of those particular ones is that the benefit gain from aetherhunting is far less than from bashing/influencing. *grin*

Edit: Got any ideas of other ways it could be done, Ssaliss?

Nope. Never claimed I did, nor that it was needed. I wouldn't mind seeing essence gain increased, of course (being the greedy bastard that I am), but I don't see the need for it to happen.

BUY <#> ESSENCE WITH CREDITS

Eh, figured by all the complaining people in the thread on the new changes, that some ideas on increasing it was needed. *shrugs*

Something I'd like to see is a way to solo-aetherhunt though. Not with returns anywhere near what we see with grouped aetherhunts, but mounting a small turret, a grid and a collector to the chair would be neat. Returns would be roughly what one would expect from normal hunting (say roughly 100k-150k per hour). Would also open up bashing areas!

Trademasters should get xp/essence when a private design is approved.

Go.

Actually, that was something I'd hoped to see a long time ago. Fightercraft, in essence. A new type of module incompatible with existing chairs and grids. This module is a combination chair, grid, shield orb and turret. This module recovers balance twice as fast, allowing the fightercraft to be VERY speedy, or VERY offensive (with its one turret) or some combination. An aethership that has one of these modules operates off a much stricter ratio of rooms to speed. So you might see one, two or three room fightercraft in quantity, but after about 5 or so it would prohibitively slow. The fightercraft has half the hull of a normal aethership (500 hull) before adding on hull for rooms. All of the standard modules could be added to the fightercraft except the chair and grid, though the size crunch would tend to see these ships be very focused on a particular task. Extra heavy firepower (+2 turrets), or dust harvester (+3 holds), or marine injector (+cloak, +ramhead), so on.

Then we might consider making a DOCK module, where you could have these fightercraft dock into a larger aethership.

This would broaden out aethership combat in interesting ways. Assuming we ever get ship to ship combat back.

And as a plus (?) it would allow people to build small solo-aetherhunting ships. Fightermodule + shield + hold(s).

Though frankly, I'm not convinced of the desirability of facilitating solo aetherhunting.

That was the point of both of the ideas I'd had. It would move the emphasis away from aetherhunting for demis, as well as play up the demi RP.

If balanced XP-wise properly (so you perhaps get a little more XP due to a much larger gold investment, but nowhere near the current amounts), I don't see a problem with it myself.