Knight of Dandriss: Stone and Steel

[strauss]

Maybe contribute some points of your own before dismissing people's words out of hand?

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I haven't dismissed anything which is why I am annoyed that I read through so much non-arguments.

Basically what it boils down to is that the second gives a boost to everything but isn't particularly relevant to what everyone is worried about right now(willpower). The first gives an immediate boost to it and might or might not lead to further special tech on this line of development. The third gives an increased rate of training with no cap but will possible have penalties to everything we do while making use of it. All three may have impact on wider use of whichever we choose.

As a civilization game the first or second would be the most logical to me but given that I have gone through AN's quests I feel in this case the third is the best even if anything happens while we make use of it is sure to be awful.

 

[Candesce]

The phylactery is immediately rewarding, but ultimately useless outside of right now, before things have had a chance to escalate. It's a good piece of gear that lets you cheese through the first few Will encounters, and you don't have to maintain it (leaves personal actions open). [...] The cube is an enormous boost to one thing, but it takes a little effort to build up steam

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Let's be absolutely clear on this: Doubling equipment bonuses means we still improve psi defense with the Phylactery. It just means spending research actions instead of personal ones.

Research actions we'd have considered doing anyway, at that.

The catch is that we'd not get any of the other benefits of Willpower.

And yeah, that formatting weirdness was odd.

 

[Powerofmind]

Let's be absolutely clear on this: Doubling equipment bonuses means we still improve psi defense with the Phylactery. It just means spending research actions instead of personal ones.

Research actions we'd have considered doing anyway, at that.

The catch is that we'd not get any of the other benefits of Willpower.

And yeah, that formatting weirdness was odd.

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There's an upper limit to equipment upgrades in that sense. We can expect maybe one or two personal refinements that add willpower to existing implants if we roll luckily into them from personal research, but it will take decades of research to unlock new willpower-boosting implants, and unless they give in the realm of a natural +10 to checks, will always scale slower than the other two (dramatically so in our case, as we cannot control duchy-level research, so it could take twenty years before we see the tech focus slide in that direction, and another 10 to see the tech come into being).

 

[Ekans Ekans Ekans]

[X] Pedagogical accelerator muse extension (Improved learning success; doubles age for the purposes of educational trait requirements)
[X] Skull Garden (a place where the skulls of the departed are displayed with their death poems, guarding the skulls of dragons slain by the faithful)

The nightmare cube is the absolute worst option and will fuck over Ella long term. The mounting stress of having nightmares all the time is going to be very bad for her mental and general health. In the time needed to equal the gains by the Phylactery Ella will be a wreck, if it's constantly on. That's several years of nightmares every night.

Edit: And overall the Pedagogical accelerator has the best long term benefits as we can learn new traits faster.
Edit2: It also increases learning in general meaning we can also train willpower with it faster than without it.

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I kind of disagree with a lot of your reasoning. First of all, we don't know that it's always on or what the side-effects look like. We also will gain faster general growth from the Nightmare Cube. Willpower is the key stat for checking trait gains if this works the way the last game did.

It's the single most important stat in the game by a mile if this runs anything like the original AoS did (and it seems to).

I think you're jumping a bit far into a conclusion about what the Nightmare Cube will do to us in terms of negatives and I think you're significantly underselling willpower. It's the trait that the largest number of game-ending life-or-death decisions hinge on and it acts as a growth accelerator in its own right.

 

[Ekans Ekans Ekans]

Let's be absolutely clear on this: Doubling equipment bonuses means we still improve psi defense with the Phylactery. It just means spending research actions instead of personal ones.

Research actions we'd have considered doing anyway, at that.

The catch is that we'd not get any of the other benefits of Willpower.

And yeah, that formatting weirdness was odd.

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I will point out, once again, that the Nightmare Cube's gains are the most permanent. We might respec or lose access our muse at some point. I don't want to suddenly lose 10 willpower at ANY point, especially if we've been relying on it. Same thing for equipment bonuses.

More than that, we can work with the Nightmare Cube and still get a Phylactery Muse a few years down the line if we're still running into problems (or when it enters widespread service).

 

[Candesce]

There's an upper limit to equipment upgrades in that sense.

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There's an upper limit on how much benefit we can get out of personal willpower when none of our subordinates get the benefit, too. Psy shenanigans can fuck us up from either end.

And our only point of judgement on what we can get for equipment bonuses vs. psy is a +10 to a check.

Ekans^3's got a much better point in that willpower is a key stat for more than just psi defense.

Edit: Also in that the Nightmare Cube is a lot better the sooner we get it, vs. the Phylactery.

 

[Da Boyz]

[X] Nightmare cube (Guarantees minimum +1 base willpower per year used; greatly improves willpower training; additional side effects when in use)
[X] Stone Reliquary (final resting place of Dia Stone's stasis chamber)

 

[SuperSonicSound]

Im of the mind that we should go with either the PAME or the cube.

My problem with the cube is I think it's a waste of time if we aren't dropping a willpower training action every turn once we have it and people have been exceedingly adverse to taking training actions with the personal action space..

 

[Powerofmind]

Im of the mind that we should go with either the PAME or the cube.

My problem with the cube is I think it's a waste of time if we aren't dropping a willpower training action every turn once we have it and people have been exceedingly adverse to taking training actions with the personal action space..

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PAME requires exactly the same commitment, or it does absolutely nothing. Besides that, we've finally done basically all of the unique personal actions, so it's about time we started taking some training actions. I suspect pretty much everyone voting for either of those agree.

 

[Ekans Ekans Ekans]

There's an upper limit on how much benefit we can get out of personal willpower when none of our subordinates get the benefit, too. Psy shenanigans can fuck us up from either end.

And our only point of judgement on what we can get for equipment bonuses vs. psy is a +10 to a check.

Ekans^3's got a much better point in that willpower is a key stat for more than just psi defense.

Edit: Also in that the Nightmare Cube is a lot better the sooner we get it, vs. the Phylactery.

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Also remember that +5 willpower (less than 5 years if we're training willpower vs. the cube consistently) will get us a +10 willpower check. Most WP checks are Stat*2.

Im of the mind that we should go with either the PAME or the cube.

My problem with the cube is I think it's a waste of time if we aren't dropping a willpower training action every turn once we have it and people have been exceedingly adverse to taking training actions with the personal action space..

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Actually a lot of us have wanted to take training actions (And we did one this turn, remember?)

With Reavers out for our blood I think that WP training is going straight to the top of the priority queue.

 

[George]

I think we should stick with Combat or Officer. If they're really out for our blood we're just going to die. Combat will up our chances when they 'play' and engineer dangerous scenarios for us.
We need to do sustained efforts and even some voting for the cube don't want to use it year in and year out, so we should pick a core training like officer and then weave willpower training around it.

 

[lordchaos99]

I think the opposite
Remember Willpower doubled as the Learning stat for personal improvement last game

I think we should focus Willpower with our careers as secondary
I do wonder if the careers are like the Education trait of last quest. Clearly it's a bit different, allowing two careers for someone without a lot of training

In the last Quest, Education capped off at 4 before the first age unlock
But were a lot harder to raise via training post-adulthood

 

[George]

I think the opposite
Remember Willpower doubled as the Learning stat for personal improvement last game

I think we should focus Willpower with our careers as secondary
I do wonder if the careers are like the Education trait of last quest. Clearly it's a bit different, allowing two careers for someone without a lot of training

In the last Quest, Education capped off at 4 before the first age unlock
But were a lot harder to raise via training post-adulthood

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Yeah, but that same personal improvement did more for Willpower than anything else. It's a treadmill you can run, but if we want specific capabilities then actually training them is by far the best way.

 

[lordchaos99]

Well given the fact we want moar Willpower, making it our primary focus with Career secondary makes sense then...
Willpower is a training stat, you want as much of it before you begin training as you can, but it's a balance
One we tip by needing to fight with Willpower right now

Think of it like a promotion.
Training is working for money (that you use to buy Stats)
Willpower is bribing your boss for a promotion and thus get more money per time worked

Short-term yes, we are less capable in fields outside of Willpower
Long-term we growth-spiral our stats to victory

 

[Ekans Ekans Ekans]

Yeah, but that same personal improvement did more for Willpower than anything else. It's a treadmill you can run, but if we want specific capabilities then actually training them is by far the best way.

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I personally would actually like to automate Cube training. Unlike Partying it doesn't cost any resources, so we can actually afford it. Willpower is going to be highly relevant to a lot of very important things for the whole game. Including controlling cyber stuff/mecha, resisting psychic attacks, getting new traits/education traits, making important (difficult) decisions in the moment like we failed at last turn.

It's a force multiplier. I agree that we should advance other education traits and stats besides JUST willpower, but it's definitely the most important out of any of them, and the one we need to work on most pressingly. We're really good at a lot of other things, but not so much at this.

 

[Candesce]

I personally would actually like to automate Cube training.

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Personally, I think we have no business planning that until we get an idea of how bad the side effects are.

 

[GamingGeek]

Hm... Vote change, still willing to listen to arguments for/against cube.

[X] Phylactery muse extension (+10 to willpower checks; doubles other equipment bonuses vs. psychic powers)
[X] Stone Reliquary (final resting place of Dia Stone's stasis chamber)

 

[George]

I personally would actually like to automate Cube training. Unlike Partying it doesn't cost any resources, so we can actually afford it. Willpower is going to be highly relevant to a lot of very important things for the whole game. Including controlling cyber stuff/mecha, resisting psychic attacks, getting new traits/education traits, making important (difficult) decisions in the moment like we failed at last turn.

It's a force multiplier. I agree that we should advance other education traits and stats besides JUST willpower, but it's definitely the most important out of any of them, and the one we need to work on most pressingly. We're really good at a lot of other things, but not so much at this.

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I think that would drive us completely insane and refuse to ever vote for it without AN directly saying otherwise.

It's not even really a long term thing if there's still a cap on base stats. Just 12 points of willpower to hit what I think is the most likely cap. We can do a couple in a row then switch to every other year and reach that in short order, which gives enough room to either study something or stay on top of developing issues.

Is Willpower actually what we use for actions like Study War? That doesn't really make sense to me, with other more closely aligned stats available to check, though I know it was used all over in AoS. I'll adjust priority of it upwards if that turns out to be true, but right now, while I recognize that going from 8->12 Willpower is top of our list, I think increasing our Officer trait comes before Willpower 12->16, even without the side effects issues of focused effort with the nightmare cube.

Hm... Vote change, still willing to listen to arguments for/against cube.

[X] Phylactery muse extension (+10 to willpower checks; doubles other equipment bonuses vs. psychic powers)
[X] Stone Reliquary (final resting place of Dia Stone's stasis chamber)

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Do you have anything in particular against Pedagogical?
Though, really, Nightmare Cube is unlikely to lose its lead. There are 22 votes for Nightmare Cube, 13 for Pedagogical, and 5 for Phylactery.

 

[Ekans Ekans Ekans]

Hm... Vote change, still willing to listen to arguments for/against cube.

[X] Phylactery muse extension (+10 to willpower checks; doubles other equipment bonuses vs. psychic powers)
[X] Stone Reliquary (final resting place of Dia Stone's stasis chamber)

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The Cube is permanent benefit and goes directly to Willpower. The Phylactery Muse is something that can be lost/disabled/changed out for a different muse build. It's simply not as reliable.

5 Willpower points gained through the cube would give us the same +10 to willpower checks (thus far it's been willpower*2) and we can go a LOT farther than that. The cube is permanent gains, and more than that we can still get a Phylactery Muse a few years down the line to stack on top of our improved Willpower.

The cube pushes us a lot further towards a solid foundation. (Willpower is also what governs trait gain and a bunch of other stuff, not just psychic defense. We're better off truly building it up as far as we can rather than just putting a Phylactery Muse over it as a patch. That limits our options, gives us a point of failure and doesn't help us nearly as much in the long-run in terms of building the stat up)

 

[Winged One]

[X] Phylactery muse extension (+10 to willpower checks; doubles other equipment bonuses vs. psychic powers)
[X] Stone Reliquary (final resting place of Dia Stone's stasis chamber)

I think it was the fact that the cube is reliant on future votes to train willpower that convinced me.

 

[Powerofmind]

Hm... Vote change, still willing to listen to arguments for/against cube.

[X] Phylactery muse extension (+10 to willpower checks; doubles other equipment bonuses vs. psychic powers)
[X] Stone Reliquary (final resting place of Dia Stone's stasis chamber)

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If you don't vote cube, I'd vastly prefer you went for pedagogue over phylactery. Phylactery seems like a potential sucker's bet, and grows much more slowly in value compared to the other two (it practically relies on the good graces of Anna to keep delving heavily into psionic-machine tech to improve itself), while the pedagogue is at least universally effective and lets us age trait faster.

I'd vote pedagogue if not for the fact that it doesn't generate willpower quickly enough to suit our needs.

 

[Powerofmind]

[X] Phylactery muse extension (+10 to willpower checks; doubles other equipment bonuses vs. psychic powers)
[X] Stone Reliquary (final resting place of Dia Stone's stasis chamber)

I think it was the fact that the cube is reliant on future votes to train willpower that convinced me.

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Plan makers have been discussing year 4 as the first year we start doing focused stat training actions. Getting the cube just means we don't have to argue over which stat it is we'll be training.

 

[Candesce]

If you don't vote cube, I'd vastly prefer you went for pedagogue over phylactery.

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You sure Pedagogue isn't a sucker's bet?

Come right down to it, I don't think any of them are - including None.

And that has implications about what the side effects are going to look like.

 

[Powerofmind]

You sure Pedagogue isn't a sucker's bet?

Come right down to it, I don't think any of them are - including None.

And that has implications about what the side effects are going to look like.

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I see the phylactery as a sucker's bet because it gives us all the tools we need to roll the fodder psions the reavers generally put on dandriss. It has everything we want... in a very immediate sense of the word 'now'. At the same time, it's likely to fall flat against a reaver with more refined psychic talent. It's a safety net, an ez lighter, when what we need is to learn how to make a fire from a log and a stick.

 

[Ekans Ekans Ekans]

You sure Pedagogue isn't a sucker's bet?

Come right down to it, I don't think any of them are - including None.

And that has implications about what the side effects are going to look like.

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The side-effects are going to be what they are. Nightmare Cube grows our key stat fastest and is almost as helpful for overall long-term growth as Pedagogue (although the gains are more permanent. Things learned under pedagogue stay around but the learning bonus itself is only there as long as we're using pedagogue. Nightmare Cube makes us better at learning. Seems like the clear choice on that front)