Grade III Aetherial Wheels - Currently useless

Just to chime in, I think that it all depends on the size of the FC. For us, these buffs (running a grade 1, 2, and 3 on the wheel) would help us conserve FC points to use on more airship barrels and flight credits. We only have a handful of active members and are barely able to keep a net gain of FC points if people are buying the FC buffs from the quartermaster.

Every 3 days you can produce (up to) 3 FC buffs. Assuming you get the 3 buffs on the 4th day; it's a net savings of 9 fc buffs (through FC points) over 12 day. It adds up to a decent amount over time. I think the most unfortunate aspect is the lack of the grade 3 buffs that some people will want most (I'm looking at you heat of battle).

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Originally Posted by Loony_BoB

They're far from useless. They give better stuff. If you have a large FC, getting those mats is nothing. Hell, aside from the Deep _____ Clusters, I can farm the rest of the mats myself in little time.

I don't know about the food buff and all that, because I don't think the lower level buffs are worth it either, but our FC always has Heat of Battle II up and often other buffs such as gathering/crafting exp or spiritbonding speed, or even reduced rates. As the saying goes: Every little helps.

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Those deep clusters are the issue.

I don't think it's as big of a deal as you're making it out to be at the endgame. Before that, yeah, it can be hard getting the clusters, but think about it this way. ALL of the endgame sectors drop Deep Color Clusters. 17&20 drop red, 18&21 drop green, and 19&22 drop blue. Four rank 50 ships can hit 3 sectors every 4 days. That's ~6 chances per day. The wheels take 3 days to charge and you can only charge one at a time (I think?), so that's 18 chances to get clusters before you need them. Each drop gives ~4.5 at a time, so you need to get them twice out of those 18 chances. That's pretty darn good odds.

This is a huge boon for small FCs. It doesn't matter how good or bad the buffs are, getting the buffs via Company Credits costs, well, Company Credits. The whole point of the Grade 2 and Grade 3 wheels are that they save you Company Credits, offsetting the Company Credit cost of fuel for airship ventures. Once you get to endgame, if your ships are going slow enough, you can eke out positive Company Credit gains from airship ventures due to the Aetherial Wheels.

The one thing that's a little annoying about the system is that you can only use one wheel every 3 days, which means only 1/6th of the cost can be offset by wheels. I suppose you could have one ship running SC05, SC06, and SC07 repeatedly looking for Deep Color Crystals to make the rank 2 wheels so you can charge one of each at a time (I'm assuming the tier 3 stand lets you charge one level 2 and one level 3 wheel since the tier 2 one does one level 1 and one level 2), but you'll get tons of garbage items that way too. If you charge both a 2 and a 3, then you can nearly halve your company credit expenditure on FC Actions.


You can't balance these things for the midgame. You have to balance for the endgame. And no one is there yet with airships.

They drop specific deep colored clusters, they drop them not very often, and they drop them in very low amount. Add to that any trip to a sector dropping them usually takes 30+ hours per sector visited, and your looking at a very small amount of them gained, very slowly.

Using 4 airships as an argument does not work well for smaller FCs either, who are presumably the ones to benefit the most from 'free actions'. 4x Airships require quite a lot of points via tickets and fuel to maintain. In addition they require an enormous investment for obtaining the parts.

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Originally Posted by Nyalia

Four rank 50 ships can hit 3 sectors every 4 days.

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Originally Posted by Nyalia

This is a huge boon for small FCs

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I would be interested to know how many small FC have 4 level 50 airships ...

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Originally Posted by Katchoo

I would be interested to know how many small FC have 4 level 50 airships ...

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Selection bias - ones that don't shouldn't be caring about anything discussed in this thread.

You can't balance around the one-woman FC. They're balanced considering 200 person FCs. But, small FCs that do use airships can make back what they spent on credits, eventually.

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Originally Posted by Katchoo

I would be interested to know how many small FC have 4 level 50 airships ...

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2 man FC - 3 Airships close to getting the 4th

Its absolutely doable and i alone get enough points back to make up for the fuel of 3 ships atm - If i'd consider FC buffs any useful i'd have ~12 FC buffs II just by lvling airships up and saved me ~70k credits already, so yeh - they are nice for small FCs ^^ and once i get to clusters i get to activate the +15% MGP every saturday >.> if i ever win that darn jumbo cactpot ill make that an extra 150k!

Unfortunately even 4 lv50 airships does not guarantee a G3 FC action per 3 days, which kind of sucks.
They also need to make deep crystals faaaaaaaaaaaaaar more common, or also drop in appreciable amounts from the lv50 sectors. *stares at 2 stacks of empty crystals*

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Originally Posted by Jeykama

Unfortunately even 4 lv50 airships does not guarantee a G3 FC action per 3 days, which kind of sucks.
They also need to make deep crystals faaaaaaaaaaaaaar more common, or also drop in appreciable amounts from the lv50 sectors. *stares at 2 stacks of empty crystals*

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Totally agree here. The quantities could really use some buffing. I wonder how double Tatanora castles do though... That should guarantee a second item and high/optimal yields, right?

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Originally Posted by Nyalia

Totally agree here. The quantities could really use some buffing. I wonder how double Tatanora castles do though... That should guarantee a second item and high/optimal yields, right?

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ya, every 4 or 5 days xD