Have to go to bed, fighting off a cold and cannot afford to stay up late.
Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)
- Thread starter inverted_helix
- Start date
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Official word on weening people off Serena is that it will take so much effort in cubes and man-hours, on top of a major research arc, that it's basically unfeasible within a year, let alone that we're focused elsewhere and considering taking on a lot of extra girls.
Heh, bad luck again: 40 girls at 1-in-40 odds puts us at 63.68% odds of having at least one Elite in the mix. Oh well.
So? We've got time; meguca don't even age, so putting them on life support is inherently more moral than leaving them to die. Moreover, these are now two more girls for Serena's Cuddlepile of Death, making her even more potentially effective at dealing with the Tokyo problem.
OK, need to run some numbers to see what things look like.
On the cube side:
Current upkeep (meguca): 74
Current cubes: 114.3
Upkeep if we accept all 40 applicants: 114
Upkeep while using Grief Management: 108.3 (probably not recommended at this time)
Hunting:
Both north and south are at ~0 DS right now, so returning to a standard overhunt balance requires extra effort.
North: 1 solo elite, 11 pair vets
South: 7 pair vets (capped @37 cubes)
Rural: 3 solo vets
Seto teleport (0.5)
NB: Assuming hunters will still be the ones with the experience bonus
Net cubes: 113.2
In other words, we can net 0 this month even with accepting the new applicants.
Future months, if no expansion of territory: 93.4
Basic cube income we'd want, to support 114 meguca:
- Add 8.3 cubes for spirals, assuming absorbing the new applicants drags morale down
- Add 11 cubes for growing the buffer
- Add 10 cubes for research and miscellaneous
Total: ~140
Expected net loss (bare minimum vs what we can harvest): 23.2 cubes per month
However, accepting these 40 into our ranks gives another good wedge on claiming Tokyo territory when it's cleared, and we can expect at least some of the overhead to be covered by our activities in hunting the youma in tokyo.
We can manage at our current balance and expected income for 3 months before things will start looking tight: 1 month of close to net 0, then 2 months of -23 per month puts us at uncomfortable levels. However we should have gained additional cubes from youma kills in the meantime, so it's not really that bad.
On the money side:
Current net income: +$6,580 per month
Food upkeep increases by $4000 per month.
Housing upkeep for 40 more people will be $5,000 per month using apartments, as it's impractical to go for a house for them right now.
Stipend would be $4000 per month.
Misc upkeep increases of +$1200 per month
Net income: -$7,620 per month.
Welcome package (cell phones, bikes, shields, etc): $10,000 (assuming $250 each; might be misremembering)
Current bank balance: $88,950
We can easily absorb the welcome cost, but we'll need more income.
However - We have 40 new people to send out to grab odd jobs. If we send out just a couple dozen, and just half of them manage to land $1000/month jobs, that covers the income needed, taking us from -8k/month to +4k/month. And we can improve on that without too much issue.
So the money side of things is pretty easily managed.
Summary:
I think we should accept all 40. The cubes will be a minor issue, but if we expect to be able to finish Tokyo within 3 more months (so a 4 month total), the extra bounty income will easily keep us afloat until we can expand in that direction. The money side is not an issue at all.
The only significant issue is the morale side. Absorbing this many people will hurt things. On the other hand, I think this month is going to be very light on the hunting, and heavy on the research and diplomacy, so we'll have time for things to get worked out.
On the cube side:
Current upkeep (meguca): 74
Current cubes: 114.3
Upkeep if we accept all 40 applicants: 114
Upkeep while using Grief Management: 108.3 (probably not recommended at this time)
Hunting:
Both north and south are at ~0 DS right now, so returning to a standard overhunt balance requires extra effort.
North: 1 solo elite, 11 pair vets
South: 7 pair vets (capped @37 cubes)
Rural: 3 solo vets
Seto teleport (0.5)
NB: Assuming hunters will still be the ones with the experience bonus
Net cubes: 113.2
In other words, we can net 0 this month even with accepting the new applicants.
Future months, if no expansion of territory: 93.4
Basic cube income we'd want, to support 114 meguca:
- Add 8.3 cubes for spirals, assuming absorbing the new applicants drags morale down
- Add 11 cubes for growing the buffer
- Add 10 cubes for research and miscellaneous
Total: ~140
Expected net loss (bare minimum vs what we can harvest): 23.2 cubes per month
However, accepting these 40 into our ranks gives another good wedge on claiming Tokyo territory when it's cleared, and we can expect at least some of the overhead to be covered by our activities in hunting the youma in tokyo.
We can manage at our current balance and expected income for 3 months before things will start looking tight: 1 month of close to net 0, then 2 months of -23 per month puts us at uncomfortable levels. However we should have gained additional cubes from youma kills in the meantime, so it's not really that bad.
On the money side:
Current net income: +$6,580 per month
Food upkeep increases by $4000 per month.
Housing upkeep for 40 more people will be $5,000 per month using apartments, as it's impractical to go for a house for them right now.
Stipend would be $4000 per month.
Misc upkeep increases of +$1200 per month
Net income: -$7,620 per month.
Welcome package (cell phones, bikes, shields, etc): $10,000 (assuming $250 each; might be misremembering)
Current bank balance: $88,950
We can easily absorb the welcome cost, but we'll need more income.
However - We have 40 new people to send out to grab odd jobs. If we send out just a couple dozen, and just half of them manage to land $1000/month jobs, that covers the income needed, taking us from -8k/month to +4k/month. And we can improve on that without too much issue.
So the money side of things is pretty easily managed.
Summary:
I think we should accept all 40. The cubes will be a minor issue, but if we expect to be able to finish Tokyo within 3 more months (so a 4 month total), the extra bounty income will easily keep us afloat until we can expand in that direction. The money side is not an issue at all.
The only significant issue is the morale side. Absorbing this many people will hurt things. On the other hand, I think this month is going to be very light on the hunting, and heavy on the research and diplomacy, so we'll have time for things to get worked out.
As for the two death spirals: Send them to Serena.
This does introduce a liability into her group, in that those two are at significant risk while Serena is fighting, since they're not at elite level. Care will have to be taken in that regard, though I think we can manage with proper positioning and placement.
However we have long-term plans of getting girls out of Serena's aura, so we're definitely not giving up on them.
This does introduce a liability into her group, in that those two are at significant risk while Serena is fighting, since they're not at elite level. Care will have to be taken in that regard, though I think we can manage with proper positioning and placement.
However we have long-term plans of getting girls out of Serena's aura, so we're definitely not giving up on them.
I find the expectation of clearing Tokyo in 3 more months to be overly optimistic.
What, you're saying our original one to two month estimates weren't realistic?
The sarcasm is unnecessary.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
The other four are just vets, themselves. Their effective addition to Serena's team will be gated by their mental resilience to the full load to use it effectively.
Well we're not going to go spear-fishing for Oni much, if at all, next month, at least not until they break up into singletons again, so hopefully we can get those two girls acclimated and on their way to Elite+ levels soon-ish. That's going to take some extra cubes and personal tutoring, I suppose, but the other girls should be used to the process by now.
Hm. If the two spirals aren't named girls, we'll have to come up with names/personalities for them. We're missing Jupiter/Neptune expys, aren't we?
We don't have much choice. DS levels are already high-negative, and will be getting worse with the exodus. I'm not sure we even have 3 more months before DS levels get so low that we start seeing mass civilian casualties: in other words, Hong Kong.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Uhhh... Should I point back to my last post? Raising their effective level under Serena is not based in cube costs, but time. Make them drink enough of the koolaid that they stop acting too much like idiots on full blast. Training in the sense of improving their abilities and cubes for magic are superfluous and ultimately pointless for them.Well we're not going to go spear-fishing for Oni much, if at all, next month, at least not until they break up into singletons again, so hopefully we can get those two girls acclimated and on their way to Elite+ levels soon-ish. That's going to take some extra cubes and personal tutoring, I suppose, but the other girls should be used to the process by now.
Hm. If the two spirals aren't named girls, we'll have to come up with names/personalities for them. We're missing Jupiter/Neptune expys, aren't we?
It's a joke. I'm well aware of the issue of being too optimistic in planning. And while I recognize that I joke rarely enough that it's not what one might normally expect, I did hope that the smiley face would help convey the intended humor.
It will take time for them to adapt, though, and until they do so, they're just a couple loopy vets. We don't know how long that will take, so I expect that at least the next month will have them be liabilities. On the other hand, I don't expect much fighting next month either, so it sort of balances.
Getting away from the numbers, start looking at the politics.
We already know that a large number of magical girls are fleeing Tokyo right now, creating significant pressures on the surrounding territories. We got 40 coming to us, and while we're definitely well known at this point, we're just one small group. Still, I could see that a large portion of those fleeing would tend to head towards us, and the holes we're creating are more on our side of Tokyo than the far sides.
Consider what happens if we don't accept them:
1) We present ourselves as similarly mercenary in nature to Nagoya. A 'safe' acceptance level would be 20 magical girls. If we reject the other 20, where do they go? 15/16? Kofu? Coalition? Nagano? Niigata? Almost all of them are going to have pressures of new girls heading their way already, and what we know of the ones close to us implies that they couldn't handle an influx of more than a couple girls each.
Sending girls on their way past us is Bad News.
2) How do we choose who to accept or reject? There are partial groups among them, and picking and choosing for particular power sets is not going to sit well if it means splitting them up. We can expect bad relations and rumors to start cropping up about us again.
3) We can't let this spread further out. Waves of girls escaping Tokyo is one of our worse case scenarios. Try to keep the girls contained close to the Tokyo area.
On the other hand, we have Diplomacy skills, and connections to a lot of nearby groups. It's entirely possible for us to accept them temporarily, and then try to foster some of them to new homes with other groups, if those groups have the space to handle them. That gives assurance to the Tokyo girls that they have a home, even if we are trying to find them new homes, and to the surrounding groups, in that they can make the choice to specifically accept new members, rather than just having random new people show up on their doorstep asking for handouts.
We also will need to be putting that Diplomacy to work dealing with the other emigrants, and keeping fires put out rather than letting them instigate new conflicts that could potentially lead to new oni-class problems.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
We can also institute the same controls Nagoya has, and put some of the girls on ice while we work to build enough territory to support them. If we have to, we can even buy the process they use if it has some particular method to make it cheaper or less intensive.
Random other thoughts:
The new girls with Serena can now spend all their time helping that group learn Japanese. No longer need to dedicate any specific time to that.
Hmm. Do we know/track whether any of these girls had families? Those who had families are going to know about our little group (due to stuff after the water poisoning event), and possibly need to have have their records at school show they were withdrawn. Might be a standard Incubator action, though, so possibly not our problem to worry about.
Just when we finished getting new girls trained up, a whole new crop gets added. But training upkeep might be adjusted, so I'm not going to worry about that til helix indicates whether or not there will be any changes.
I'll need to spend more time thinking over the Heaven's Chosen diplomacy stuff.
Very happy the research yielded fruit, even if the results are far less than hoped. I can kind of see it being useful tactically, but it's not strong enough to be the full interdiction that we need. On the other hand, with Seto, it "degrades her performance severely" to try to punch through. What does that mean? First guess is that her teleportation range is severely hindered. Which is actually sufficient for our purposes, in terms of blocking out teams of teleporters jumping in.
If a teleporter has a 30 km range normally, but only a 10 km range when going through a tele-barrier, that means that any incoming youma that are coming from long range would simply fail if they had to get through the barrier as well (similar to the issue of how magic degraded for our clairvoyance checks over distance). That's enough to slow them down sufficiently that we could clean up on a pair and escape before their reinforcements could arrive, assuming we select targets that are far enough away from any reinforcements that this would impact them. Probably still couldn't kill the teleporter of a pair before it escaped, but it would severely handicap their ability to gang up on us.
Shinobu and Aiko have managed the tele-barrier. We need to get Seto trained on it as well, though it might be more difficult for her. Getting at least one elite involved in the process should make them strong enough to work with on a tactical basis. Need to get charm versions working, too.
We need to start exporting our hunting research to surrounding groups asap. They need to be able to handle the increased meguca load they're getting, and we need to get them to accept the new girls to prevent conflicts from starting.
The new girls with Serena can now spend all their time helping that group learn Japanese. No longer need to dedicate any specific time to that.
Hmm. Do we know/track whether any of these girls had families? Those who had families are going to know about our little group (due to stuff after the water poisoning event), and possibly need to have have their records at school show they were withdrawn. Might be a standard Incubator action, though, so possibly not our problem to worry about.
Just when we finished getting new girls trained up, a whole new crop gets added. But training upkeep might be adjusted, so I'm not going to worry about that til helix indicates whether or not there will be any changes.
I'll need to spend more time thinking over the Heaven's Chosen diplomacy stuff.
Very happy the research yielded fruit, even if the results are far less than hoped. I can kind of see it being useful tactically, but it's not strong enough to be the full interdiction that we need. On the other hand, with Seto, it "degrades her performance severely" to try to punch through. What does that mean? First guess is that her teleportation range is severely hindered. Which is actually sufficient for our purposes, in terms of blocking out teams of teleporters jumping in.
If a teleporter has a 30 km range normally, but only a 10 km range when going through a tele-barrier, that means that any incoming youma that are coming from long range would simply fail if they had to get through the barrier as well (similar to the issue of how magic degraded for our clairvoyance checks over distance). That's enough to slow them down sufficiently that we could clean up on a pair and escape before their reinforcements could arrive, assuming we select targets that are far enough away from any reinforcements that this would impact them. Probably still couldn't kill the teleporter of a pair before it escaped, but it would severely handicap their ability to gang up on us.
Shinobu and Aiko have managed the tele-barrier. We need to get Seto trained on it as well, though it might be more difficult for her. Getting at least one elite involved in the process should make them strong enough to work with on a tactical basis. Need to get charm versions working, too.
We need to start exporting our hunting research to surrounding groups asap. They need to be able to handle the increased meguca load they're getting, and we need to get them to accept the new girls to prevent conflicts from starting.
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This actually raises a problem I don't think we can really test. If another team of half a dozen teleporters try and penetrate the barrier simultaneously they might be able to overwhelm it. Given that we don't have that many teleporters, let alone that many high level ones, we have no way of knowing for sure expect for putting into practice and hoping for the best.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Despite knowing how it's done, we'd best still try to push diplomacy with HC to try to get a more functional version of it. Unless it's the leader's personal elite power, we can almost definitely duplicate whatever they've done to create nearly-passive area denial teleport interdiction.
Well, not right away. Right now we need those two girls to be in Serena's full-power aura 24/7 to get acclimated, and then to start the however-long training process it takes to get to the rest of the girls' power levels.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
How many times do I have to repeat it before this sinks in? Helix even liked the original comment on this; Serena's team are vets in level of ability, not elites. The only thing they have to do to get on the others' level is to acclimate to full blast.
@inverted_helix Will Kyubey tell us how many magical girls are left in Tokyo right now?
You're looking at nearly all greens in terms of how you'd classify skill levels. (Veteran composition roll 1d100 = 1) This isn't as peculiar as you'd think though because of the extremely binary nature of hunting in Tokyo right now. The normal demons have fallen well below normal, so you don't get much experience fighting with normal demons, and when you do run into a youma the difficulty gap is so enormous you end up dead.
In terms of significant groups there aren't any. With a roll dictating they're virtually all green, and the nature of Tokyo you aren't going to see many groups. And pack hunting simply isn't a reasonable tactic. The normal demons are too weak to need the extra power, and the youma you'd attract are too strong for a small pack of greens or vets to stand against anyways.
Nope rolled on the blanks. You actually had a lot of luck where the bad rolls always ended up on non-specialists this turn (except the annulled Taya).
Well conversely that means 36.32% odds of none, it works out.Heh, bad luck again: 40 girls at 1-in-40 odds puts us at 63.68% odds of having at least one Elite in the mix. Oh well.
Cuddlepile of Death... I'm not sure that particular combination of words has ever been used before.
They weren't previously named. I mean they have randomized names on my spreadsheet, but they've never appeared in the game as characters, so feel free.Hm. If the two spirals aren't named girls, we'll have to come up with names/personalities for them. We're missing Jupiter/Neptune expys, aren't we?
Calm calm. Also full idiocy can still be expected for a while. But mainly the thing to consider is that the high degree of power that Serena's team exhibits is in brute force casting. Whereas normally girls tend to hold back on heavy magic for energy saving, they don't need to. This is normally represented as simply pushing their dice up to elite.
(Something to keep in mind is the Elite+ was assigned based on what Serena originally told you about her group. This was based off comparison to other girls, she thought hers with her aura up were stronger fighters than Elites. You may recognize the issue with that. I was originally going to point it out earlier but people whined too much about Serena being too weak for a Legendary, which made me not. Even though the other Legendaries all had deeper problems than the base portfolio suggested anyway and you just never got to see them.)
Homura: There was a significant chance she would have attacked you straight off because Madoka gave her life for you and you don't even remember Madoka. This is not happy go lucky Homura. This would not have gone well for a Mami with no clue about Homura's powers.
Hortence: Someone that has been around for centuries gradually accumulating resources and with a power that can conjure money from thin air. There's literally nothing material you could offer her. I didn't even have a plan for how you could convince her, I just kind of drafted a personality and I was hoping players would surprise me.
Kesi: You'd have had her for a very limited time, and you'd have had to convince the Incubators that you could hold Tokyo together peacefully in the aftermath. You may be beginning to understand the difficulty of the last one. Possibly. Plus you wouldn't have gotten any of the cubes from the Class 3s. She's actually the strongest though because the Incubators have provided her some minor equipment.
Hortence: Someone that has been around for centuries gradually accumulating resources and with a power that can conjure money from thin air. There's literally nothing material you could offer her. I didn't even have a plan for how you could convince her, I just kind of drafted a personality and I was hoping players would surprise me.
Kesi: You'd have had her for a very limited time, and you'd have had to convince the Incubators that you could hold Tokyo together peacefully in the aftermath. You may be beginning to understand the difficulty of the last one. Possibly. Plus you wouldn't have gotten any of the cubes from the Class 3s. She's actually the strongest though because the Incubators have provided her some minor equipment.
I actually built up a more complex character idea for Yashiro Hiko than any other NPC I think. Then I tried to consider how this character would act. So it's a pretty densely packed bit of information. She's a bundle of contradictions it may seem, but there are reasons behind her every action that make sense from her perspective. But you have to keep in mind that no one knows everything in this quest.
This is correct, her range is diminished.
Not quite.
So for some totally random numbers for the clairvoyance check. (Not counting effects of rolls) Say you need 20 power to punch through a stealth field and you produce 30 power. That means you only have 10 power for the distance projection part of the cost. If you're at such range that you have 20 power spent on the distance crossing effect you can't punch through the barrier.
But this doesn't mean that you don't cross the distance, it just means you see the outside of the barrier.
So if you turn that to teleportation. Something try to teleport in from max range would not have the energy to get through the barrier, but that just drops them off outside the barrier. They aren't being charged the cost to penetrate the barrier 30km away where they started their jump, they're being charged it when they get to where the barrier actually is.
You're researching some pretty heavy things now for a handful of people. This is something that has a long long road of improvement.
For clarity you have a way to do it. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's the same way they use.
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Last months numbers were about 1200, right? I was expecting a way larger fraction of escapees to go in different directions.
Roll for general number making a run for it was fairly low. It could definitely go higher.
Even that many will cause some serious problems though.
This is a bit of a false assumption imo. It's less mercenary and more practical. We'd be absorbing/hosting a group that is over half SIMP's size, most of them extremely inexperienced and likely suffering from some form or other of PTSD. Accepting all of them will wreak havoc on us in terms of morale and resources.
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Ah! Yes. We decided to call them Youma, didn't we?
I couldn't remember the name we decided on.
This is sort of what I was leaning towards. Also, we could hunt over +10 DS if we really had too.
Light on the Youma hunting you mean.
Possible. I did mean to mention this as another possibility.
We'd need a morgue, or a meat freezer at least. It'd be a little complicated, but possible.
On the other hand it will be a huge turn off to girls trying to join up.
Hmm hadn't thought about that benefit. That will be useful right away.
Not sure how helpful Seto will be in the near term what with her being unable to endure Serena's aura at all.
We get that. Eyes was suggesting that Serena have her aura up 24/7 so that they have more ability to acclimate.
Of course we'd get all the greens who want to join up with Serena aka Sailor Moon.Still... at least they won't have bad habits. Focus on teaching them hunting tech, and they can help us with propagating that to the girls back in Tokyo once the youma have been cleared.
We'll just have to use pack hunting. We'll have the girl power for it.
Also... as all greens, that suggest a better morale actually... too young to know yet how bad things are, and our girls suddenly get to be sempai.
Still... it would prevent getting jumped like we just did and give us time to retreat in a more orderly fashion.
Anyway, have to get back to bed. Couldn't sleep, but my cough is getting worse.
"Wrecking havoc" is probably overstating it.
It will put a strain on our resources, but we can handle it.
As for morale, it cuts both ways. Our girls are likely suffering from the loss of Mayako. Turning away a bunch of greens could also hurt their morale further.
Taking them in on the other hand makes for a positive morale experience. "We are heroines! Saving the weak and new girls." and also "Now I get to be the sempai!"
Furthermore, if they are greens, then they likely have less PTSD - as the fact they haven't died suggests they have avoided battle with youma.