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 .
I hope you're all happy, I'm now spending time trying to calculate how much return on investment I'd be able to get if I knew in advance Tokyo would be obliterated. Taking into account borrowing money to buy on margin to short sell. And oh god the ROI.

Why does Sachiko have to be more moral than me. She could buy a new country, a better one! (Well maybe not better in every term, but in the important ones to an individual.)

(You are all lucky that Sachiko is not nearly as amoral as you all think, because otherwise after seeing the ROI for having Tokyo destroyed she would sabotage your efforts rather than be willing to help as long as she makes a profit.)
 
Last edited:
This math really just goes to prove that your offer is ridiculously bad for her. I mean you'd essentially be paying just above her opportunity cost from not investing the money in other potential investments, so she'd not actually be making much more than a safe investment.

And that's before accounting for the massive risk of failure that her other investment options don't have.
3.75% of gross profits per mil (equivalent to the original 5% of benefits per mil) approximates a 12% per year investment return rate. 12% is pretty good in terms of real investments, though probably a little weak for a magically gifted investment. Regardless, that's her opening offer, so she at least considers that reasonable.

If she's looking at truly long-term benefits, though, her return continues to increase over time, as long as we maintain a steady growth rate. The problem is that there are limits that we'll run into that I'm not sure how we'd expand past. (Not that I don't think that we could, I just don't know how it would happen.)

If I cap average income at $48k per year (which happens about 12 years out at the growth rate I have set up), total repayment over 20 years at the 3% per mil rate would be $7 mil, or an overall average growth rate of 10% per year.

If we added extra territory and capped our population at 1200 instead of 1000, it would be $8 mil over 20 years, for 11% per year, using the 3% payment rate. 3.75% is back at the 12% per year rate, hitting $10 mil after 20 years.

If we did something crazy and absorbed Nagoya or something, putting our total population at around 2000, overall rate of return only goes up to about 13% per year.

Basically, growth rate per year slows down very quickly barring truly exceptional circumstances. Getting above 12% will be hard, and even increasing our payout by 25% (from 3% to 3.75%) only increases the growth rate from 10% to 12% (so a 20% gain).

If she's aiming for a 10%-12% return rate over a very long time (20 years or so), we can work in the 3% to 3.75% range. $2.7 million would incur an 8.1% repayment rate even at 3%, though, which is getting noticeable.

In general, we spend about 80% of our income on our members. 3% on $2.7 mil would increase that to about 88%, while 3.75% would increase it to 90% (10% payment value). With 600 girls, 12% of $300k is the equivalent of 20% of $180k, which would be 360 girls. If we can expect this to get us the needed funds for more than 240 girls (considering 360 is a bit above my outer stretch for what we could afford on our own), it's worth it.

Anyway, if she's OK with the 12% return rate (3.75% per mil) as an opening offer, we should be able to counter with a 10% return rate (3% per mil). After that, it's how much we want to draw on. I'd say $2.7 mil (8% of our profits) is probably about the max we want to allow for.

Probably still want to cap the duration at between 10 and 20 years, though. She'd be making a pretty tidy profit (at least $7 mil per mil, over 20 years), but it's not like we didn't make a pretty solid concession to Hiko for a similarly critical bit of assistance.

I hope you're all happy, I'm now spending time trying to calculate how much return on investment I'd be able to get if I knew in advance Tokyo would be obliterated. Taking into account borrowing money to buy on margin to short sell. And oh god the ROI.
I was gonna say, it's kinda hard to sell those shorted stocks when the stock exchange is underwater, but I guess there's a chance she might manage at least some of it before it all became worthless.
 
I was gonna say, it's kinda hard to sell those shorted stocks when the stock exchange is underwater, but I guess there's a chance she might manage at least some of it before it all became worthless.
You short sell stocks before they go down in price. The whole point of shorting is that you make money if the asset gets cheaper.
 
I was gonna say, it's kinda hard to sell those shorted stocks when the stock exchange is underwater, but I guess there's a chance she might manage at least some of it before it all became worthless.
No the beauty of short selling is that you sell borrowed stocks in advance. Essentially you borrow stocks and then sell them but have to put the money from the sale in an brokerage account + a % of the stock's value in your own money. Which you then later have to use to buy the stocks to return what you borrowed. Anything left in the account is yours to keep.

If you short sell stocks and then the stock exchange is utterly wiped out, you get to keep the money from the sale and the stocks are now worthless so you don't lose any of the account buying them back. So make essentially the whole value of the sale in profit.

Depending on your ability to borrow and how much existing capital you have to back the account you can make absurd amounts of money. Because of only having to put a % of the stock's value in your own money in the account you can short sell more stock than you could normally afford to buy. In Japan the margin requirement is 30%. So you need 30% of the value of the stock you're going to short. So X/.30 = 10/3 X. (assuming stock value goes to zero) You could make 333% profit off just taking whatever money you have and short selling the stock. That's before you get into just borrowing like crazy. (I'm trying to determine how much she could borrow, but it's hard to just look up how loans in the millions usually go. She could probably borrow enough to increase her effective balance at least 50% pushing ROI to 333%*1.5 = 500%)

And that's all in one day return on investment. Before you start the compounding from the years you're expecting her to wait on her investment in you guys to pay off.


Anyways, the point of the math I'm doing is mostly that she would make ridiculous amounts of money off Tokyo being destroyed, so trying to argue that Tokyo going under would hurt her business isn't actually accurate. (Well and the math is also entertaining me. The Serene's math obsession is present in me as well.)

Again though, Sachiko isn't as amoral as me so destroying Tokyo to make money isn't attractive to her in itself. Sigh, the lost hundreds of millions of profits.


Also trying to write the first segment of your attack on Tokyo this month and keep getting distracted by how much money she could make.
 
Last edited:
Anyways, the point of the math I'm doing is mostly that she would make ridiculous amounts of money off Tokyo being destroyed, so trying to argue that Tokyo going under would hurt her business isn't actually accurate. (Well and the math is also entertaining me. The Serene's math obsession is present in me as well.)

Again though, Sachiko isn't as amoral as me so destroying Tokyo to make money isn't attractive to her in itself. Sigh, the lost hundreds of millions of profits.
Well there's more to life than having money; you also need to have a place still around in which to spend it. Japan is the world's third largest economy. If that vanishes off the face of the Earth, less than a year after Hong Kong and Buenos Aires, there wouldn't be a safe and stable place left. Magical girls can't live well in a world of anarchy: each one needs over 20,000 regular humans to sustain themselves, preferably living in urban centers, and all of that is going to turn into shifting sand if Tokyo completely dies.

That's not to mention that, despite the fact that nobody would officially be able to charge her with anything for profiting so massively off of a natural disaster, you can bet that everyone will be hugely interested in the corporation who made a huge number of strategic moves a bare few months before the disaster occurred. In the wake of Tokyo's destruction, all the spy organizations and military groups in the world will be itching to put black bags over the heads of everyone involved with the Magick Company, to interrogate them as to how they could predict (or maybe cause?) such a destructive event. It could well be more of a masquerade violation than the death of Tokyo itself was, and the Incubators would need to move in force to handle it, probably by making all of Sachiko's money, and likely Sachiko herself, retroactively disappear.
 
Last edited:
3.75% of gross profits per mil (equivalent to the original 5% of benefits per mil) approximates a 12% per year investment return rate. 12% is pretty good in terms of real investments, though probably a little weak for a magically gifted investment. Regardless, that's her opening offer, so she at least considers that reasonable.
Really depends on what she's pegging our growth rates at, both short and long term. Having a poke through...conservative growth rates fall well short of 12%. Less conservative short term growth, and decent long term growth can markedly exceed 12%.
Of course, if she had a (pseudo) riskless 12% loan, she's doing really good anyway.
If I cap average income at $48k per year (which happens about 12 years out at the growth rate I have set up)
...I'm curious what you're using for growth rate, because I've got ~$12k at that point (admittedly, mine isn't capped due to inflation, but I'm curious how fast you think we'd grow). Pseudo-edit: Closer to 20k now.
If we did something crazy and absorbed Nagoya or something, putting our total population at around 2000, overall rate of return only goes up to about 13% per year.
Depends when we do this, but...chucking in a jump to 2k at 2 years in...it increases things. A lot. Depending on growth rate (of course), probably between 13%-15%. Of course, that sort of thing would be implied in a high short term growth rate, so probably not accurate to just chuck it in. Dropping short/med term growth to almost 0, with OK long term growth, is approximately 13%. Of course, when you compare that to the change in NPV instead...that almost doubles the NPV (compared to a moderate short term growth). Considering that's ~$1.7 mill with a discount rate of 10% (i.e. really high) and ~$4-$5 mill at 5% discount rate...
I hope you're all happy, I'm now spending time trying to calculate how much return on investment I'd be able to get if I knew in advance Tokyo would be obliterated. Taking into account borrowing money to buy on margin to short sell. And oh god the ROI.
Depending on your ability to borrow and how much existing capital you have to back the account you can make absurd amounts of money. Because of only having to put a % of the stock's value in your own money in the account you can short sell more stock than you could normally afford to buy. In Japan the margin requirement is 30%. So you need 30% of the value of the stock you're going to short. So X/.30 = 10/3 X. (assuming stock value goes to zero) You could make 333% profit off just taking whatever money you have and short selling the stock. That's before you get into just borrowing like crazy. (I'm trying to determine how much she could borrow, but it's hard to just look up how loans in the millions usually go. She could probably borrow enough to increase her effective balance at least 50% pushing ROI to 333%*1.5 = 500%)
:lol Yay arbitrage! (Pretty sure I've got that right)
Also trying to write the first segment of your attack on Tokyo this month and keep getting distracted by how much money she could make.
I've been trying to do exams, and keep getting distracted by how much money she'd make off us, so it's only fair :p . (We can almost compete...assuming we're completely riskless :rolleyes:, and with high short and long term growth, and a low discount rate...).
(Well and the math is also entertaining me. The Serene's math obsession is present in me as well.)
I've actually been amused by the idea of our negotiating vet discussing the terms with one of the other girls who loves spreadsheets, and just *maths* :eek:.

(Also, my spreadsheet's looking more like a proper spreadsheet now. Yay!)
 
That's not to mention that, despite the fact that nobody would officially be able to charge her with anything for profiting so massively off of a natural disaster, you can bet that everyone will be hugely interested in the corporation who made a huge number of strategic moves a bare few months before the disaster occurred.
I would be willing to take the other side of that bet.
In the wake of Tokyo's destruction, all the spy organizations and military groups in the world will be itching to put black bags over the heads of everyone involved with the Magick Company, to interrogate them as to how they could predict (or maybe cause?) such a destructive event.
I'd bet against this to. Governments are not in the habit of just kidnapping every random person who does anything interesting. Where do people get this idea from?
 
I would be willing to take the other side of that bet.

I'd bet against this to. Governments are not in the habit of just kidnapping every random person who does anything interesting. Where do people get this idea from?
In this case we'd be talking about a corporation who may have had a hand in killing 13 million people and attempting to topple the Japanese government. That sort of puts the "extraordinary" in "extraordinary rendition".
 
In this case we'd be talking about a corporation who may have had a hand in killing 13 million people and attempting to topple the Japanese government. That sort of puts the "extraordinary" in "extraordinary rendition".
No one is going to believe just because they made some suspicious stock trades that they were responsible for a natural disaster. And I doubt anyone would be paying attention to stock trades from before the disaster anyways. I mean who would be looking at those and why?


Also rolled your first set of encounter dice. Kind of annoying results (in that they essentially result in nothing happening). Pretty much they're a result of your order of operations having a flaw though and enemy rolls exploiting it. I could cut the miniturn there, but that would just be silly, might just have your group go fish again.


Though plus side your gossipmonger action allows you to recruit an elite if desired. Nagoya's dossier indicates:
Morita, Miho
Elite Class
PVP Skill rank B
Earth-bender power set, known to spend significant time underground alone.
Estimated Time as a Magical Girl: 3-4 years
Immigration Banned: Former high rank member of Charm Protector group, direct contact has been limited as she's very rarely seen.
 
Last edited:
We shouldn't let any of the old Elites into leadership positions, since they clearly can't handle it, but ultimately it's better to let them join us then to push them to one of our enemies.

Do her powers help with construction? Because setting her to rebuilding the village would be a good way to keep her out of trouble.
 
Though plus side your gossipmonger action allows you to recruit an elite if desired. Nagoya's dossier indicates:
Morita, Miho
Elite Class
PVP Skill rank B
Earth-bender power set, known to spend significant time underground alone.
Estimated Time as a Magical Girl: 3-4 years
Immigration Banned: Former high rank member of Charm Protector group, direct contact has been limited as she's very rarely seen.

So long as we keep her away from a leadership position, I say we grab her.
 
No one is going to believe just because they made some suspicious stock trades that they were responsible for a natural disaster. And I doubt anyone would be paying attention to stock trades from before the disaster anyways. I mean who would be looking at those and why?
Before the disaster, the Trade Commission wouldn't likely let her make such massive short-sells over such a small span of time, at least for the kind of money she'd be dealing with. What she would basically be doing would amount to fraud (and there are cases of people trying to short-sell then run/change identities, which is what this amounts to--- at the very least, groups that watch for insider-trading would notice a particular company short-selling a lot of stocks), and there are groups that watch the stock trade that look for the signs of such activities.

Besides, if the Disaster hits and the stock trade goes out, who's to say the brokerage would even honor the agreement, or if there even still around for her to get the money from? Banks (that survive) wouldn't likely even allow for a withdraw of that size anyway so that they still have money to back the money they have on hand for the disaster relief/cash-withdraws of all the people that need money from them (iirc, it called the reserve ratio, or something along those lines-- there's a disaster specific procedure).

Yeah, she might be able to pull it off eventually, and she may be able to get the millions eventually once they get released, but I think you were underestimating the amount of personal risk such a plan entails. With her offer of a deal to us, she's betting on our risk, win or lose though she could still survive; the short-sell idea though puts all of the risk on herself, win and she's a millionaire, lose and she's either broke, on the run (from meguca and others), or in prison/under investigation-- while being a meguca would change a few things, her company that she built up would effectively be gone.

Anyway, it's moot since you said she wouldn't do this anyway, she's certainly not that bloodthirsty. :confused:

Ehhhh. I guess I'm leaning on getting her. We'd need to keep her busy though, you think she likes gardening? We should totally have her run a flower shop or plant nursery.

Do we have any info on Charm Protector group?
 
Do her powers help with construction? Because setting her to rebuilding the village would be a good way to keep her out of trouble.
Less than you'd think. Her power lets her control dirt and stone. She could make a "building" out of stone, but that's not really a common construction type these days and it does nothing for water, power, sewage, and gas lines (which are really hard to put into a slab of stone). And she's not an electrician or plumber.

Stuff like tunneling or general digging sure though. She could even build a road of solid stone if you want and just smooth out any cracks as needed.

Ehhhh. I guess I'm leaning on getting her. We'd need to keep her busy though, you think she likes gardening? We should totally have her run a flower shop or plant nursery.
If you've ever seen Avatar the Last Airbender, her power is like earthbenders there. She can move dirt and stone around telekinetically essentially, mold and shape it like clay even, but her power doesn't relate to things growing in the dirt. (I know earth elementalists can in some settings, but not in this case.)

Before the disaster, the Trade Commission wouldn't likely let her make such massive short-sells over such a small span of time, at least for the kind of money she'd be dealing with. What she would basically be doing would amount to fraud (and there are cases of people trying to short-sell then run/change identities, which is what this amounts to--- at the very least, groups that watch for insider-trading would notice a particular company short-selling a lot of stocks), and there are groups that watch the stock trade that look for the signs of such activities.
The thing is she wouldn't be short selling an unusual amount of any particular stock, she'd be short selling all the different varieties of stock on the Japanese exchange she could. That wouldn't raise many flags because the individual trades would be smaller. And there'd be no sign of insider trading because you might have insider knowledge on one company but not tons. Also selling and running doesn't even apply to modern short sales where the money is held in trust by a third party until the stocks are returned.

Besides, if the Disaster hits and the stock trade goes out, who's to say the brokerage would even honor the agreement, or if there even still around for her to get the money from?
Brokerages and Banks have redundant servers off site to secure their records against damage. Make the trades through foreign brokerages too if you can so they aren't locked down.

Yeah, she might be able to pull it off eventually, and she may be able to get the millions eventually once they get released, but I think you were underestimating the amount of personal risk such a plan entails. With her offer of a deal to us, she's betting on our risk, win or lose though she could still survive; the short-sell idea though puts all of the risk on herself, win and she's a millionaire, lose and she's either broke, on the run (from meguca and others), or in prison/under investigation-- while being a meguca would change a few things, her company that she built up would effectively be gone.
If she gives you money your risk becomes her risk. Admittedly she's not betting everything on you, but she's not required to bet everything on the short sale if she doesn't want to either.

Do we have any info on Charm Protector group?
Keep in mind that said former, the organization is gone.
 
Last edited:
Also trying to write the first segment of your attack on Tokyo this month and keep getting distracted by how much money she could make.
Hoping there's no disasters this time. Had some notable issues with parts of Haman's plan, but didn't manage to argue much on it.

Also rolled your first set of encounter dice. Kind of annoying results (in that they essentially result in nothing happening). Pretty much they're a result of your order of operations having a flaw though and enemy rolls exploiting it. I could cut the miniturn there, but that would just be silly, might just have your group go fish again.
Is this a flaw that should be obvious?
 
Also.. I can't believe Mami got put on artifact training, and not put in Tokyo during a hunt (at least half time) where our control ability is really awkward because of the battery, and there are way too many opportunities for another mass ambush. I guess Aranfan got his wish? Now I'm really nervous.

Though plus side your gossipmonger action allows you to recruit an elite if desired. Nagoya's dossier indicates:
Morita, Miho
Elite Class
PVP Skill rank B
Earth-bender power set, known to spend significant time underground alone.
Estimated Time as a Magical Girl: 3-4 years
Immigration Banned: Former high rank member of Charm Protector group, direct contact has been limited as she's very rarely seen.
Is she asking to help fight? Or just get out of the area? If fighting, what's the result of her Serena Test?

If accepted, will want to limit her contact time with the other Tokyo girls. Time around our own will give us a better idea of her personality.
 
Weren't we looking into a basement in Kyouko's church a while back and the contractor laughed at the idea of putting a basement in a preexisting building? We could get her to do that.
 
Is this a flaw that should be obvious?
It was obvious to me, but we've long since determined that's essentially meaningless.

Basically they degraded to traveling in singletons. You lured a single teleporter youma to attack. Then you teleported your massive combat team in with the best attempt at speed and coordination you could. The youma rolled against DC60 to escape while you were teleporting in and before you raised the barrier (including +10 bonus to DC from you guys having practiced your lure maneuver the days before). It succeeded. And thus it teleported away while you were still teleporting everyone in before you raised the teleport barrier.

Now that's not actually like it's the end of the world, I mean odds are better than even for this strategy working, or you could also raise the barrier first and teleport in around the barrier and run in, either or. But it does make your first attempt feel a bit silly and anti-climatic.

Is she asking to help fight? Or just get out of the area? If fighting, what's the result of her Serena Test?
She's willing to fight or be more generally recruited. And I'm not sure what you mean by Serena Test exactly, but I'm guessing resistance. On that front you guys just can't catch a break, with you asking I decided to just roll for it.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top