Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)
- Thread starter inverted_helix
- Start date
I'll preface this with noting that, for all the arguments on either side, it's most likely just going to be a random dice roll that determines the outcome, not any of our expectations. So either side could be "right", just on random chance. This is still a civ game, not a pure social like PMAS.
Basically, it's impossible to argue against the assertion that the other side will see us as condescending, when we are not actually acting in that manner, because as soon as you make that assertion, anything can justify it. It's a red herring of an argument.
If we simply said, "We're having a party today. Come on over.", then yes, that would be pretty obnoxious, implying that anything they were doing at the time wasn't that important.
But we're not doing that. We're giving them a couple weeks of notice, which is plenty of time to decide 1) if they want to come at all, and 2) how to manage their hunting schedule so that they can make time on that day to do something else. Just like us. We have enough time to work out how to adjust schedules so that on 'this' day, everyone is free.
I'd also assert that your argument applies 100% the same to the meet-and-greet. We'd be asking them to take time out of their schedules to do something other than hunting. Is a non-recruit chat worth wasting their time on some self-serving get-together? (Note that since I don't believe your argument applies at all, I am not using it to actually criticize the meet-and-greet suggestion.)
Basically, this aspect is something I agree could have a lot of little issues, and trying to compensate for it (paying for a train ticket, offering money to use at the carnival, etc) isn't easily justifiable or acceptable. It was less of an issue with the original party plan, and would be a mixed issue with the meet-and-greet (eg: slightly grubby clothes at a party isn't as big a deal as slightly grubby clothes at a formal meeting/dinner, but providing money for the trip and dinner is more easily justified).
If you wish to pursue the argument from this direction, I'm willing to discuss better ideas.
The only rules are, "Don't do anything that would require Kyuubey's attention", and "Be nice to people (including strangers)".
@inverted_helix said that we're in the first month of winter, but I'm not sure if that means November or December. If it's currently December, then I agree to wanting to do the netbook buy this month. If it's November, then I'd wait til next month.
By that definition, every interaction where we ever invite anyone to join the group should be seen as an indication of condescension. If you view the other side of an interaction as condescending to you, there is almost nothing that other person(s) can do that can negate that, because condescension self-justifies against pretty much any behavior.
Basically, it's impossible to argue against the assertion that the other side will see us as condescending, when we are not actually acting in that manner, because as soon as you make that assertion, anything can justify it. It's a red herring of an argument.
This, I simply can't see any basis for. We are taking a single day out of the month, with significant advance notice to the neighboring girls as to exactly which day that is, to have a day off.
If we simply said, "We're having a party today. Come on over.", then yes, that would be pretty obnoxious, implying that anything they were doing at the time wasn't that important.
But we're not doing that. We're giving them a couple weeks of notice, which is plenty of time to decide 1) if they want to come at all, and 2) how to manage their hunting schedule so that they can make time on that day to do something else. Just like us. We have enough time to work out how to adjust schedules so that on 'this' day, everyone is free.
I'd also assert that your argument applies 100% the same to the meet-and-greet. We'd be asking them to take time out of their schedules to do something other than hunting. Is a non-recruit chat worth wasting their time on some self-serving get-together? (Note that since I don't believe your argument applies at all, I am not using it to actually criticize the meet-and-greet suggestion.)
This does touch a little on something that I've been trying to hammer out in my head — how do they afford the trip to the festival, and pay for actually attending (food, games, etc)? If they're strapped for cash, they can't just drop $100 for a train ticket, expensive fair food, random carnival games, etc. Not to mention dressing up in something they're not embarrassed to be seen in.
Basically, this aspect is something I agree could have a lot of little issues, and trying to compensate for it (paying for a train ticket, offering money to use at the carnival, etc) isn't easily justifiable or acceptable. It was less of an issue with the original party plan, and would be a mixed issue with the meet-and-greet (eg: slightly grubby clothes at a party isn't as big a deal as slightly grubby clothes at a formal meeting/dinner, but providing money for the trip and dinner is more easily justified).
If you wish to pursue the argument from this direction, I'm willing to discuss better ideas.
I find this to be an unsupported assertion. The entire point is to have them behave normally, not to have them 'perform'. Nor are they performing for a crowd. The visitors are just a handful of separate individuals amongst the mass crowd of the festival itself. Unless you're saying they need to perform for everyone in the entire festival? But that's discredited by the idea of going to the festival at all.
The only rules are, "Don't do anything that would require Kyuubey's attention", and "Be nice to people (including strangers)".
Doing some reading for other stuff, I came across a bit that I think defines when we should give the notebooks. Namely: Is this the o-seiba period? Oseiba would be exactly the right time to be giving these as gifts. It just depends on if we're in November or December, as oseiba covers the first few weeks of December (but isn't to be confused with Christmas).
@inverted_helix said that we're in the first month of winter, but I'm not sure if that means November or December. If it's currently December, then I agree to wanting to do the netbook buy this month. If it's November, then I'd wait til next month.
Well, if you really want to combine the meet-and-greet with an all-day morale event, then I think going back to my earlier idea would work better: rent a venue for an all-day party, like a park building, the sort of thing you use for a large birthday party (park building fees in my area go for around 35-45 dollars an hour, so a 10-hour rental would go for 350-450, plus whatever decorations / catering / entertainment you want, maybe $2000 total for a party for 70). You can have people dropping in and leaving whenever they want, have the building as sort of a "home base" point for people that want to do other things like sports or shopping, just make a day of it. Something like that would be casual without being condescending, since it's obvious that we're making an effort to make this a special day, rather than implying that we do this sort of thing all the time.
Agreed on this, and in light of this I'll agree to disagree on all the other social points. On the meta level, though, I'm a bit concerned that trying to combine a morale action and a diplomacy action is just going to get us a penalty for trying to double-dip an action.
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Not at all. A 1x buffer means we are still living paycheck to paycheck. 2x buffer means we have some actual savings. Right now we are bluffing to others that we have sufficient grief cubes to make us appear stronger, but that is at best a delaying tactic. We need to actually be stronger. And having sufficient grief cubes that we could take an entire month of hunting is a major source of power.
While I'll agree that in peace time with no external threats that 2x buffer is sufficient for likely threats, I don't think that applies to us at all.
Until we at least double in size, I think that we are looking at a serious threat of a conquering group attacking us. Most likely through poaching. That makes us incredibly vulnerable if we don't have sufficient cubes for a safety net.
I think we need at least 3x, and preferably 5x or even more to deal with mass poaching threats. We may very well be unable to to hunt for months. Being able to abandon hunting for two months (3x buffer) would give us one month to take a counter action, and one month to let DS fall.
I highly doubt that. As Kyouko has a massive buffer, and received no penalty. I would also be surprised if the Nagoya group has anything less than a 3x buffer, if they really are sending periodic missions to Tokyo.
I will agree that anything above 2x buffer, or maybe 3x buffer, enters into the realm of us needing articulate a good reason as to why we need that much instead of spending it on other things.
But that is the whole point, Kinematics and I removed it from the diplomacy recruit action. Basically you are entering a circular reasoning loop. They will believe us untrustworthy because they will believe us untrustworthy.
A reasonable argument towards a higher total buffer, but at the same time it shows that the main reason you'd even consider going for a 3x+ buffer is if you're preparing for war. If we are not actually expecting to fight a war, then I don't want to take actions that would support the idea that we are preparing for one, since that belief tends to become reality as the org members start thinking the same thing.
I did avoid that in my response. Kyouko falls under 'miser', but also, because she's a single individual, the x-times buffer rating doesn't quite hold the same meaning.
Well, it could be that there's no penalty whatsoever; but at the same time, it could be a more long-term evaluation, as to whether they feel that an organization like ours is beneficial to their overall goals. (We discussed the risks of the viability of a cooperative organization vs a hierarchical organization, or other types, long long ago.)
We aren't "bluffing" about our wealth. We have 57.7 GCU, which is a huge amount (as perceived by any individual) and almost a full month of costs for our large group. Paycheck-to-paycheck would be 1/2 a month or 1/4 a month (depending on whether the paycheck is weekly or biweekly).
Who exactly are you worried about attacking us? The NE groups want to avoid conflict. Nagoya is obsessed with fighting Class 3 demons. We're already one of the largest groups around (due to the difficulty of sustaining a large group).
We might see a couple more poachers trying to grab a few cubes, sure, but that type of thing is a high risk operation for small reward (both from increased DS and from enemy meguca). A few individuals might be desperate enough to try this, but it's not reasonable to worry about the possibility of a large group muscling in and hunting our entire territory. That would be completely outside of anything we've experienced or heard about in this quest so far.
I'd be much more worried about an opportunistic stealth specialist finding our stockpile of 60 (or 120) GCU and deciding to "redistribute" the wealth.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
With the revelation of the class 3 demon thing, I feel confident in stating that we probably have the most advanced demon hunting in the entire world. With most groups playing XCOM and likely being victims of their own success, they are almost certainly not in a state to have the accumlated experience and relative safety with which to experiment with hunting schema that resulted in us getting Rotating Tactics.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Only the Princess Maker girls would contort their view of cube hunting into something akin to farming. The former implies people die to it enough to be a danger. The latter only implies you die from accidental heat stroke(and then it's mostly your fault).
Just having a foreign meguca experience our hunting protocols would probably fry their brains.
Eh, let's not pat ourselves on the back too much. We might be the only group to figure out RT cube-farming in our area, maybe even all of Japan, but surely there are at least a dozen other places in the world, maybe more, where they've figured this out. Not everyone is willing to go full-on Lord of the Flies at the drop of a hat, and it doesn't need to be the group leader who comes up with the idea of rotating tactics; kids from farming backgrounds would actually be fairly likely to figure out the concept, even if it takes a rather sophisticated group to fully implement it.
Let's not forget that we just sold the concept to Nagoya, and as a result we just raised the sustainable population in their area by 20-25%; if they didn't outnumber us already (they might have had a population as low as 50-55, even if they controlled the entire city), they certainly will by the middle of next year barring aggressive expansion on our part.
Now, Improved RT, that's going to be rather unique to areas of very high education, and likely only diplomatic groups. Teenagers generally don't think in terms of statistical modeling, and a criminal group probably won't have the long-term discipline to carry out such a study to begin with. That tech, and anything we develop as a result, is probably unique to us.
Let's not forget that we just sold the concept to Nagoya, and as a result we just raised the sustainable population in their area by 20-25%; if they didn't outnumber us already (they might have had a population as low as 50-55, even if they controlled the entire city), they certainly will by the middle of next year barring aggressive expansion on our part.
Now, Improved RT, that's going to be rather unique to areas of very high education, and likely only diplomatic groups. Teenagers generally don't think in terms of statistical modeling, and a criminal group probably won't have the long-term discipline to carry out such a study to begin with. That tech, and anything we develop as a result, is probably unique to us.
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True, but we have to face reality that we are in a vulnerable position. I think that based on current circumstance, a long term goal of 3x buffer is reasonable. It's not like our girls are unaware of the fact that there are a lot of threats out there. Nagoya did just attack us and beat us rather badly in the skirmish. And there is always the threat of class 3 demons from Tokyo.
There is the Peace through Strength mentality as well. I don't think a 3x buffer would make our girls more aggressive. Rather I think it would ease apprehensions about external threats, and thus reduce aggressive feelings due to feeling more secure.
When our monthly burn rate is a minimum of 60, then yes, 57 cubes is not wealthy. AT ALL.
Nagoya clearly has far, far more cubes then we have.
We don't have enough cubes to even avoid hunting for a single month, let alone fight a war. We aren't even at the neutral morale level. We have a negative morale modifier for not having a big enough grief cube stockpile. How can you possibly consider us wealthy?
Nagoya certainly would not consider us wealthy.
EVERYONE. You are making pleasant assumptions that you hope are true. In truth, humans by nature love to dominate and control other humans. Humans love to beat up other humans and take their stuff. Meguca's have it worse than modern humans, due significant resource restrictions that make conflict very likely, and extremely tempting.
Nagoya already attacked us once. If they perceive attacking us as in their interest, they will attack us again. Appearing too strong to be worth fighting is essential to a peaceful relationship. The rumors say that Nagoya is gearing up to attack Tokyo again, but how do we know they aren't gearing up to attack us instead? How would we know the difference? I don't believe that they are, but I've been mistaken about a lot of things in this quest, and I think proposing a large stockpile is only a reasonable measure to ensure the safety of our girls.
Prudence demands that we take the minimum precautionary measures. 3x is the bare minimum we need to reliably be able to react to a massive surprise attack.
How do you know the NE groups want to avoid conflict? We know hardly anything about them.
And what about Kofu? We still haven't scouted there.
This is a dangerous world, it's PMMM, and you are being extremely cavalier about the risk.
False. We were told that is exactly what happened in Tokyo (and Nagoya). The various meguca organizations over hunted their rival's territory, and this resulted in massive generation of class 3 demons.
We've already discussed how overhunting a rival's territory is very possible means of attack. (It's essentially the same as burning a enemies crops in the field.) In fact, considering the PvP mechanics, it's a very likely means of attack, as it is far less risky than open war.
If a victim has 1x grief stockpile, they can survive but will likely take significant casualties, if they have 2x grief stockpile they can strike back, if they have 3x stockpile they can strike back and also recover without taking significant risk.
Oh, I see. Someone might stealth our wealth, so lets just stay poor.
First of all, our stockpile is distributed through out our territory and so there is no one stockpile location to be looted. Additionally, the stockpiles are located inside the houses and apartments, which means that a stealth theft would require repeatedly making successful saving throws against large numbers of magical girls. Maybe a team of stealth tandem casting girls could attempt that (and in fact, maybe we should have our stealth girls try such a thing as a test of our defenses), but it's still a high risk tactic.
A far more likely method of success would be for an attack in force against a base, (after a distraction attack), followed by looting. And that's a high cost plan.
Probably, which is one of the reasons I want to push for a high grief stockpile. It's the most direct way to turn our hunting tech into power. Our superior hunting tech means that we should have a larger stockpile than other sized groups. It's one of our greatest strengths, and by failing to stockpile grief cubes we are failing to fully exploit it.
Yes, and I think we ought to hold on to it as our edge. Normal RT ought to be enough for other groups to be able to survive, and even thrive. You also need so much additional tech to properly exploit IRT that it's not needed for new organizations anyway.
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Also, there are many other possible factors like pre-madokami groups, magical girls of extreme power and/or intelligence, and simple luck.
Anyway, I had hoped to work on the part 2 omake today, but far too busy hacking up my lungs (which is better than yesterday when I felt like I was slowly suffocating - smog is awful).
Fortunately between the rain clearing up the outside, and my purchase of an air purifier, I have air to breath again. However, that means my body decided it's now okay to hack up all the crap out of my lungs.
Fortunately between the rain clearing up the outside, and my purchase of an air purifier, I have air to breath again. However, that means my body decided it's now okay to hack up all the crap out of my lungs.
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But wouldn't DS fall during the counter action month ?
Possibly, but that depends on enemy action. I don't want to make assumptions on needed resources that assumes the enemy does what you expect.
Where do you live that smog is that bad anyways?
Working on update, will probably be late. Rolls overall were pretty decent.
What's the maximum number of cubes you can harvest from a territory in a month? 2X sustainable? 3X? All we need to keep as a buffer is the number of months it will take to get DS back down to +0 so we can start hunting in earnest again (at +10 we can underhunt for a month, but a month of underhunting nets a little over half a month's worth of cubes for us. I agree with @Elder Haman though, that an extra month on top of that would be good to account for enemy action.
At the same time, one would hope that if enough poaching happened all at once, enough to mess up our rotation and bite into our returns, that we'd immediately break for mini-turns mid-month so we could address the problem. ("Roll for initiative!") Our detection is so advanced that we can easily figure out something's wrong within a few days, even if we never catch the actual poachers.
Put that together and I'd peg 2.5X as the "minimum safe" level, and 3-3.5X is "conservative".
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On an unrelated note, I was thinking of doing an omake on the various uses girls find for Fun With Magic, and was wondering exactly how much you can do with .1 months of cubes. I don't want to depict anything impossible, after all. Could you give an example, @inverted_helix ?
It's still a very limited amount of extra magic to play around with. I haven't really thought too much about specifics since I usually operate on a more abstract layer.
0.1 GCU is basically three days worth of cubes. So that's, what, maybe one full cleanse? Note that it's also the number of cubes each vet had to go through per minute spent in that Class 3's aura, and then only thanks to Kaoru's song magic; otherwise it would have been per 30 seconds.
Yeah basically.
Interesting corollary: when we see Homura cleansing, it's with 12 cubes. If it takes 12 cubes to cleanse, and each is about the size of a normal, 3/4 teaspoon sugar cube, then 1 GCU, or ~120 grief cubes, is about the size of a pint (128 cubes to a pint).
The only sad thing is that we can't actually keep out grief cubes in pint glasses because they'll cook off and spawn more demons. How sad.
Nagoya is an outlier, just like we are. Most of the girls we've met have been subsisting hand-to-mouth on territories that are barely able to support them. If the girls we've seen are representative, then we are wealthier than 80-90% of all magical girls.
That they want to avoid conflict is one of the few things we do know about them:
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Sure, hunting sabotage is an obvious tactic and it was tried in Tokyo (and Nagoya). But it failed miserably because the tactic turned out to be just as dangerous to the attackers as it was to the victims. People who have experienced this tactic in the past (i.e. Nagoya and girls near Tokyo) are definitely not going to try it. Even girls who have merely heard about it will think twice. And if Nagoya hears about someone trying this tactic, they are likely to come down hard on the culprits. A few desperate individuals might try hunting in someone else's territory, but any large group in the vicinity will not. They might attempt other acts of sabotage (like dropping used grief cubes), but direct hunting sabotage is unlikely at this juncture.
We ought to be on our guard, sure, but if they do want to attack us, then having a stockpile will not help; I would expect them to attack us directly rather than trying to hunt our territory; and if they defeated us, then that huge stockpile would merely be more plunder for the taking. And the larger the stockpile, the more incentive there would be for a mercenary group to attack.
No. I'm proposing that we spend the excess on things that are useful rather than hoarding it. A 1x stockpile is essential. I'm all for that. Even 1.5x I can see to give a bit of buffer to recover from unexpected events (like a fine from Kyuubey or a theft or whatever). 2x? Maybe for a short time if our hunting is particularly lucrative and we don't have anything nice to spend it on yet. But anything beyond that is just wasteful.
I'm thinking of a lone talented thief sneaking around and scoping out the stockpiles and pilfering them. Our detection rate of other girls in our territory has been abyssmal, so we can't say for sure what the odds of somebody succeeding at this would be. You have a very good idea about having our girls try it as a test of our defenses and a way of training our girls in detection.
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Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
We seriously need a mass-tandem clairvoyance net...
@inverted_helix Out of curiosity, are you implying two with the word 'tandem' or just multiple? In simple terms, would we have to research further to get more than two girls in on a tandem cast?
While true for local groups, a distant group might try setting off a Class 3 apocalypse in another group's territory. Kofu would be too close, but someone up in Nagano might think it's a bright idea.
Really though, this is more of a concern for the more distant future, when we may or may not have international conflicts or terrorists to deal with. Fly a group of 3 highly-trained stealth vets into an enemy area, settle in for a month of pack hunting on a size 2 territory, cap at six cubes. A month later boom DS +40 and two Class 3s are tearing through your target city.
