Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)

[Kinematics]

Hmm. Well, at least add a bit asking Kyubey if it's responsible first. It would be silly to find out this is 'just' the Incubators cleaning up after themselves, only after going through the expense and hassle of your idea.

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Added some notes on that.

I presume that Kyuubey gave us her dossier in character, like with Kesi and Hortence and the one in Baja California.

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I thought those dossiers were OOC only.


On other projects, math on sustainability and cube harvests at varying contract rates vs casualty rates:

Spoiler

Hypothetical area with territory capacity of 100 GCU per month.

The Incubators' standard strategy is to go for 100% contract coverage for an area, so 100 magical girls.

Some of them are going to die. With no organizational backing, but perhaps pair hunting, maybe a 3% death rate for vets, 5% death rate for greens.

In addition, some of them are going to spiral. Since there is no cube buffer, all girls that spiral will die. Number of spirals will be approximately 6 per month, split between vets and greens. This works out to an additional 6% death rate for both categories, so a total of 9% vet death rate and 11% green death rate.

Number of deaths per month (10.2) approximates the number of greens that graduate to vet each month (3.6) plus the number of greens that die (6.6).

Overall population distribution would be about 40% vet/60% green.

Number of cubes collected would be 90-95 per month (depending on the distribution of deaths), with the remainder lost due to deaths. Any value from contracting new girls would be added here, at 10 per month.


If, on the other hand, contract rate was 89%...

Death rates from hunting would be the same (3%, 5%).

5.5 spirals that are countered with up to 4 cubes would use an average of 11 cubes. Death rate would be 0.7%.

Vet/green death rates would be 3.7%/5.7%. Population distribution would be 75% vet/25% green.

4.2 deaths per month.

Cubes collected would be 89 - 4.2 + 11 = 95.8 ~= 96 to 98 (depending on distribution of deaths). Any value from contracting new girls would be provided at a rate of about 4 per month.


Overall balance would be about 6 more cubes per month for 6 fewer contracts per month.


However, that assumes that there is no attempt to harvest sufficient numbers to deal with grief spirals (in the 100% coverage case), despite that increasing demon strength. Minimal overhunting would lead to risk of class 3 demons within 6 months. In addition, death rates rise drastically, which leads to much fewer cubes being generated per month.

With an increase in demon strength by 15%, that increases death rates by 6% (so a total of 15% for vets, 17% for greens). At that death rate, there will never be any vets, because with 1/6 of greens dying per month, in 6 months (the time to level up from green to vet), all of a month's contractees will be dead.

So, 100% greens. Only 83 cubes harvested per month, with maybe up to an extra 8 distributed across the month.

Cubes collected: 83-91 per month. Contractees: 17 per month (how long is that sustainable?) 13 fewer cubes for 13 more contractees per month, compared to the 89% contract rate.

Actual split with proper statistics is 64.4% green/35.6% vet. 65%/35% for general purposes. 16.3 contracts per month. 84 to 92 cubes. Difference of 12 cubes and 12 contracts vs 89% (which is probably slightly off as well).

Only pure hope that an elite or two will survive, as there's no hope for the greens to do anything about the eventual class 3. When a class 3 does show up, it'll be pure destruction, followed by destruction of the human population (long-term loss of grief cubes), with the need to call in favors from a class 4 meguca to put out the fires.



Reducing the contract rate below 89% will continue to generate near-maximum cubes, because the magical girls will then use the excess cubes on other activities. Ideal range is probably somewhere between 80% and 89%.

The main unknown is the value of a contract vs a GCU. If a GCU is worth at least as much as a contract, the incubators ought to be revising their contract rates regardless. Even if a contract is worth more than a GCU, the fallout and collapse due to magical girl needs and conflicts lead very strongly towards revising contract rates.

 

[racnor]

Seriously? Can we send Homura on a world tour to just slap magical girls?

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You assume that is not what she is already doing. Let's face it, slapping a whole crowd of people from timestop would look hilarious.

On a more serious note, @Kinematics, have you considered switching out the "buy the church" action for having the place examined by a contractor so we can tell if the repairs are within our budget? After all, if we buy the church first and can't afford the repairs, then the loan payments are going to make getting the money for them take much longer.

 

[racnor]

With an increase in demon strength by 15%, that increases death rates by 6% (so a total of 15% for vets, 17% for greens). At that death rate, there will never be any vets, because with 1/6 of greens dying per month, in 6 months (the time to level up from green to vet), all of a month's contractees will be dead.

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That not how statistics work. If a green has a 1/6 chance of dying, that means 5/6 greens last for 1 month, (5/6)2​ last for two months, and so on until (5/6)6​=33.49% last for 6.

 

[Kinematics]

You can consider yourself aware via your open communications line with them that they're now going to be running operations every month due to the changed circumstances.

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OK, do we want to send support, and if so, who and what setup?

KyouClone has been suggested, and is easy enough. I don't know that anything else is viable. Don't want to send vets without Kaoru (except maybe just for observation), and we want to try to get Kaoru up to elite this month. (Really need to have her in place for future assist attempts, and we're limited on time, so we need those omakes.)

You assume that is not what she is already doing. Let's face it, slapping a whole crowd of people from timestop would look hilarious.

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Ah, Homura taking on the role of Bowerick Wowbagger. Slap (and insult) everyone in the world in alphabetical order.

On a more serious note, @Kinematics, have you considered switching out the "buy the church" action for having the place examined by a contractor so we can tell if the repairs are within our budget? After all, if we buy the church first and can't afford the repairs, then the loan payments are going to make getting the money for them take much longer.

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A reasonable adjustment. Will do so. Since we can't get the housing space out of it immediate, there's less immediate pressure. Plus we're going to be focused on some other stuff for the short term.

 

[Aranfan]

@inverted_helix

Were the Legendary Dossiers IC or OOC? Can we reasonably IC choose to contact anyone on the list?

 

[Skelm]

I don't know that anything else is viable.

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Can Kaoru usefully put her song in spell anchors?

 

[Kinematics]

That not how statistics work. If a green has a 1/6 chance of dying, that means 5/6 greens last for 1 month, (5/6)2​ last for two months, and so on until (5/6)6​=33.49% last for 6.

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Ugh. You're going to make me do real math on that? Fiiiiine.

Actual split with proper statistics is 64.4% green/35.6% vet. 65%/35% for general purposes. 16.3 contracts per month. 84 to 92 cubes. Difference of 12 cubes and 12 contracts vs 89% (which is probably slightly off as well).

 

[TheEyes]

Added some notes on that.


I thought those dossiers were OOC only.


On other projects, math on sustainability and cube harvests at varying contract rates vs casualty rates:

Spoiler

Hypothetical area with territory capacity of 100 GCU per month.

The Incubators' standard strategy is to go for 100% contract coverage for an area, so 100 magical girls.

Some of them are going to die. With no organizational backing, but perhaps pair hunting, maybe a 3% death rate for vets, 5% death rate for greens.

In addition, some of them are going to spiral. Since there is no cube buffer, all girls that spiral will die. Number of spirals will be approximately 6 per month, split between vets and greens. This works out to an additional 6% death rate for both categories, so a total of 9% vet death rate and 11% green death rate.

Number of deaths per month (10.2) approximates the number of greens that graduate to vet each month (3.6) plus the number of greens that die (6.6).

Overall population distribution would be about 40% vet/60% green.

Number of cubes collected would be 90-95 per month (depending on the distribution of deaths), with the remainder lost due to deaths. Any value from contracting new girls would be added here, at 10 per month.


If, on the other hand, contract rate was 89%...

Death rates from hunting would be the same (3%, 5%).

5.5 spirals that are countered with up to 4 cubes would use an average of 11 cubes. Death rate would be 0.7%.

Vet/green death rates would be 3.7%/5.7%. Population distribution would be 75% vet/25% green.

4.2 deaths per month.

Cubes collected would be 89 - 4.2 + 11 = 95.8 ~= 96 to 98 (depending on distribution of deaths). Any value from contracting new girls would be provided at a rate of about 4 per month.


Overall balance would be about 6 more cubes per month for 6 fewer contracts per month.


However, that assumes that there is no attempt to harvest sufficient numbers to deal with grief spirals (in the 100% coverage case), despite that increasing demon strength. Minimal overhunting would lead to risk of class 3 demons within 6 months. In addition, death rates rise drastically, which leads to much fewer cubes being generated per month.

With an increase in demon strength by 15%, that increases death rates by 6% (so a total of 15% for vets, 17% for greens). At that death rate, there will never be any vets, because with 1/6 of greens dying per month, in 6 months (the time to level up from green to vet), all of a month's contractees will be dead.

So, 100% greens. Only 83 cubes harvested per month, with maybe up to an extra 8 distributed across the month.

Cubes collected: 83-91 per month. Contractees: 17 per month (how long is that sustainable?) 13 fewer cubes for 13 more contractees per month, compared to the 89% contract rate.

Only pure hope that an elite or two will survive, as there's no hope for the greens to do anything about the eventual class 3. When a class 3 does show up, it'll be pure destruction, followed by destruction of the human population (long-term loss of grief cubes), with the need to call in favors from a class 4 meguca to put out the fires.



Reducing the contract rate below 89% will continue to generate near-maximum cubes, because the magical girls will then use the excess cubes on other activities. Ideal range is probably somewhere between 80% and 89%.

The main unknown is the value of a contract vs a GCU. If a GCU is worth at least as much as a contract, the incubators ought to be revising their contract rates regardless. Even if a contract is worth more than a GCU, the fallout and collapse due to magical girl needs and conflicts lead very strongly towards revising contract rates.

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Somewhat heartless corollary: even if contracting is worth more than a GCU, the Incubators would be better off immediately killing any new contractees if they would put any territory over 80-85%, devolving the situation into the one you describe.

@inverted_helix, This, by the way, is why I would rather not have the Incubators get much out of the contracts themselves: it won't change the world we eventually see, but underneath it will be an extra pile of teenage corpses.

 

[Elder Haman]

@inverted_helix

A few more pricing questions:

Open Relations: Kofu. 0.5 elite (Taya, Mami), 1 vets (should allow for 4 vets and 2 elites to spend 1/4th of their time this month in Kofu).

Is this reasonable?

Also need pricing on trade deals. I'm guessing 0.5 vets for most of them as they appear pretty simple to arrange. Maybe a whole girl for the Coalition? And maybe nothing for the Nagoya trade? As we've already done cube/money pricing with them, small adjustments should be easy to handle.

Trade deal (Coalition): We would like to discuss trading terms for cubes and money as well as research information. We are aware of their Tandem Casting ability and have developed our own form, offer to exchange notes on it. Other things we can offer include training on our hunting techniques. Offer two forms of this: First is to hire 2 vets worth of girls (this might mean 4 vets for half the month) to hunt with us (in pairs or packs) next month at a pay rate of 4 cubes per a girl. Second is to send our 2 vets worth of our girls to their area to help them plan and organize their hunting to more closely match our productivity.

Trade deal (Area 15/16): We would like more information about Tokyo and their interactions with class 3 demons and magical girls from Tokyo. We are concerned about the Tokyo situation, and need more information to figure out how to prevent it from becoming another Hong Kong. We are interested in boundaries, contacts with girls inside the city, information on class 3 demon behavior. Something we can offer would be an agreement to take in a certain number of magical girl refugees (thus relieving them of some of the pressure for fighting). We are interested in prices for cubes/money as well.

Trade Deal (Areas 14): We would like the information in the welcome packet that Nagoya gives out to new vassals. We would also like to discuss terms for trading cubes and money.

Trade Deal (Areas 13): We would like to discuss terms for trading money and cubes.

Trade deal (Nagoya): Trade negotiations with Nagoya over cubes for money

Information exchange (Nagoya): Hold discussions with Nagoya over the rumors of them trying to clean up Tokyo. Explain that we'd be interested in helping, though we'd need info on how they go about it, and how we might apply our own skills to the matter. Also, ask to be allowed to send an observer or two on their next Tokyo expedition. Suggest that it appears to us that solving the matter will require widespread cooperation among most of the large magical girl organizations in Japan. Ask for contact information for any additional large meguca organizations in Japan that they know of.

I have the following for the Church action:

Kyouko's family church (1 vet, $1000): Begin negotiating the purchase of the Sakura church. Target price $500,000 with 20% down ($100,000). New upkeep (predicted): $3,500. Get a professional evaluation of the property, including all needed repairs, and the specific remodeling for a large gym, dormitory, large meeting hall, and large commercial kitchen. (Cost for initial earnest money and inspection $1,000.)

Actual purchase assumes we complete a trade with other groups for at least $35,000, expect to financially complete that deal next month.

I thought it seemed a reasonable approach, as a major purchase like this typically would take more than a month.

And then, how many vets to get apartments? If we can just rent back the ones we had, then maybe it only take 0.5vets? Or do have to pay 2.5 vets and the initial money like it says on the front page?

Apartments: Rent another block of 20 space in apartments. $2500 upkeep.

 

[Elder Haman]

This is excellent. I do quite like it. I feel she might reasonably have been interpreted as being more favorable towards Bernie, given that socialism got big in america in the lead up to and aftermath of the Civil War, what with that being when capitalism really took hold of America. But I think the woman you've described is fully believable as who she's supposed to be. Kudos.

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Oh yes. Mary does not view Socialists with the same loathing that Cold War era Americans do, as hinted by her reference to Socialism as "foolish and silly, but respectable." She associates socialism with those Utopian religionists, and thus not something to be taken seriously, but not something to be hated either.

 

[Kinematics]

Kyouko's family church (1 vet, $1000): Begin negotiating the purchase of the Sakura church. Target price $500,000 with 20% down ($100,000). New upkeep (predicted): $3,500. Get a professional evaluation of the property, including all needed repairs, and the specific remodeling for a large gym, dormitory, large meeting hall, and large commercial kitchen. (Cost for initial earnest money and inspection $1,000.)

Actual purchase assumes we complete a trade with other groups for at least $35,000, expect to financially complete that deal next month.

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Copied this.

Open Relations: Kofu. 0.5 elite (Taya, Mami), 1 vets (should allow for 4 vets and 2 elites to spend 1/4th of their time this month in Kofu).

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Note that if we use Taya and Mami there, and pull KyouClone from hunting to do the expedition, and have 1.0 elites on tandem training, and Seto on teleport, and hunting using up the extra fractionals, we won't have enough elites to train Kaoru.

[Could pull Seto off teleport support; that would cost 3.4 cubes. Would also need to pull 0.5 elites off of hunting, which means it costs another vet, as well.]

If we're still unable to get the omakes written for Kaoru, it won't really matter, I guess, but assuming we want to get Kaoru up to speed for dealing with Tokyo, this is an uncomfortable delay.

 

[racnor]

Note that if we use Taya and Mami there, and pull KyouClone from hunting to do the expedition, and have 1.0 elites on tandem training, and Seto on teleport, and hunting using up the extra fractionals, we won't have enough elites to train Kaoru.

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That depends on how much time the expedition takes up for the clone.

 

[Aranfan]

Oh yes.

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It occurs to me that the rampant birtherism should have turned Mary off of Trump. Or am I just being too modern?

 

[Elder Haman]

It occurs to me that the rampant birtherism should have turned Mary off of Trump. Or am I just being too modern?

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Sadly Mary finds Trump's birther stuff to be worth considering. While she doesn't follow all the arguments, she does sort of suspect Obama might be a bit too "foreign" since he grew up in the Dutch East Indies, and that maybe that's "why it hasn't worked out well." (Mary voted for Obama the first time around, but for "the Massachusetts boy" the second time). She detests Cruz as the "most Southern of all the Southerners." So the attack on Cruz being secretly a Canadian, and not fully loyal to the US delights her, though she would never admit it since Trump is so vulgar about it. It plays right in to her bias against Southerners as having suspect loyalties.

 

[Elder Haman]

Note that if we use Taya and Mami there, and pull KyouClone from hunting to do the expedition, and have 1.0 elites on tandem training, and Seto on teleport, and hunting using up the extra fractionals, we won't have enough elites to train Kaoru.

[Could pull Seto off teleport support; that would cost 3.4 cubes. Would also need to pull 0.5 elites off of hunting, which means it costs another vet, as well.]

If we're still unable to get the omakes written for Kaoru, it won't really matter, I guess, but assuming we want to get Kaoru up to speed for dealing with Tokyo, this is an uncomfortable delay.

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I sort of suspect that we won't have omakes written. And I'm not sure we have to right away. I think right now it's better to focus on soul anchoring Kaoru's song into an enchantment.

 

[Elder Haman]

I'm not entirely clear on what you're getting at. Though it would probably be a higher cost project.

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I guess I'm looking at things that are enchantments instead of instant effects. For example, the strengthening of our shields, once cast as an enchantment the shields are stronger as long as it is maintained, and if insulated the enchantment lasts longer before needing to be sustained.

Compared to charms which are instants, I was wondering if we can create a containment field to hold an enchantment in place, rather than an instant spell. That way the enchantments can be preserved without requiring constant sustaining.

Of course, rather than the containment field being a permanent part of the equipment (like on a charm), we'd want the containment spell to be attached to the inside of an equipment locker or something. So a specialist would enchant the magical tool, and hand it off to a magical girl to maintain. When done for the day, the magical girl would check the enchanted tool into the storage locker with the containment field, and she would no longer need to maintain it. Then when she needs it again, come back and pull it out of the containment field and start sustaining the enchantment again.

 

[boonerunner]

And trying to whittle the class 3 demons slowly isn't going to risk losing the entire area?

You don't seem to get the desperate nature of the situation. We have maybe 6 months at the outside to try and save Tokyo. Picking off one or two class 3 demons is not going to make a difference.

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Obviously it doesn't clear the area immediately, that's not the point. The point is that it shows immediate, demonstrable progress to the incubators so that they don't call down exterminatus on the area. Here was the situation in Tokyo as of 2 months ago:

53 Class 3 demons originated in Tokyo during the initial upward swing in their spawning, at that time there were 107 Grade 3 Contracted countering them and 1693 total Contracted in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. Early losses were substantial. Coordination and force concentration improved survival rate after initial losses. Currently there is an estimated 37 Class 3 demons in the region and 45 Grade 3 Contracted with 1200 total Contracted despite unusually aggressive recruitment. Remaining Contracted have switched to mostly guerrilla activity with few fixed concentrations.

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Nagoya is running a Class 3 demon hunt every month and appears to be able to pick off at least one every time. Historical data indicates that the number of Class 3 demons in Tokyo is going down (although the Elites are being picked off at a higher rate). If our contributions can raise the net rate at which Class 3 demons are being killed to an average of two per month, then Tokyo will be cleared of Class 3 demons in less than 1.5 years. Any improvements to the strategy (e.g. recruiting more groups to kill demons or convincing Kyuubey to stop making contracts in Tokyo until the area is cleared) will move that timeframe up considerably.

@inverted_helix: How long did it take for Tokyo to go from 53 Class 3 demons and 107 Elites to 37 Class 3 demons and 45 Elites? Can Kyuubey give us a monthly update on the number of Class 3 demons and Elites in Tokyo?

There is no way that we can successfully save Tokyo by ourselves.

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No one is suggesting that we try to save Tokyo alone. I'm suggesting that we start working with Nagoya (the only group that we know of who is proactively doing something about the problem). Recruiting other groups to help in the demon hunting effort would obviously improve it, but simply improving the efficiency of their current operation will hopefully be enough to turn the tide.

Direct combat or hiring a legendary, both solutions will require a grand alliance. If you think it's impossible to diplomatically agree to control Tokyo after a Legendary kills all the class 3 demons for us, how in the world do you think diplomacy for direct combat will work?

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As we are now, we can't control a fifth of Tokyo, so I'm suggesting that we don't lie to the incubators and say that we can. We can hunt a few Class 3 demons and continue to expand at our current maintainable rate, but even if we managed (by some miracle) to convince Kyuubey and a bunch of other groups that we should carve up Tokyo, we would end up overextending ourselves and being destroyed.

That's silly. Of course we have the firepower. Okay, we got an area of Tokyo with 250 girls. We take half our team (the orphans = 35 girls) to Tokyo. We go around and talk to each of these girls groups (probably a handful each) and tell them the new rules. Some of the Tokyo girls look like they are going to cause trouble. We pick the 25 most troublesome, jump em with our whole posse when they are alone, gem coma them, ship their bodies and soul gems separately to our base (Kyouko's church) in Kasimono.

In Tokyo all the girls making trouble just disappeared, we tell the other girls if they don't want to disappear too they will shut up and follow the new rules. Meanwhile we are introducing massive training programs and hunting plans that mean the risk of dying in hunting drops dramatically, and in a few months they have housing, food, and a better life than they ever had before. A couple girls start trying to make trouble, but we gem coma them to.

Meanwhile, in our home base, the 30 girls there wake up 4 or 5 of the gem coma girls, and tell them that they are no longer in Tokyo, and they are going to learn the new rules or they can go back into a gem coma. After about 6 months or so, Stockholm Syndrome will start to set in, and we can wake up another 4 to 5 girls, while sending the other girls back to Tokyo, which makes the Tokyo girls realize we didn't kill any friends of theirs.

Controlling a demoralized population of only four times our size is easy.

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This would be a bit more difficult than you're trying to make it sound, but I agree that it would be possible to recruit and integrate 250 demoralized newbies. If that were the only problem we had to deal with then I'd say it would be a decent plan. But integrating the Tokyo survivors would be the smallest of the problems that we would have to deal with in the situation that you're describing. Some of the bigger problems would be:
1. Our own girls would tend to balk at the draconian tactics required to pacify a resistant native population. I would suggest that we not use the morally questionable gem coma method and instead invite some of them as mandatory "guests" in order to keep the others in line (a tactic which has been used with much success throughout history). But even this tactic (and the mandatory policing of Tokyo that would still be necessary) would cause our sheltered girls quite a bit of distress (i.e. lower morale which would lead to a higher spiral death rate).
2. The remaining elites in Tokyo who have a tendency towards territorialism and violence and who would object to our attempts to subsume the remains of their organizations.
3. Most worryingly of all would be the other organizations that we "allied" with in order to carve up Tokyo. Despite their "X-COM tactics", Nagoya appears to be fairly well on the optimistic end of the spectrum; other organizations are likely to be more greedy and would probably pounce on our poorly defended territory the moment they saw any obvious weakness.

Somewhat heartless corollary: even if contracting is worth more than a GCU, the Incubators would be better off immediately killing any new contractees if they would put any territory over 80-85%, devolving the situation into the one you describe.

@inverted_helix, This, by the way, is why I would rather not have the Incubators get much out of the contracts themselves: it won't change the world we eventually see, but underneath it will be an extra pile of teenage corpses.

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Remember that the incubators also place a high value the masquerade, so that has to factor in on the "fewer deaths" side of the equation. Even as things currently stand, SADS is a recognized (if relatively rare) phenomenon. If the incubators increased the death rate simply to get a few more cubes, people would start to talk.

 

[TheEyes]

It is not illogical to wait and see how things develop before changing your methods. Especially when you are working on a eon level timescale.

Sure, in 50 years when the current full recruitment method is continuing to produce bad results due to massive class 3 demon generation, I'm sure that the Incubators will change methods. My point is that it's unreasonable to expect them to abandon a working method because of a blip in the stats.

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By this standard of thinking cell phones don't exist. After all, we've only observed them for the last 20 years or so; I'm sure they're just a blip and we'll discover we imagined them.

You don't have to wait for a trend to appear in geologic time before you acknowledge its existence; in fact that's usually a bad idea, because if you wait that long then you find yourself facing potentially irreversible consequences, like global climate change. We also already know that the Incubators aren't as irrationally static as you portray them: if they were they'd be using "witch" or "chosen one" or "faerie" instead of the very recent "magical girl".

Propose idea to Kyubey of Kesi coming to clean out Tokyo if the other magical girl organizations in Japan agree to impose hunting controls on Tokyo to prevent future over hunting.

Bribe Kyubey to give us the contact information to all large magical girl organizations in Japan.

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Plane Tickets and teleporters and Kyuubey giving directions? If Kyuubey isn't willing to just handle transportation itself.

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Would we need to bribe Kyubey for information/transport help to the Legendary candidates, or for that matter to get information on the other meguca organizations? After all, they're losing anti-entropy hand over fist in Tokyo right now; they ought to be playing the percentages and seeing if our group has what it takes to plug their spiraling Class 3 situation.

Then the Doctors would have indicated that it was a weakened immune system that did people in rather than a single virus.

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And where did the weakened immune system come from? Environmental factors, or a disease; those are the only real choices, other than magic, and who believes in that?

I sort of suspect that we won't have omakes written. And I'm not sure we have to right away. I think right now it's better to focus on soul anchoring Kaoru's song into an enchantment.

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How many more do we need, versus how many we can conceivably get anyway? Base chance 30, +10% for two omakes, means that to get up to 80% we'd need another eight?

Remember that the incubators also place a high value the masquerade, so that has to factor in on the "fewer deaths" side of the equation. Even as things currently stand, SADS is a recognized (if relatively rare) phenomenon. If the incubators increased the death rate simply to get a few more cubes, people would start to talk.

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The masquerade is shattering all over the place due to Incubator insistence of recruiting 100% of territory capacity; frankly that's just another reason they'd be likely to accept an argument that recruiting needs to come down.

 

[Godwinson]

@Elder Haman
I would read a fanfic about Mary Hopkins.

 

[boonerunner]

The masquerade is shattering all over the place due to Incubator insistence of recruiting 100% of territory capacity; frankly that's just another reason they'd be likely to accept an argument that recruiting needs to come down.

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According to Kinematic's math, at 100% capacity, there would be 10.2 deaths per month in a 100 cube region (~20,000,000 people, of whom about 340,000 are adolescent girls). And at 89% recruitment, there would be 4.2 deaths per month. In either case, SADS would probably be the single leading cause of death among adolescent girls, but it wouldn't be greater than the other causes of death combined, and total number of deaths would be small compared to the general population. But if the incubators recruited extra girls and then killed them, the numbers would quickly hit the point where the authorities would be unable to ignore them.

And I'm highly dubious as to whether the incubators are allowed to make contracts and then directly kill the girl afterwards. According to Kyuubey, Incubators can't lie and they can't coerce contracts and they can't even suggest wishes. Being able to directly murder girls simply for the sake of convenience and 1 GCU probably isn't allowed either.

 

[racnor]

On the subject of Kyubey's recruitment rate, it's entirely possible he has already adjusted it. How long has it been since he last sent us more girls, anyway?

According to Kinematic's math, at 100% capacity, there would be 10.2 deaths per month in a 100 cube region (~20,000,000 people, of whom about 340,000 are adolescent girls). And at 89% recruitment, there would be 4.2 deaths per month. In either case, SADS would probably be the single leading cause of death among adolescent girls, but it wouldn't be greater than the other causes of death combined, and total number of deaths would be small compared to the general population. But if the incubators recruited extra girls and then killed them, the numbers would quickly hit the point where the authorities would be unable to ignore them.

And I'm highly dubious as to whether the incubators are allowed to make contracts and then directly kill the girl afterwards. According to Kyuubey, Incubators can't lie and they can't coerce contracts and they can't even suggest wishes. Being able to directly murder girls simply for the sake of convenience and 1 GCU probably isn't allowed either.

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Indeed, the incubator's clearly have some standard they hold themselves to, even if it is completely incomprehensible from our perspective. My headcanon is that it's mostly the result of pissed off potentials makings wishes like "I wish you couldn't lie! ".

 

[Powerofmind]

Let's face it, slapping a whole crowd of people from timestop would look hilarious.

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I feel completely obligated to say that if I was a sigging man, I'd beg permission for this one.

 

[FixerUpper]

Yeah, @FixerUpper All of those seem like very interesting girls for omakes, but as a huge pain to incorporate into the game. Non-canon omakes are probably the only solution.

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Reasonable enough.

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So, is this a nix on there being any unique meguca past this point, or just a nix on me writing a dozen omakes making unique puella because the latter was... uh, not going to happen, sorry if that was the impression you got. I really just wanted someone to pick one idea as being really cool and I'd use that as a springboard to write an omake, but that was not what ended up happening at all, haha.

 

[inverted_helix]

...

Seriously? Can we send Homura on a world tour to just slap magical girls?

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Well think about it this way. Players have previously argued that using Class 3 mechanics as a weapon against other groups doesn't make sense because much like biological weapons there's too little control of their effects once they're deployed, they could easily breed up and overwhelm your group too or just head straight for your side in the first place. But now re-evaluate that reasoning if you know that at pretty regular intervals someone is going to come by and eradicate any of the biological weapons that are still active.

Suddenly they seem like much more reasonable weapons to deploy.

She's Japanese, and given the racism and nationalism that infests Japanese culture, that means she should be the first choice that our girls subconsciously gravitate to.

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I largely ignore real world Japanese racism in anime settings. I mean let's face it, a large number of anime characters don't look Japanese at all but hardly ever face any racism. Trying to graft real world Japanese racism onto those settings doesn't really make much sense.

Also, if you are wondering how I can write this character

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Interesting.

Gotcha. I guess she is really unusual, but her abilities are more anti-meguca than demon. Although, since she affects barriers, and anything that tries to tie people up,her anti-meguca abilities are actually a lot broader than just mind control. I put her down as surviving because Incubators identified her as being very useful for their efforts to control meguca so she had Incubator assigned jobs a s a fallback and didn't have to hunt as heavily as other girls, allowing her time to develop her skills.

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Honestly as written she's really interesting, and certainly well above the usual elite, but not so heavily as the rest. Kind of a 3.5 rather than a 4. I mean a couple elites could probably just brute force beat her without a plan. So long as they didn't happen to be specialized in what she hard counters.

Though I've been really planning a mind controller boss enemy since before I started the quest, and having a girl that hard counters that and hates mind controllers so much would really put a damper on that.

Yeah, it does feel convoluted. Too hard to keep track of. That's why I suggest you just give it as a straight risk reduction. Running back to the hunt shouldn't cause that much of an efficiency loss anyway.

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You're covering a rather huge area. That's why teleportation actually gives a bonus. I can't give you what amounts to reverse teleportation without a penalty.

Number of cubes collected would be 90-95 per month (depending on the distribution of deaths), with the remainder lost due to deaths.

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Why do you think that them dying costs cubes?

@inverted_helix

Were the Legendary Dossiers IC or OOC? Can we reasonably IC choose to contact anyone on the list?

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You can count them as available in character and you can reasonably try. Each of those listed would be capable of resolving the Tokyo situation mostly solo and are deemed at least vaguely possible to convince to help.

Jiao for instance I still intend to use, but is not listed because it isn't believed possible to enlist her aid.

Somewhat heartless corollary: even if contracting is worth more than a GCU, the Incubators would be better off immediately killing any new contractees if they would put any territory over 80-85%, devolving the situation into the one you describe.

@inverted_helix, This, by the way, is why I would rather not have the Incubators get much out of the contracts themselves: it won't change the world we eventually see, but underneath it will be an extra pile of teenage corpses.

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There are limits to how many girls are potentials, and they need to keep reserves in case of mass die offs, and they can't just kill huge numbers without making too big of a problem for keeping it secret.

I have the contract itself giving a bonus because it seems the most reasonable interpretation of canon. Kyuubey tells them thank you for reducing entropy when they contract after all.

Open Relations: Kofu. 0.5 elite (Taya, Mami), 1 vets (should allow for 4 vets and 2 elites to spend 1/4th of their time this month in Kofu).

Is this reasonable?

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Hmm I'll take it. It's quite a long travel from your core territories.

Trade deal (Coalition):

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1 vet

Trade deal (Area 15/16):

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1 vet, you're negotiating for a lot of intelligence from a group distrustful of everyone.

Trade Deal (Areas 14): We would like the information in the welcome packet that Nagoya gives out to new vassals. We would also like to discuss terms for trading cubes and money.

Trade Deal (Areas 13): We would like to discuss terms for trading money and cubes.

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.5

Trade deal (Nagoya):

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free

Information exchange (Nagoya):

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.5

Kyouko's family church (1 vet, $1000): Begin negotiating the purchase of the Sakura church. Target price $500,000 with 20% down ($100,000). New upkeep (predicted): $3,500. Get a professional evaluation of the property, including all needed repairs, and the specific remodeling for a large gym, dormitory, large meeting hall, and large commercial kitchen. (Cost for initial earnest money and inspection $1,000.)

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Definitely going to be 2 vets, buying a large property, even one severely devalued by haunting is not quick in any sense of the word.

I guess I'm looking at things that are enchantments instead of instant effects. For example, the strengthening of our shields, once cast as an enchantment the shields are stronger as long as it is maintained, and if insulated the enchantment lasts longer before needing to be sustained.

Compared to charms which are instants, I was wondering if we can create a containment field to hold an enchantment in place, rather than an instant spell. That way the enchantments can be preserved without requiring constant sustaining.

Of course, rather than the containment field being a permanent part of the equipment (like on a charm), we'd want the containment spell to be attached to the inside of an equipment locker or something. So a specialist would enchant the magical tool, and hand it off to a magical girl to maintain. When done for the day, the magical girl would check the enchanted tool into the storage locker with the containment field, and she would no longer need to maintain it. Then when she needs it again, come back and pull it out of the containment field and start sustaining the enchantment again.

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This is definitely going to be a long term research option, since it's essentially a heavily upgraded form of insulation. This would likely be significantly higher cost than the current highest. (I do have to keep in mind your expansion potential.)

@inverted_helix: How long did it take for Tokyo to go from 53 Class 3 demons and 107 Elites to 37 Class 3 demons and 45 Elites? Can Kyuubey give us a monthly update on the number of Class 3 demons and Elites in Tokyo?

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Around a 12-18 months, haven't quite plotted it out. Hmm, I'd rather not give you such information since it would make more work for me, but in character Kyuubey should be willing to at the very least give you information on the number of Class 3s active, though perhaps not the Elites.

How many more do we need, versus how many we can conceivably get anyway? Base chance 30, +10% for two omakes, means that to get up to 80% we'd need another eight?

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Actually for omakes I give the first two on the subject +10, and then further a diminished return of +5. (Guidelines subject to omake quality of course, my omake policies are very much subjective.)

And I'm highly dubious as to whether the incubators are allowed to make contracts and then directly kill the girl afterwards. According to Kyuubey, Incubators can't lie and they can't coerce contracts and they can't even suggest wishes. Being able to directly murder girls simply for the sake of convenience and 1 GCU probably isn't allowed either.

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I'm dubious of that possibility as well.

Indeed, the incubator's clearly have some standard they hold themselves to, even if it is completely incomprehensible from our perspective.

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I think that the Incubators have some sort of limitations imposed on them even though they're emotionless. Otherwise making magical girls spend their magic on harvestable energy generation would be more a thing as well.

So, is this a nix on there being any unique meguca past this point, or just a nix on me writing a dozen omakes making unique puella because the latter was... uh, not going to happen, sorry if that was the impression you got. I really just wanted someone to pick one idea as being really cool and I'd use that as a springboard to write an omake, but that was not what ended up happening at all, haha.

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Oh well if you limit it to one or even two of the others (and no cripples for reason mentioned earlier) then it's okay. And I try not to underestimate your possible writing output

 

[TheEyes]

According to Kinematic's math, at 100% capacity, there would be 10.2 deaths per month in a 100 cube region (~20,000,000 people, of whom about 340,000 are adolescent girls). And at 89% recruitment, there would be 4.2 deaths per month. In either case, SADS would probably be the single leading cause of death among adolescent girls, but it wouldn't be greater than the other causes of death combined, and total number of deaths would be small compared to the general population. But if the incubators recruited extra girls and then killed them, the numbers would quickly hit the point where the authorities would be unable to ignore them.

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What I'm getting at is that if the Incubators really did get a bonus from contracting, then they'd be better off contracting the same 10.2 girls per month that they apparently do by default under your 100% scenario, and then immediately killing 6 of them, maintaining the 89% recruitment option (or maybe 7 of them to maintain an 80% recruitment red line). They would thereby cut down on Class 3 apocalypses like we're seeing now, which are bad for a number of reasons, because even at 100% recruitment girls will logically try to stockpile cubes to handle their own grief spirals, and that overhunting activity will inevitably lead to Class 3 events, as we're seeing now.

And I'm highly dubious as to whether the incubators are allowed to make contracts and then directly kill the girl afterwards. According to Kyuubey, Incubators can't lie and they can't coerce contracts and they can't even suggest wishes. Being able to directly murder girls simply for the sake of convenience and 1 GCU probably isn't allowed either.

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But we know they can murder contracted girls; Kyubey in fact admitted this to us when it talked about eliminating populations via orbital bombardment. All the other restrictions you name make perfect sense as the result of wishes (cannot lie: at one point at least one of the hundreds of thousands of Wishes made could have been: "I Wish you couldn't lie to me."), or as a fundamental law of the universe (No wish-engineering: if the wish does not come from the girl's heart then it doesn't work), but there's no way a girl is going to Wish: "I Wish you won't be able to immediately kill or restrain me for the next X hours, but then have carte blanche to do it later."

Definitely going to be 2 vets, buying a large property, even one severely devalued by haunting is not quick in any sense of the word.

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The action suggested isn't buying the property; it's arranging for an inspector or pair of inspectors to look over the property as a preliminary step to buying it. There's no way that alone is going to take 2*8*22 = 352 meguca-hours; I'm not even sure the entire escrow process will take that long.