The best way to improve is to debrief- to look at what happened and analyze it.

So, in this spirit, I have attempted to break down aetherpolitics into 'things that worked' and 'things that didn't work', as far as I could tell.

Things that worked:
-all of the bubbles were in play at once.
This had the benefit of giving everybody a chance; slower orgs had more time because faster orgs went for the extra empty bubbles.
-After all the bugs were worked out, colossi and beacons worked.
These were two of my favorite things from Nexus Weakenings; glad to see them back.
-Aethership-on-Aethership combat was once again brought back.
Again, glad to see more of it.

Things that didn't work so well:
-More than one ship from an organization can bombard at a time.
Lets an organization win really, really fast if they have more aetherships (or a guy with a bubblix, four ships, and a whistle). Money -> success, which I'm not a fan of. An org shouldn't win just because they've got a guy with 1500cr+ invested in aetherspace.
-Low setup time. Orgs that didn't have an artisan or an enchanter ran into problems.
This will, of course, not be an issue in the future, but I figure it was worth mentioning here.
-Aethercommunication is ridiculously painful if you're not an ascendant with Omniscience. If Seren didn't have Lehki, we would have been awful at communicating. Given that gaudi and Hallifax don't have any ascendants, this is an extremely big concern.
-I would suggest giving everybody (or maybe just CT or each org's SEG/Swarm/Legion equivalent? Alternately, give it to protectors/security) omniscience, or at least bubble-to-ship range, listening and speaking abilities. Would make it much easier to communicate and coordinate for those orgs without a surplus of ascendants.

Thoughts? Concerns? Praise?

Planarbond helps with the communication issue. Also a well-run armada is nice.

Limiting it to one ship per org would be -terrible-. All orgs have the option to invest in a fleet if they want to be competitive. Good for business too. Buy credits, fix up those ships!

Uh, I don't have Omniscience, in fact nobody does anymore as far as I know. I think it's a high up cult ability.

I was just spamming everybody with msgs.

Diminishing returns might not be a bad idea, though. More ships bombarding, the less additional bonus each ship nets you.

Why not just shoot down the ships. They can't all be fully manned. You can gun down many of them without much of a fuss.

And why the complaints about bubblixes? they're just like any avenue of conflict in the game - guys with arties have paid and are given an advantage. So money = success isn't exactly new.

Edit: And yeah, it'll probably only flare 1-2 bubbles from now on, so multi-bombards are much less likely.

I imagine future flares when there's fewer bubbles to grab up, it's going to be all about the aethership fights and stopping the other people from x3-4 bombarding for the win.

I was pretty amused when I noticed orgs had 1 person manning a ship (and 4-5 ships!).

There's most likely more changes coming down the pipeline, so we'll see how things go. It certainly pointed out some things that will likely change!

Allowing each turret on a ship to bombard would likely solve that issue fairly well. Plus it'd be easier on the smaller orgs, since they wouldn't need the same kind of investments into ships (instead of three manses two rooms big, each with a chair and a turret, they'd only need one manse four rooms big with a chair and three turrets). Same firepower in a smaller package.

Can we get a timetable for flares? Villages are every 8 days or so, domoths flux every Estar, etc. Anything similar for rings?

Yes. Sometime between now and next year there may or may not be at least one or more flares.

Come on guys, half the fun is figuring this stuff out.

Mmm this conflict has delicious written all over it. I always hated village revolts, but now this I can get into.

Shuyin has the right of it on this. Just shoot down those ships! A fully crewed ship will have no problem at all taking down multiple one-manned ships. It's a tactic that's not going to work against competent opponents. The bombard action takes so long, that I feel like this ship-zerg can only really be effectively used in circumstances that are uncontested, or else after a successful battle (both seen last night).

It becomes a matter of maximizing the down time, when there is no immediate aether-conflict. I think it will be fun to see what other 'plays' emerge, and I think that should be encouraged. These will be boring as hell if you pair it down to just 6 even sides with the same colossus and the same 1 artied ship with ~3k hull. They'll just be domoth fights. (Not that domoth fights are boring - but they already exist. I'm excited about this because potentially the focus will not be on the ground fight.) It'll be interesting to see what other problem points emerge as people become more experienced with ship-to-ship fighting. Step away from the nerf-stick just yet, Mister Exalted!

...the only obnoxious thing to me is that dingbat items, that are supposed to be "whimsical", are rapidly becoming more valuable than the pure credit arties.

If we're going to do this admin, how about putting a real credit price tag on stuff like the bubblix items? I know I'd give you actual cash if I could just buy a damn bubblix, rather than having to go through the pointless rigamorale of trying to amass dingbats for this stuff.

The same could be said of stuff like the snout to a lesser degree. When dingbat items become seen as essential, the dingbat process becomes less "amusing" and more "annoying as all ****".

I really do not feel that bubblixes are too much of an advantage over flash points in this instance, particularly as you're not required to land to begin staking a claim/begin the fight. They were definitely used in the initial battle, but that is mainly because no one anticipated it at all, and had no ships prepared. In the future, I feel it is safe to assume that people will keep flash points prepared for the bubbles they are anticipating, something that will likely be able to be covered by one ship, at that.

As far as the dingbat artifacts in general... all I can say is that with the Iron Elite Memberships, they've never been more available than they are now. The going rate of exchange seems to be 1.5 credits per, and there seem to always be people selling them. Even moreso this week with these gnomes giving people free dingbats they're eager to trade for credits. I do agree that useful whimsy has taken a turn toward required for some of the items. It's trouble backtracking though... people have bought them for the advantages they provide in domoths/world games. Maybe they'll decide to change it slightly (as with cubixes/distort) but I'm not sure they can fairly eliminate the utility they were purchased for entirely. It'd be fine if they became regular artifacts, as well. It would actually be worse at this point if they did not begin selling them again, as that would only leave those currently in possession of them with a permanent advantage, as opposed to one that can be matched given enough time/money.

It's probably too early to really say how much of an advantage they'll be, but I think you're not really considering how important ground control could turn out to be and bubblix allows for MUCH faster movement of people to the bubble then ships do, and straight through any conceivable aethership blockade.

I imagine it's going to be a dance of controlling the ground and stopping others from bombarding, I'm interested in who would win out with one side just using colossus, and the other just bombarding, with just 1 ship, multiple bombards would clearly win out, I think.

If this is actually true as it seems to be written, bubblixes might be useful in getting there, but once someone's there and a beacon is up, you can use your own nexus world from your nexus to get to the site of the conflict, so bubblixes won't be going up that much in utility after all.

Can you disable the other sides beacons? And how long does it take to set a beacon up?

Don't misunderstand! I thought the same thing. I even commented to Sior I'd do one better - I'd get in a small ship and kick up a storm of critters then dock wherever there's a cluster of one-man ships.

I don't think we'll see the number of ships participating limited (I think it already is, anyways, by the number of people required to really man a ship to optimum functionality).

Mind, it's not my call to make, so.