Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)

[Elder Haman]

Main problem I can see on the enchanting front is that it's a very long term investment thing.

We'd want to do further research in how to extend the duration even further. Most of the uses I can think of are also rather mundane in application, so maybe we could translate magical power into money. Yet what we really need is some way to improve magical needs and reduce our manpower needs.

Wards that could be setup to detect a demon entering territory so as to make it easier to find them without a dispatch team. (Or at least not requiring a dispatcher).

So that would need something like a clairvoyant enchantment. It would need to last at least a day, so something very insulated. It'd need to either send a magical signal, or hook into a mundane signal method - like a phone? We'd need enough to cover our territory. And the cost to recharge all of them would need to be less then 4 cubes a month.

So... further research we'd need:

Specialist enchantment research
Mundane tech enchantment research?
Additional duration research (probably x2 or x3 efforts along these lines)
Minimizing the cube cost to enchant research? Tandem casting might apply?

Sigh...

Okay... let's try another method of reducing manpower needs. Something that can provide translation ability... (Double effective money per a girl?)

Specialist enchantment research
Magical girl powering a specialist enchantment not in her field?

Hmm.... might be more promising for quicker returns.

Specialist enchantment research is something we definitely need to do.

Did we ever do that research into the way personalization effects enchantment?

 

[TheEyes]

Mundane tech enchantment research?

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I'd really like to be able to record demon battles for later review. Might help with developing advanced tactics.

 

[Aranfan]

Given the following information:

With M=Morale and X=Pop, is the equation:

((100-M-1d100)/5)=Y

Where Y is the percentage of the population that spirals?

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Yeah pretty much.

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And:

1 Grief Cube averts half of grief spirals, 2 avert half of the remaining portion (3/4 total), 4 avert half of the remaining (7/8 total), etc. Some grief spirals are completely unstoppable once they start. You cannot save every grief spiral

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That will average a cost of: 1 (first round applied to everyone) +.5 (a second round of 1 applied to the remaining half) + .5 (a round of 2 applied to the remaining quarter) = 2 grief cubes*number of grief spirals on the average. Though granted there's a roll involved so average will not perfectly reflect the spending. Dedication to saving them will mitigate the losses of them dying though.

Number Spent	Average Cost
1	1*Spirals
2	1.5*Spirals
4	2*Spirals

Do keep in mind just how costly this can be compared to your income though, especially if you get a lot of spirals.

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And capping expenditure at 4 per person who spirals:

Can someone who is better than me at statistics figure out what our average spiral prevention is going to cost per turn? As a percentage of the GCU income of a naively sized territory equal to our population (Minus Ayase and Kyoclone)?

Cause I think it might be important to planning how much budget we truly have for things like research and fun with magic.

 

[Kinematics]

Can someone who is better than me at statistics figure out what our average spiral prevention is going to cost per turn? As a percentage of the GCU income of a naively sized territory equal to our population (Minus Ayase and Kyoclone)?

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Averaging all 100 possible results for each morale (since they have varying degrees of reaching 0% spirals), a 30-ish morale (roughly where we are now) would have an average of a 4.8% spiral rate, while a 40-ish morale (roughly where we were before absorbing Seto's group) would have an average of a 3.5% spiral rate. At least if I understand the formula correctly.

Excluding Ayase, Kyoclone, and Mami herself (who won't spiral), that's 1.9-2.6 spirals per month.

For each spiral, allowing for up to 4 cubes would mean an average of 1.875 cubes used per spiral, which means averaging between 3.5 and 4.9 cubes used per month.

Worst case at 30-40 morale is 11.8% to 13.8% spiral rates. That's between 6.5 and 7.5 spirals, which is 12.2 to 14 cubes.

Dropping from 4 cubes to 3 cubes as the limit would reduce the average number used from 1.875 to 1.75, which is only a 6.6% reduction in cubes used.

 

[Elder Haman]

Interesting.

As helix has commented that we have had unusually good spiral rolls, so that's probably the low end estimate. (Although our morale used to be lower, did you take that into account Kinematics?)

 

[Kinematics]

Although our morale used to be lower, did you take that into account Kinematics?

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I'm not sure what I should be taking into account? I just gave average values for two morale levels. If you want the average for a lower morale level, I can provide that.

At 40-ish morale, as long as we beat a roll of 35 we were pretty much OK (expect to use 5 cubes). At 30-ish morale, we'd want a 45 or better.

 

[Elder Haman]

Sorry, missed that Aranfan gave you a specific equation, I thought you went and averaged all our actual rolls to find the average number of grief spirals.

 

[Kinematics]

Wards that could be setup to detect a demon entering territory so as to make it easier to find them without a dispatch team. (Or at least not requiring a dispatcher).

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Yeah, I was hoping for something like that for detecting Class 3's. We're several steps away from it right now, though, I think.

If the long-duration tests pan out, and we can get a variety of materials that will hold a charge for about a month, it becomes a lot more feasible. Recharging on a daily basis will become cost/labor prohibitive. Still need the enchantment and signalling portions dealt with, though.

Did we ever do that research into the way personalization effects enchantment?

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Nope, I think the mass research plan we had all fell through with the chaos of the police.

Minimizing the cube cost to enchant research? Tandem casting might apply?

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Tandem Casting probably has a very good chance of getting extremely strong enchantments going, that will last a while. We definitely need to work on the basics of that soon.

 

[Kinematics]

Brainstorming time

Given the limits of our current research, what sort of useful things can you think of for basic material enchantments? Add useless ideas, too.


Copper: Superconductor, Pure heat conductor.

Superconductor use: Gauss rifle (superconducting coilgun). Super spiffy if we were a criminal organization, though infeasible for arms deals due to the short discharge time (a few hours at best). Do mundane weapons work against demons (since guns worked against witches)? Possibly provides a ranged attack option for meguca that are melee-only. A fair bit of work to get a high quality level.

For power reference, an experimental 1-stage coilgun accelerated a 2 gram ring to 5000 m/s in 1 cm of length. A .220 rifle bullet can reach 1200 m/s, and has a mass of 3-4 grams. A handgun-sized gauss gun would be at least 15 cm in length, allowing up to 15 stages (but probably more like 4 or 5), and a theoretical max velocity of /obscene/. Even a single stage can give it twice the momentum of the rifle bullet.

So, massive firepower in the size of a handgun, with virtually no reload time. In theory (with good enough electronics), you could have multiple bb-like projectiles constantly streaming through the barrel at the same time, giving it a higher ammo throughput than a full-auto machine gun. Ammo really becomes the main limiter.

Probably needs Technology Research (at the least) to make this feasible to build. Charge the coils at the start of the hunt, and be free to use it the rest of the evening.


All other superconductivity uses I can think of (other than bigger versions of the gauss gun for orbital launches) seem to require long-term sustainability, which we can't provide right now.


For the heat conductivity... I could see Akane experimenting with advanced cooking techniques, using pots that can reach exact heat in an instant, and drained of heat equally fast. The problem is, again, it can't be maintained without the insulation (which negates the point) or constant application of magical power (which is unsustainable). Various other ideas to use it as a cooling system are likewise infeasible.

Supertransparent glass could maybe be used as a type of optical fiber, but time duration hinders that.

Flexible wood might be used in some sort of art projects, maybe. Possibly easier boat-building? In this case, I can't think of anything other than trivial short-term effect uses; long-term flexibility... I dunno, golems? Bindings?

Meh, I'm tired. Will try again tomorrow.

 

[Elder Haman]

Supertransparent glass could maybe be used as a type of optical fiber, but time duration hinders that.

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Wouldn't a fiber optic cable be encased inside an insulator rather easily?

Flexible wood might be used in some sort of art projects, maybe. Possibly easier boat-building? In this case, I can't think of anything other than trivial short-term effect uses; long-term flexibility... I dunno, golems? Bindings?

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Hmm... with wood construction the short duration actually becomes a feature. Make the wood flexible to shape it into something and then let the magic wear off and you have wood bent into a useful/beautiful shape.

Might be possible to use as another business, maybe a way for the arty types to do something. They must feel out of place among all these number crunching math track girls.

 

[Aranfan]

Does anyone think it would be a good idea to have more granularity on our Morale? It would let us better plan our expenditures and surpluses.

Probably don't have the spare meguca to do it this turn, but I think it will be useful later.

 

[inverted_helix]

Does anyone think it would be a good idea to have more granularity on our Morale? It would let us better plan our expenditures and surpluses.

Probably don't have the spare meguca to do it this turn, but I think it will be useful later.

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I was originally going to give you a new research/administration project at month 25 to get it a bit finer accuracy, but people didn't seem to think the original one moving you from ultimate vagueness to 1-10 scale all that worthwhile at the time (which kind of boggled me because the original scale was so hilariously vague that I think you guys were only ever in one section of the range) so I figured people wouldn't take it anyways. (Getting much more accurate on something as nebulous as morale of a group would probably take regular surveys anyways.)

Plus I'm using morale as a bit of fudge factor. Basically factoring all sorts of minor things into it (with the biggest factors generally getting mentioned in the morale line). Morale is very squishy compared to the hunting being ultra-crunchy. It's basically the way that all the minor bonuses like having better stipends and what not get factored into the more crunchy aspects of the quest.

 

[Aranfan]

(which kind of boggled me because the original scale was so hilariously vague that I think you guys were only ever in one section of the range)

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We did get to see both Low and Medium, but it was really dang vague.

 

[Kinematics]

Wouldn't a fiber optic cable be encased inside an insulator rather easily?

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Yes, that part of it works out. But a short period of slightly higher data transmission rates doesn't seem useful. That's the sort of thing where you really need permanent duration, and even then it needs to be incorporated into components that can take advantage of it.

I could maybe see it as the internal control channels of the gauss gun, since you'd need to charge it up anyway for the superconductivity. Or maybe for directional laser transmission (though there are uncertainties with that as well).

Hmm... with wood construction the short duration actually becomes a feature. Make the wood flexible to shape it into something and then let the magic wear off and you have wood bent into a useful/beautiful shape.

Might be possible to use as another business, maybe a way for the arty types to do something. They must feel out of place among all these number crunching math track girls.

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Yeah, that could maybe work out.

There's also the question of whether we should be thinking of things that we can use, or things that we can provide to non-meguca, and the fact that these are just component materials (which means the number of options to start with is already low if we're not trying to combine them with something else).

So, gonna try to think of some composite ideas for a bit.

Does anyone thing it would be a good idea to have more granularity on our Morale? It would let us better plan our expenditures and surpluses.

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Honestly, I'm kind of against it. Morale is, by its nature, a very amorphous thing, and having a number for it at all is a bit of a concession to the game mechanics. Having a precise IC measure of it (as you're implying in needing meguca available to develop it) just feels rather creepy.

And really, the difference in average cube expenditures for a 10 point swing in morale is only a couple cubes, at most. Plus, it's random, in a way that we can't anticipate, which means that no matter what we plan for, it can always vary significantly from that. So, we can already plan well enough to be close enough to the average to be fine, and planning for worst-case is just something we have to soak. Having greater accuracy on it will very rarely have any realistic value.

 

[Aranfan]

Honestly, I'm kind of against it. Morale is, by its nature, a very amorphous thing, and having a number for it at all is a bit of a concession to the game mechanics. Having a precise IC measure of it (as you're implying in needing meguca available to develop it) just feels rather creepy.

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Fair enough. If I could rate just this section insightful I would.

 

[inverted_helix]

So, gonna try to think of some composite ideas for a bit.

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Well bear in mind that all of these research options are fundamentally pieces. I'm trying to make research here a little less crazy fast than in normal empire quests. But in doing so it comes to mind why research is crazy fast in empire quests, because the pace of the game really necessitates that to make it worth doing. I've also considered increasing the amount of time represented by a turn in order to make faster research (from a turns spent perspective) more reasonable.

Another thing I am strongly considering and will probably do is on the long model research projects let you spend double the resources to double the rate of success and increase per turn (effectively reducing average completion time by a hair under half). That would let you research a bit quicker if you have the resources to throw at it.

Honestly, I'm kind of against it. Morale is, by its nature, a very amorphous thing, and having a number for it at all is a bit of a concession to the game mechanics. Having a precise IC measure of it (as you're implying in needing meguca available to develop it) just feels rather creepy.

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I don't think it creepy at all if you think about it in In Universe terms. A girl's happiness is directly correlated to if she's going to make it through the month or not. I imagine any magical girl organization maintains a level of interest in its individuals day to day happiness that would shame most families. Humans will sacrifice a lot of things in order to improve odds of survival.

As to having it be a specific number representing morale of the organization, yeah it's a level of mechanical abstraction. Other options I brainstormed pre-quest creation were ultimately nonstarters due to complexity really.

 

[mastigos]

I don't think it creepy at all if you think about it in In Universe terms. A girl's happiness is directly correlated to if she's going to make it through the month or not. I imagine any magical girl organization maintains a level of interest in its individuals day to day happiness that would shame most families. Humans will sacrifice a lot of things in order to improve odds of survival.

As to having it be a specific number representing morale of the organization, yeah it's a level of mechanical abstraction. Other options I brainstormed pre-quest creation were ultimately nonstarters due to complexity really.

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Now what I could see is statistics based on soul gem corruption rates and grief cube consumption. Actually you might even be able to get strictly quantifiable data out of shining a flashlight through a soulgem and measuring the exact shade gradient*. With an added bonus of starting research into "what correlates with soul-gem color?"

*edit: and comparing that with previous data points, dates of soulgem administration, and some method of measuring magic use

 

[inverted_helix]

No posts for a full day and only one kinematic's plan it seems like? @Elder Haman I only saw a rough plan marked from you and no indications of it being finished. I'd like to get a plan soonish, so let me know if there's any further questions I need to answer.

Now what I could see is statistics based on soul gem corruption rates and grief cube consumption. Actually you might even be able to get strictly quantifiable data out of shining a flashlight through a soulgem and measuring the exact shade gradient*. With an added bonus of starting research into "what correlates with soul-gem color?"

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One of the possible ways I could have run the quest was to make each individual girl's grief cube consumptions different and variable depending on their own independent happiness. This would undoubtedly have modeled things far more closely, but the amount of work this would have required is absurd. I mean I'd probably have needed to cap you at like 5 girls to make a system like that doable for a quest (in before someone links some quest with unique character sheets for 40 people, I mean for me with my terrible writing capability and limited grasp of human psychology).


I'm considering broadening the world a bit but I'm hesitant. So far things have been basically my personal interpretations and extrapolations from canon with a side of tempering things for game mechanics reasons. I'm having trouble giving you enough variety from that though. I mean if you think about it PMMM is fundamentally a very narrowly focused series, it works well with that shortness. I mean the difficulty level can be maintained with things that are in line with PMMM (even the high class demons are pretty much based off walpurgisnacht tinted with a different lens and something you'd have kind of expected as a result), but as the quest marches onwards though you're getting in stuck in a cycle, which I suppose would be fine in a video game with quick turns, but is rather boring in a quest.

Thus I find myself considering diving off into the uncharted and bringing in more world elements to give you more things to deal with. However people seem to strongly object to even the minor deviations from canon I make for the sake of game balance (like Mami's strength, even before you get into what she pulled in Rebellion which we have a few opinions on just what it meant). Or the enchanting system which I pretty much invented wholesale just to give you a good research tree (because canon PMMM doesn't lend itself all that well to research systems). So I'm a bit uncertain, it's sort of a compromise between how close I hold to PMMM, and how much variety of events I can really bring you.

One thing I probably will do is start giving you more in universe hints/rumors which will likely be halfway truth and halfway false just so you have more things to start looking at. (This quest is in some ways an objection to the more streamlined and less model based system of other empire quests and one of the things that bothered me about other Empire Quests is that rumors are always true.)

TL;DR Do people want me to give more variety at the cost of moving further from PMMM and To The Stars canon?

 

[Elder Haman]

Sorry about that. I actually did update my plan a little bit ago. Here is the completed one, which I think is actually the same as Kinematics.

 

[Aranfan]

TL;DR Do people want me to give more variety at the cost of moving further from PMMM and To The Stars canon?

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I think it would depend what you mean by "more variety". Are you planning on changing the metaphysics to give us more variety of opponents, or just extrapolating what's there fairly conservatively to give us more enemies? Like, are we suddenly going to run into Kitsune and Kappa, or is it more that we are going to get into tensions with other groups?

 

[TheEyes]

No posts for a full day and only one kinematic's plan it seems like? @Elder Haman I only saw a rough plan marked from you and no indications of it being finished. I'd like to get a plan soonish, so let me know if there's any further questions I need to answer.

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As far as I can tell everyone seems happy with Kinematics's plan, seeing as we've all bantered back and forth over it for a few days. Kyuubey's penalty, our consolidation efforts with Seto's group, and our need for a lot of morale-boosting efforts have made this month pretty tightly constrained anyway, so it's not much of a surprise. The next turn should have a more lively debate.

Or the enchanting system which I pretty much invented wholesale just to give you a good research tree (because canon PMMM doesn't lend itself all that well to research systems). So I'm a bit uncertain, it's sort of a compromise between how close I hold to PMMM, and how much variety of events I can really bring you.

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I don't know if I object so much as find it a bit strange. I was expecting more of our research to be related to demon-hunting and martial tactics; in particular I figured our biggest long-term project, other than intra- and inter-team politics and maybe working to promote some of our girls to Legendary status (maybe Legendary should have levels, like D&D character levels?) was going to be trying to bring up the cubes/girl and cubes/land area ratios enough that the Incubators won't just decide to eventually kill us all.

Having enchantment be a research topic rather than something that meguca just sort of do is unexpected, and taking a bit of mental readjustment, but it's actually pretty cool, even if I can't find any use for the stuff we've currently done outside of curiosities and lab-only applications like limited maglev via superconductors.

 

[Sereg]

I'm happy for to have more variety.

 

[mastigos]

@inverted_helix your current morale representation is a good abstraction. I was more talking about an in-game research avenue that would make sense and help allow targeted morale issues. A way to catch girls with unusually low morale and have them brought to Mami's attention.

 

[Diomedea]

Hmmm, I'm wondering if instead you should start introducing more political problems. We have 1/3 of a city in the south which we took forcibly, and we're kinda the big scary target in the region. If a MG needs to travel and they think poorly of us, they need to go all the way around our territory. I've been kinda expecting at least one of the groups around us trying to get girls together to take us down a peg. Otherwise, who know when we'll decide to swoop in and take their territory?! Last year, they only girls who didn't disappear and lose their territory (we absorbed them peaceably) were those who didn't let them scout them out properly! Those crazy serene girls don't make any sense! Paranoia runs rampant!

 

[Elder Haman]

I wouldn't mind variety, however I don't think we need to depart too far from current semi-cannon levels. I think small side quests and events for the girls would be plenty interesting. Akeno enters a race... how does that play out? Nagisa is asked for help by a cat to save her kittens (someone keeps "disappearing" kittens in Mitakihara). The rumors about Mami being a Yakuza Princess just won't die, they just don't get mentioned in front of Mami anymore - but Taura still knows it's going on under the surface.

It'll be a slice of life to go with our constant fear of violent death or depression killing us, and the struggle to balance a budget. (Also, the balancing in this quest has been really good. Very hard to break out beyond just staying ahead, which makes the growth aspects very challenging).

I also don't think there are really any big complaints about the way canon has been interpreted so far. It's just that we are all the kind of nerdy geeks that argue about stuff like how the techno-babble on Star Trek fits together, and why the Kessel Run is measured in distance instead of time. It's a compliment that everyone is taking your canon seriously and trying to make it fit better with PMMM canon.