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High Clerk of the Ymaryn
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- He/Him
[X] Pressed on on her own to the rest of the people (Fast, risky to self)
Knight of Dandriss: Stone and Steel
- Thread starter Academia Nut
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Except if we do this, we leave the nomads' warriors unsupported by our troops AND we don't get there as quickly as possible. It's the situation that has the highest probability of ALL the nomads dying. (And doesn't even have the highest probability of us surviving)
In this case it's just the most sensible solution (followed by the lowest risk. The medium risk is the least sensible because it leaves the Nomads fighting alone against a superior foe)
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[X] Pressed on on her own to the rest of the people (Fast, risky to self)
Gotta uphold the family tradition
Gotta uphold the family tradition
The Nomads appear to think that they have matters in hand, and our troops will be doing damage to the Reavers as they fight through the battlefield.
We are not playing a super-character this time. For all we know this is a Reaver trap or the Nomads might even be working with them. Now is the time to be a competent professional, not a rash hero. Isolating the single most appealing and important target from all assistance while surrounded by hyper-mobile psychics who are hunting for sport is a quick way to get mobbed to death.
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Okay, the idea that they're working together (and sacrificing their own?) to trap US (read: nobody) seems a bit far flung, doesn't it?
We're pretty well defended against infantry (even psychic infantry) and we can get where we're going a hell of a lot faster than any of our soldiers can.
As someone pointed out above, the job of the military is to assume risk on behalf of civilians. We shouldn't wait.
Even if the nomads COULD fight off the rest of the attack on their own, they would take more losses if we moved our troops out. And clearly we're confident that we can take at least a few Reavers with just our mech, or we wouldn't even have the option to go alone, so the idea that a few of them might follow us isn't quite as scary as you're making it out to be.
Actually, I would argue the opposite. The situation right now is that we have at least one force of Reavers attacking the main force of the nomads and an unknown number potentially assaulting the civilian position. Once we break through the scrum, we will find on of three things. One, there's nobody attacking the civvies. This would be ideal since that would allow us to spin and catch the Reavers in the flank, pouring fire in from both sides. Two, we might find the squishies being attacked but fighting against the Reavers. This would be problematic, but we can deal with it, because if the squishies are holding them off, there can't be all that many or all that powerful. Blow away the Reavers, give the squishies a chance to breathe, and come back around with the information that they're alright. Third, the squishies might have gotten slaughtered. In that case, we need to know RIGHT NOW because that means that the Reavers are about to get their own reinforcements. In any case, going right now is the best option.
TL;DR: We're the fast cavalry on this world. We need to act like it.
There's a difference between the military conducting an organized, professional, coordinated operation to help civilians, and any random soldier running off to play Rambo at first opportunity, much less the commanding officer. Nobody is going to give her trouble for following standard procedure in this situation, but if she starts winging it and things go tits-up she'll be raked over the coals for being an impulsive incompetent. I'm put in mind of a certain naval officer who broke protocol to leave their post to take a comrade for medical attention only to have all five in line for command killed or disabled while he was away and ended up getting charged for dereliction of duty during combat as commanding officer for it. The commanding officer should not be abandoning her troops in the middle of combat to charge off solo into an unknown situation. At the very least, it raises the possibility that the hyper-mobile psychics hunting for sport will decide that the big stompy mech looks like the most fun and opportune target and suddenly concentrate all their attention on her before anybody else can react. Worse, it could turn out that the Nomad who issued the request was being mind-controlled specifically to accomplish that. Heaven help us if something goes wrong back in the free-for-all and she has to explain that she wasn't there to handle the situation because she was off chasing rabbits based on an unconfirmed tidbit from an unknown foreign soldier.
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[X] Moved her soldiers through the running battle towards the rest of the people (Medium speed, medium safety)
Taking a bad injury and killing some of our actions for this year or next isn't worth it. I don't care about preventing some minor nomad civilian casualties. We've already completed our goal of aiding them by being here to help them fight the Reavers, anything more that's higher personal risk is for a little more political capital isn't worth that risk at all. No one is going to blame us for not rushing headlong into the enemy alone.
The upside of more nomad casualties is that they'll be forced to lean on us for more aid.
Taking a bad injury and killing some of our actions for this year or next isn't worth it. I don't care about preventing some minor nomad civilian casualties. We've already completed our goal of aiding them by being here to help them fight the Reavers, anything more that's higher personal risk is for a little more political capital isn't worth that risk at all. No one is going to blame us for not rushing headlong into the enemy alone.
The upside of more nomad casualties is that they'll be forced to lean on us for more aid.
Frankly, I'm concerned that the Nomads aren't just saying, "Great, you handle these punks, we're going to go check on our civilians." If it were my loved ones at risk I'd be inclined to go defend them myself and leave the reinforcements to handle the current battle instead of asking a random stranger to do it for me.
The thing is we have a big ol' mech. We're faster than most of the soldiers, and maybe even the guy on the Diamondback Tiger. And we're way more durable than any of them. We are both fast enough and tough enough to get there immediately and make an impact. It's a pretty reasonable request. If he went himself, he'd quite possibly be picked off or have insufficient firepower to really help.
Like, these guys aren't pushovers but we have them outgunned by a huge degree. Gotta keep that in mind.
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
[X] Pressed on on her own to the rest of the people (Fast, risky to self)
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
[x] Pressed on on her own to the rest of the people (Fast, risky to self)
- Location
- Canada
[X] Pressed on on her own to the rest of the people (Fast, risky to self)
We are a Stone. They are Reavers.
I bet we can take 'em.
We are a Stone. They are Reavers.
I bet we can take 'em.
No, the last time a Stone tried the high-risk option against a Reaver, she decapitated two of them in one swing, a horde of Khornate daemons backed her up and one of the coolest moments in the entire series occurred.
Fine, the last time a Stone who was only a borderline supernatural combat powerhouse rather than a superpowered living saint filled with impossible arcane knowledge while wielding a one-in-a-billion magic sword tried it.
That also wasn't a player decision.
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It was. We could've intentionally done an intentional summoning or pulled some other corrpution-inducing bullshit to guarantee our safety.
Killing the Dark Seer was not a player decision, but engaging after the Bloodthirster died was.
The Bloodthirster wasn't a Reaver, and you referred to Mirande's suicidal charge against the Reavers, which was the result of passing an automatic temptation test, not a player vote. If the outcome of that hadn't already been settled at the level of the narrative it would have been put to a vote.
In this case we have a starting character with starting stats in her first taste of combat during the second year of the game grossly outnumbered by hyper-mobile psychics who can change their targets and concentrate their attacks at will.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
This is hardly fair to the last two quests, considering AN hadn't put as much effort into ensuring game balance as he did this time (and the rewards for taking those risks were rather far removed from normal).
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Personally, I also think that, if high risk, high reward tactics always break the quest, that's a flaw that needs further work. Balance is always tricky, and kudos to AN for doing as well as he does, but it shouldn't be on the players of a game to intentionally avoid breaking it, no effort made in design to avoid break-ability.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
In this case we have a starting character with starting stats and a mech in her first taste of reaver combat grossly outnumbered by a bunch of psychotic murderhobos with big knives that our character realizes are basically non-threats. The risk to us, personally is relegated to whichever reaver has their suspected one gun that can actually do any damage.
The structural material of their speeders is described as being tougher than almost any dedicated armor on the planet, and their blades are monomolecular and wielded with surgical precision, to say nothing of their universally being psykers on vehicles and with casual access to force weapons. Considering that forest patrols aren't entirely composed of small numbers of light mechs I'm not willing to bet that a swarm of Reavers are completely helpless against a mech. There also remains the issue of a commander abandoning her troops in mid-battle against an unknown enemy force to run off with the vast majority of their C3 and heavy firepower on a wild goose chase.
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