Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)

[Aranfan]

Note that Kyuubey's estimates do not take casualties into account. 15 Elites may be able to kill a Class 4, but how many of them would die in the process? We want to have overwhelming force when we attack the Beholder.

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So we have a rapid reaction force of 20, or 30 girls, or even more than that if we can get a good sounding excuse for the parents of our girls who aren't orphaned. We will be boosted and the demon will be significantly weakened. Serena is the anti-demon Legendary.

I don't think we need to bring in Nagoya on this. If we really do need more meguca power we can recruit locally in tokyo.

 

[TheEyes]

According to the Kyuubey summary of Demon Strength, a Class 4 only needs about 15 Elites to reliably kill. Serena both buffs our vets up to at least elite level, and weakens demons. We plan to have a rapid reaction force of at least 15 girls to back up Serena.

I think your fears are overblown.

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There's "reliably kill" from an Incubator perspective, and there's "reliably kill without losing 40-60% of our forces", which should be our perspective. I don't want our vets dying in droves to put that thing down: if that's going to be our perspective we may as well move to Nagoya.

 

[TheEyes]

helix has vetoed that plan for game balance reasons.

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Then we set the other house on fire and pay the Incubators to keep people from finding us. Point is, there's options here, other than "if we don't absorb X amount of Tokyo then we lose Serena and break our promise to her," options that we don't get by going with the $10,000 option.

 

[Aranfan]

There's "reliably kill" from an Incubator perspective, and there's "reliably kill without losing 40-60% of our forces", which should be our perspective. I don't want our vets dying in droves to put that thing down: if that's going to be our perspective we may as well move to Nagoya.

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Even if the Beholder is a class 4, which we don't know for sure, it won't be a class 4 when we fight it because Serena weakens demons significantly. We will be bringing huge overkill, even without any help from Nagoya.

 

[Kinematics]

And, as a complete extra note, there's no guarantee that teleporter interdiction is the only super dangerous power the beholder has. A D&D beholder has a huge variety of powers, different for each eye. We should anticipate that it has a ludicrous power set.

 

[TheEyes]

So we have a rapid reaction force of 20, or 30 girls, or even more than that if we can get a good sounding excuse for the parents of our girls who aren't orphaned. We will be boosted and the demon will be significantly weakened. Serena is the anti-demon Legendary.

I don't think we need to bring in Nagoya on this. If we really do need more meguca power we can recruit locally in tokyo.

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Recruiting locally in Tokyo is my plan. I'm just off the opinion that we should start recruiting this month, so we have time to get ahold of the ones that only check their email once every two weeks; if we wait until the day before we strike we're not going to get ahold of anybody at all.

 

[Kinematics]

Continuing on the money front.

Money:
Income: $69,590 (bank) + $35,500 (income) + $77,000 (trade) = $182,090
Expenses: $30,620 (upkeep) + $11,500 (buying cubes) + $1,000 (advertising) + $5,000 (propaganda) + $6,000 (video conferencing) = $54,120
Final: $127,970

If we're not spending $50k next month on the couriers (as it would be premature), then the only major expense we're assuming is the cell phones. (Also: Are we doing to need masquerade protection for a purchase that large? Or can we sell it as something like, "promotional gifts for our customers"?)

That means we're working from a bit over $100k for what we're going to allow for spending this month.

We still need to buy the armor, and with a better buffer, I'd like to go back to using 100 cell phones for early contact with those in Tokyo ($2000). Plus $10k for the getaway, if we assume we'll end up in a good position with Tokyo.

How much armor are we going to need? Depends on what our attack plan ends up as, which in turn somewhat depends on what we learn from the Nagoya expedition.

Recruiting locally in Tokyo is my plan. I'm just off the opinion that we should start recruiting this month, so we have time to get ahold of the ones that only check their email once every two weeks; if we wait until the day before we strike we're not going to get ahold of anybody at all.

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Agreed. Should we set up 1.0 vet to talk with all the people we can drop cell phones to this month? And what would we need to drop to get that vet? Would also give us an idea of if we need to bring in spare sets of leather armor to distribute to anyone wanting to help us.

Am considering dropping grief management. Would lose 3 cubes, but if we don't need to buffer cash for the courier expansion, we don't need to strain on sales this month.

 

[Aranfan]

Agreed. Should we set up 1.0 vet to talk with all the people we can drop cell phones to this month? And what would we need to drop to get that vet? Would also give us an idea of if we need to bring in spare sets of leather armor to distribute to anyone wanting to help us.

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Sounds good. Looking at your plan, Grief management seems like the only real flex spot.

 

[Aranfan]

On a lighter note, the argument between Manami and Urako when they find out about Serena is going to be very real.

 

[Kinematics]

Sounds good. Looking at your plan, Grief management seems like the only real flex spot.

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One other option is to repurpose our gossipmonger for it. Have to see.

 

[Kinematics]

Yeah, I think I'm going to use Yuka, our gossipmonger, for this. This is right up her alley, and works pretty well with our purpose of setting her up (she's our "welcoming voice"). Basically, her contact with other neighbor areas goes down, as she focuses time on talking with any Tokyo elements. I might see bumping it up to 1.5, to have an assistant helping if we start getting a lot of calls from our neighbors, but a full month on the phone should really cover all the time she needs to speak with everyone.

@inverted_helix - Is this viable? Would it need 1.0 or 1.5? Also, how much would Kyuubey charge for distributing the phones?

 

[Elder Haman]

First: $50,000 expense next month, if we clear out Tokyo. We're being optimistic on that goal, perhaps too much so. Serena's power makes it seem like it should be possible, though, particularly if we can draw in extra assistance from the local elites and/or Nagoya.

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Yes, plus $20,000 if we want to pay for cellphones for every Tokyo girl (for one month)

Second: Even if we clear Tokyo, DS is still negative, and will be difficult to get positive with the remaining meguca population. This will likely be a significant negative malus on attempts to expand business there.

Third: Assuming the remaining meguca's first priority is to hunt Tokyo's DS back up to 0, and that there are 30 elites and 900 others (50% vet, 50% green), their total hunting capability would raise DS from -10 to just -6.6 if every single one of them was on hunting (thus, no dispatch bonus).

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I doubt the low DS will negatively impact of business expansion. It didn't in Kyouko's territory, which was -10 DS when we expanded there.

Also, I don't think the first priority is to get back to 0 DS as fast as possible. Kyouko's territory was DS -10 for a long long time, and we didn't see it causing major problems like Hong Kong.

Getting DS above -10 (if it's below that) could be critical, but not up to DS 0.

So my feeling is that if we want to be able to show quick returns to being organized we need to balance cubes and money. For every 30 girls I think we need at least 6 girls working to support just the cellphones. Probably better to pick 7 girls, leaving 23 girls for hunting. Put 3 of those girls on dispatch duty, and that leaves 20 girls, which for vet packs in a 50 cube territory ought to be over hunting a little bit, so slowly increasing that DS. As long as the demon strength is increasing I think we ought to be okay.

Also, I suspect that the population is more 70% to 80% vet, and 30% to 20% green. (Greens die like flies, and if you survive two months you're a vet.)

So, I think the first thing to do is drop the anticipated courier expansion as part of the actions planned during the Tokyo expedition. That's just not feasible until we get the demon strength back under control, and that will take a full month of focused hunting to accomplish. At the same time, if we get control of a lot of this territory, we can sell extra cubes like candy.

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Again I think you are setting unreasonable priority on DS over making sufficient money to pay for Tokyo costs.

According to the Kyuubey summary of Demon Strength, a Class 4 only needs about 15 Elites to reliably kill. Serena both buffs our vets up to at least elite level, and weakens demons. We plan to have a rapid reaction force of at least 15 girls to back up Serena.

I think your fears are overblown.

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My worry is not killing the beholder (I suspect we will be in danger of casualties, but I bet we can take it). My nightmare is having to face the beholder and then 15 other class 3 demons teleport in.

We can plan to mitigate the chance of this, but we do have to make sure we plan.

We need to get something for this month, either the Getaway house or the Akiya house. The Getaway house costs $10,000 per month with nothing to show for it afterwards, but the Akiya house gives us a permanent resource. Which plan is better depends on how much we value having the Akiya house as a resource and how long it would take to renovate the village.

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Also depends on our discount rate. How important is cash now over cash 3 months from now?

Because the Akiya house coast $30,000 right now.

The Getaway house costs $10,000 now, and $20,000 in two months, and $30,000 in three months.

If cash on hand this month (say to buy armor) is sufficiently more important than our amount of cash in month four, then the Getaway house is actually better.

 

[Powerofmind]

Sorry, there has been a lot of discussion and I skimmed through a lot of it.


Note that Kyuubey's estimates do not take casualties into account. 15 Elites may be able to kill a Class 4, but how many of them would die in the process? We want to have overwhelming force when we attack the Beholder.

Click to shrink...

There's "reliably kill" from an Incubator perspective, and there's "reliably kill without losing 40-60% of our forces", which should be our perspective. I don't want our vets dying in droves to put that thing down: if that's going to be our perspective we may as well move to Nagoya.

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Use of Legendary is preferred, but not necessary. 15 elites is their observation-determined lower bound for successful kills, but we're tacking on a legendary specifically advantaged against demons, and I must again point out how ridiculously disgusting Mami and our other actual elites would be under that aura. Helix even admitted that my hilarious mental picture of TIRO FINALE MINIGUN MAMI would be completely accurate, and there's only so many things that can compete with that much excessive firepower, not even accounting for the vets and the other elites we'd support Serena with.

 

[Aranfan]

Just thought of something, won't we need to print up a bunch of operations manuals, to help train our tokyo recruits?

 

[Elder Haman]

So we have a rapid reaction force of 20, or 30 girls, or even more than that if we can get a good sounding excuse for the parents of our girls who aren't orphaned. We will be boosted and the demon will be significantly weakened. Serena is the anti-demon Legendary.

I don't think we need to bring in Nagoya on this. If we really do need more meguca power we can recruit locally in tokyo.

Click to shrink...

I want a force of 52 girls.

Serena & Co. = 5
Mami, Kyouko, Kyoclone = 3
Taya + clairvoyant tandem casting search for stealth/new demon enemies = 2
2x clairvoyant tandem casting for beholder tracking = 2
Seto for Serena transport duty (no combat) = 1
4x teleporter for evac team (limited to when beholder is being tracked a safe distance away, based with Taya) = 4
5 x teams of 7 girls (2 barrier, 1 healer, 2 melee girls, 2 range girls) = 35

I think we can have this setup during the first two weeks, and then switch to something less intensive the last two weeks.

Hmm... maybe we can get some support from the other local groups for clairvoyant work?

There's "reliably kill" from an Incubator perspective, and there's "reliably kill without losing 40-60% of our forces", which should be our perspective. I don't want our vets dying in droves to put that thing down: if that's going to be our perspective we may as well move to Nagoya.

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I think we can come up with sufficient forces for overkill even without Nagoya, and even without Tokyo elites (though I do want them).

We just need to over engineer this solution.

Then we set the other house on fire and pay the Incubators to keep people from finding us. Point is, there's options here, other than "if we don't absorb X amount of Tokyo then we lose Serena and break our promise to her," options that we don't get by going with the $10,000 option.

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And then our morale drops because we just became criminals.

The GM is putting limits on us, and instead of accepting them and working within them you are intending to smash our head agaisnt them until something breaks.

Recruiting locally in Tokyo is my plan. I'm just off the opinion that we should start recruiting this month, so we have time to get ahold of the ones that only check their email once every two weeks; if we wait until the day before we strike we're not going to get ahold of anybody at all.

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I already asked for their contact information, the GM said no.

What more do you want me to do?

If we're not spending $50k next month on the couriers (as it would be premature), then the only major expense we're assuming is the cell phones. (Also: Are we doing to need masquerade protection for a purchase that large? Or can we sell it as something like, "promotional gifts for our customers"?)

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Probably not next month, but the following month I think we do have to have the courier expansion going, because otherwise we won't be able to afford even the cellphones for the Tokyo girls. We have to provide the seed money to get the TOkyo girls into bootstrap mode.

Am considering dropping grief management. Would lose 3 cubes, but if we don't need to buffer cash for the courier expansion, we don't need to strain on sales this month.

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Sounds good. Looking at your plan, Grief management seems like the only real flex spot.

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Tandem casting should be what we drop, gain 3 cubes, and 3 vets.

 

[Elder Haman]

Just thought of something, won't we need to print up a bunch of operations manuals, to help train our tokyo recruits?

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Already included in both Kinematics and my plan.

 

[Aranfan]

Probably not next month, but the following month I think we do have to have the courier expansion going, because otherwise we won't be able to afford even the cellphones for the Tokyo girls. We have to provide the seed money to get the TOkyo girls into bootstrap mode.

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Well, assuming we don't get an assload of cubes to sell to cover costs in the interim.

 

[Kinematics]

Yes, plus $20,000 if we want to pay for cellphones for every Tokyo girl (for one month)

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Yeah, but I didn't even get to that part after running the numbers on the hunting/expansion problem.

Also, I don't think the first priority is to get back to 0 DS as fast as possible. Kyouko's territory was DS -10 for a long long time, and we didn't see it causing major problems like Hong Kong.

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We were told explicitly that the low DS in Kyouko's territory made it a pretty miserable place to live for most humans, but Kyouko really didn't care about the side effects. I certainly wouldn't count on it not effecting a major business expansion like you're proposing for Tokyo. It'd be a GM call.

Caveat: We won't know what the actual DS is until the Nagoya expedition info comes in. The only thing that's certain is that it's currently less than 0, and will drop again this month.

Also, I suspect that the population is more 70% to 80% vet, and 30% to 20% green. (Greens die like flies, and if you survive two months you're a vet.)

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Two months to vet would be speculative. I would not be surprised, but the only metric we have is 6 months to vet if the green is actively involved in hunting.

Given the population drop, it looks like around a 6%-9% death rate per month. (Not sure if the decrease from 1200 to 1000 was over 2 or 3 months.) Population has been described as in free-fall, so probably not much recruiting going on. Still, will take the high end and bump it up a little to a 10% death rate.

Anyway, at that death rate:

6-month vet
0 cubes on spirals: 33% vet/66% green
1 cube on spirals: 40% vet/60% green

3-month vet
0 cubes on spirals: 60% vet/40% green
1 cube on spirals: 66% vet/33% green

 

[Kinematics]

Again I think you are setting unreasonable priority on DS over making sufficient money to pay for Tokyo costs.

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Oddly, I see it as exactly the opposite. The effort to fix DS should give us such a surplus in cubes that we can easily sell them to cover our expansion costs.


Anyway, I'll put the grief management back, and put the tandem research on hold. It annoys me, but we do have larger concerns right now. Even if we succeeded in fusion research, we wouldn't be able to use it in Tokyo because no one would be trained in it.

Currently at 53/56 vets (with potential +0.5 for gossipmonger work). 79.2 net cubes, but unknown costs for paying Kyuubey.

 

[Aranfan]

So I just had an idea regarding the likely lack of sufficient megucapower in Tokyo to hunt it up to viable. We could move our Orphaned girls into Tokyo, and have Kyuubey start recruiting in Mitakihara again.

There are probably a bunch of problems with this that I haven't thought of, but it would give us an experienced core of girls to form Tokyo around, while also providing extra megucapower for hunting up further.

 

[inverted_helix]

somewhat depends on what we learn from the Nagoya expedition.

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I'm curious, what information are people actually hoping to get from this, so I can tailor my writing of it a bit.

Yeah, I think I'm going to use Yuka, our gossipmonger, for this. This is right up her alley, and works pretty well with our purpose of setting her up (she's our "welcoming voice"). Basically, her contact with other neighbor areas goes down, as she focuses time on talking with any Tokyo elements. I might see bumping it up to 1.5, to have an assistant helping if we start getting a lot of calls from our neighbors, but a full month on the phone should really cover all the time she needs to speak with everyone.

@inverted_helix - Is this viable? Would it need 1.0 or 1.5? Also, how much would Kyuubey charge for distributing the phones?

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Definitely 1.5, you're going to be halfway to cold-calling telemarketer in these conditions.

I already asked for their contact information, the GM said no.

What more do you want me to do?

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I perhaps gave the wrong, or too extreme an impression with that. It's not every single one for themselves individually. Your earlier assessment of some singletons, some small cells, and some loose organizations of cells is more accurate. The point of that was more that these people are operating on the brink and aren't checking their communications much. It's difficult to contact them.

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Difficult to contact, not impossible. What I think I meant originally that misled you was more that groups have largely broken down to the point there isn't much of any group you could contact on a group-to-group basis, and you can't just shoot off an email and expect a response.

And then our morale drops because we just became criminals.

The GM is putting limits on us, and instead of accepting them and working within them you are intending to smash our head agaisnt them until something breaks.

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Well I'd probably let you just burn them all down and slap you with morale penalty for now being arsonists. But I'd let you do it. I try to use in universe issues more than just fiat.

We were told explicitly that the low DS in Kyouko's territory made it a pretty miserable place to live for most humans, but Kyouko really didn't care about the side effects.

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This is only partially accurate. Kyouko was holding her territory at a level that was miserable but not lethal. She determined that -10 was about the limit where it started going from miserable to lethal. It would seem in character that she had to care to at least some degree, even if she'd probably deny it and claim that there was no point in letting it go lower since they already weren't a threat to her.

 

[Kinematics]

I want a force of 52 girls.

Serena & Co. = 5
Mami, Kyouko, Kyoclone = 3
Taya + clairvoyant tandem casting search for stealth/new demon enemies = 2
2x clairvoyant tandem casting for beholder tracking = 2
Seto for Serena transport duty (no combat) = 1
4x teleporter for evac team (limited to when beholder is being tracked a safe distance away, based with Taya) = 4
5 x teams of 7 girls (2 barrier, 1 healer, 2 melee girls, 2 range girls) = 35

I think we can have this setup during the first two weeks, and then switch to something less intensive the last two weeks.

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OK, everything up to the teleporter evac team is reasonable. The construction of the combat teams is also fine. However the number of them may be problematic.

In order to have that quantity in place in the first two weeks, and, say, remove two of the teleporters on the evac team and 3 of the combat teams for the last half of the month, you're committing to...

All elites are there fulltime, so nothing special on that front.
All those vets for half a month is 21.0. Reduced form for another half-month is 9.5. Total of 30.5 vet requirement.


DS0 hunting for a month would require 14 vets (including 1 on teleport, which we have enough capacity for).

Also, it would not be unreasonable to ditch all rural hunting for the month, letting it drop to -4.8 DS, and freeing up another 2.5 vets. The following month would just require 3.0 vets to bring it almost back to DS0.

Harvest would be 51.6 cubes. We'd have to count on getting at least 30 from Tokyo just to bring our buffer back to x1. I don't expect that to be a problem.


8 vets on support. Can't really remove any of those. However.... we only have 4 clairvoyant-specced meguca. You have 4 assigned in Tokyo, and we need 2 more for dispatch. Resource limit problem. Might be able to fix by recruiting assistance from local meguca to track the beholder (edit: but they wouldn't be tandem trained).

We can't really pull anyone off of jobs, even if I'd love for Akeno to have a chance at the spotlight. 13 vets there.

Third month of general training needs to be finished. 1 vet there.


Taking all that into account, we have a max of 22.5 vets available for the month. Significantly short of what you're requesting.

I think we can do 3 vet teams the first half of the month, and 2 teams the second half. That would be 23.5 total, including the extra clairvoyant team. 21.5 without the extra clairvoyant team.


Edit: or, we could delay the final general training session, freeing up 1 vet, plus put the two greens on jobs to free up 2 more vets, giving a total of 25.5 available vet months. Still not enough to clear your requirements.

 

[Aranfan]

I'm curious, what information are people actually hoping to get from this, so I can tailor my writing of it a bit.

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Just going to throw things out here:

Demon Strength for non Class 3s
Strength estimate of the various class 3s encountered as compared to the stealth one we fought with Seto
Kyoclone's impression of the Nagoya elites, and what she thinks their impression of her was
What does Nagoya think of the SIMP generally?
How Kyoclone performed, and how many cubes if any she manages to bring home
Beholder's powers if it is encountered


That's all off the top of my head.

 

[Kinematics]

I'm curious, what information are people actually hoping to get from this, so I can tailor my writing of it a bit.

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In addition to Aranfan's, I was wondering about:

How do the locals react to Nagoya and their fights. Any interaction or assistance?
How the tandem charms performed, and rate of usage.
How Nagoya felt about the tandem charm performance, and any interest.
How Nagoya handled clairvoyance scanning. Can they identify types? Do they select targets based on that? What's their range?
Based on how much info their clairvoyants got, how do the c/t demons react? Did they come from relatively close, or from outside Nagoya's detection range?
Does Nagoya use any particular combat tactics setup? Team structure?

 

[Elder Haman]

Just going to throw things out here:

Demon Strength for non Class 3s
Strength estimate of the various class 3s encountered as compared to the stealth one we fought with Seto
Kyoclone's impression of the Nagoya elites, and what she thinks their impression of her was
What does Nagoya think of the SIMP generally?
How Kyoclone performed, and how many cubes if any she manages to bring home
Beholder's powers if it is encountered


That's all off the top of my head.

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To that I would add any obviously demon patterns? Hunting in packs? Speed at which the teleporters arrive after attacking a demon.

Do the demons seem intelligent, or just acting on instinct?

Any tips that the Nagoya gave her before going into battle?

Anything you think is obviously important that we are overlooking.