We can't use it long term for Serena, true, but it is an out of the way, cheap house for 5+ people that we own. We could use it as a temporary residence for out of town visitors, or an isolation area for high magic experiments that we don't want happening in the church, or a separate residence for Seto if she wants a command center of her own like Mami, or any number of things.
Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)
- Thread starter inverted_helix
- Start date
Silly change on the rubber balls.
I had been using these, but just noticed the picture showing their relative size, and they're kinda tiny. Can change to these, which are 2.5 inches (6.5 cm) across, for better visibility. Alternatively, we can pick up these, for glow-in-the-dark fun if we need to do this in low-light scenarios.
Or we can ignore all that and just use whichever ones show up.
I had been using these, but just noticed the picture showing their relative size, and they're kinda tiny. Can change to these, which are 2.5 inches (6.5 cm) across, for better visibility. Alternatively, we can pick up these, for glow-in-the-dark fun if we need to do this in low-light scenarios.
Or we can ignore all that and just use whichever ones show up.
Temporary residence for out of town visitors: Too far out in the boonies to be useful for visitors that we want to have any dealings with. Why would we put them out there? It'd probably be considered an insult.
Isolation area for high magic experiments that we don't want happening in the church: And the woods don't serve the same purpose? We'd have to teleport out there anyway, so what's the gain?
A separate residence for Seto if she wants a command center of her own like Mami: Why would we want to encourage factionalism and division in our group?
I still haven't heard a single reason to justify the Akiya house as a long term investment.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Why is that even a concern? It'll be refurbished before Serena gets here. It'll take at least three months for tokyo to be cleared by all estimations, and by that point the Getaway house is every bit as expensive as the Akiya house and only grows moreso. Even then, once we have positive cashflow we can support recruitment.
Last time we went "absolutely no risk" it utterly hobbled us when came to expansion, and it'll do it again if we don't take it here. TheEyes already has had some ideas about other ways to mitigate the risks and those downsides about his ideas are frankly small prices to pay for saving Tokyo.
It'd make a great place to store cubes, if nothing else. A vault secured by distance.
Actually, what we need for recruitment is not positive cash flow. It's cash on hand.
Except we don't have to pay them to save Tokyo, we have to pay them to avoid a $10,000 monthly rent. $10,000 monthly rent is worth it avoid becoming arsonists.
Who is going to guard it against theft?
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
With the way the abstraction for the quest works income this turn and money in the bank are both "already had". And we do need positive cashflow to keep up with the additional upkeep costs of stipends and suchlike. And we should have plenty of cash on hand if we get the Akiya house, since we estimate it'll take about 3 months at least for Tokyo to be cleared and we're going to have more cash in the bank at the end of this turn even if we go with the Akiya house because of trading.
I was actually thinking of his "buy the other Akiya in Serena's aura" idea, not the arson idea. I'm sure that's not the only legal way to mitigate that we can come up with.
Well, after Serena leaves, we can hook the place up with alarms for people breaking in and for motion inside the house, and send those alarms to Seto's phone. If we get any other elite teleporters that we can trust then we can share the load.
Other ideas for how to make use of it after Serena leaves: A place for paperwork, a place for people who need to get away from everything for a while to relax, mundane rather than magical storage, a honeymoon place for any of our girls that get married (once they're old enough obv), etc. We can find ways to get use out of it if Serena is forced to leave.
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Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
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Thanks.
QM says this is not possible.
The akiya house has minimal value if/when we switch to another location. It's an asset, but not a useful asset. Or at least, none of the ideas tossed out so far are likely to be anything we actually want or need. Maybe we can sell it later on and get some of our money back, but it's as much sunk cost as the getaway for most purposes.
The getaway is sunk cost to at least the same extent as the akiya house by the time we're done with Tokyo and are looking at recruiting people. As such it has no monetary advantage. It costs us less in the first couple months, but the primary value for that was to have enough cash on hand to start the courier expansion, and it's very unlikely we can start that before month 4 anyway. So its advantage in the short term is moot.
Its other advantage is to wow Serena when she shows up, but that comes at a long-term cost that hurts us in a lot of ways. It's not in any way an asset.
The village is an actual true asset. We can do things there that we can't do elsewhere, and it has the potential to become another income source. However to reach that point will require a lot of investment and research, so we won't be recovering that money anytime soon. It's also not something we can get up and running before Serena arrives, which takes it off the table entirely for our short-term needs.
The getaway has the lowest short term costs (up to 3 months out). The akiya has the lowest medium term costs (3 to 12 months out), but carries a small contact risk. The medium term is where we really need to be looking for costs, because that's where we're spending a ton of money: new recruits, courier expansion, Kyouko's church, etc. However we also need to get rid of that contact risk, which means ultimately we must move to the village for our long term setup.
Of course, the investment into the village is such that repairing 5 houses is equivalent to staying in the getaway for 2 years. And there are about a dozen houses. Plus the possibility of wanting to build other stuff. Full village repair, without upgrades, would be $600,000, or 5 years in the getaway. On the other hand, that's actual investment, not sunk cost.
As an aside, if there's a 5% chance of contact risk per month at the akiya, that's a 45% chance of contact per year. At 10% chance per month, that's 70% per year. And there are options to mitigate that, even if we can't buy the other akiya homes.
The getaway is sunk cost to at least the same extent as the akiya house by the time we're done with Tokyo and are looking at recruiting people. As such it has no monetary advantage. It costs us less in the first couple months, but the primary value for that was to have enough cash on hand to start the courier expansion, and it's very unlikely we can start that before month 4 anyway. So its advantage in the short term is moot.
Its other advantage is to wow Serena when she shows up, but that comes at a long-term cost that hurts us in a lot of ways. It's not in any way an asset.
The village is an actual true asset. We can do things there that we can't do elsewhere, and it has the potential to become another income source. However to reach that point will require a lot of investment and research, so we won't be recovering that money anytime soon. It's also not something we can get up and running before Serena arrives, which takes it off the table entirely for our short-term needs.
The getaway has the lowest short term costs (up to 3 months out). The akiya has the lowest medium term costs (3 to 12 months out), but carries a small contact risk. The medium term is where we really need to be looking for costs, because that's where we're spending a ton of money: new recruits, courier expansion, Kyouko's church, etc. However we also need to get rid of that contact risk, which means ultimately we must move to the village for our long term setup.
Of course, the investment into the village is such that repairing 5 houses is equivalent to staying in the getaway for 2 years. And there are about a dozen houses. Plus the possibility of wanting to build other stuff. Full village repair, without upgrades, would be $600,000, or 5 years in the getaway. On the other hand, that's actual investment, not sunk cost.
As an aside, if there's a 5% chance of contact risk per month at the akiya, that's a 45% chance of contact per year. At 10% chance per month, that's 70% per year. And there are options to mitigate that, even if we can't buy the other akiya homes.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
@inverted_helix, can you confirm this?
@Elder Haman, there are surely other ways to mitigate things within the law, I'm positive we can come up with some.
Please don't get too exasperated over minor points
Yeah buying the rest of them would be too easy a solution.
If you can come up with some before we buy it, then I'd probably switch to the Akiya house.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Whiile I have you, how are you counting Nolrai's vote? For my Akiya plan or baseline Kinematics? It seems fairly clear Nolrai wanted not to get the Getaway.
Well, at the moment the only thing that comes to mind is Sam Starfell's security system (hanging signs that say "come in, let's talk AMWAY") but I'm also quite sleepy so...
@TheEyes
@Kinematics
Any ideas?
My baseline ideas were to a motion sensor/security camera system, or an assigned meguca keeping a watch on any activity (from outside aura range; watch incoming roads and such), and who sweeps the houses for squatters.
Since a 'safe' duration is 8 hours, even periodic sweeps during the day would work, though we would likely still want a full watch for afternoon/evening when prospective buyers are most likely to visit. Effectively, 1.0 vet should leave us pretty sure the area is always clear. 0.5 may even be sufficient.
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Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
And when a prospective buyer comes buy we act as the bitchy terrible neighbor?
Depends on the layout of the neighborhood. Could be the annoying neighbor (of a variety of stripes). Could set up (removable) road obstacles. Could just ask Serena to take a little walk (again, depending on layout and how far Serena would have to travel). Could try to scare off squatters and drunks. Could play up the cult fanatic, and be handing out flyers and proselytizing Very Enthusiastically.
There's tons of ways to play it.
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This seems like quite a bad idea, but as a mental image it's value is high.
I'm not really sure what you're planning to do with the village. It's not any less in the middle of nowhere then the other options.
I suspect proselytizing in Serena's aura will be very effective on some people, so this might end up with us having an actual cult.
Be annoying neighbors, throw raucous parties, be gossipy (the reason to buy an Akiya is to get away from neighbors, after all!).
Worst comes to worst, pay Kyubey to mindwipe them into a different land purchase, but that's probably a "nuclear" option that'll cost us a half dozen cubes or so.
In any event, all I really want to do is keep hold of the Akiya house until we find out about someone moving in, then transition Serena out of it, either to the village or (if necessary) the Getaway for a month or two and then the village. Even at @Elder Haman's IMO vastly over-inflated 5% chance that someone moves in in a given month (seriously, if rural houses were in that much demand Japan wouldn't have 81 million abandoned ones and growing, because they'd all be filled within 4 years of them becoming available!) that would still get us an average 10 months of occupancy, a savings of $70,000 over going straight to Getaway.
Worst comes to worst, pay Kyubey to mindwipe them into a different land purchase, but that's probably a "nuclear" option that'll cost us a half dozen cubes or so.
In any event, all I really want to do is keep hold of the Akiya house until we find out about someone moving in, then transition Serena out of it, either to the village or (if necessary) the Getaway for a month or two and then the village. Even at @Elder Haman's IMO vastly over-inflated 5% chance that someone moves in in a given month (seriously, if rural houses were in that much demand Japan wouldn't have 81 million abandoned ones and growing, because they'd all be filled within 4 years of them becoming available!) that would still get us an average 10 months of occupancy, a savings of $70,000 over going straight to Getaway.
8.1 million, there's a decimal there. I don't think there are 81 million houses in Japan total.
Other than that the point is fair.
It will count for your plan.
You're actually overestimating the cost in some senses. Serena's group is used to spending a fair bit of their time sweeping around her to make sure no one's loitering. And it's not like there's a whole lot else they can do anyways.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Which should mean that Aranfan's Akiya is the currently winning plan, with myself, Nolrai, and TheEyes. Next is Kinematics with himself and Skelm, and Elder Haman is all alone and needs warm hugs.
*hugs Elder Haman*
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That's the problem; any measures we take to discourage people who are already there will likely be pointless, because the aura is so pleasurable to be in.