Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)

[Diomedea]

More problems!

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It's like we're in a PMMM quest!

I'm against losing Mami's apartment. I'm also against letting any of our girls leave for an outpost, but sometimes things are beyond our control. I really need to sit down and do some number crunching so I can have an informed opinion on which route we should do.

 

[inverted_helix]

I'm against it. It's a noticeable if minor morale drop, and right now our morale is a little dangerously low. It also provides us with 3 housing (IIRC). If we could have some exact numbers I might be more for it but right now I don't think it's worth it.

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It does provide 3 housing (so technically you're at 53 capacity now. Though keep in mind that as you approach max capacity in the future you'll get morale penalties for being cramped.

It's like we're in a PMMM quest!

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lol

Something to keep in mind here is I'm attempting to find a fuzzy hybrid point in difficulty between the genres I'm working with. There's the PMMM genre where everything is one nightmare after another, and the Empire quest genre (insomuch as something with such a micro-audience can be called a genre) where things usually go unrealistically well.

Also contemplating reshuffling the way I show the resources at the end of turns. It's a bit convoluted now since it's just grown organically as more things popped up.

It'd actually be even more if we cut out dispatch and assigned 2 of the 3 into hunting, but I think that pushes the casualty rate a little high. (6.5 hunters+dispatch = 29.25 average, 8.5 hunters = 30.6 average but comes with expected .34 casualties instead of .195)

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Dispatch being significantly less effective with solo hunting is intentional, it should make sense if you think about the actual things it involves.

 

[notgreat]

Dispatch being significantly less effective with solo hunting is intentional, it should make sense if you think about the actual things it involves.

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I agree entirely.

Any chance on getting some approximate numbers for the research/training I proposed last turn? (analysis of solo hunting and setting up a support system of probably a teleporter/observer)

 

[Elder Haman]

Yes, it does. In case you wanted the exact quote.

Yeah, average of 0.1 girls die with my plan. It's not ideal, but we should be getting those member numbers back as we expand. It is a price, no doubt, but one that I think is worth paying considering we get 4 free people this way. It'd actually be even more if we cut out dispatch and assigned 2 of the 3 into hunting, but I think that pushes the casualty rate a little high. (6.5 hunters+dispatch = 29.25 average, 8.5 hunters = 30.6 average but comes with expected .34 casualties instead of .195)


I'm against it. It's a noticeable if minor morale drop, and right now our morale is a little dangerously low. It also provides us with 3 housing (IIRC). If we could have some exact numbers I might be more for it but right now I don't think it's worth it.


Oh. Hm. That penalty could be very important or it could be nothing major. I suppose not going <0 in our main territory might be a good idea then, just test it out in the rural area and see what happens.
If I add 1 more hunter we get to stay above 0 unless we get really unlucky.

Also, how about letting 2 veteran girls go out together? Then we'd have a group that can actually do diplomacy actions, and they could support each other. We could definitely drop our 1k veteran worker, since that income is going to go way down it seems.

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Okay, people seem to be against dropping Mami's apartment, how about one of our other apartments?

Also, with the new info on stacking bonuses there is a 10% chance at least one girl will die next turn with the Solo hunting plan.

Not that bad a risk... still I think I prefer Pack Hunting for now.

If I understand your suggestion right you want to try something inbetween Pack and Solo Hunting, something like Pair Hunting.

 

[inverted_helix]

Any chance on getting some approximate numbers for the research/training I proposed last turn? (analysis of solo hunting and setting up a support system of probably a teleporter/observer)

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Thinking about it from a in world standpoint I'm not sure how cost effective it will be. I mean essentially you'd need to delay your hunters until an observer is available.

-scribbles on notes in background-

It is a good idea (which I really like to reward), and there's some relatively simple ways I can adjust what I'd originally intended. I just have to tweak telepathy limits a little so they can act as a conference call node for a handful of people rather than only working with one on one calls. Thinking something like her being able to connect 5 people + herself at a time, then just rotating to those in combat to cover a larger group as the people in transit don't need the connection. They can call in advance with their phone if they need a line.

Teleporters in my current thoughts require a general direction from their current location to their target location and an image of the target area (to prevent horrible death by telefragging), but they don't have to see it personally.

Okay, I'll give the following action option:
[] Evac Team: A telepath will stay in rotating contact with all girls hunting, with them waiting to engage until a telepath line is freed up if necessary. The hunters will also call in their positions before engaging so that coordinates are available. If they are injured the telepath will relay the endangered girl's view of the scene to a teleporter that waits with her at readiness to pull the injured girl out of the situation.
Cost: 2 Veterans (Telepath and Teleporter); Reward: Lethality modifier on solo hunting reduced from 50% to 30%.

It doesn't include a healer because you don't need a full time healer for this role, the teleporter can just go fetch one as needed. However the teleporter does need to be on alert to have the necessary response speed. (Dying of bleeding out etc after being pulled out is a lot slower than dying from the demon finishing you in the combat zone.)

(You might want to rerun math for switching out of dispatch with this version.)

 

[Asael]

So how do others feel about dropping Mami's apartment?

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Probably not a good idea to take a hit to morale when we are already facing a crisis.



Notgreat has a point about GC being our most valuable commodity right now- at the same time using healing in the way Elder Haman described my help us lose fewer girls.

On one hand, losing girls will probably hit morale some, even if they do remain in contact. On the other it might let us get some preliminary scouting for far off area's, and potentially lessen the pressure to expand. With a potential GC crunch, I'm not sure whether morale or on hand GC's will prove more decisive.

Normally, I'm in favor of pack hunting but Notgreat's scouting plan strikes me as very useful in this situation.

I think I'll hold off on voting for a little while because these votes tend to get revised a few times.


@notgreat , have you considered expanding on your Kyoko vote?, Past votes have shown that adding fluff can have a positive effect on the outcome.

 

[Elder Haman]

Evac. Team certainly makes the Solo Hunting more safe. Might change my vote.

@inverted_helix

Hmm... what is the Dispatch team benefit in grief cube productivity for Solo Hunting?

@notgreat
Beyond the disagreement on Solo or Pack Hunting, what are your thoughts about the other parts of my plan?
Do you oppose inducting Ayase formally as a member of the Serenes?
Do you oppose getting a water purifier and documentation for our house having pure water so that the girls can stay in town?

 

[Felius]

Question: Would dedicating the shrine to "Hope" in a way that feel incredibly appropriate even if you can't tell why (that is, rather close to Medoka thematically) be too meta, or would that be fine?

 

[inverted_helix]

@inverted_helix

Hmm... what is the Dispatch team benefit in grief cube productivity for Solo Hunting?

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I was originally going to adjust the multiplier down, but doing some spreadsheet work it seems like it's already naturally penalized enough by you having fewer hunters in the field for the multiplier to act on, and I don't want to further tweak it as that would make it too weak. (It's already advantageous from a grief cube and labor perspective to not do dispatch for solo hunting, and the only benefit is the small edge in casualty rate, which was pretty much the goal.)

Question: Would dedicating the shrine to "Hope" in a way that feel incredibly appropriate even if you can't tell why (that is, rather close to Medoka thematically) be too meta, or would that be fine?

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I think that would be too meta. Especially given it's currently just a shrine to the dead.

 

[Elder Haman]

I was originally going to adjust the multiplier down, but doing some spreadsheet work it seems like it's already naturally penalized enough by you having fewer hunters in the field for the multiplier to act on, and I don't want to further tweak it as that would make it too weak. (It's already advantageous from a grief cube and labor perspective to not do dispatch for solo hunting, and the only benefit is the small edge in casualty rate, which was pretty much the goal.)

I think that would be too meta. Especially given it's currently just a shrine to the dead.

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Hmm...

Then dropping dispatch can be done at the cost of adding approx. two hunters to get the same number of grief cubes. That's a savings of one grief cube, but at the cost of +1 risk of injury.

A major problem with @notgreat 's plan is that it produces less then 30 grief cubes. We really need to rebuild our grief cube stockpile, and we need a minimum of 29 just to stay even, assuming no grief spirals.

Hmm.. so possible picks are (from lowest risk to the highest risk):

Baseline (my current plan): 11 Pack Hunters w/ Rotating Tactics = expected 31 grief cube harvest, no change to upkeep, and 0% chance of injury. Probability that demon strength goes down.

12 Pack Hunters w/ Rotating Tactics = expected 34 grief cube harvest, no change to upkeep, and probably 0% chance of injury. Probability that demon strength stays the same. Can't do any scouting of area 8 this turn.

7 Solo Hunters, keep dispatch = expected 31.5 grief cube harvest, and an extra 4 to work with, possibly 5.5 if we drop the pack hunting. That's a 5% chance of injury. General Combat Training for 2 vets gives us an additional an additional -1% casualty bonus. If we assign 2 to Evac. Team then that's 1.2% chance of fatality per a girl. So about 8% chance of at least one girl dying. With 0 to 1.5 extra vets to work with. But we gain that -1% bonus as semi-permanent bonus, it doesn't have upkeep.

7 Solo Hunters, keep dispatch = expected 31.5 grief cube harvest, and an extra 4 to work with, possibly 5.5 if we drop the pack hunting. That's a 5% chance of injury. If we assign 2 to Evac. Team then that's 1.5% chance of fatality per a girl. So about 10% chance of at least one girl dying. With 2 to 3.5 extra vets to work with.

9 Solo Hunters, drop dispatch = expected 32 grief cube harvest, and an extra 5 vets to work with, possibly 6.5 if we drop the pack hunting. That's a 6% chance of injury. Assign 2 to General combat training which gives us an additional -1% bonus. If we assign 2 to Evac. Team then that's 1.5% chance of fatality per a girl. So about 13% chance of at least one girl dying. With 1 to 2.5 extra vets to work with. But we gain that -1% bonus as semi-permanent bonus, it doesn't have upkeep.

9 Solo Hunters, drop dispatch = expected 32 grief cube harvest, and an extra 5 vets to work with, possibly 6.5 if we drop the pack hunting. That's a 6% chance of injury. If we assign 2 to Evac. Team then that's 1.8% chance of fatality per a girl. So about 15% chance of at least one girl dying. With 3 to 4.5 extra vets to work with.

.... I don't really like the risk of dropping the dispatch team. And the gains in man power are minimal when not dropping the dispatch team. It just seems like we don't get much gain yet. I mean... the Evac. Team makes me a lot more open to taking the risk of Solo Hunting, but I don't really feel we are at that point this month. I'd rather buckle down on getting Kyouko and scouting the Area 8 and expand in to Kasimono then try to expand into the rural areas anyway. I don't think we really want to deal with large rural areas anyway, they are definitely suboptimal areas for grief cube harvesting. Especially since we don't know yet the penalty for going under 0 Demon strength in those areas.

Really the major difference between notgreat and my plan is the mini-outposts versus keeping all our girls together. I am really opposed to mini-outposts with just one or two girls going off by themselves. I think we need to send at least Mami and 3 or 4 Vets with them. So the only reason I see to risk Solo Hunting this month is if we are going to go the outpost route.

I much prefer we get our extra documents and try to keep all the girls here in town. Outposts later on when we are more prepared for it (say in 6 months) I think is an attractive possibility, but not this month. We want to establish them strongly, not throw them out there and hope for the best.

I think the decision tree for voters should be something like this:

Outposts or Boarding House. If Outposts look at a Solo Hunting option. If Boarding House look at Pack Hunting. If Pack Hunting ask if you are more concerned about grief cube stock piles or expansion. If grief cube stockpile pick the 12 hunters. If expansion pick 11 hunters and scouting area 8.

@inverted_helix
Is the cost of General Combat Refresher course 2 Vets? Or could we do it for 1.5 Vets? That might make dropping Pack Tactics more desirable.

Also, what are the numbers for Pair Hunting instead of Solo or Pack?

 

[inverted_helix]

Baseline (my current plan): 11 Pack Hunters w/ Rotating Tactics = expected 31 grief cube harvest, no change to upkeep, and 0% chance of injury. Probability that demon strength goes down.

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The way Rotating Tactics work is basically (baseline demon strength change)*(fraction). It decreases any increases, but doesn't make it drop on its own. It's designed for an oscillation approach to hunting, not to just generate a drop from no where. This is what I decided to avoid some of the more obvious exploits. It actually says so on the action.

Is the cost of General Combat Refresher course 2 Vets? Or could we do it for 1.5 Vets? That might make dropping Pack Tactics more desirable.

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Hmm, I suppose I can bump it down to 1.5 vets, since it's half as much of an improvement as the original but your population is 50% higher (2*.5*1.5 = 1.5)

Also, what are the numbers for Pair Hunting instead of Solo or Pack?

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Hmm I suppose I can just let you have a pure hybrid if it will help compromise your long running debates.

[] Hunting Pairs: Magical Girls will hunt in pairs reducing the danger, but because they are not covering as much area their efficiency is reduced. Death is less likely.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward 1.6 Grief Cubes per Meguca assigned; 16% base casualty chance

This should be a reasonable result of hybridizing them I think. To a degree I expect one person being injured and one covering them isn't nearly as effective as multiple, since it basically puts one person on defense protecting the injured, in a group the others can move the injured away or kill the demon, with pairs your options are more limited. 40% death chance. Modify to 20% with the evac team.

Though I suspect that this will actually just greatly increase the size of your decision matrix without making it any easier.

 

[notgreat]

What exactly would you be trying to get him to say? He is not willing to lie to contractees.

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Well, why would people not want to join us? We have reliable grief cubes, act as a support system, and a bunch of other things that are huge upgrades over going alone or in a very small group. I assume that they would suspect us of lying, or they would think that we're on the edge in terms of cubes, or otherwise in a very risky situation. Kyuubey could assure them that we're not lying, that we have almost a full month's worth of cube reserves (and that that's reasonable given a group our size) and that we're not likely to collapse immediately.


@Elder Haman I'm willing to drop the outpost actions. We could do more scouting to get some more territory in rural areas (or area 1 if we think the risk is worth it), or we could use those to reduce lethality. Obviously if we're not doing outposts we have to get the filters and papers, no questions there. Our skills in counterfeiting are pretty horrible I suspect.

The thing I'm opposed to is sitting still and doing pack hunting which means we get basically no work done, we get Kyouko and 1 scouting action. If we go with 6.5 solo hunters and get all the available bonuses (4 people spent) , we lose an average of 0.0585 people. That's comparable with our rate of loss per spiral. And I think we can drop our veteran 1k/month worker along with 1-2 of our apartments, which gives us enough people to scout every non-rural area available (sans Kyouko's). (Assuming we drop pack hunting training as well)
Though I do think another sports day is still a good idea, our morale needs the boost.I agree that keeping dispatch is a good choice right now, the casualty reduction they provide is definitely worthwhile. Especially with our morale as low as it currently is.

note: just saw the new Hunting Pairs. Stay at sustainable and do the general training, it should be a 0% casualty chance. Working out the math for a full plan now.

 

[notgreat]

Sorry for the double post, but I think this is a good compromise plan that gets things done.

[X]Upkeep: 7 Veteran, 5 Green
-[X] shift one green into courier business, remove the 1k/month veteran, stop doing Dispatch

[X] Hunting Pairs: Magical Girls will hunt in pairs reducing the danger, but because they are not covering as much area their efficiency is reduced. Death is less likely. 11 Veterans = 31.68 GCs average
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward 1.6 Grief Cubes per Meguca assigned; 16% base casualty chance

[X] Scout Areas 5,8: You can deploy a veteran to scout out one of the territories around you stealthily. They should be able to gauge the demon strength there and the magical girls status there without tipping them off, hopefully.
Cost: 1 Veteran x2; Chance of success: 70%; Reward: information on demon strength, support capacity of the territory, and status of current magical girls in the territory, bonus to diplomatic efforts.

[X] Talk to Kyouko, it's been a long time.
Cost: Mami; Reward: Variable; Chance of Success: ???

[X] Defending each other: With only two fighters there's significant danger that if one is injured the other will be just as crippled by the need to defend the injured one. In larger groups this problem is alleviated as at least one person can always remain on the offense. Training girls in how to defend a companion without endangering themselves will help.
Cost: 3 veterans; Reward: -2% paired casualties, -1% pack hunting casualties (subject to decay)

[X] Fake documentation: You can personally make up some vaguely official looking documents to say the water at your house is safe, though you'd want to at least have some fancy looking filter system you could attribute it to.
Cost: $5000; Reward: Water purifier, girls parents possibly reassured enough to leave children here
-[X] Addon: Kyuubey offered to arrange actual official documentation for you.
Cost: 2 grief cubes; Reward: Greatly reduced chance of ruse being discovered.
-[X] Negotiate with owner for a temporary rent reduction in exchange for purchasing and installing the water purifier.

As I was thinking through this plan I realized that keeping the apartments is a good idea because we've been told that having extra space is good for morale, which we do need to get up. We do have to lose 1k/month to get the extra veteran, but I think that's worth it to do the +morale action. I'm open to be convinced though.


edit: keeping pack training and removing repeated general combat training due to revealed mechanics of pair casualty rates.
edit2: Added in new "Defending each other" training, losing dispatch, scouting, and group morale in exchange.

 

[Asael]

[X] Notgreat

 

[Elder Haman]

@notgreat

Haven't had the chance to run the numbers myself, but that seems like a reasonable compromise.

Is there a reason you object to making Ayase an associate member?

Or that you object to the add-ons to talking with Kyouko?

I assume you reject the healing business because of the grief cube cost. How do you feel about making it family members only? I think that will be a huge major contributor to morale if the girls feel they are helping their families.

EDIT:
Hmm...

@inverted_helix

What are the -% casualty bonuses associated with Solo Hunting training for Pair Hunting. I assume no less then the -1% for Pack Hunting. What about the bonus for Pack Tactics? does any of it apply to Pair Hunting? And what about the cellphone bonus (which currently applies only to solo hunting) does any of that bonus apply to Pair Hunting?

Sorry notgreat, I'm guessing that a reasonable application of these bonuses will apply and that then Pair hunting comes out as a reasonable compromise, but if none of them do, suddenly Pair Hunting becomes worse then Solo hunting.

20%-16% = 4% vs 16% - 6% = 10% (assuming the solo and pack bonus don't apply to Pair Hunting).

Say Solo Tactics gives -2% to Pair Hunting, and cell phones the full -2%, that's still only a -8% bonus, so 6% risk... but at 30% chance of death. Results in 1.8% chance of death per a girl, or a total of 15% chance of at least one girl dying.

Gah!

If we get Evac. Team as well that's a 20% chance of death, so 1.2% chance of death per a girl so a touch more then 10% chance of at least one girl dying...

@inverted_helix What are the costs and bonuses associated with Pair Hunting Tactic training?

I just want to make sure things are clear before changing my vote.

 

[landcollector]

Caught up to this. Very interesting, so far. Notgreat's plan seems feasible to me after looking it over, so:

[X] Notgreat

 

[Elder Haman]

Sigh...

Why is no one even willing to talk about Ayase, or about the healing service?

Did people just go "Wall of Text" and decide to ignore it?

Or you know, wait until we actually know if Pair Hunting does what people are assuming it does?

 

[landcollector]

Sigh...

Why is no one even willing to talk about Ayase, or or the healing service?

Did people just go "Wall of Text" and decide to ignore it?

Or you know, wait until we actually know if Pair Hunting does what people are assuming it does?

Click to shrink...

Remind me about Ayase?

 

[Elder Haman]

Remind me about Ayase?

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Ayase is the girl that found out the secret of Magical girls, but is not a magical girl herself, nor does she have the potential to become a magical girl. Kuybey wanted to mind wipe her, but we convinced him not to. She is friendly towards us an helped us last month in researching the effect of magical on normal humans.

Plans I voted for this month regarding her:

[] Mami decides she needs to meet with Ayase and formalize the relationship. Asking Ayase over to her apartment so she can speak with her alone, Mami of course prepares the traditional cake and tea. When Ayase arrives, Mami thanks her for helping out with researching magical effects last month. Mami tells her that she would like to formalize Ayase's relationship with by making her a Serene Associate member.

While there are many things that only Magical Girls can do (such as fight Demons), there is also the need for normal work to earn money to support the team with housing and food, and everything else. Mami explains that with the recent crisis of the water supplies, she would like to put one of the girls on healing duty, but this requires ever more grief cubes to support them.

She would like to ask Ayase to take the place of one of the veterans currently working as a waitress so that the veteran can harvest grief cubes instead. Mami points out that she realizes this doesn't make as much sense for a normal girl to surrender her salary to the group when she doesn't need grief cubes herself, but there are a some things the Serene Imperium can offer as compensation. First, just like the other girls, Associate members would receive the monthly stipend. Second, Associate members can use the Serene housing if they need it. So if Ayase's family decides to move, they will offer Ayase the chance to stay at their boarding house just like they will be offering the other girls. Third, just as their healing service will be giving first priority to magical girl family members if they get sick, Associates and their family will also have priority in receiving care from the Serene healing service. Finally, Ayase would have the satisfaction of knowing she is helping the Serene Imperium protect the city of Mitakihara. Mami asks Ayase if she is willing to agree to those conditions.

[] Mami decided to use the new house to hold a full team meeting. She discusses the current crisis of the water supply with them. She informs them that she talked with Kuybey, and he confirmed that their magic will protect them from contaminated water, so none of them need to worry about drinking water themselves, but their families are not protected.

The Serene Imperium will be setting up a healing service to heal those harmed by the contaminated water, and first priority will be given to any family member of a Serene. Mami notes that this will require higher grief cube harvesting for to support this service. For those concerned about their families moving out of town, they will masquerade as a boarding house for girls, and will offer rooms to girls of families moving out of town so that they can finish out the school year. They will be purchasing a water filter and get documentation to show that the water is safe in the house. Mami notes that the water may not actually be safe for non-magical girls, so be sure to have bottled water to offer to any non-magical girls that come over.

If Ayase has agreed to join, then Mami introduces her as the first Serene Associate member and holds a little induction ceremony.

[] Start your own business, healing: Now might be a great chance to start this business, with a lot of people interested in extra ways to protect themselves. 1 Veteran meguca for now. Purchase miko and nun outfits for Yuma, Sayaka, and Hinako, setup a website where people can request a visit and pay initial donation, print up company business cards to hand out with website address. (-$1,500). Together they look up books and descriptions of exorcisms and other purification ceremonies, and practice some mummery on how to cover their healing as a religious/spiritual ceremony. Customers make the request and we visit them at home, they never know where our headquarters is.
-[]Two pricing models:

Family: Family members of Serenes (including associates) no initial donation charged for visit. After healing, request for a donation, with the size of donation left to the choice of the family healed.

Everyone else: Initial donation of $1,000 required for an initial visit to "determine how serious the contamination is." After initial visit we ask for another donation depending on how rich the potential customer is, which we justify with describing how serious the contamination is and how expensive the "cleansing regents" are. For the poor we ask for no further donation, and increase with apparent wealth up to a maximum of $5,000 for the truly wealthy.
Limit of 6 grief cube expenditure this month, unless a family member is in serious need, in which case a limit of 10 is approved. Family members get priority in order of treatment.
Cost: Minimum 1 veteran meguca, .5-1 grief cubes per customer, attention; Reward: ??? Highly variable. Likely to increase over time.

Other then Pair vs Pack hunting (which I might change based on the bonus clarification from the QM) this is the main difference between my plan and notgreat's. Since he seems to be concerned about the potential grief cube impact I was wondering if we could just limit it to family members.

The other main difference is that I had add-ons to the Kyouko talk to try and make it more successful:

[] Talk to Kyouko, it's been a long time.
Cost: Mami; Reward: Variable; Chance of Success: ???
-[] Bring Kyouko's favorite cake and apple pie, suggest a picnic as our meeting place to talk
-[] Shamelessly exploit Kyouko's protectiveness towards the youngest, such as Yuma, when talking to her about how great our organization is
-[] Invite her to come see the house
-[] Addon, Double Bribery: Giving the girls some money might help them realize just how good for them cooperation could be. You don't need to rob ATMs anymore Kyouko!
Cost: $300 per girl in the territory; Reward: +1d15% success chance

 

[Mecrazyfang]

@Elder Haman I like all of these ideas.

I'd like to point out one problem with the water solution: taste. Imagine drinking scummy pond-water, or eating burnt pancakes, all month. Tell me how that makes you feel. Tell me how you think that'd affect teen and pre-teen girls already forced to fight for their lives.

 

[Elder Haman]

@Elder Haman I like all of these ideas.

I'd like to point out one problem with the water solution: taste. Imagine drinking scummy pond-water, or eating burnt pancakes, all month. Tell me how that makes you feel. Tell me how you think that'd affect teen and pre-teen girls already forced to fight for their lives.

Click to shrink...

Uhh... not sure what your point is?

1: The "water solution" is all about convincing parents it's safe to leave their children here.

2: We haven't been told if the water tastes funny

3: We are getting a water filter, so the water should taste better, except this chemical that no one can do anything about.

4: We aren't preventing girls from drinking bottled water if they prefer to...

 

[Mecrazyfang]

Uhh... not sure what your point is?

1: The "water solution" is all about convincing parents it's safe to leave their children here.

2: We haven't been told if the water tastes funny

3: We are getting a water filter, so the water should taste better, except this chemical that no one can do anything about.

4: We aren't preventing girls from drinking bottled water if they prefer to...

Click to shrink...

1 - Granted. A very good reason to pull off the 'boarding school' shtick either way.

2 - Water isn't supposed to have much taste at all, being water. Tainted water is almost guaranteed to have an unpleasant taste, unless fully and properly filtered. Since this chemical slipped through the normal filters, it's safe to assume that it bonds well to H2O, making it difficult to cleanse.

3 - See #2. Water filters take out big nasty chunks of stuff, while chemical taints go much deeper. Not quite to the molecular level - usually - but enough so that one more filter on top of the series already in place between the source and the tap, will not make significant headway.

4 - In a situation like this, prices will go up sharply. Sharply enough to make it a viable tactic to drive halfway across Japan and stock up on as many bottles as will fit in the back of a half-dozen rented vans. While bottled water is a good choice, it's likely to sell out very quickly.

 

[notgreat]

Sorry notgreat, I'm guessing that a reasonable application of these bonuses will apply and that then Pair hunting comes out as a reasonable compromise, but if none of them do, suddenly Pair Hunting becomes worse then Solo hunting.

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That is a very good point. I blindly assumed the bonuses would apply, but if it drops by ~2% then it's definitely not worth it (since more hunters = more chance of death) Perhaps we could do some pair-specific training?

Ayase: The main reason we'd be able to get her to join would be through offering her services (like healing). Especially since she'd be taking a 1k/month job just to get a $100/month stipend. And if we aren't starting the healing business, we don't really have much incentive to get her to join.

Healing: You are correct. Right now we have a relative excess of Money and a lack of grief cubes (or more importantly, grief cubes that don't raise strength). That's actually why part of the original point of the outposts was to see if we could build up some trade, exchanging our cash for their cubes. Though with the information about some sort of a downside if we go sub-0 strength, I'm not certain it's worth it. I want to try it out in the rural area, see what happens, and decide from there.
If going sub-0 really does cause huge problems I wouldn't object to starting the business, but I really want to see exactly what it does before we commit a permanent 1-2 GCs/month for a relatively small income. Also, trying to shroud the whole thing in mystery just makes us sound like charlatans, frauds. I certainly wouldn't trust someone who came off the street asking to heal me (exaggeration, yes). If we wanted to reveal to the families that we're basically magic I'd be fine, but seriously, your young teen daughter coming in and saying "I found a bunch of these magic people who are willing to heal you". I'd expect most parents would ban them from hanging out with us in the future. And if we offer proof that comes with its own set of huge problems (ref: QB)

Meeting: Honestly it just felt like they were saying "make sure the girls know what we're doing" which I hope is the default anyway.

Kyouko: They mostly seemed like "try this tactic", most of which were things I'd assume Mami knows about already. I really don't want to have to build up a whole decision tree built into my plans. The votes would grow to be ridiculously huge way too fast. Things like "hunt until 32 cubes obtained, then shift all remaining workers to research, navigating through this large tree graph of specific questions, with all costs done in portions of a cube required for that one question." The GM is reading the thread, so any good ideas like that will probably be incorporated if it fits what's being written. I don't want to plan out the whole meeting, that kinda defeats the point of it.

Though I could see adding in the bribery, that has a direct resource cost so it'd make sense for that to be a required addon. At the same time though I can't help but think that Kyouko with think we're giving her charity and reject it/get angry.

 

[Elder Haman]

1 - Granted. A very good reason to pull off the 'boarding school' shtick either way.

2 - Water isn't supposed to have much taste at all, being water. Tainted water is almost guaranteed to have an unpleasant taste, unless fully and properly filtered. Since this chemical slipped through the normal filters, it's safe to assume that it bonds well to H2O, making it difficult to cleanse.

3 - See #2. Water filters take out big nasty chunks of stuff, while chemical taints go much deeper. Not quite to the molecular level - usually - but enough so that one more filter on top of the series already in place between the source and the tap, will not make significant headway.

4 - In a situation like this, prices will go up sharply. Sharply enough to make it a viable tactic to drive halfway across Japan and stock up on as many bottles as will fit in the back of a half-dozen rented vans. While bottled water is a good choice, it's likely to sell out very quickly.

Click to shrink...

Do you have a proposal to help with the problem? The only thing I can think of is to roll the dice on the purify research.

That is a very good point. I blindly assumed the bonuses would apply, but if it drops by ~2% then it's definitely not worth it (since more hunters = more chance of death) Perhaps we could do some pair-specific training?

Ayase: The main reason we'd be able to get her to join would be through offering her services (like healing). Especially since she'd be taking a 1k/month job just to get a $100/month stipend. And if we aren't starting the healing business, we don't really have much incentive to get her to join.

Healing: You are correct. Right now we have a relative excess of Money and a lack of grief cubes (or more importantly, grief cubes that don't raise strength). That's actually why part of the original point of the outposts was to see if we could build up some trade, exchanging our cash for their cubes. Though with the information about some sort of a downside if we go sub-0 strength, I'm not certain it's worth it. I want to try it out in the rural area, see what happens, and decide from there.
If going sub-0 really does cause huge problems I wouldn't object to starting the business, but I really want to see exactly what it does before we commit a permanent 1-2 GCs/month for a relatively small income. Also, trying to shroud the whole thing in mystery just makes us sound like charlatans, frauds. I certainly wouldn't trust someone who came off the street asking to heal me (exaggeration, yes). If we wanted to reveal to the families that we're basically magic I'd be fine, but seriously, your young teen daughter coming in and saying "I found a bunch of these magic people who are willing to heal you". I'd expect most parents would ban them from hanging out with us in the future. And if we offer proof that comes with its own set of huge problems (ref: QB)

Meeting: Honestly it just felt like they were saying "make sure the girls know what we're doing" which I hope is the default anyway.

Kyouko: They mostly seemed like "try this tactic", most of which were things I'd assume Mami knows about already. I really don't want to have to build up a whole decision tree built into my plans. The votes would grow to be ridiculously huge way too fast. Things like "hunt until 32 cubes obtained, then shift all remaining workers to research, navigating through this large tree graph of specific questions, with all costs done in portions of a cube required for that one question." The GM is reading the thread, so any good ideas like that will probably be incorporated if it fits what's being written. I don't want to plan out the whole meeting, that kinda defeats the point of it.

Though I could see adding in the bribery, that has a direct resource cost so it'd make sense for that to be a required addon. At the same time though I can't help but think that Kyouko with think we're giving her charity and reject it/get angry.

Click to shrink...

On the healing, Japan is very used to having religious/spiritual cleansers do cleansing ceremonies. If someone in the family is sick, and your daughter brings home a miko to preform a free cleansing ceremony, people are not going to say no. If we successfully heal someone, why would they be mad? They'll be over joyed that the cleansing ceremony worked.

Much much worse would be the morale loss due to being able to heal a family member but not being allowed to in order to maintain secrecy. Obviously we can't tell them the truth, but we can leverage religious belief to give our healers cover.

On the meeting and Kyouko, all I can say is that including items like that have in the past had a very positive effect. The QM has also said he appreciates fluff like that being included.

@inverted_helix Do you prefer that we include or don't include things like the meeting and the tactics to take towards Kyouko?

 

[Mecrazyfang]

Do you have a proposal to help with the problem? The only thing I can think of is to roll the dice on the purify research.

Click to shrink...

Well, firstly, road trip. Approach the families of girls in Serene first, and offer to pay them for gas, time, and the incurred costs, if they'll hunt down a silly amount of bottled water from another town. This gets around sending girls out to drive - which is at least as bad of an idea as it sounds, worse if a certain speed-freak gets behind the wheel - and allows us to put that cash to use, instead of burning through Cubes, of which we do not have a comfortable stash.

Secondly, research the possibility of conjuring substances. See if they are temporary or permanent, how costly they are, and if they are safe to consume. Water should be a simple thing to make, compared to, oh say, muskets.

Finally, paranoia hitting me, send a girl or two to investigate where the city's water comes from, and if it is possible that a Demon is responsible. This will mostly involve google searching, making a few phone calls 'for a school research paper', and then ducking in at midnight.