Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
I'd rather not put all the eggs in one basket like that.
Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)
- Thread starter inverted_helix
- Start date
I'd rather not put all the eggs in one basket like that.
All our eggs are already in that particular basket. If Serena dies, then the Veterans definitely won't be combat effective and will probably die.
Actually, does Serena's aura continue to exist when she's separated from her body? It's a totally passive effect that doesn't seem to cost her Grief Cubes to maintain, which might make it different. If so, we could stick her soul gem (and everyone else's soul gems because why not) inside a large earth-bent stone container. It's probably a bad idea, but maybe we (or some other group @inverted_helix) could make it work.
Maintenance costs were always percentage based, it's just previously I lagged a lot in updating them and it wasn't as clear to the players. And it is entirely sensible from a realism perspective. Training maintenance was representative of everyone training a small amount of their time, so when the "everyone" number increases the time spent also increases.
Administrative upkeep also goes up steadily with size because there's more people to administrate. If anything I'd say that administrative upkeep increases at a greater than linear rate with the size of an organization.
Though this doesn't actually have much bearing on what other groups are doing.
Yeah which is why I mostly just hoped for ideas that I'd then adjust behind the curtain.
Hmm interesting idea, I might try to work with that.
Along those lines would be fine, it would tends towards just being lumped in with whoever you assign to body-guard.
Would not help.
Already house-ruled that enclosing soul gems interferes with connectivity significantly. (If there wasn't some drawback then Homura in canon would have had her soul gem encased in a titanium box.) Though haven't decided how that interacts with soul gem shut down range yet. It may just give you sensory deprivation instead of power-saver mode.
Also Serena's Aura would be centered on her Soul gem rather than her body in the first place. Though whether it would shut down when the soul gem went into power-saver mode is unclear.
The problem is that a girl's combat ability is decreased if she is separated from her soul gem. So it's not feasible to do it for Serena or any of the Elites. But Veterans could be a different story. Since their combat ability is significantly decreased by proximity to the Beholder, any benefits by being close to Serena would help them more than it would the Elites. Let's take an example:
* Combat effectiveness reduction by gem separation: 25% (pure conjecture)
* Elite Combat effectiveness reduction from Miasma + Serena: 20%
* Elite Combat effectiveness reduction from Miasma + Serena holding Gem: 10% (pure conjecture)
* Overall reduction: 35%, which is significantly worse than operating alone.
* Veteran Combat effectiveness reduction from Miasma + Serena: 50%
* Veteran Combat effectiveness reduction from Miasma + Serena holding Gem: 25% (pure conjecture)
* Overall reduction: 50%, which is the same as if they were operating alone, but with the benefit that their soul gems would (arguably) be safer.
That makes sense. But my point was that these rates increased in Turn 34, so we now have fewer available girls to work on research than we had earlier.
OK. But how much would it hurt? Being able to preserve soul gems in the event of body death might still be worthwhile in this particular case.
Perhaps, but entrusting that many soul gems near one person/point of failure is just asking for things to go terribly wrong.
Obviously there's a risk of things going terribly wrong. But (as I mentioned before), Serena is already the one point of failure that would doom the whole operation and directly result in the deaths of many if not all of the Veterans. So we might as well take the chance to increase their odds of survival as long as Serena does survive.
This is not a strategy that would be generally useful; in fact, the only situation I can think of where it would be useful is when fighting a Class 4 demon with a strong miasma. But that happens to be exactly what we're facing here.
The thing is, I don't believe the survival odds are better with your idea.
Are you arguing that the girls would die anyway, even if Serena did have their gem? I agree that this tactic can't protect against all forms of death (since massive trauma to the body often causes a grief spiral even when the soul gem itself isn't damaged), but do remember that one of the potential attacks that the Beholder uses can directly attack souls. And physical attacks can sometimes destroy the soul gem when they wouldn't have directly killed the girl otherwise. These are the situations I'm trying to protect the Veterans from.
Or are you arguing that Serena's death would not be bad enough that the operation would be doomed and many of the girls would die?
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
The assumption here is that the benefit of Serena's aura at full strength outweighs the penalty of being further away from one's soul gem meter by meter in percentage effect. Given Serena would have be standing within 100 meters of the beholder for this plan to be viable, likely closer than that, even her aura at full strength will be reduced in effectiveness. Given Serena will not be able to hold something like twenty-plus soul gems without a container, likely a sealed container to keep them from falling all over the ground, their combat effectiveness will be further reduced, and much more seriously than merely holding their gems away from them would.
This isn't even accounting for the issues inherent in a demon being able to notice that all the girls souls are in Serena's arms (their sensory abilities are naturally higher than meguca, you can't assume they aren't able to do this until we're proven otherwise), and focus firing on her until she trips up. This isn't even accounting for Serena needing to mentally keep track of twenty plus girls so she doesn't accidentally kill one of them herself by disconnecting their body, and those same twenty plus girls having to keep track of Serena in the heat of combat lest they kill themselves.
This is the equivalent of spooling out an unbreakable string from one particular person in a combat situation, and tying it around every other soldier's neck. There are so many tactical issues with that plan that any benefit that could be gained would be immediately drowned out by the coordination issues it would create instead.
I'm not 100% sure what you mean here. If you're talking about needing to be within 100 meters of the Beholder in order to support melee Veterans, then I'd counter by saying that I would prefer to rely on ranged attacks as much as possible. Or are you saying that the girls are generally going to be closer to Serena than they are to the Beholder anyway, so it wouldn't provide much more benefit to be right next to her? I'm waiting on inverted_helix for the verdict on that one.
Containers don't reduce effectiveness (AFAIK). The thing that reduces effectiveness is the fact that the gems are not touching the body.
They're going to notice that she's the one generating the Aura, so she's going to be Priority Target #1 regardless.
This is an issue, to be sure, but 100m is a fairly long distance. I'd say that the bigger risk here would not be accidental disconnection, but rather that the girls will have a tendency to clump together and stay too close to Serena. So they would be more likely to be hit. But I'd still say that the benefits outweigh this risk (as long as their combat effectiveness isn't hurt too much by not having their gems on them).
String isn't a very good analogy, because there isn't a physical connection that could get snagged on anything. And 100m is a fairly long distance. But yes, there definitely are tactical issues. I want to spend a good chunk of time training to fight the Beholder, and that is one of thing that I would want them to work on. Heck, even if we don't decide to use this tactic, it would still be good to train our Veterans to fight when they aren't carrying their own soul gem because that would be a reasonable approximation of the reduced combat effectiveness that would occur due to fighting inside a miasma.
Anyway, I fleshed out my plan to put some of the girls into stasis, along with some mitigation strategies to reduce the morale penalties that it will involve:
Purchase a Time Machine: (0.5 Vet, $2,000 for the first month's rent, $4,500 for a freezer)
Find a location with enough room for a large walk-in freezer in one room and 10 beds in another room. The location should be isolated enough that the neighbors won't notice the girls going in and out. Find another location (a small apartment or office, or even just a locker) which is 100-200m away, where the soul gems can be safely stored. Also purchase a large walk-in freezer and have it installed. Purchase it under the restaurant's name in order to avoid suspicion.
Decorate the Time Machine: (1.5 Vet, 1.5 Green, $1000)
Find a number of artistically minded girls to decorate the waiting room (i.e. the Time Travel Chamber) with comfortable beds, relaxing artwork, comforting colors, etc. The Freezer (i.e. the Time Machine) can also be decorated with a futuristic look.
Travel Through Time: (1.5 Vet, 32.5 Green, +29.2 GCU)
Everyone who is not spending all of their time on essential tasks (i.e. the greens) will be required to spend half of their time in the Time Machine. Remind them that this plan is going to be temporary, and it's still much better than Tokyo or staying on ice long-term like Nagoya is offering.
Procedure: Two healers will trade off guard shifts of the Time Machine and provide healing for the bodies, working together during the transition times. Girls will lie down on beds in the Time Travel Chamber in the evening and both the gems and the girls will be meticulously labeled to prevent mixups, along with which bed they're on. The gems will be taken away and the girls will be instructed to go to sleep (sleep medication will be provided to anybody who wants it). After everyone is asleep, the gems will be taken to the gem storage area. Then their bodies will be put in the freezer. In the morning, the girls who are scheduled to rotate out will be put on the same bed that they originally gone to sleep on. The bodies will be warmed up to a normal temperature using electric heating pads and healed to remove stiffness. Then the gems will be returned. The transition should be made as smooth as possible so that (ideally) it will simply feel like taking an (extraordinarily long) nap.
This plan will cost around $7,500, 3.5 Vets, and 34 Greens. And it will gain us 29.2 GCU, which is equivalent to $116,800.
Find a location with enough room for a large walk-in freezer in one room and 10 beds in another room. The location should be isolated enough that the neighbors won't notice the girls going in and out. Find another location (a small apartment or office, or even just a locker) which is 100-200m away, where the soul gems can be safely stored. Also purchase a large walk-in freezer and have it installed. Purchase it under the restaurant's name in order to avoid suspicion.
Decorate the Time Machine: (1.5 Vet, 1.5 Green, $1000)
Find a number of artistically minded girls to decorate the waiting room (i.e. the Time Travel Chamber) with comfortable beds, relaxing artwork, comforting colors, etc. The Freezer (i.e. the Time Machine) can also be decorated with a futuristic look.
Travel Through Time: (1.5 Vet, 32.5 Green, +29.2 GCU)
Everyone who is not spending all of their time on essential tasks (i.e. the greens) will be required to spend half of their time in the Time Machine. Remind them that this plan is going to be temporary, and it's still much better than Tokyo or staying on ice long-term like Nagoya is offering.
Procedure: Two healers will trade off guard shifts of the Time Machine and provide healing for the bodies, working together during the transition times. Girls will lie down on beds in the Time Travel Chamber in the evening and both the gems and the girls will be meticulously labeled to prevent mixups, along with which bed they're on. The gems will be taken away and the girls will be instructed to go to sleep (sleep medication will be provided to anybody who wants it). After everyone is asleep, the gems will be taken to the gem storage area. Then their bodies will be put in the freezer. In the morning, the girls who are scheduled to rotate out will be put on the same bed that they originally gone to sleep on. The bodies will be warmed up to a normal temperature using electric heating pads and healed to remove stiffness. Then the gems will be returned. The transition should be made as smooth as possible so that (ideally) it will simply feel like taking an (extraordinarily long) nap.
This plan will cost around $7,500, 3.5 Vets, and 34 Greens. And it will gain us 29.2 GCU, which is equivalent to $116,800.
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Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
If the girls are going to clump on Serena anyway, then there is effectively no point to giving their gems to Serena. 100m is a good distance, yes, but you forget; the benefit provided by Serena's aura is static while the penalty is based on their proximity to her. The father away they get from Serena, the less effective they become. Assuming that Serena negates 10 or 20% of the ability loss from the class 4 means that any girl she's holding onto has an effective range of 20 meters, not 100, assuming a perfectly linear distance-weakness ratio. You would have to assume her effectiveness is far beyond what we have any reasonable expectation for, for any girl to have an effective distance from her of greater than 20 meters.
I find it really strange to call stasis a time machine.
I mean everyone is continuously traveling forward in time. What defines a time machine then is the ability to go backwards.
Plus we have plenty of words for stasis already, like stasis, cryosleep, or even cryogenic stasis.
Also decided to take the super easy route on developing techs for other groups. Went to the 3.5e D&D spell list and just started translating abilities that I could make work. Got about 10 just from the As.
I mean everyone is continuously traveling forward in time. What defines a time machine then is the ability to go backwards.
Plus we have plenty of words for stasis already, like stasis, cryosleep, or even cryogenic stasis.
Also decided to take the super easy route on developing techs for other groups. Went to the 3.5e D&D spell list and just started translating abilities that I could make work. Got about 10 just from the As.
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- Location
- Head in the clouds
Not sure I should like this for that being a good idea or funny it for how you stated it.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
You don't have to squint too hard to view stasis as a form of time travel. Technically, it's one's consciousness that travels through time linearly and views it as such. There could exist temporal anomalies or other weirdness damn well near anywhere, but because we don't have the proper organs or equipment to sense them, we're as blind to them as we are to solar radiation or whatever function is behind the antics of gravity.
Basically, stasis is the easiest time travel we can come up with. It transplants a consciousness from time A to time B, with no intervening changes in thought or chemistry.
That's no different than just sitting in a chair and calling the chair a time machine. You're still traveling forward.
That seems overly simplistic to me. The method of traveling forward is rather an important consideration.
There's no time alteration here.
This is no different from sleeping. Sleeping isn't time travel. Nor is a bed a time machine.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
"With no intervening changes to thoughts or chemistry" is, I believe, the operative phrase.
Sleep could be considered the same thing then.
Or we're all time traveling hundredths of seconds at a time in the space between chemical activities in the brain.
- Location
- Maybe?
In any case, trying to make a thing look better via transparent theming does not actually work to make it look better, it just makes people feel justified in their initial aversion. It's like you're saying "yes, you were right to not like this, given how I have to resort to such tactics to make it look better."
"Time machine" has more positive connotations than the other descriptions and it's intended to highlight the fact that the stasis will (in theory) be experienced as a jump forward in time. The bodies will be physically frozen, but the girls won't ever experience that part of it. But if people think that the name is too odd, then we can change it. "Stasis" isn't too bad. I do want to pick a name that has positive connotations and which will take the focus off of the fact that the bodies will be frozen. We don't want to lie or mislead people, but we do want to focus on the positives as much as possible.
The physical flow of time is not changed, but the perception of it is changed.
Arguably, sleep is a form of time travel, however, we experience it so often that we're conditioned to accept it as normal. But jumping forward days at a time will make the time discontinuity more obvious than normal. That could cause problems, and I'd prefer to head some of those off by embracing the change.
I think I'm going to start calling my bed a time machine. That's just too cool of an idea not to use.
Actually, on second thought, girls whose soul gems are next to Serena should be able to survive even complete body death. They'd be irrevocably addicted to Serena's aura, of course, but they would survive.
I thought it was the other way around. The conflict between Serena's aura and the Beholder's miasma creates an area where it's worse closer to the Beholder and better closer to Serena. And the soul gem has 4 possible states:
1. Touching the body - this is normal
2. Not touching the body, but within 100m - a fixed malus to combat effectiveness, regardless of whether the girl is holding the gem in an armored container or if it's 99m away.
3. 100m-200m - the gem can detect the body, but the body is inactive
4. > 200m - the gem cannot detect the body and starts (trying) to make a replacement.
@inverted_helix: is this correct?
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A time machine is defined by the ability to travel backwards. Traveling forwards is as easy as sleeping. It needs no machinery whatsoever. We can't define a time machine by ability to go forward because any human is capable of that without any external assistance magical or technological.
Not really, it loops to
Where it tries to build a new body, this process being so enormously inefficient that you vanish regardless.
Keep in mind that the girls in Serena's aura still consume grief cubes to maintain normal existence levels. It prevents emotional fluctuations and depression of a spiral, but it doesn't remove the costs entirely of just living.
1, 3, 4 are correct.
2 is variable.
I see. Well, perhaps Serena's aura will at least allow any girl whose body is horribly mangled (but not killed) to keep calm until a healer can fix them.
Wow, these liches are using really poor designs for their phylacteries, aren't they?
It's almost as if the designer of the phylacteries didn't want them to survive for long. Maybe we can (eventually) improve on that design...Ugh. I guess my plan of Serena holding onto the gems of all the Veterans isn't going to work. Although perhaps it's still useful as a training tool (i.e. while training, have every girl carry her soul gem in a box to simulate the debilitating effects of the miasma).
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I'm pretty sure that's exactly the case..., these liches are using really poor designs for their phylacteries, aren't they?
A lot of things loop back to the whole design being to let them survive for a while, but not too long.