Don't forget fly!! All the celestines have it....


Umm, Acrune.... how quickly your wagon wheels seem to be falling off...


Shorlen, lets call Forren, he likes this game so much more the UMD he won't mind a bright and early " wake up I wanna test Titan Maelstrom call "

-signals Ixion and Veo with a giant Terrapin Signal-

Thankyou for your reasonable response, Geb.

Is it not true that if you are enemied to Celest (the org) but not Celestia (the plane), you are being summoned from non-enemy territory to enemy territory? That is what I was referring to. If the whole plane was Celestia, or the whole plane Celest (and therefore either all unguardable or all guardable) there wouldn't be an issue with summoning to the nexus as far as I was concerned.

You are also being summoned from an area that cannot be protected by guards and hence not a part of the city/commune, to an area with guards and thus part of the nation. While you are certainly right that they have chosen to be in enemy territory if they are already or plan to become enemied to Celestia, I think there is a distinction between fighting in a city and fighting outside it. I could harm Serenwilde psychologically by taking on Faethorn (enemy territory), I'd be stupid to try large scale offensives in the prime forest itself. If I could be summoned between them by virtue of the fact I'm already in enemy territory anyway, I'd consider the mechanics flawed.


Edit: And now that I think about it, why was magical transport out of nexus rooms blocked? Couldn't the nation shields just be extended to cover the nexus rooms? The reason they prevent summons into prime nation territory seems to me the same as why they should prevent summoning into planar nation territory.

I agree completely. I was one of the people saying that summoning into guards was cheap and should have consequences (or be blocked completely, as Estarra suggested). I also agree that stonewalling defenders into a room so they can't defend is equally cheap.

The entire idea here is to create enjoyable combat. It might be that you're horribly outnumbered or outclassed, but it's still fun to go out and engage the enemy. If your entire goal is to beat down the enemy without engaging them in any way (which both of these tactics seem to do), you're missing the point.

Still, fixing it might not be so clear and simple. Either we allow stonewalls to be used as a cheap 'I win' strategy, or we allow summoning into guards to be used in the same way. Does anyone have any ideas that would stop both of these problems? Rifts to the supernals sound pretty good for one.



This is a good question. I'm not sure what the reasoning is, it might have to do with the way the room is coded. Adding a no-teleport flag might have been easier than changing the room to actually be included as part of the organization. If these rooms WERE counted as part of the organization, it might take extra checks to prevent local area and plane-wide skills from reaching them.

You -can- summon from Faethorn into Ethereal Serenwilde (just not at the Mother Moonhart). If the target is enemied to the Mother Moon, you can suck them directly to a Moon Avatar - ie. instant death. How is that so different?

The mechanics and logic are still a little flawed, but at least summoning into an Avatar you take a risk too. Room attack - instant death for both of you.

I disagree. I think there should be mechanics in place to give defenders a superior advantage. The idea that combat is more enjoyable when it is 15 enemies versus 3 defenders is absurd. Furthermore, I consider using strategy to be a "fun" part of combat. I don't find being forced to engage an enemy when you are vastly out numbered to be anymore "fun" than empressing them into guards.

We've basically went from one extreme to the other.



Summon someone to a non-Avatar room with 5+ ladies, and they will die. I can't tank 5 ladies so I know most would be near instantly torn apart. No risk here.

I'm going to have to disagree here as well. What's fun about that? There's still no strategy. You pretty much just die instantly irrespective of what you do if you go out into that kind of situation. Group combat is pretty much by definition not fun here. The only exceptions are A) When you're beating down an "opposing" force without actually being challenged or opposed (I don't find this fun, and you'll say you don't, but there are still people who do, or they wouldn't do it for hours on end) or like 2% of circumstances where it's somehow a fair fight and with low enough numbers that any one person can survive long enough to use any kind of strategy and have fun to begin with.

You envoys remember me griping about the rising costs of entering combat? Here you go.

How do you propose a merian Aquamancer without tumble get past a stonewall? Wouldn't you agree that single-handedly locking all tri-trans members of the demesning guild out of the combat area with only the efforts of one semi-skilled mage is a little troublesome?

Huge differences here. The Empress issue was a material cost, and if you could afford to sacrifice some offense, it wasn't even a huge material cost. Tumble is several dozen credits into a common skillset. But really, this isn't even about summoning/not summoning into guards. It's an unintended consequence of a change made to alter cosmic raiding dynamics (and a really, really, really, really, really bad dynamic change, but I've ranted about that enough elsewhere--favoring raiders is a Bad Idea.) If the new mechanic stays, stonewall is likely going to need a readjustment.

I agree that defenders should have an advantage. I don't think they should have an auto-win card. If you're severely outnumbered, you should lose. Still, there should be options. There are still strategies to use against larger groups by manipulating the environment (trees, summoning, walling, blocking, etc) to split them up and place things in your favor. You still won't win, but coming up with strategies to still be effective is fun. It's NOT fun to walk alone into a group of 15 enemies, that's not really what I meant.



Fair enough, if someone summoned you individually into a group of ladies then you would instantly die. I don't have a huge problem with this, I think individuals and small groups which raid shouls be easy enough to catch this way. The same tactic won't work if you're being raided by a larger group, though.



I think it becomes boring and annoying because we start out with this attitude. As soon as we realize that we can't win a frontal assault, we decide we can't do anything. I think there are other strategies and things which can be done, even if they won't win everything for you. As much as I usually hated Munsia IC, she was a master at things like this. She would single-handedly pester enemy groups. Would she ever actually win? Of course not. But she at least had fun and made herself an annoyance.



Those people should be savagely beaten, then shot, then beaten again, then shot again. All while crucified.

Thank you for the free insult, but I made no statement as to whether dissolve used balance or equilibrium. I even followed the quotes backwards to double check. It was indeed Shryke who said that. An apology would be nice

Your inability to rationalize the situation baffles me. In fact, I'm not sure anymore if you are just ignorant or intentionally ignoring reality.

Empress was never an auto-win card. I lead teams and solo raids against people who tried it - and it never worked against me. If you are prepared and skillful, it was very easy to dodge. Your claims that it is are false. They stem likely from your own inabilities.

Lusternia has become the only IRE game where mass numbers dictates who wins (although this is largely restricted to Cosmic Planes). The passive/active defenses for defenders in Imperian, Aetolia, and Achaea -vastly- give defenders (even a handful) a chance against a great number of people. While strategy and skill can overcome these advantages, they imo definately balance out the "we win because we have more people" factor.





Whoops! Sorry! It seems my ability to read early in the morning sucks.

Cutting out your insults and other nonsense, since it adds absolutely nothing. I believe we can realistically admit that you tend to have a hard (or at least, historically you have) time being unbiased. Now, Empress is not necessarily an auto-win card in that you would decimate entire groups with it (except in rare and strange situations). However, it WAS far too powerful and was an unbalancing factor for defense primarily because there was no cost or risk associated with it. The majority of players agreed (check the poll), the admin agreed to test it. Why exactly are you still trying to argue this point?



Lusternia is also the most dynamic and successful in terms of conflict. I can't speak for Imperian (didn't stay there long), but in Achaea conflict is basically dead. Raids simply don't happen, because the cost is too high. I believe defenders should have an advantage, but not a prohibitive advantage that makes raids no longer worthwhile.

Great idea make dropping a monolith dispell great pentagram.

If summoning remained blocked, but voluntary magical transport out/in was allowed, wouldn't the issues be resolved?

As such, would having a flamed monolith dropped in advance block a great pentagram from being erected in the room? If so, the skill is totally nerfed into worthless. Furthermore, anyone with a flamed monolith can in turn cancel out trans highmagic.

First, we have to establish that Faethorn is not the same as the cosmic planes. Your nexus is not in Faethorn, it is in the Ethereal Serenwilde. There is an arch to separate the too, where the person actually have to use a command to enter your area. An enemy entering Faethorn would not be raiding Serenwilde's holdings. An enemy entering a cosmic plane would be raiding the city attached to it. Serenwilde has no obligation to protect Faethorn beyond what you place on yourselves. Damage done to it will not harm your nexus. Does killing entities in Faethorn cause them to call out to your people in Serenwilde? Are you getting the difference? Therefore, your analogy is a poor one, because the only damage that can be done to Serenwilde by harming Faethorn is attached to a particular role-play. Damage caused on the cosmic planes is hard coded to affect the Nexuses of the cities attached to them.

Second, a person may not immediately be enemied to Celestia when stepping foot on the plane, but one kill of an entity there will cause the person to be enemied. Besides, the situation can easily be avoided by not raiding the plane in the first place. If you go there to cause trouble, then you have to expect there to be a response to it. The response should not be tailored to be the lightest it can be for the person initiating the conflict. Truthfully, if one initiates the conflict, then the person should suffer the most if he is unsuccessful. Initiating the conflict is a willful action that shows it is what the person desired to do. Having to respond to his action may not be what his opponents’ desire, but may feel compelled. Therefore, a person receiving greater experience loss because he raided an enemy plane or was summoned into guards on that enemy plane is entirely fine with me, because said person had the option of not being there in the first place.

How exactly is there no risk or cost associated with entering a room of a group of people, lusting a target, escaping, returning to your nexus, and empress said target? If it was easy to do, people would have been successful doing it against me - many tried. You make it sound so easy and viable, but you can provide no details to support this notion. Do have a log where a single person was able to "decimate" an entire group?

I also disagree with the notion that the playerbase supports this. A group of people who voted on forums certainly do, but that's in no way reflective of Lusternia as a whole. Furthermore, the admin are -testing- this for a reason. It isn't set in stone, and I feel it should be returned to how it was.

Make it work both ways, if you drop a monolith gp gets destroyed, if you drop a gp the monolith gets destroyed, reduce the power of gp then if you feel it isn't good enough, it still makes it pretty dam nifty forcing people to teleport/magic travel to your room.

If Great Pentagram wasn't the trans Highmagic skill, maybe... but this would be crap. Imagine comparing this version you have suggested to Serpent. Who in their right mind would ever take Highmagic unless they absolutely had to?

Greaterpentagram? Pfft. Rad ftw, n00bs.