Wouldn't the cost of buying/fixing up the farmstead be just as much? The issue of Cost is kind of a wash imo.
Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)
- Thread starter inverted_helix
- Start date
The premise on the farmstead is that, being abandoned, it has no purchase cost, or something like an auction price on a foreclosed property, at worst. Refurbishment would be there, but that's quite manageable.
Buying shouldn't be much, since we're looking more at hacking and mind-altering our way into ownership of an abandoned neighborhood, rather than paying for it. We might need to pay for one or two properties to complete a set, but it shouldn't be too bad, not anything on the order of Kyoko's church.
Renovations? Yeah, those will cost, but they can be done over time. We can start with camping equipment, a generator, and making sure the bathrooms have running water, then move on to redoing the walls, roof, flooring, kitchens, etc. Heck, Serena's girls might like to learn some DIY home remodeling, take a break from dedicated research now and then.
With them actually living there, I would think that their priorities would be the other way around...
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And how much would the repairs to make that farm livable cost? (Not rhetorical, I have no idea)
For number two, what is the difference between the two, mechanically? Because if it's just durability then I once again point you to the legendary grade enchantment.
Impossible to say until helix gives us the specs. It might be minor cleanup and a splash of paint, and be done in a few hours; or it might need a massive overhaul, need plumbing and electrical fixed, have dry rot that requires replacement of the interior structure, have termites, or any number of other horrible things that mean you have to practically rebuild half the house.
Obviously I can't give any reliable answer on the effect of magical enchantment. Ocean types apparently are going to want solid hulls and heavier structural integrity, as they generally have to deal with significantly greater rolling due to ocean waves (combined with being a bit more top-heavy than normal boats), and more risks on the coastal depths depending on where they travel.
Oh, and being out on the ocean during a storm ought to be fun.
So, now that we might have gotten past the latest train wreck, can we make a decision on which way we're going?
[][Tokyo] Do not request aid from a legendary.
-[] Time to get people working together.
[][Tokyo] Request aid from Homura
-[] How lucky do you feel?
[][Tokyo] Request aid from Serena
-[] Deal with Serena's power. And the money sink.
[][Tokyo] Request aid from Kesi
-[] What sort of aftermath plan have you drafted?
[][Tokyo] Request aid from Hortence
-[] Need to persuade her. How?
I am perfectly fine with any of the choices, but I'd like an actual solid goal. The only one of these options we have not spent time pretending we were going to pursue is Hortence.
Every choice has a downside. Whatever that downside is, we have to live with it, not pretend we can get all of the benefits with none of the drawbacks. Whatever choice is made, I'm going into it fully accepting the drawbacks, for whatever plan I write.
So, please make a choice, or I'll just pick one at random and go all-out on it.
[][Tokyo] Do not request aid from a legendary.
-[] Time to get people working together.
[][Tokyo] Request aid from Homura
-[] How lucky do you feel?
[][Tokyo] Request aid from Serena
-[] Deal with Serena's power. And the money sink.
[][Tokyo] Request aid from Kesi
-[] What sort of aftermath plan have you drafted?
[][Tokyo] Request aid from Hortence
-[] Need to persuade her. How?
I am perfectly fine with any of the choices, but I'd like an actual solid goal. The only one of these options we have not spent time pretending we were going to pursue is Hortence.
Every choice has a downside. Whatever that downside is, we have to live with it, not pretend we can get all of the benefits with none of the drawbacks. Whatever choice is made, I'm going into it fully accepting the drawbacks, for whatever plan I write.
So, please make a choice, or I'll just pick one at random and go all-out on it.
The other problems with the houseboat idea are 1) houseboats are: small, not seaworthy, expensive, pick two, and 2) the need to come in to port at least once a week for supplies, which either means a second boat, or that you regularly expose a 1 km radius to Serena's aura.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
At this point, it's pretty clear that while we all have plans for serena's power, none of us have the same plan. This would make working with her much harder, because consistancy of votes would not be assured.
Thus, I currently lean towards option 1.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Why do we need to pick one? I thought we had a pretty good chain of fallback plans here.
It's an act of fully committing to your first choice, without using the existence of fallbacks as an excuse to waffle and meander over decisions. There has been enough disturbance that people have proposed dropping Serena altogether, and if we do that, we need to properly commit to all the things needed for whatever choice is selected. Or if we stay with Serena, we need to do so with the full acceptance of the risks that come with that choice.
Basically, it doesn't matter if there are fallbacks. If we need to move to a fallback, then that will need just as much commitment as the original choice. The point is, take a stand for where we're going to start, and put our best effort into it. I don't want to spend another week arguing over it.
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The real question, in my mind, is if we can get @Elder Haman back. Frankly, even after this incident, I'd rather have him in the thread then Serena with the Serenes; he brings a lot more value to the thread than Serena can to the IC group. If dropping consideration of Serena will get him back and not angry at me that's a price I'm eager to pay.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
A fair point. Without him there's basically only one person who can consistently make plans here.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
I've actually been talking with him on PM yesterday, and he said he'd give the thread a chance again. And that he forgave me for screwing up and accidentally asserting he wanted to imprison Serena.
Edit: Actually he said he would "see how he felt tomorrow", but hopefully that means he'll give the thread a chance.
Edit: Actually he said he would "see how he felt tomorrow", but hopefully that means he'll give the thread a chance.
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With the caveat that we still need a plan to stabilise Tokyo afterwards regardless, I support Serena.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
I support none of them. Even if we'd never brought legendaries into the equation we had plans to control the rise of class 3's and mitigate the spread. Frankly, there's no way we could even begin to make headway in Tokyo without a significant number of those thousand meguca dying, and any effort to contain the problem would only backslide in a few months when the city kids decide the hodunk farmers don't know what they're talking about and ignore warnings against biological warfare.
Um, what?
They are all dying. Like right now, the apocalypse clock is striking midnight; thousands of them have already died, and the rest will follow within the year. This is the best, possibly the only, time to get these people to listen and not have them ignore us, because they're all dying and they know it.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
So what? Stick our head in the ground while Tokyo dies? Because if Tokyo goes so goes Japan, and so goes Mami's little experiment.
I... will be back in ten hours with things to say I really need to get to work right now. >_>
Quick question though: @inverted_helix - would you be willing to trade omakes for character details on the current crop of legendaries? I have a few in the bank that I'd be willing to spend, and then... kind of un-spend by writing an omake about the legendary and using it to pay for those details.
I'm running on somewhat limited sleep I'm not sure if that was comprehensible. Basically, omakes for personality info on legendaries, y/n?
Quick question though: @inverted_helix - would you be willing to trade omakes for character details on the current crop of legendaries? I have a few in the bank that I'd be willing to spend, and then... kind of un-spend by writing an omake about the legendary and using it to pay for those details.
I'm running on somewhat limited sleep I'm not sure if that was comprehensible. Basically, omakes for personality info on legendaries, y/n?
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
@inverted_helix
Would you be willing to hold off on closing the vote and writing the update until @Elder Haman can tell us if he'd be willing to come back even if we go for Serena, or if we would have to ditch her to keep him? I much prefer having him than any legendary.
Would you be willing to hold off on closing the vote and writing the update until @Elder Haman can tell us if he'd be willing to come back even if we go for Serena, or if we would have to ditch her to keep him? I much prefer having him than any legendary.
I offered to just switch Serena with another similar archetype legendary to him in PM. I've even come up with one based off @FixerUpper ideas list that would be just as hard to deal with without any mindscrew factors. Though probably less interesting to talk about.
I mean Haman is one of the top participants in the quest and I'm too attached to my voters to leave one that upset about this. Not like it's some core mechanic or setting thing. Really felt like some sort of emotional trigger issue.
Pretty much already the case. There's still too much vote changing for me to feel comfortable anyways.
Hmm I suppose could do that.
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Well... I first of all want to apologize for flying off the handle like that.
I haven't read anything in the thread since then, since I've been having the problem that I keep trying to step away to cool down, and then when I come back I just get heated right back up. So I 'm about 4 pages out of date in my response.
First of all, I obviously must have been at fault for failing to communicate what my true intentions where. Thinking over it, the only thing I can think of is that my assessment of the worst case scenario: a breakdown of relations and a violent confrontation with Serena - got interpreted as my first response instead of my last response. I tend to assess worst case scenarios first because for something like Serena's powers that to me was the first question. If there wasn't a way to handle the worst case, then that was an auto-rejection, and no point in continuing the assessment.
Now I did, several times, in several different posts make statements that clearly show that this was not my first response and that I had a more reasonable position, but perhaps the fast pace of the conversation, combined with my emotional reaction to some of the suggestions that we regularly expose our girls to her aura obscured these posts.
I'd already come to that conclusion after I had finally got recognition through that I didn't want to imprison Serena. I was coming back to apologize and see if we could reenter a discussion now that we understood each other. Then I saw a post that claimed I wanted to imprison Serena. (After talking with the poster privately, I see that I misunderstood that post as well.)
And at that point I lost it. I felt like I was being forced to continually defend a position that I didn't hold, and that is an infuriating position to be put in. I lost my temper, and began lashing out. I wasn't even attempting to persuade anymore, but just venting my spleen. That was wrong of me, and in my anger I said many heated things and made accusations based on ungenerous assumptions about other people's motives. I apologize for doing this, and hope you will forgive me.
After all of this, I also began to try and consider why I would find this so obvious a position, and yet hardly anyone seemed to understand the point I was making. This is a bit of a long way around to try and explain it, but it's the best I can think of.
I did a small informal poll of my friends, and the results where quite illuminating. There was a clear split in how people saw the situation. One group was overwhelmingly in agreement with me. Indeed there were some who felt that I was too soft on the matter, and that we ought to kill Serena. In this group, there were only two that agreed with the majority of this board, and a good few more that agreed with me, but thought I overreacted.
There was a clear break of "everyone else" with the second group, the Engineering division, which overwhelming agreed with the majority of the board and disagreed with me. Of 18 engineers, 2 agreed with me, 2 disagreed, but thought I raised good points, with the remainder as incomprehensible of my position as you have been.
It made me think that maybe this is a Moral Foundations scenario. Basically, I get the feeling that all of you are primarily addressing this as a Fairness/Justice question. This is why you kept making remarks about me hating Serena, which always confused me, as I never hated Serena, I just felt sorry for her. I just couldn't understand what my judgement on Serena had to do with the question at hand.
To me, the whole Serena question hits a lot of buttons all over the Moral Foundations. First, it raises obvious Liberty issues which has always been a high moral priority for me. For me it also hits care/harm, loyalty, and sanctity/purity moral questions. Sanctity because Serena's power is a perversion and mockery of hope. Taking something good and turning it into evil, it's horrific. That's not a judgement of Serena as a person, it's just a judgement about her power.
Harm because in addition to being degrading, and a threat to liberty, Serena's aura can kill magical girls. This flows straight into Loyalty, in which I perceive that we have a fundamental duty as the leader of our group (Mami) to not endanger our girls without good reason. To expose our girls to Serena's power for unnecessary reasons is therefor a betrayal of our trust, and a betrayal of the loyalty of our girls to us.
And that hooks into Duty, with the capital D, which has always been my personal ultimate moral standard. (I consider duty to be the supreme value in determining the right thing to do). That's why I reacted so viscerally to the idea of experimenting to find safe regular exposure levels.
Understand, I don't think that you all don't care about Loyalty. Rather I think you conglomerate it into one question that is combined with the Fairness/Justice question (which is the primary moral foundation for the rationalist morality model). So to you all those loyalty issues goes into the equation, but when you consider the way Serena has made an effort to avoid damaging people the answer that comes back is "Serena deserves a chance."
To me they aren't one question, they are two questions. The first is "does Serena deserve a chance?" to which my answer is yes. However, I also see a separate question, which is "are we sufficiently protecting the girls in our trust, that we can honestly say we have kept faith with them?" And to me the answer to both those questions have to be yes before making a deal with Serena.
I feel like we can answer the second one as yes, if we take reasonable precautions, and ask Serena to agree to reasonable restrictions. Since I perceive Serena as a moral individual, I don't see how she could object. But you all interpret it as me saying to Serena "I don't trust you" and thus likely to offend her. When to me it has nothing to do with trusting Serena. That's a different question, and I wouldn't even be suggesting hiring her if I didn't trust her. To me it's about doing the due diligence to fulfill our duty. Why would anyone object to that?
Anyway, I know that was a long roundabout way of explaining it, but I hope that it allows you to understand why I was reacting the way I was, and what my true feelings are.
I was told there was some talk about maybe giving up on contacting Serena to placate me. I don't know if I feel comfortable with that. Feels like I would be getting my way because I threw a tantrum. I realize looking back that is sort of what I implied, but I was talking out of anger, and not with any intent or plan to try and impose my will on everyone.
Let's see instead if I can present what my position is, and maybe now you'll understand me, and you can respond to what I'm proposing and my concerns. Then we can see if we can agree without anyone feeling they have been forced to accept my personal preference. And I will commit to accepting whatever we end up deciding as a thread, even if I might have some objections, since after calming down I can see that you are not ignorant of our duties, rather you are addressing it in an indirect way. Which I don't like, but I can at least try to accept if the vote goes against me.
I don't object to making arrangements for occasional trips by Serena, as long as they managed in a way that doesn't expose magical girls to her aura when they don't need to be. Since it's not as deadly to mundanes, and because we don't have a special duty to mundanes I'm not as worried about occasional exposure to them. Although I wouldn't agree to regularly exposing Ayase, because to me she is someone we also owe a special duty too.
I don't object even to sending Serena abroad to handle class 3 demon crisis, as long as it is recognized that we should be sure to talk about the situation with the local girls, and not just impose exposure to Serena on them just because we think it's a good idea.
I do object to any policy of regular exposure to Serena's power by any of the Serenes, and to a lesser extent object to the regular exposure of any magical girl. Not because I don't trust Serena, nor because I think she somehow deserves to be isolated, but merely as part of our duty if we are going to take on responsibility for Serena. I just don't feel comfortable shoving the decisions all onto Serena, that seems like avoiding responsibility to me.
I do object to any attempt to experiment with direct exposure to her aura (as opposed to through a charm).
I do feel that we ought to explicitly bring up the issue of movement restrictions in discussion with Serena, so that there are no misunderstandings. This one is probably the easiest for me to compromise on, but I do feel that it's unfair to Serena to not explicitly discuss these issues, because otherwise how will everyone know that people are fulfilling their duties if we have unwritten expectations.
Anyway, I do hope that you will forgive me for my outburst.
I haven't read anything in the thread since then, since I've been having the problem that I keep trying to step away to cool down, and then when I come back I just get heated right back up. So I 'm about 4 pages out of date in my response.
First of all, I obviously must have been at fault for failing to communicate what my true intentions where. Thinking over it, the only thing I can think of is that my assessment of the worst case scenario: a breakdown of relations and a violent confrontation with Serena - got interpreted as my first response instead of my last response. I tend to assess worst case scenarios first because for something like Serena's powers that to me was the first question. If there wasn't a way to handle the worst case, then that was an auto-rejection, and no point in continuing the assessment.
Now I did, several times, in several different posts make statements that clearly show that this was not my first response and that I had a more reasonable position, but perhaps the fast pace of the conversation, combined with my emotional reaction to some of the suggestions that we regularly expose our girls to her aura obscured these posts.
I'd already come to that conclusion after I had finally got recognition through that I didn't want to imprison Serena. I was coming back to apologize and see if we could reenter a discussion now that we understood each other. Then I saw a post that claimed I wanted to imprison Serena. (After talking with the poster privately, I see that I misunderstood that post as well.)
And at that point I lost it. I felt like I was being forced to continually defend a position that I didn't hold, and that is an infuriating position to be put in. I lost my temper, and began lashing out. I wasn't even attempting to persuade anymore, but just venting my spleen. That was wrong of me, and in my anger I said many heated things and made accusations based on ungenerous assumptions about other people's motives. I apologize for doing this, and hope you will forgive me.
After all of this, I also began to try and consider why I would find this so obvious a position, and yet hardly anyone seemed to understand the point I was making. This is a bit of a long way around to try and explain it, but it's the best I can think of.
I did a small informal poll of my friends, and the results where quite illuminating. There was a clear split in how people saw the situation. One group was overwhelmingly in agreement with me. Indeed there were some who felt that I was too soft on the matter, and that we ought to kill Serena. In this group, there were only two that agreed with the majority of this board, and a good few more that agreed with me, but thought I overreacted.
There was a clear break of "everyone else" with the second group, the Engineering division, which overwhelming agreed with the majority of the board and disagreed with me. Of 18 engineers, 2 agreed with me, 2 disagreed, but thought I raised good points, with the remainder as incomprehensible of my position as you have been.
It made me think that maybe this is a Moral Foundations scenario. Basically, I get the feeling that all of you are primarily addressing this as a Fairness/Justice question. This is why you kept making remarks about me hating Serena, which always confused me, as I never hated Serena, I just felt sorry for her. I just couldn't understand what my judgement on Serena had to do with the question at hand.
To me, the whole Serena question hits a lot of buttons all over the Moral Foundations. First, it raises obvious Liberty issues which has always been a high moral priority for me. For me it also hits care/harm, loyalty, and sanctity/purity moral questions. Sanctity because Serena's power is a perversion and mockery of hope. Taking something good and turning it into evil, it's horrific. That's not a judgement of Serena as a person, it's just a judgement about her power.
Harm because in addition to being degrading, and a threat to liberty, Serena's aura can kill magical girls. This flows straight into Loyalty, in which I perceive that we have a fundamental duty as the leader of our group (Mami) to not endanger our girls without good reason. To expose our girls to Serena's power for unnecessary reasons is therefor a betrayal of our trust, and a betrayal of the loyalty of our girls to us.
And that hooks into Duty, with the capital D, which has always been my personal ultimate moral standard. (I consider duty to be the supreme value in determining the right thing to do). That's why I reacted so viscerally to the idea of experimenting to find safe regular exposure levels.
Understand, I don't think that you all don't care about Loyalty. Rather I think you conglomerate it into one question that is combined with the Fairness/Justice question (which is the primary moral foundation for the rationalist morality model). So to you all those loyalty issues goes into the equation, but when you consider the way Serena has made an effort to avoid damaging people the answer that comes back is "Serena deserves a chance."
To me they aren't one question, they are two questions. The first is "does Serena deserve a chance?" to which my answer is yes. However, I also see a separate question, which is "are we sufficiently protecting the girls in our trust, that we can honestly say we have kept faith with them?" And to me the answer to both those questions have to be yes before making a deal with Serena.
I feel like we can answer the second one as yes, if we take reasonable precautions, and ask Serena to agree to reasonable restrictions. Since I perceive Serena as a moral individual, I don't see how she could object. But you all interpret it as me saying to Serena "I don't trust you" and thus likely to offend her. When to me it has nothing to do with trusting Serena. That's a different question, and I wouldn't even be suggesting hiring her if I didn't trust her. To me it's about doing the due diligence to fulfill our duty. Why would anyone object to that?
Anyway, I know that was a long roundabout way of explaining it, but I hope that it allows you to understand why I was reacting the way I was, and what my true feelings are.
I was told there was some talk about maybe giving up on contacting Serena to placate me. I don't know if I feel comfortable with that. Feels like I would be getting my way because I threw a tantrum. I realize looking back that is sort of what I implied, but I was talking out of anger, and not with any intent or plan to try and impose my will on everyone.
Let's see instead if I can present what my position is, and maybe now you'll understand me, and you can respond to what I'm proposing and my concerns. Then we can see if we can agree without anyone feeling they have been forced to accept my personal preference. And I will commit to accepting whatever we end up deciding as a thread, even if I might have some objections, since after calming down I can see that you are not ignorant of our duties, rather you are addressing it in an indirect way. Which I don't like, but I can at least try to accept if the vote goes against me.
I don't object to making arrangements for occasional trips by Serena, as long as they managed in a way that doesn't expose magical girls to her aura when they don't need to be. Since it's not as deadly to mundanes, and because we don't have a special duty to mundanes I'm not as worried about occasional exposure to them. Although I wouldn't agree to regularly exposing Ayase, because to me she is someone we also owe a special duty too.
I don't object even to sending Serena abroad to handle class 3 demon crisis, as long as it is recognized that we should be sure to talk about the situation with the local girls, and not just impose exposure to Serena on them just because we think it's a good idea.
I do object to any policy of regular exposure to Serena's power by any of the Serenes, and to a lesser extent object to the regular exposure of any magical girl. Not because I don't trust Serena, nor because I think she somehow deserves to be isolated, but merely as part of our duty if we are going to take on responsibility for Serena. I just don't feel comfortable shoving the decisions all onto Serena, that seems like avoiding responsibility to me.
I do object to any attempt to experiment with direct exposure to her aura (as opposed to through a charm).
I do feel that we ought to explicitly bring up the issue of movement restrictions in discussion with Serena, so that there are no misunderstandings. This one is probably the easiest for me to compromise on, but I do feel that it's unfair to Serena to not explicitly discuss these issues, because otherwise how will everyone know that people are fulfilling their duties if we have unwritten expectations.
Anyway, I do hope that you will forgive me for my outburst.
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Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
I forgive you. And I'm sorry for the part I played in making you fly off the handle like that.
Also, your link doesn't work for me, is this what you meant?
Home | moralfoundations.org
Also, your link doesn't work for me, is this what you meant?
Home | moralfoundations.org