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Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)

What should I do regarding a change in system?

  • Notgreat's proposed simplification of hunting, leave rest intact.

    Votes: 5 55.6%

  • Chapter system vastly simplifying everything.

    Votes: 4 44.4%
  • Total voters
    9
  • Poll closed .
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@inverted_helix Would Tandem casting, Fusion allow one member of the Tandem dance to play conductor with the entire spell? Basically, putting two meguca together and letting one draw magic from both wells to do one of their regular abilities to greatly increased effect?

I ask because there seems to be inbuilt limits into just how much you can dull your soul gem with a single expense of magic, and that seems like an interesting way around it(allowing two veteran meguca, with proper defensive support, to hit at double their weight class, closer to an elite in strength).
 
Godwinson said:
Even if we can't send in our girls to help, we can still provide assistance. Cash, cubes, research, canned magic... hell, even something as simple as playing vacation destination for girls who need to decompress, or just sending food could help. If Tokyo goes up, Japan dies.
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This, I can get behind right now. Although I think you might be overplaying Tokyo's importance a tiny bit. We'd probably be looking at years, or even decades of recession. Whether that's enough to end Japan is debatable.
 
You're ignoring the panic that would be brought on by a city that large dying, especially after Hong Kong.
 
Asael said:
Speaking of which, think we could negotiate sending a Meguca or two with the Nagoya expedition force as observers as we are considering the possibility of lending assistance?. At least then we would have some actionable intel. we only have one point of data in regards to the actual strength of a class three.
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They'd let you go along with. If it's only for observation they'll only allow 1-2 to go. They'd also make it very clear that if you try to backstab them and somehow manage to succeed there will still be enough forces left home to make you regret it. They're willing to give you a decent amount of information about their expeditions with similar caveats.

Powerofmind said:
@inverted_helix Would Tandem casting, Fusion allow one member of the Tandem dance to play conductor with the entire spell? Basically, putting two meguca together and letting one draw magic from both wells to do one of their regular abilities to greatly increased effect?
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That would be it's own research project. The mechanics of it would be quite different than your current techniques. I mean tandem casting is basically about harmonizing your magic with the target. Even the fusion techniques. What you're talking about is more them taking control of your magic, or you pushing your magic into them for them to use.


Also to those questioning the Hong Kong thing, you don't have all the info so I don't expect you to be sure what exactly is going on there. Though you've got the right idea in general. You don't really need to though, you've already figured out enough. I'm not relying on players making logical leaps anymore.
 
inverted_helix said:
They'd let you go along with. If it's only for observation they'll only allow 1-2 to go. They'd also make it very clear that if you try to backstab them and somehow manage to succeed there will still be enough forces left home to make you regret it. They're willing to give you a decent amount of information about their expeditions with similar caveats.
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Excellent. We should send Kyoclone.
 
TheEyes said:
Heck, if we're sending Kyoclone we can have her participate. Does Nagoya know about her? I can't remember.
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They know about Kyouko but I don't think they know she's a stealth/illusion Elite or about Kyouclone. Hence my jokes about the infinite supply of red-heads.

EDIT: It occurs to me, we could supply Nagoya with anchored-tandem cast spells for their forays into Tokyo. We wouldn't have to give away how we were stockpiling them because we could have people stabilising them all the way to the fight and it would substantially increase the amount of force they could bring without risk to us.
 
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Skelm said:
They know about Kyouko but I don't think they know she's a stealth/illusion Elite or about Kyouclone. Hence my jokes about the infinite supply of red-heads.
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They do at least know she's an illusion elite who likes to obscure her identity in combat from when they tried to snipe her.

I do think we should be honest about the fact that we can regenerate her though.
EDIT-:ninja:
 
I think that if Helix allows it then we should definitely have Mami try to diplomance a Legendary Meguca into intervening in Tokyo.
 
Okay, rereading the mini-turn, Kyouko doesn't use her clone until after she's escaped the ambush site and had some cover, but they might have been able to watch her with Clairvoyants anyway.
 
Asael said:
Grade 3 contracted are elites, IIRC.

In simple terms, our entire force projection is a drop in the bucket when compared only to the elites lost.

I am fairly convinced that even if we threw every Meguca we have at this problem (which we can't, because farming grief cubes.) we would not be able to clear Tokyo. Our girls deaths would be for nothing.
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The number of elites in Tokyo doesn't show the full story. The girls in Tokyo were fighting each other when the demon outbreak started. And they continued fighting each other for a while afterwards (even now the girls from Areas 15&16 are fending off attacks from Tokyo) and the hard feelings between elites probably prevented them from ever working together effectively. Despite the large number of elites, It's likely that they were never able to coordinate a large group in order to effectively deal with things. Additionally, the Class 3 demons are attracted to magical girls, so any such large force would have attracted a bunch of demons (rather than dealing with them one at a time like Nagoya is trying to do). On top of that, the girls in Tokyo are living in subsistence mode, so they don't have the resources to develop the tactics and weapons/armor/anchors that we have been able to.

In short: despite the smaller number of Elites that we have, our efforts (when combined with Nagoya) are much more likely to be able to deal with the Tokyo situation than the Elites living there are capable of doing on their own. Obviously we want to start small: I propose that on Nagoya's next expedition, we send Kyoclone as an expendable shock troop and Taya as clairvoyant support, along with a supply of cubes and tandem-cast healing and barrier anchors.
 
I'm just hoping Inverted Helix will let us try to convince Homura to intervene. I can't see any reason IC why Kyuubey would refuse.
 
It's also worth remembering that Nagoya probably does have enough Elites to make a difference, they're much bigger then us. The tandem-cast spell anchors are the biggest thing we can offer. Unlike Nagoya, we can stockpile them, so it's feasible for us to outfit their entire expedition force if they're willing to compensate us for the time and grief cubes it will cost and tandem casting presumably makes the spell more then twice as powerful, letting them get more out of the limited number of anchored spells they can bring.
 
TheEyes said:
That's a good point. At the same time, a fridge keeps things cold by pumping heat outside it; that would only extend the life of a charm if they actually were heat-sensitive. Nah, if that's the case then either Russian doll-ing the thermoses or going with a lab dewar is the only real way to go, barring spell trigger research or some other way of extending duration, or just giving up and saying that the girls need to sleep cuddled up with their spells.
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Well, a refrigerator does have insulation as well, but I suppose we can spring for a lab dewar if that provides us with long term storage possibilities.

inverted_helix said:
Current thought is teleport range of about 20 kilometers baseline for a veteran, around 35 for a pair of vets tandem casting, and probably around 20% less for charms from them, shouldn't generally affect too much. Healing charms I'm thinking may only mitigate death chance, since it heals up injuries rather than prevents them. Barrier charms thinking will give around 1-2% risk reduction in general hunting.
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Okay... so we already know these things and don't have to do more research?

Normal barrier charms give -1% casualty risk, and tandem -2%?

What effect on casualty risk do teleport charms have (providing emergency bug out capability)?

What effect on death risk will healing charms have?

@Kinematics @Aranfan Do you guys know where the equation on how death risk per casualty risk is? I can't find it. We'll need to have that equation to assess the effectiveness of healing charms.

boonerunner said:
"Oh no! A few of our friends might be at risk of dying if we help out! Rather than do that, let's just let 38 million people we don't know die..." is not the response that the Serene are going to have. We might delay our response until we have additional training/supplies/allies/information or whatever in order to make the job a bit safer, but at this point we are obliged to deal with the Tokyo situation.
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:facepalm:

More like "Oh no, all 70 of our girls will die, killing everyone we love, and destroying the entire Serene organization, while failing to do more than slightly delay the destruction of Tokyo by a couple months, so 38 million people will die anyways."

boonerunner said:
I expect that things would work like the Class 3 demon we already attacked: the Elites would be the ones doing the actual fighting while the Veterans work in support roles. Combined with Nagoya's extensive experience in the area (and their own experienced Elites), we ought to be able to handle a Class 3 demon much easier than we did earlier - I expect that we would be able to destroy one or two Class 3 demons each turn with (relatively) small risk. That's not enough to clear out Tokyo all at once (of course), but hopefully it would be enough to stabilize the area enough that Kyuubey won't decide to sterilize Tokyo and will allow us to whittle away at their population and eventually clear all of Tokyo.
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Your assessment of the threat of class 3 demons is absurdly low, and your assessment of our capabilities is absurdly high. The belief that such a vague plan will some how work is crazy.

boonerunner said:
What would be breaking the masquerade?
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Tandem casting every morning when sending out our girls to hunt.

TheEyes said:
In fact, it's pretty fair to say that the construction is going to cost more than the land the building is on. The Sakura church is based on the floorplan of the Canterbury Cathedral, which is itself about 100,000 square feet. Obviously her church isn't itself nearly that large, but even at a more reasonable 15,000 square feet, which is sort of average for a Christian church, and given that the naive cost of construction is going to be about $125 per square foot, that values a replacement build cost of $1.9 million.
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Uhh... we aren't doing a replacement build.

TheEyes said:
BUT WAIT! We want to build a giant basement for training, and to hide the fact that we're going to be sleeping dozens of magical girls inside the church, and generally making architectural changes that will have people asking questions. All of that will add a minimum of 50% to toe construction cost, for a total expense of $2.9 million, plus probably 50-75 cubes to Kyubey for all the memory-wiping he'll need to do. Again, this is all assuming we don't do it ourselves, but that's going to require expertise we don't have and a lot of labor that we kind of don't have time for yet, but if we do it ourselves we can probably cut half off the initial cost, and build the church for $1 million, plus a sizable bribe to Kyubey to make all the paperwork line up right and time and effort sending a couple of girls to school for architecture and structural engineering and to get contracting licenses.
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Umm...I'm pretty sure that it already has a basement. Most large buildings like that do.

TheEyes said:
On the other hand, what do you suppose is already on the land? If the existing wreck of a church has an existing basement, then we can use it as a training ground in the meantime, and strange noises coming from a haunted church is at least somewhat explainable, if we don't get too loud.
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Yes... we would be using what is already there, and repairing it, and maybe making some small modifications to the interior.

racnor said:
She's also especially useful because her "death" would not grant any new abilities to the class 3s.
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How do you know this?

Kinematics said:
Looks like a residential area to the far right, and some sort of large-ish utility house to the mid-right (next to the tower). And there's more stuff further back.
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Churches usually do have a residential house attached.

boonerunner said:
Right. But this passive enchantment is one that can still be tandem cast, right? And Mami can be trained to do this?
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Is that worth it though?

inverted_helix said:
I'm not relying on players making logical leaps anymore.
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:V

Skelm said:
EDIT: It occurs to me, we could supply Nagoya with anchored-tandem cast spells for their forays into Tokyo. We wouldn't have to give away how we were stockpiling them because we could have people stabilising them all the way to the fight and it would substantially increase the amount of force they could bring without risk to us.
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This has been suggested, but first we need to get to the point of stockpiling them, and then we can provide them to Nagoya. One question is how d we keep our Tandem Casting edge, but also convince Nagoya that our barrier spells are better than theirs?
 
Elder Haman said:
This has been suggested, but first we need to get to the point of stockpiling them, and then we can provide them to Nagoya. One question is how d we keep our Tandem Casting edge, but also convince Nagoya that our barrier spells are better than theirs?
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Well, they won't actually see any tandem casting and it's not that obvious of an idea. Just tell them we've figured out how to cram more power into the anchor and are willing to sell them the results for their assaults on Tokyo, along with a few for testing. Even if they figure out normal tandem casting we'll still have fusion for more exotic effects and it doesn't really work well with their XCOM strategy.
 
Aranfan said:
I'm just hoping Inverted Helix will let us try to convince Homura to intervene. I can't see any reason IC why Kyuubey would refuse.
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Just reviewing the Legendaries you came up with seeing if I'd use them. Currently thinking the ones I like most are Hortence and Jiao (since Jiao type was always planned as a villain at some point). Citra to a lesser extent.

Sita I'm definitely sure is right out. I'm looking at abilities that are brokenly powerful, but not something so plain as "you always win at anything". That's brokenly powerful, but also pretty boring. Legendaries mostly are meant to be unbeatable in most scenarios, but there's supposed to be some way that a sufficient force could bring them down (though not just by throwing more brute strength at them). Like for instance grappling with Homura before she engages timestop.

Also Sabrina would be nice, but that would be cribbing from another quest, and one where I've argued excessively (even by my standards which is saying something) with the GM before so wouldn't want to step on his toes. (I actually did get okays from the authors of the two inspirations I listed on the main page.)

Hoping for a couple more good ideas for them, otherwise I'll probably just steal interesting powers from other sources. Aiming for probably around 7 total. Though I suppose I don't need them all lined up from the start, could just give the ones in range.

I'm hesitant to introduce Homura, largely because right now I've put her down as essentially on a long term vacation out of Japan away from reminders. Since she did spend an unknown amount of time looping (I lean towards the high end interpretation of how long she was looping) and then largely failed from her perspective anyways. And if I reintroduce her there's this massive meta force effect from players wanting to go after her when IC Mami doesn't know her from Eve. I don't like when things get super meta like that really.

Also something I've not mentioned before but was my internal justification for the divergence between this and Rebellion: in canon Homura told the Incubators much of what had happened in the original timeline (which never made sense to me in canon anyways). Here she still hated Kyuubey and basically tells him nothing, at all, ever. The Incubators believe that she has time related powers, but only by observation. They know nothing of her true past.

Elder Haman said:
Okay... so we already know these things and don't have to do more research?

Normal barrier charms give -1% casualty risk, and tandem -2%?
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Yes and yes.

Elder Haman said:
What effect on casualty risk do teleport charms have (providing emergency bug out capability)?

What effect on death risk will healing charms have?
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I'm not really sure you'd have much opportunity to use a teleport to reduce your risk of injury to be honest. I mean a barrier is one thing, since you can preemptively use it. But if you use a teleport to avoid an attack that may or may not hit you, you have to go all the way back to the place you were fighting to re-engage.

Healing call it -10% solo and -10% pair. Pack it's just assumed you have a real healer.

Elder Haman said:
:V
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Not sure whether this is meant to be good or bad.
 
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Regarding the house, why don't we get an assessment on refurbishment costs BEFORE we buy it? We would need to spend an action on that anyway.
 
So... potential (sane) plan for trying to do something about Tokyo:

1st Month:

Research:
Improve duration/spell anchoring project: Constructing a holder to keep charms in the correct orientation when stored inside a thermos, dipping the charms in polyurethane before placing them in the thermos. Layering thermoses. Placing the thermos inside a large cooler. Purchase a lab dewer and determine how much longer storing them inside adds to the long term storage life (goal is at least 24 hours) - note to test using non-destructive spells (like healing).

Containment spells that break on certain specified conditions:
- on contact with demon miasma
- on a timer (ie containment spell can be modified to break at a specific time)

Class 3 Demon repulsion magic (something that makes them go away)
- probably need to bribe Kyubey to help us with this

Class 3 Demon lure magic
- probably need to bribe Kyubey to help us with this

Stealth/Illusion enchantments
-just like we can strengthen shields, what about a stealth girl casting an enchantment on a ring that makes the wearer less visible? That the wearing girl then just maintains?

Magic interaction with technology
- Specifically mp3 players and Kaoru's song

Diplomacy:

Forget scouting Kofu, just Open Relations with them
Trade information with Area 15/16: information on Tokyo: boundaries, class 3 demon density, contacts in the city
Trade Information with Nagoya: Information on their class 3 demon hunting, contact information for Osaka area, potential observers, etc.
Discuss with Coalition: Class 3 Demon activities, potential risk to Tokyo (point to Hong Kong), suggest we work together to handle the coming difficulties
Offer Aid to Coalition: Training on Hunting techniques
--- Option A: They send a girl or two to come hunt with us (we pay them in grief cubes for their time)
--- Option B: We send a couple vets to them to help them setup hunting in their territory

Ask Kyubey to give us more detailed information on Tokyo, contact information, locations where the class 3 demons are sparser, etc. Would Ayase be safe in Tokyo (potentially as a messenger, or to deliver charms to girls that need it).

Bribe Kyubey to give us contact information of girls in Sendai.

Training:
Tandem Casting
PVP (since that gives some less effective bonus against class 3 demons)
Fighting Class 3 Demons

Month 2:

Research:

Combination of lure/repulsion magic with conditional containment fields to create lures/scarecrows that can be deployed separate from girls.

Storage of long term enchantments. A containment field, that could be opened, and have an enchanted item placed inside, that would then preserve the enchantment until it's opened up and a girl takes out the enchanted item and begins actively maintaining it again.

Diplomacy:

Trade with Nagoya: Long Term storage of charms information. Recommend the purchase a of a lab dewar. Give a few tandem cast barrier/healing charms as samples. (Don't tell them they are tandem cast, but let them experience the fact that our spells are superior).
Discuss with Nagoya: Major alliance against the Tokyo class 3 demon threat

Contact Osaka girls: Propose Major alliance against Tokyo threat
Contact Sendai girls: Propose Major alliance against Tokyo threat
Contact Kofu girls: Propose Major alliance against Tokyo threat

Further trust building with Coalition, discuss grand alliance
Contact Area 15/16 girls, discuss grand alliance

Bribe Kyubey for more information on class 3 demons in Hakone/Fujisawa area (may modify based on other information)

Training:
Tandem Casting
PVP (since that gives some less effective bonus against class 3 demons)
Fighting Class 3 Demons

Every girl we can spare put on creating and stockpiling charms

Month 3:

Continue research

Diplomacy:
Discuss with those agreeing to grand alliance the various additional charms we are working on. Propose plan of attacking in Fujisawa area first, establishing a beachhead there allowing slow advancement into the rest of the city.
-- Propose Nagoya/other rich teams fund the rental of a large house in the area to be our forward base
-- Propose the mass purchase of Kevlar armor, with bribes to Kyubey to cover the purchase
-- We provide "scarecrows" to help make the forward base safer
-- Develop attack plan for the various class 3 demons in the area

Begin providing Tokyo girls with charms?

Every spare girl is on charm production duty

Month 4:

Begin the attack?

That's probably the best case scenario I can think of, and assumes a lot of things go our way. It could easily take much longer to implement.
 
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