Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)

What should I do regarding a change in system?

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

    Votes: 5 55.6%
  • Chapter system vastly simplifying everything.

    Votes: 4 44.4%

  • Total voters
    9
  • Poll closed .
1: We don't know that it isn't clairvoyant. Stop making assumptions that are not in evidence.

Clairvoyance they have no way to judge clearly since they believe demons communicate with each other to summon aid rather than simply view another in danger. Telepathy it shouldn't have.
Combined with the knowledge that they can sense meguca from several km away without clairvoyant powers, it seems more likely that it hears a call we can't when fighting breaks out, or it would always appear to deal with Nagoya raids (which are the biggest danger to their hunting system).

Another point in favor of this speculation; if it was clairvoyant, at least outside it's miasma, it would be capable of catching fleeing teleporters more than once. There's good reason to believe it can tell where you are anywhere in the miasma, but outside is another story.
At no point did I assume that our elites would not be with our vets. I'm assuming that the demon will have the advantage of a surprise round, and probably kill one or two vets before we can respond. Remember Seto's experience with class 3 demons?

Sure, we'd probably win the battle, but at the cost of 1 or 2 lives. I know we can't avoid all risk, but I'd like a plan that doesn't have an 80% probability of deaths.

Also, how exactly can we "always" know if it's safe to teleport our forces? To do that we have to know exactly where the eyeball is at all times, and know the size of it's interdiction field. Otherwise we don't know if it's safe to teleport. Notice that locating the eyeball is something we have failed at... repeatedly. Please tell us your "proper plan" because if you really have that great of a plan I would love to hear the details.
Speaking of people making assumptions without basis, that's a cool 80% probability you pulled up, there. To counter, I'll point out that the class 3 Seto fought got it's surprise round because it had stealth abilities. Even if a teleporter were to drop directly on the backup, unless it's also clairvoyant, it has no way to know exactly where it'll land, and even then, barrier girls or barrier charms are effective enough to mount a defense even in the miasma long enough for us to react.

We can always know if we're teleport safe because they can't teleport onto us if the eyeball is nearby, and barring that, by teleporting the rubber balls a few feet around the team, onto Serena's team, and in a specific direction chosen as a retreat area, on regular intervals.
I'm already assuming superhuman speed. At the top marathon speed ever recorded it would be at least 7 minutes to run 5 kilometers. That assumes no obstacles. At best we might get 5 minutes to the center of the miasma in ideal conditions, but I don't think we should consider ideal conditions, since we are unable to setup an ambush on the grounds of our choosing.

And that still doesn't consider the time cost of having to fight through some space distorting underground labyrinth.
Exactly. 1 km per minute is the speed I was assuming, accounting for obstacles. It does consider the labyrinth, because the point of keeping them within 1 km of Serena is that unless the 4 teleports directly on top of her (and even if it does), we're able to react quickly enough that Serena can lure it into the rest of the support as they're moving forward, negating the time delay, or if it teleports, reducing it to less than 5 minutes total.
Give me your estimation of our top speed and defend it. Until you do, your point is moot.
As above.
Teleporting demons. No miasma closing in will be visible. One moment no demon, next moment, demon.

Your point is moot.
Again, everything was accounted for. Teleporters, if they can even teleport if the eye is nearby, will be within a minute's run, or even a teleport of our own (due to preparations), less if Serena's team does a tactical retreat to lure it closer, and the eye itself either won't teleport to ensure we can't do so either, or will teleport and we can use the same delay/retreat tactic to give the team time to catch up.
 
Leaving aside for a moment the matter of clearing Tokyo, I would like to propose that Mami spend some time each month socializing with Serena. After she's learned Japanese of course, but having a friend that doesn't need to be friends with her would do wonders for her. It would also help cement her loyalty to us.

Considering Mami must know Italian, it shouldn't be that much effort to learn Spanish.

Add in the fact that Mami's resistance to Serena's aura is a sensible starting point for research in how to create a resistance to that aura I think that there will be a lot of time spent together.

The way I see it there are three main research paths for Serena's aura:

  1. Resistance to the aura (making the aura safe for the non-addicted)
    1. Mami's resistance?
    2. Telepathic based resistance (mental magic to mitigate the effect - perhaps particularly against the "drunk" effect)
    3. Barrier based magic (If it's a magic effect, then magic ought to be able to create a barrier to block it)
    4. Healing based magic? (Apparently what healing means becomes flexible under the influence of her aura)
    5. Effect of materials (insulation prevents magic from "escaping" can we do something similar with her aura? - lead would be the traditional thematic shield)
  2. Concentrated Hope Medicine (finding a way to encapsulate the aura into a charm or enchantment that can apply it to girls grief spiraling past the effectiveness of grief cubes)
    1. Temporary solution of teleportation inside her aura?
      1. Are there addiction risks?
    2. Can the aura be put into a charm form?
      1. Are there addiction risks?
    3. Narrow the target of the aura (if in charm form)
    4. Tandem Fusion magic? Healing and Aura? Perhaps Lita and Serena can create what we need together?
    5. If the aura can not be put into charm form, perhaps enchantment form will work? (see Empowering the Aura)
  3. Empowering the aura without Serena (allows her friends to be able to safely leave her 1 kilometer range.)
    1. Spell Bindings
    2. Can the aura be put into enchantment form?
    3. Can the effect be narrowed to target the user?

I would guess that Serena would like to work on the first or last ones quite a lot. From our viewpoint the second one is the most urgent though.
 
@inverted_helix - Possibly invalid numbers on the jobs listing?

We should have 6 greens on jobs, not 3. (plan had pushed 3 more greens on the couriers to free up 3 vets) And it's missing the 3 vets on restaurant delivery.

Also, Support total should be 8 vets, not 8.5 (assuming turn-specific support isn't included in the standing number)
Translator: +$5500 per turn
We need to get Keiko working on cloning Haikano :p

Seto on the other hand flees the moment she can from Serena, or worse is nearly catatonic when she's transformed.
Gonna pull Seto off the Tokyo operation in general. There are too many risks, and she can't seem to handle the aura. Will leave her on hunting support.

Now, with Seto assisting on hunting, the difference between plans is:

Do normal hunt. 84.5 cubes. 15 vets. Uses 12 sets of full kevlar.
Do static hunt (no DS change): 72.7 cubes, 14 vets
Do DS0 hunt (drop DS to 0 in both sides): 54.6 cubes, 9.5 vets

All of these leave out any rural hunting.

The main choice of which is viable comes down to how many cubes we collect from Tokyo. If we're averaging 10 per class 3 kill (5 drop, 5 bounty), even a handful of kills vastly outstrips any need to focus on the local hunting. But if we don't get those cubes, for whatever reason, then going with the low hunt is going to severely hurt us on the cube buffer front. We're currently sitting at an 89% buffer.


Using 9.5 vets on hunting, plus support, jobs, and training, and 1 vet assigned as liaison to coordinate with the Nagoya teams, we'll have 23.5 vets available. So, set that as your upper limit when working through how we want to build teams. Also consider any other actions we may want to take this turn, if we can manage to not use up the entire allocation.
 
Concentrated Hope Medicine (finding a way to encapsulate the aura into a charm or enchantment that can apply it to girls grief spiraling past the effectiveness of grief cubes)
  1. Temporary solution of teleportation inside her aura?
    1. Are there addiction risks?
We already know, from helix's own mention, that any use of Serena's aura on a spiraling girl is between 85 and 95% permanently addictive. I believe helix's words on the matter were "almost definitely never leave the aura again."
 
We already know, from helix's own mention, that any use of Serena's aura on a spiraling girl is between 85 and 95% permanently addictive. I believe helix's words on the matter were "almost definitely never leave the aura again."

1: Quote please. As I recall nothing of the sort. As I recall, the comment in question was about girls struggling with depression. In other words, girls with 0 morale. Grief Spirals != depression.

2: Since we are dealing with an alternative of certain death, 85% to 95% addiction rate sounds pretty good.
 
We can always know if we're teleport safe because they can't teleport onto us if the eyeball is nearby
This is not actually confirmed; just an assumption that it affects other demons as well as magical girls.

Also, if my little speculation about the interdiction leading to its labyrinth is correct, it doesn't matter if it interdicts other demons. They just don't get to arrive at the fight directly, but might surprise us when trying to chase down the beholder.
 
On what grounds would she object?

"No absolutely not! Let those girls die! Better than having them forced into staying in a nice home with me and work on research projects."

:eyebrow:
I guess I value freedom of movement too highly then? Were I in Serena's position, I certainly wouldn't like having additional people being forced to stay within a kilometer of me or cease to exist.
 
1: Quote please. As I recall nothing of the sort. As I recall, the comment in question was about girls struggling with depression. In other words, girls with 0 morale. Grief Spirals != depression.
5. Discuss the possibility of hope anchors and teleport anchors to bring spiraling girls into Serena's aura.
While she wouldn't say no to it if the other option was their death, they'd almost certainly not be able to leave again.
 
Combined with the knowledge that they can sense meguca from several km away without clairvoyant powers, it seems more likely that it hears a call we can't when fighting breaks out, or it would always appear to deal with Nagoya raids (which are the biggest danger to their hunting system).

Another point in favor of this speculation; if it was clairvoyant, at least outside it's miasma, it would be capable of catching fleeing teleporters more than once. There's good reason to believe it can tell where you are anywhere in the miasma, but outside is another story.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Furthermore, clairvoyants are not effective against teleporters. Clairvoyants would have to sweep large areas to figure out where a teleporter hopped to. Following running girls is easier. Indeed, the ability of the demon to teleport onto fleeing girls who are running tends to weakly support clairvoyant hypothesis. Though perhaps the ability to sense magic girls is precise enough to allow accurate teleportation.

Speaking of people making assumptions without basis, that's a cool 80% probability you pulled up, there. To counter, I'll point out that the class 3 Seto fought got it's surprise round because it had stealth abilities. Even if a teleporter were to drop directly on the backup, unless it's also clairvoyant, it has no way to know exactly where it'll land, and even then, barrier girls or barrier charms are effective enough to mount a defense even in the miasma long enough for us to react.

Yes. Stealth can give a surprise round. Traditionally, so can teleportation.

Furthermore, I guarantee at least a few of those 20 teleporting demons are clairvoyant.

Furthermore, even those that aren't clairvoyant might get lucky, and roll higher initiative.

In a surprise round it's probable that our barrier girls will not be able to react in time to block the first attacks.

You are right that the 80% probability is a WAG, maybe it's only 70%. My point is that it is a high risk tactic.

You are not making a persuasive case for it.

We can always know if we're teleport safe because they can't teleport onto us if the eyeball is nearby, and barring that, by teleporting the rubber balls a few feet around the team, onto Serena's team, and in a specific direction chosen as a retreat area, on regular intervals.

A demon teleports in, we have to take the time to figure out if it's the eyeball or not,and then everyone get to the teleporter. It kills a girl. Oh, now we see that it isn't an eyeball, safe to teleport escape.

I don't count that as a win, do you?

Similarly with the ball idea, it takes time. Time that we don't have.

Exactly. 1 km per minute is the speed I was assuming, accounting for obstacles. It does consider the labyrinth, because the point of keeping them within 1 km of Serena is that unless the 4 teleports directly on top of her (and even if it does), we're able to react quickly enough that Serena can lure it into the rest of the support as they're moving forward, negating the time delay, or if it teleports, reducing it to less than 5 minutes total.

So you are assuming double the normal human speed, including obstacles, and you assume that we will be within a kilometer, something that I demonstrated quite clearly is high risk, and you assume that 5 minutes is not going to be too late.

Again, everything was accounted for. Teleporters, if they can even teleport if the eye is nearby, will be within a minute's run, or even a teleport of our own (due to preparations), less if Serena's team does a tactical retreat to lure it closer, and the eye itself either won't teleport to ensure we can't do so either, or will teleport and we can use the same delay/retreat tactic to give the team time to catch up.

This isn't even a response to what I pointed out. You claimed that clairvoyants could warn us about miasma moving towards Serena and thus we would not be caught by surprise. I pointed out that teleporting demons negate this, as there will be no miasma moving towards Serena, just suddenly a demon where there was none before.
 
Now, with Seto assisting on hunting, the difference between plans is:

Do normal hunt. 84.5 cubes. 15 vets. Uses 12 sets of full kevlar.
Do static hunt (no DS change): 72.7 cubes, 14 vets
Do DS0 hunt (drop DS to 0 in both sides): 54.6 cubes, 9.5 vets

All of these leave out any rural hunting.

The main choice of which is viable comes down to how many cubes we collect from Tokyo. If we're averaging 10 per class 3 kill (5 drop, 5 bounty), even a handful of kills vastly outstrips any need to focus on the local hunting. But if we don't get those cubes, for whatever reason, then going with the low hunt is going to severely hurt us on the cube buffer front. We're currently sitting at an 89% buffer.


Using 9.5 vets on hunting, plus support, jobs, and training, and 1 vet assigned as liaison to coordinate with the Nagoya teams, we'll have 23.5 vets available. So, set that as your upper limit when working through how we want to build teams. Also consider any other actions we may want to take this turn, if we can manage to not use up the entire allocation.

Hmm... plan I have has us with 24 vets during Stages 1 and 2.

Stage 1 will likely take a few days if everything goes well and we move to Stage 2, which may last two weeks?

Alternatively Stage 1 stirs up the hornets nest and we jump to Stage three after a few days, greatly reducing our meguca needs.

I think we ought to plan on the DS0 hunt, but with a list of various actions as "back up plans" assuming we move to Stage 3 early and don't need as many girls on support. With some of those back up plans including hunting the DS higher.
 
So you are assuming double the normal human speed, including obstacles, and you assume that we will be within a kilometer, something that I demonstrated quite clearly is high risk, and you assume that 5 minutes is not going to be too late.
5 min is in fact an eternity in combat. As long as we're comparing one game to another, in Shadowrun's 10-second rounds 5 minutes is 30 rounds of combat; in D&D terms it's 50. How often do you see 50 rounds of combat in D&D?

So yeah, probably not a good idea. On the other hand, we're talking 4 Elites (Mami, Taya, Kyoko, Kyo-clone), several pairs of tandem barrier-girls, and lots of shooters against a Class 3; that's not a terribly bad scenario. And we don't actually need Serena to arrive at the battle; all we need is her aura, as that will turn the fight into an easy win.

What we need are quick "keep-alive" packets bouncing between Serena's group and the rearguard. Demon miasma will cut off cell service, acting as sort of a dead man's switch informing the other group of an attacking demon. If Serena doesn't hear from the rearguard then she moves to assist; the fight should be over in seconds as the Class 3 turns to mush and Mami orders a full-on bombardment attack. If the rearguard doesn't hear from Serena it's because she's under attack and they need to move in ASAP; that's the tougher scenario because Serena and her group need to avoid being instantly overwhelmed, but they have an Elite+ barrier girl in the aura so they should be fine.
I think we ought to plan on the DS0 hunt, but with a list of various actions as "back up plans" assuming we move to Stage 3 early and don't need as many girls on support. With some of those back up plans including hunting the DS higher.
Do you think we should try to buy more cubes from the Coalition and 15/16? How much are they going to charge?
 
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Furthermore, I guarantee at least a few of those 20 teleporting demons are clairvoyant.

Furthermore, even those that aren't clairvoyant might get lucky, and roll higher initiative.

In a surprise round it's probable that our barrier girls will not be able to react in time to block the first attacks.

You are right that the 80% probability is a WAG, maybe it's only 70%. My point is that it is a high risk tactic.
You just brought out three qualifiers that increase the difficulty of getting a surprise round, on top of the additional qualifier that they won't necessarily one-off their target, and are still stubbornly standing above 50%. Hell, you're still sitting above 30% which seems like a significantly more accurate risk assessment given what you yourself qualified for the chance of occurrence, and even then I feel like that's a pretty conservative estimate and would put it at 20% or less that a girl is killed before any of our people can react to it.
A demon teleports in, we have to take the time to figure out if it's the eyeball or not,and then everyone get to the teleporter. It kills a girl. Oh, now we see that it isn't an eyeball, safe to teleport escape.

I don't count that as a win, do you?

Similarly with the ball idea, it takes time. Time that we don't have.
Why would we have to figure out if it's the eyeball or not if it's standing on top of us and we've been regularly testing teleport safety up until the attack? Under those conditions there's effectively no reason to believe we're suddenly not able to teleport because something teleported onto us unless we see, for a fact, that it's the beholder or the labyrinth.
So you are assuming double the normal human speed, including obstacles, and you assume that we will be within a kilometer, something that I demonstrated quite clearly is high risk, and you assume that 5 minutes is not going to be too late.
Double? You just said 7 minutes to 5 km yourself. At worst, I'm assuming a 50% increase on the human ideal, not unbelievable at all. You also ignore my mention of using delay and retreat as a means of getting Serena closer to the group, something we know works, considering Nagoya is capable of retreating from the beholder without teleportation well enough that it has had to teleport onto them to keep up.
 
We knew there would be casualties going in. I think it would be worth it.

There is a difference between acknowledging that avoiding all risk is impossible, and deciding that we should not try to avoid risk.

Saying that we have to choose between never leaving the house, and speeding down the highway at 100 mph on a motorcycle without a helmet is a false dilemma.

I'm not arguing against all risk, I'm arguing against high risk that serves no purpose.

Or did you not read the rest of my post that you quoted?

Still got a dead girl. Is that worth it?

Probably, if we had no other options, but we do have other options.
 
So yeah, probably not a good idea. On the other hand, we're talking 4 Elites (Mami, Taya, Kyoko, Kyo-clone), several pairs of tandem barrier-girls, and lots of shooters against a Class 3; that's not a terribly bad scenario. And we don't actually need Serena to arrive at the battle; all we need is her aura, as that will turn the fight into an easy win.

Actually I was assuming Serena + 4 girls vs the beholder (and any friends it decides to bring along). As I figure they will strike at the source of the threat.

However, let's assume it drops in on us in the support team instead. So it gets a surprise round in, then we mange to get a call out to Serena, so it gets another round in, and then Serena's aura shows up. (Assuming that the beholder space manipulation effect does not impact the range of Serena's aura). Now we have more power, oh, but we also have the overconfidence malus making us take unneeded risks. Will we win? Probably, but the casualty level will likely be devastating.

Obviously not all of this risk can be avoided, but having us hanging around within 1 kilometer of Serena all the time will greatly increase the risk.
 
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