Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)

[Elder Haman]

My current logic is that it doesn't apply to rural. Since you're effectively using teleportation to jump between demons spotted by your dispatchers.

Dispatch is inefficient in the rural area compared to just having boots on the ground. (Technically speaking you could do dispatch on rural areas, but the efficiency is too low to justify it.)

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I thought teleportation was separate from dispatchers. We may not have dispatchers in rural areas, but we still have Demon Forecasting.

Last I remember the idea was that it effects rural. The lack of dispatchers lessens the effectiveness, but the greater distances between forecast demon routes meant greater benefits to teleportation in rural (similar to why Seto can hunt nomadic areas). These opposing effects were then going to be ruled as canceling each other out to make the math easier.

 

[Aranfan]

So, @Kinematics, @Elder Haman, what do you think about the upkeep option of 1 girl per 40 for -.05 cube consumption per girl? Does it math out as advantageous?

 

[inverted_helix]

You, sir, are a brutal slave-driver. You realize that as of this turn 77% of our forces (44.5/58) are still doing mandatory upkeep jobs, and that number's only going to grow when we fit the full RT crop rotation gig in? Makes me wonder how these other groups have the time to harass us, given how much we have to squeeze just to have time to scout; hell, given how much work we've had to do just to scout surrounding areas it's amazing that any of them know we exist at all.

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Hah hardly. Keep in mind your maintenance proportion is high, but as your numbers go up your absolute number of free meguca rises. Also keep in mind that as a GM I love upkeep costs because there's very little writing to those. If I let your number of free meguca for turn to turn stuff rise uncheck the update length would rapidly spiral out of control. Also in fairness the average organization spends a lot of its time and money effectively just keeping from backsliding. I don't think this is unusual that only a minority of resources can be devoted to growth.

As to other groups development. You guys have handicapped yourself by your extreme risk aversion. Other groups accept casualties and that allows them to expand more quickly and have more resources free.

This omake really puts it well in some ways:

Tomoe is extraordinarily casualty averse, which has contributed to both the relative slowness of her expansion and the high morale of her organization, which is deservedly considered the safest MG organization on the planet. Every organization worth it's salt has as one of it's main draws greater safety and lower turnover than the wild, however the Serene Imperium is the only organization able to reliably recruit from other organizations on the same basis.

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I thought teleportation was separate from dispatchers. We may not have dispatchers in rural areas, but we still have Demon Forecasting.

Last I remember the idea was that it effects rural. The lack of dispatchers lessens the effectiveness, but the greater distances between forecast demon routes meant greater benefits to teleportation in rural (similar to why Seto can hunt nomadic areas). These opposing effects were then going to be ruled as canceling each other out to make the math easier.

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Hmm, I suppose that makes sense as well and I probably did say it. My memory is less than great at times. I guess I'll allow it, though keep in mind that when you hit a 75 cube harvest I'll be bumping you to 1.5 meguca upkeep on it.

So, @Kinematics, @Elder Haman, what do you think about the upkeep option of 1 girl per 40 for -.05 cube consumption per girl? Does it math out as advantageous?

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It's meant as the opposite tradeoff of teleportation support for hunters. One lets you trade cubes for meguca months, the other lets you trade meguca months for cubes. It gives you options.

 

[TheEyes]

It's meant as the opposite tradeoff of teleportation support for hunters. One lets you trade cubes for meguca months, the other lets you trade meguca months for cubes. It gives you options.

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It does more than that: it lets us trade meguca months for territory-free cubes. That'll be important if, for example, we somehow find ourselves with 10-12+ more meguca living off of the same sized territory. For now it's not worth it, but if we go all Serene-borg on that nomadic invader group and find out that there's actually a dozen meguca in the group? We'll need to squeeze as many cubes out of our territory as we can.

As to other groups development. You guys have handicapped yourself by your extreme risk aversion. Other groups accept casualties and that allows them to expand more quickly and have more resources free.

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Yeah, well, look at what our morale is like, and how many spirals we have to deal with, even with our zero-casualty policy. These "quick expanding" groups should be shedding meguca left and right to spirals, which should be dropping morale even further causing more spirals, etc. Which means they need to recruit constantly, making their meguca majority-green rather than majority-veteran, further impacting their free time since a larger proportion of them need to hunt rather than do other things.

I really can't see groups without a zero-casualty policy lasting for more than a few months without imploding.

 

[Kinematics]

Hmm, I suppose that makes sense as well and I probably did say it. My memory is less than great at times. I guess I'll allow it, though keep in mind that when you hit a 75 cube harvest I'll be bumping you to 1.5 meguca upkeep on it.

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Hmm. I'll need to revert some of my corrections, then, but I'll keep rural and urban separate in my spreadsheet, as it's not always worthwhile, and rural areas have blocky edges on demon strength.

--

Two issues we'll want to decide on.

1) Do we want to do the skewed split for hunting, with something like 45/20 instead of 33/32? This will free up a number of meguca every other turn, but clamp down on available meguca on the alternate turns. The numbers assigned to hunting will be like 22 one turn, 15 the next, instead of 18.5 both turns. Essentially, we'll spend one turn doing a massive amount of hunting, and then the next turn using the free meguca to pursue more meguca-costly projects such as research.

Arguments could be made either way on how to go about it. I'm inclined towards staying balanced at the moment because it's 'safer' — if something happens on a high hunt turn, we're not caught scrambling to get the people we need (at least, not as much). However I'm not entirely against the swing mode, as it feels like it could be useful; just not entirely sure how we'd apply it.


2) Do we want to activate the teleportation methodology? We lose net cubes, but right now we're more pressed for meguca. Need to get an idea of what projects we want to focus on, and how many people we'll need this month.

Updated my spreadsheet to count all hunting costs — Demon Forcasting and Teleportation — and taking the net total there.

Default: 81.8 cubes for 19 units (4 elite)
Teleport: 77.3 cubes for 17 units (3 elite), including the teleporter

+2 units (including 1 elite) for -4.5 cubes. 1 cube of loss is from allocation rounding.


I get the feeling we're going to want to make use of the elites' abilities this turn, so freeing up a spare elite will help with that.


If we use teleportation, we'll be at a net +10 cubes before grief spirals, which doesn't leave much room for research costs. We'll have 2 elites and 8.5 vets after all mandatory + Sports Day, though, which gives us a fair amount of wiggle room for all the things we want to look at.


Also, if we combine teleportation with the swing hunting, we could end up with substantially more meguca available, particularly in off turns. I'll need to see what the numbers look like.


Anyway, thoughts on which way people would like to go?

 

[Elder Haman]

So, @Kinematics, @Elder Haman, what do you think about the upkeep option of 1 girl per 40 for -.05 cube consumption per girl? Does it math out as advantageous?

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Well... it's pretty easy to math out. 40 x -0.05 = -2 cubes

So even at maximum usage it is about half as efficient as having that girl just hunt for cubes (assuming it's a vet in pair hunting).

Might be worthwhile if we get in a situation where we have a lot of extra meguca months, or where the territory is not sufficient to harvest enough cubes. But normally, no.

Hmm, I suppose that makes sense as well and I probably did say it. My memory is less than great at times. I guess I'll allow it, though keep in mind that when you hit a 75 cube harvest I'll be bumping you to 1.5 meguca upkeep on it.

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Okay, sounds good.

Hmm. I'll need to revert some of my corrections, then, but I'll keep rural and urban separate in my spreadsheet, as it's not always worthwhile, and rural areas have blocky edges on demon strength.

--

Two issues we'll want to decide on.

1) Do we want to do the skewed split for hunting, with something like 45/20 instead of 33/32? This will free up a number of meguca every other turn, but clamp down on available meguca on the alternate turns. The numbers assigned to hunting will be like 22 one turn, 15 the next, instead of 18.5 both turns. Essentially, we'll spend one turn doing a massive amount of hunting, and then the next turn using the free meguca to pursue more meguca-costly projects such as research.

Arguments could be made either way on how to go about it. I'm inclined towards staying balanced at the moment because it's 'safer' — if something happens on a high hunt turn, we're not caught scrambling to get the people we need (at least, not as much). However I'm not entirely against the swing mode, as it feels like it could be useful; just not entirely sure how we'd apply it.


2) Do we want to activate the teleportation methodology? We lose net cubes, but right now we're more pressed for meguca. Need to get an idea of what projects we want to focus on, and how many people we'll need this month.

Updated my spreadsheet to count all hunting costs — Demon Forcasting and Teleportation — and taking the net total there.

Default: 81.8 cubes for 19 units (4 elite)
Teleport: 77.3 cubes for 17 units (3 elite), including the teleporter

+2 units (including 1 elite) for -4.5 cubes. 1 cube of loss is from allocation rounding.


I get the feeling we're going to want to make use of the elites' abilities this turn, so freeing up a spare elite will help with that.


If we use teleportation, we'll be at a net +10 cubes before grief spirals, which doesn't leave much room for research costs. We'll have 2 elites and 8.5 vets after all mandatory + Sports Day, though, which gives us a fair amount of wiggle room for all the things we want to look at.


Also, if we combine teleportation with the swing hunting, we could end up with substantially more meguca available, particularly in off turns. I'll need to see what the numbers look like.


Anyway, thoughts on which way people would like to go?

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I think we should combine the territories.
We need to play it safe for now.

And along those lines, this first turn we should not use teleportation transport. We need a good harvest of cubes this turn to put us solidly in the black on our stockpile. Next turn we should consider teleportation transport to make more meguca months available for other things.

 

[Elder Haman]

@inverted_helix

I've asked multiple times now and still have not got an answer.

How many girls will it cost and what are the expected benefits of extending the courier business up to Seto's area?

If you don't know yet that's fine. Just please say so. Right now I'm not sure if your are deliberately ignoring my questions, or if it's just fallen through the cracks because of all the posts being made.

 

[boonerunner]

Yeah, well, look at what our morale is like, and how many spirals we have to deal with, even with our zero-casualty policy. These "quick expanding" groups should be shedding meguca left and right to spirals, which should be dropping morale even further causing more spirals, etc. Which means they need to recruit constantly, making their meguca majority-green rather than majority-veteran, further impacting their free time since a larger proportion of them need to hunt rather than do other things.

I really can't see groups without a zero-casualty policy lasting for more than a few months without imploding.

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It depends how callous the leadership in the group is. They could (for instance) save a lot of cubes by not using any to avert grief spirals. If the leadership is willing to accept the high losses and constant replacement costs, then such a group could survive for quite a while. The turnover at the lower ranks would be fairly high, but still better than in the wild. Morale is tied to the status quo, even if that status quo is pretty horrible.

 

[Aranfan]

1) Do we want to do the skewed split for hunting, with something like 45/20 instead of 33/32?

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I'm in favor of the balanced split.

 

[Elder Haman]

Yeah, well, look at what our morale is like, and how many spirals we have to deal with, even with our zero-casualty policy. These "quick expanding" groups should be shedding meguca left and right to spirals, which should be dropping morale even further causing more spirals, etc. Which means they need to recruit constantly, making their meguca majority-green rather than majority-veteran, further impacting their free time since a larger proportion of them need to hunt rather than do other things.

Click to shrink...

It depends how callous the leadership in the group is. They could (for instance) save a lot of cubes by not using any to avert grief spirals. If the leadership is willing to accept the high losses and constant replacement costs, then such a group could survive for quite a while. The turnover at the lower ranks would be fairly high, but still better than in the wild. Morale is tied to the status quo, even if that status quo is pretty horrible.

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First of all, our morale problems are due to absorption of other girls, not Serene life itself (which is closer to a 5/10 morale). So our current morale might not be much better than a group that accepts attrition.

Second, it's pretty likely that these other groups do have a greater percentage of greens who are desperate and with lower morale, and then core of veterans who have better morale because they are better teated and valued, and maybe an inner circle of elites who are quite well off.

 

[Kinematics]

I think we should combine the territories.
We need to play it safe for now.

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Combine how? Even split? Lopsided for swing hunting? Or combine into one massive territory?

 

[Aranfan]

Second, it's pretty likely that these other groups do have a greater percentage of greens who are desperate and with lower morale, and then core of veterans who have better morale because they are better teated and valued, and maybe an inner circle of elites who are quite well off.

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Going to point out that it is in no way impossible for a diplomacy group to accept casualty-risk. In fact, I would expect that most diplomacy groups would accept casualty-risk, because they would perceive themselves to be forced by circumstances.

This doesn't mean they have to be doing differential pay and cube allotment.

 

[Elder Haman]

At least one action probably ought to be sending Seto (and others?) out to make contact with these 4ish girls hunting in the nomadic areas and make contact with them. Maybe share our pamphlet/manual, and mention that if they are hurting for cubes they should come talk to Mami as we currently have room to take on a few more girls. Maybe give them a cellphone too?

Hmm... instead of just a manual we also ought to put together a recruitment pamphlet explaining why a magical girl should join the Serenes.

 

[inverted_helix]

Yeah, well, look at what our morale is like, and how many spirals we have to deal with, even with our zero-casualty policy. These "quick expanding" groups should be shedding meguca left and right to spirals, which should be dropping morale even further causing more spirals, etc. Which means they need to recruit constantly, making their meguca majority-green rather than majority-veteran, further impacting their free time since a larger proportion of them need to hunt rather than do other things.

I really can't see groups without a zero-casualty policy lasting for more than a few months without imploding.

Click to shrink...

It's less dramatic than you think. Largely because getting higher morale is essentially more a logarithmic than linear process. The amount of effort to hold morale at say 1 or 2 is far far less than that needed to hold it at 4 or 5. It's hard to explain precisely, but think about it from this perspective: how much does it take to make a child that is rich, has a loving family, and is healthy happier vs how much it takes to make a homeless beggar happier? This is the most extreme example but it illustrates the idea. Diminishing marginal returns on happiness essentially, the happier you are the harder it is to make you happier. (Though happiness is not a perfectly accurate term, but you get the idea.)

This works in reverse as well, it takes a lot to make conditions worse the worse off your are to begin with.

Essentially all morale effects are modified by how high your morale currently is. It's a very unforgiving system at higher levels but very forgiving at lower levels.

You've also created a group with every effort to try and make the girls feel a sense of comradery and unity. This means that morale effects tend to ripple out more. (Though of course there are benefits to this approach as well.)

A callous group would not promote such unity and thereby reduce the impact of any deaths on the overall morale. Plus even at 0 morale a pack hunting group can offer better casualty rates than a solo hunter could manage by herself. And the need for new recruits would therefore still be in the sustainable level that Incubators are looking at.

If your group was at low morale levels you'd run into problems like dissent, desertion, theft, etc. These can be managed though as countless oppressive regimes have managed around the world.

It depends how callous the leadership in the group is. They could (for instance) save a lot of cubes by not using any to avert grief spirals. If the leadership is willing to accept the high losses and constant replacement costs, then such a group could survive for quite a while. The turnover at the lower ranks would be fairly high, but still better than in the wild. Morale is tied to the status quo, even if that status quo is pretty horrible.

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This sums it up as well.

First of all, our morale problems are due to absorption of other girls, not Serene life itself (which is closer to a 5/10 morale). So our current morale might not be much better than a group that accepts attrition.

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Yes this is a fair thing to say. Absorbing a group that lost 1/3rd its members in a day did not help your morale. Particularly in a group emphasizing integration like your own. You can expect that the abstraction of total morale is a combination of the differential though. (I actually shifted the meguca selection in this turn's grief spiral check to account for that a little.)

Second, it's pretty likely that these other groups do have a greater percentage of greens who are desperate and with lower morale, and then core of veterans who have better morale because they are better teated and valued, and maybe an inner circle of elites who are quite well off.

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This is also a big situation. To a more pragmatic group preserving the quality core of the group at the cost of the greens makes good practical sense. It also helps maintain loyalty in layers to help you keep everyone in control, again a tactic many regimes have employed.

Something to keep in mind is that other diplomatic "nicer" groups can be accepting some casualty risk as well. They aren't going to be pushing up against 5/10 on morale doing so like you've managed in the past, but they won't break down either. With some minor casualty risk you're likely to be able to hover around 3/10 morale.

Something to keep in mind as well is that 10/10 morale is essentially impossible. The happiest person on Earth would probably be represented by 8 or 9 out of 10 morale. 10/10 would basically be: nothing bad has ever happened to you or will ever happen to you, you live in an unusually happy Disney Movie.

Your morale score is never meant to get that high as it would mean that nothing could possibly happen to make you despair. A morale of 5 is actually really good. It's hard to imagine, but meguca live a kind of terrible existence where just being sad can be life threatening. Every normal person gets sad or depressed every now and then it's just the vast majority of the time they recover.

 

[Elder Haman]

Combine how? Even split? Lopsided for swing hunting? Or combine into one massive territory?

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Sorry I was unclear. I meant even split. Didn't get much sleep last night and it's catching up with me.

Going to point out that it is in no way impossible for a diplomacy group to accept casualty-risk. In fact, I would expect that most diplomacy groups would accept casualty-risk, because they would perceive themselves to be forced by circumstances.

This doesn't mean they have to be doing differential pay and cube allotment.

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True, and they probably would have a morale closer to what we currently have. I was just pointing out that there are ways even in a high casualty group to protect your more valuable girls.

EDIT: GM

 

[TheEyes]

Combine how? Even split? Lopsided for swing hunting? Or combine into one massive territory?

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Even split. We could get away with a lopsided split if we weren't beset on all sides, and wanted to pool meguca-months for single large projects (say a large aggressive expansion) but we need the capability to react to outside threats right now.

 

[TheEyes]

At least one action probably ought to be sending Seto (and others?) out to make contact with these 4ish girls hunting in the nomadic areas and make contact with them. Maybe share our pamphlet/manual, and mention that if they are hurting for cubes they should come talk to Mami as we currently have room to take on a few more girls. Maybe give them a cellphone too?

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I'm thinking a full-court press:

We also need to shock and awe these girls invading "our" nomadic territory. Maybe we should send out a convoy on mopeds: Taya, Seto, and Mami, each with a shield girl riding alongside and as much backup as necessary, tracking down the invader group and giving them a nice, warm, "We are the Serene. Lower your weapons and surrender yourselves. We will add your magical and logistical distinctiveness to our own. Your group will adapt to service us. Reluctance is unladylike."

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Do we want to start picking up mopeds this turn for hunting, and maybe the courier service?

Hmm... instead of just a manual we also ought to put together a recruitment pamphlet explaining why a magical girl should join the Serenes.

Click to shrink...

Interesting idea. Heh, I suspect a Serene recruitment pamphlet to be like 90% statistics, which would probably weird out a lot of the teenage girl recruits. Hey, maybe there's an omake in that?

 

[Aranfan]

@inverted_helix, have you considered threadmarks?

 

[Kinematics]

OK, updated the spreadsheet so that the Teleport mode works for rural areas, but is still selected separately from the urban areas.

--

Just as a side note: We can combine the current North + Seto for a size 37 territory at DS 0. That would give us a moderate swing size (instead of the more extreme 45/20), and is a reasonable thing to do due to the fact that both areas are already at the same DS value, and we don't have to lose anything from merging. It also fits within the armor limits if we use the teleportation method.

If we do a swing 37/28 split with teleportation, we can go from 3 elite/16.5 vet/81.1 cubes (33/32 territory split) to a 3 elite/14 vet/1 teleporter/81.2 cubes result. That is, we get the same number of cubes, but save 1.5 vets.

Next turn would be 69.5 cubes for 3 elite/11.5 vets/1 teleporter (1.5 vets less than this turn). Overall average of a bit over 75, instead of 79 without using teleportation.


In terms of available meguca after discounting hunt/job/support, it would become:

This turn: 2 elite/9.5 vets
Next turn: 2 elite/11 vets

Compared to, if using an even split:

This turn: 2 elite/8 vets
Next turn: 2 elite/8.5 vets

The above doesn't count the -2 for Sports Day in any of them.

So an extra 1.5 to 2.5 vets per turn. Leaving this as a potential path in case we really need a couple extra meguca, but going to assume an even split for the time being.

 

[Elder Haman]

Do we want to start picking up mopeds this turn for hunting, and maybe the courier service?

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I don't favor this.

Mopeds don't really help our courier business that much. It might save us a few girls but not increase our income. Teleportation transport is a bit more effective than mopeds.

Main benefit of mopeds is that they cost money not cubes or meguca. However we are now in a slight money crunch. We need to get our income up higher and start saving money so we can actually purchase land, housing, and Kyouko's family Church.

 

[inverted_helix]

@inverted_helix, have you considered threadmarks?

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I have, but it seems a lot of extra work to go through threadmarking the 30 turn posts, let alone the extra 30 or so omake posts.

Interesting idea. Heh, I suspect a Serene recruitment pamphlet to be like 90% statistics, which would probably weird out a lot of the teenage girl recruits. Hey, maybe there's an omake in that?

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:lol

You know I packed this recent turn full of more subtle plot hooks and whatnot, kind of sad those didn't warrant much discussion.

I've asked multiple times now and still have not got an answer.

How many girls will it cost and what are the expected benefits of extending the courier business up to Seto's area?

If you don't know yet that's fine. Just please say so. Right now I'm not sure if your are deliberately ignoring my questions, or if it's just fallen through the cracks because of all the posts being made.

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I'm not deliberately ignoring you it just kind of slips by buried under more interesting questions.

Kind of thinking it's just 1 meguca +$1500 area, it's really not as large as the total Kasamino area you had before.

 

[Elder Haman]

OK, updated the spreadsheet so that the Teleport mode works for rural areas, but is still selected separately from the urban areas.

--

Just as a side note: We can combine the current North + Seto for a size 37 territory at DS 0. That would give us a moderate swing size (instead of the more extreme 45/20), and is a reasonable thing to do due to the fact that both areas are already at the same DS value, and we don't have to lose anything from merging. It also fits within the armor limits if we use the teleportation method.

If we do a swing 37/28 split with teleportation, we can go from 3 elite/16.5 vet/81.1 cubes (33/32 territory split) to a 3 elite/14 vet/1 teleporter/81.2 cubes result. That is, we get the same number of cubes, but save 1.5 vets.

Next turn would be 69.5 cubes for 3 elite/11.5 vets/1 teleporter (1.5 vets less than this turn). Overall average of a bit over 75, instead of 79 without using teleportation.


In terms of available meguca after discounting hunt/job/support, it would become:

This turn: 2 elite/9.5 vets
Next turn: 2 elite/11 vets

Compared to, if using an even split:

This turn: 2 elite/8 vets
Next turn: 2 elite/8.5 vets

The above doesn't count the -2 for Sports Day in any of them.

So an extra 1.5 to 2.5 vets per turn. Leaving this as a potential path in case we really need a couple extra meguca, but going to assume an even split for the time being.

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Actually that presents another option. Don't do the even split and instead keep the slight swing. Use the teleportation transport on the large hunt, and drop it on the low hunt. I think that results in a slight average gain for us on the meguca side at a smaller cost on the cube side.

 

[Elder Haman]

Kind of thinking it's just 1 meguca +$1500 area, it's really not as large as the total Kasamino area you had before.

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That's cool.

Every little bit helps.

 

[Elder Haman]

You know I packed this recent turn full of more subtle plot hooks and whatnot, kind of sad those didn't warrant much discussion.

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Yes... there is also the Iwata incident. We need to set up diplomatic connections with all the surrounding territories and figure out what is going on.

 

[Aranfan]

I'm thinking a full-court press:

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Can we please not do more pressganging? I don't want the Serenes to become a conquest group, and our reputation is already pretty bad. I don't want to make it worse.