With the recent aetherhunting experience cut, I know this is pretty unlikely to be considered, but I was thinking the person doing the siphoning on a hunt gets a pretty bad deal. Half the experience as the gunners, probably more than twice the aetherwill drain, and doing just as much semi-auto work as them. I know sitting on a collector is like free experience if you're a back-up siphoner, but shouldn't the guy actually working get a little something more for it? What if the empath or captain could designate one of the collector modules as the primary collector, making it the only active collector and allowing the person on that module to get experience more comparable to the guns? Feel free to poke holes.

EDIT: Yes, I tend to get relegated to siphoning.

This has been discussed and suggested before. Then, as now, I am fully in favour of this, as cutting the siphoner xp in half was done in response to many people joining a ship, then just sitting there, doing nothing while aetherXP came freely to them.

Not saying yes or no... but wanna point out that siphoner is the module lock position which requires the lowest investment in the aetherspace skill, not to mention you can have numerous energy collectors. No? Is there a way to discern who is and isn't actively siphoning?

The difference in investment doesn't strike me as a sufficient justification for keeping siphoner xp down. Many times, the people on the siphon fully have the skills to do other stations, but are saddled on a siphon- because nobody ever wants to give up a gun slot. (If the investment thing is an issue, then make XP gain a function of aetherspace skill).

Moreover, once the reflexes are firing, its "free xp" for everyone, in terms of how much effort the player is actually putting in to things. This can even be true of piloting in certain situations.

On top of that, as a matter of practicallity, its usually the siphoners who get the thankless job of unlocking, and running around killing slivven, a task that bears far more risk and effort than making your turret fire every time it can.

Overall, the benefits and fairness of boosting up siphoner xp to be equivalent to the other stations, especially after aether xp in general was toned down, seems to outweigh the costs to me.

(Edit: Not to mention that it would eliminate the "I deserve a gun slot and should never have to give it up to these plebians" or "Castro has been on a gun all night long!" "Shut up Stalin" "Screw you." *Stalin has unlocked from a siphon* Stalin has left the area.

Should be possible. Just make it so when you siphon, there's a timer that runs, say, five minutes, during which you get XP same as everyone else on the ship. If you haven't siphoned again before it runs out, after it runs out you no longer get any. Put that in, then bring siphoning back up to the same turrets get, and it should address all the concerns.

In light of this...

Although in light of this, couldn't people just game the system by rotating who is the active siphoner to make sure all involved get that XP gain?

Sure, but then they'd be doing just as much as people on the turrets are doing.

Also, it isn't really true that siphoner requires the least lesson investment. That is actually Pilot. You don't need transverse to find dragons, and gliding is just a luxury. Sure, a better pilot can do more, but basic piloting is all you should need if the other posts are doing the job they were set to do.

If not more. You'd be coordinating module unlocking, siphoning, re-locking, etc. with several people just to get the equivalent of what the gunner can get with minimal effort.

Though, I think the whole debate over aetherbashing is that it is (or was) easy XP gain for minimal effort/risk.

I just want to point out the reason they made collectors half xp is not because of investment or whatever. The reason is that people placed a lot of collectors just to let people leech without having to do anything, and that is why collectors, cubes and anchors give half xp. Until that is changed they are not going to up the xp

I feel it compensates for the part of the hunt you become a secondary collector.

Siphon XP was halved for several of the reasons mentioned, if my memory serves correctly. The fact you can have an infinite number of siphoners (I do not believe there's a limit on collectors) is a big one I'd think.

And, as an aside, by bringing siphons up to turret level, it'd actually be a 10% increase from where they were pre-'nerf'.

People still go on aetherhunts?

yep, it is still better then bashing since it doesn't get bashed out before you can get to it. Also no enemy territory (something important for those titans and new demigods) like the prison or kephera. And harder to find you unlike astral (if those nodes even have power left in them)

Except, they usually do have to do stuff. I have to do a lot more work when I'm on a collector than when I'm on a turret, due to slivvens and such.

Worse, you get so much potential for drama, because nobody wants to sit on a collector unless they have to. Especially now with the decrease.

This is going to sound surly and argumentative. Sorry in advance!



In my experience, no one has more than one person actively siphoning at any given time. There's no need for any ship to have infinite collectors, so why not limit it, like guns, to three?

As for the aside... Well, that's great! What's the problem with that? No one will disagree that it's ridiculously easy, even if you're putting in every command manually. And it's ridiculously easy to cobble together a few reflexes to automate gunning and siphoning. My entire point is that person who is actually siphoning is doing just as much 'work' as any gunner. (And, as noted, we're usually put on slivven duty too. I personally really like that part of the job, but the reward is not nearly on par with gunning, given the risk.)

A collector can only hold 1000 power, please do not limit my power hording by limiting collectors.

As for the entire Slivven hunting, there are also ships where the pilot and a combateer hunt slivvens after a kill (Serenwilde). There are ships that just have a resident demi not to concerned about essence running around (me when I feel like it) and there are ships with collectors doing it. Therefore the problem with slivven vs xp is one seperate from collectors.

You need a better experience then!

All right, there's more to it than I knew, clearly. Surely there's a compromise to be reached here.