Knightfall
Nui lover and Slaaneshi
- Location
- New York, New York
Dude cool it.
Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)
- Thread starter inverted_helix
- Start date
You are vastly overestimating how much anyone cares about investigating a new piece of random quack medicine. No one will ever notice the suspiciously high success rate unless we start letting people do actual trials. Sell it on the internet to make it difficult to find us and we will never have an issue.
Knightfall
Nui lover and Slaaneshi
- Location
- New York, New York
That and with the religion issue there is something called Faith healing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
I've heard of it, but it's a bad idea to actively draw attention to ourselves that way. No one cares about a new brand of homeopathic pills on the internet, but they might notice what is basically a piece of performance art, especially if we start literally making cripples walk etc.
I agree completely. Which is why I am proposing that the pills should have a minor effect which is not beyond people's ability to comprehend. Plenty of people believe that taking natural herbal supplements will make them healthier and feel better. And even in real life, taking such pills does make people feel better if for no other reason than the placebo effect (which can be surprisingly strong). Adding magic to the mix, so that the pills actually do make you a bit healthier and taken by people who expect the pills to make them feel better, will not raise any eyebrows. We could screw it up, of course, but if we do it right then people will feel no need to investigate.
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Knightfall
Nui lover and Slaaneshi
- Location
- New York, New York
So we put herbs into the pills and then enhance the effects with magic.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
A man claims that the cream he sells makes your skin tighter, smoother, and appear at least ten years younger. It has reportedly high success rates. He declines to explain the process by which he produces it. What do you think the response to that will be? If something that, after examination, shouldn't do what it does and invites scrutiny, then something like that where the manufacturer outright refuses examination will invite at least twice that amount, and if you think a bunch of teenage girls can cover their internet tracks better than a hobby-hacker can trace them, you're daydreaming.
The problem arises when said pills do way more than they should be capable of. If a person takes these pills and suddenly their arthritis is basically gone, it's going to become a thing that anyone with arthritis will want. If, say, these peoples' doctors start to realize that their patients have been symptom and pain free since taking these herbal remedies, they're going to take virtually any length to have us reproduce the results for official testing and use. They'll want to know what the miracle chemical is, and when it doesn't work as advertised except when produced by a bunch of teenage girls, somebody's going to investigate.
This is a mundane and relatively kind direction such scrutiny could take. Frankly, it is not, has not been, and never will be worth the risk of giving Kyubey another 35 GCU when it goes sour.
This is why I'm advocating putting only a small amount of healing magic in the pills. Not enough to outright heal the arthritis, but enough to reduce the pain somewhat, for instance. If a patient tells their doctor that they've been taking these herbal remedies lately and they still have pain but it's more manageable now, the doctor is going to smile and nod and dismiss it as the placebo effect. Just like the hundreds of other similar stories he's heard over the years. But that patient will still be getting slightly better and they'll be paying us money. Enchanting the pills so that they do have a benefit, but that the benefit is small enough to be dismissed might be a delicate balance, but it should be possible.
Knightfall
Nui lover and Slaaneshi
- Location
- New York, New York
Pretty much this.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
I still reserve the right to point and say I told you so when it goes wrong. I wonder at the effect of ingested healing magic taken once per day, no matter how small the amount, and the stupidity of people being people and 'making up for lost time' by overdosing two or three pills at once.
Nothing. There are literally dozens of companies doing exactly that right now (they tend to use pseudoscience instead of just refusing to explain, but we could do that too) for anti-aging cream alone and hundreds more for other things. No one does anything about it because everyone who matters knows it's bullshit without having to spend any resources on investigating. In this universe, they'd happen to be wrong, but they have no way of knowing that.
Examined by who? Investigating quack medicine is a waste of time. Who decided that doing this examination was worth their time? Who's funding this? Why are they examining us, instead of any of the other groups whose stuff is indistinguishable from ours before a detailed investigation?
They rarely do anything that overt, but there are plenty of things we can to to make controlled trials harder (refuse to tell them who our customers are, don't sell to people in bulk) and we only have to be more inconvenient then something else to get skipped.
So? That takes effort. Why do they care?
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Okay. Talk all you want about how brilliant your plan is, how stupid it is to examine the genius of the idea in a critical way. I have one last question for you.
Would you be willing to commit to it without having a surplus of GCU to pay Kyubey for a memory fix? Because if you aren't willing to do it, then all of your arguments against me ring kind of hollow, don't they? You deride every argument I make as needless worry, as wrong and excessive in my assessment, but unless you're willing to bet it all without having that safety net, well...
Would you be willing to commit to it without having a surplus of GCU to pay Kyubey for a memory fix? Because if you aren't willing to do it, then all of your arguments against me ring kind of hollow, don't they? You deride every argument I make as needless worry, as wrong and excessive in my assessment, but unless you're willing to bet it all without having that safety net, well...
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Someone's salty over their arguments being debunked, and it isn't Skelm. Seriously dude, you're embarrassing yourself.
OK, on the issue of whether to uncap the rural harvest.
In order to keep the rural demon strength at 0 over time, any positive harvest must be balanced with a negative harvest. With our default 2.5 solo vets hunting there, the uncapped harvest would be 7.4 cubes instead of 7. However that would increase DS to 1.1. In order to reduce DS back to 0, the following month would need to harvest 6.6 cubes.
As you can see, over two months, 7.4 + 6.6 = 14, exactly the same as if we keep things capped: 7+7 = 14.
(Also: I can't seem to get Haman's 0.5 elite solo + 1.5 vet solo to add up to 7.3 cubes, with teleportation. I get the same 7.4 cubes as the default 2.5 vet solo without teleportation.)
As long as we don't simply intend to allow DS to grow unbounded, this will always be the case, unless we apply rotating tactics to the area. Thus, outside of a change to rotating tactics, there is no reason to uncap the rural harvest value.
If we do apply rotating tactics, things get more complicated.
First, we'd have to actually increase the DS of the area for RT to have any effect. Can take it to 7.9 DS with 11.6 cubes harvested. (Lower max cap because we have lower casualty reduction in rural areas.)
Second, we can't use 2.5 solo vets there anymore, due to the increased risk. The above would require 5 vets in pairs.
And third, we'd need to underhunt the following turn. 0.5 solo elite plus 1.0 vet pairs with a cap of 4.2 cubes would do.
Total harvest would be 15.8 cubes over two turns — an extra 1.8 cubes at a cost of an extra 1.5 meguca.
Overall conclusion: For our purposes, using rotating tactics in the rural area isn't worth it, and not using rotating tactics means there is no effective difference between capping at the area capacity and letting it cycle between slight high and low values.
Personally, I'd rather just keep the cap in place and not worry about it at all.
In order to keep the rural demon strength at 0 over time, any positive harvest must be balanced with a negative harvest. With our default 2.5 solo vets hunting there, the uncapped harvest would be 7.4 cubes instead of 7. However that would increase DS to 1.1. In order to reduce DS back to 0, the following month would need to harvest 6.6 cubes.
As you can see, over two months, 7.4 + 6.6 = 14, exactly the same as if we keep things capped: 7+7 = 14.
(Also: I can't seem to get Haman's 0.5 elite solo + 1.5 vet solo to add up to 7.3 cubes, with teleportation. I get the same 7.4 cubes as the default 2.5 vet solo without teleportation.)
As long as we don't simply intend to allow DS to grow unbounded, this will always be the case, unless we apply rotating tactics to the area. Thus, outside of a change to rotating tactics, there is no reason to uncap the rural harvest value.
If we do apply rotating tactics, things get more complicated.
First, we'd have to actually increase the DS of the area for RT to have any effect. Can take it to 7.9 DS with 11.6 cubes harvested. (Lower max cap because we have lower casualty reduction in rural areas.)
Second, we can't use 2.5 solo vets there anymore, due to the increased risk. The above would require 5 vets in pairs.
And third, we'd need to underhunt the following turn. 0.5 solo elite plus 1.0 vet pairs with a cap of 4.2 cubes would do.
Total harvest would be 15.8 cubes over two turns — an extra 1.8 cubes at a cost of an extra 1.5 meguca.
Overall conclusion: For our purposes, using rotating tactics in the rural area isn't worth it, and not using rotating tactics means there is no effective difference between capping at the area capacity and letting it cycle between slight high and low values.
Personally, I'd rather just keep the cap in place and not worry about it at all.
There's a big difference between being willing to bet money on an issue and being willing to bet money you don't have, when the penalty for bankruptcy is death. It's just stupid to risk more than we have to on anything.
Frankly, all y'all are nuts. We have like five other ways to make money that don't involve the lossy conversion of grief cubes into miraculously working quack medicine:
- Nagisa starts a pet whisperer business.
- Expand the courier business into Seto's area.
- Franchise agreement with the non-Serene
- Sell cubes directly to Nagoya
- Start another restaurant in Iwata (doable especially if specialties can be cross-trained)
Someone has a poor understanding of the definition of the word 'debunk'.
@Powerofmind's concerns are valid. However, they are also addressable, and people have been coming up with variations on the original idea that make it less problematic (though I'm surprised no one has yet stated the simplest answer — don't heal everyone).
Basically, if you are not willing to critique your own ideas to both admit where they can go wrong, and how you will defend against those risks, expect others to do it for you. Mocking others for doing so does not help the discussion.
Knightfall
Nui lover and Slaaneshi
- Location
- New York, New York
How about letting Nagisa create cheese?
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Skelm's entire argument amounts to 'it's not that bad'. Forgive me for throwing my hands up and giving up the argument.
I agree with the above until the final conclusion.
There is a good reason, meguca costs will vary.
For example we could hunt with only 2 vets solo next turn, this would return 5.94 cubes, and save us a meguca 0.5 vet, to be spent elsewhere. DS would fall below 0, and then next turn we could overhunt again with 2.5 vets, followed by another overhunt, followed by an under hunt. We'd save 0.5 a meguca month every three months.
Alternatively a 0.5 elite, and 1.5 vets is 6.4 cubes, so closer to an even swing.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
There isn't. If you believe there is a risk of attention that requires mass mindwipes such that you'd need the GCU reserve, then why are you arguing on the basis that no mass mindwipe can happen if we simply follow the details of your own plan? It weakens your position to say 'this is infallible and perfect' and yet when a man asks you to bet money on it you waffle and say it's risky to take such a bet.
Hmm. Valid proposition. Let me run some numbers.
Due to the danger level of hunting with Solo Veterans in a rural area, we would have to alternate 1 turn of overhunting with 1 turn of underhunting and there would be a bit of inefficiency due to the DS falling below 0. Still, it would gain us (roughly) 0.5 meguca every other month at a loss of 0.7 GCU. Might be worth it.
Edit: Or we could overhunt with 2.5 Vets this turn (which is safe) and hope that we can get at least 1% safety bonus to overhunt again with 2.5 Vets on the next turn before dropping back to underhunt with 2 Vets. That would give the savings of 0.5 meguca every 3 months.
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