Okay... so work was pretty crazy since I last posted. Customer ultimatums and all that fun stuff. Was at work late every night until Friday, took yesterday off just so my brain could recover.
Unfortunately in the meantime I had this tab open with a long list of quotes that I was planning to respond to, but the computer crashed, so... I'm just going to move on. If that means in my discussion that I miss that something has already been brought up and discussed please forgive me.
Main thing I do remember was about the concept of "Clan" government.
@inverted_helix You said that a Clan government is a bunch of families led by another family, but it's more accurate to say that it's a group of families that are related to each other.
Because of this Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins all become much more powerful than in the more nuclear family form we currently have (where the Mother rules over all the children). That's the analogy that I was trying to draw, and that I think would be effective and a far more natural outgrowth of our current government form.
Bunch of new stuff posted since then, so I'm going to get it all out in a big response post:
North (37 size, 1.1 DS, slight poaching)
- Seto Teleportation (0.5)
- No Rotating Tactics
- 1.0 experienced Vets, Pair, Hard Leather armor. -3.7% risk
- 9.5 untrained Vets, Packs, Hard Leather armor. 0.3% risk
- DS: 1.1 to 5.5 (allowing buffer in case of poaching)
- Cubes: 45.1
South (37 size, 0.0 DS)
- Seto Teleportation
- Standard Rotating Tactics
- 1.5 elite (Seto, Miho) Solo, Full Kevlar. -2.1% risk.
- 10 experienced Vet Pairs, Full Kevlar. -0.1% risk.
- DS: 0.0 to 9.7
- Cubes: 67
Rural (8 size, -4.9 DS)
- 5 Green pairs. No armor. -3.0% risk.
- DS: -4.9 to -5.0
- Cubes: 7.9
Odawara (12 size, -15 DS)
- 6 untrained Vet pairs. No armor. Teleportation charms. -11.2% risk.
- DS: -15 to 2.7
- Cubes: 22.6
Total cubes: 142.6 - 1.0 (forecasting) - 1.5 (teleporting) - 0.3 (charms) = 139.8
Units:
1.5 elite hunting, 0.5 teleporting
11 experienced vets
15.5 untrained vets
5 trained greens
1 vet used for creating teleportation charms for hunters.
I would again suggest that we look at a more aggressive hunting plan that hunts all our territory and the Odawara section up to DS 10. This maximizes the amount of cubes we can get this turn, protects against poachers (by making our territory unattractive) and is allows us to use more girls. The idea would be to then attack the Eyeball at the start of next month instead.
This might not be possible, depending on the numbers, but I suggest we work the numbers first and see so that we know exactly what our options are. I'll get to work on that myself.
Nagoya quant training: 5 vets
Mentors: 10% of refugees; was 6.5 vets last turn.
Artifact powering training: was 4 vets + Mami last turn (including Keiko)
Will likely need to turn at least some of this off for this turn. Have to see the design for the Beholder fight.
I don't think we can pull the girls of the quant training. We absolutely need to maintain good relations with Nagoya.
Mentors we will have to reconsider how to handle even more girls...
Artifact Powering we have to keep some girls on it, but we probably have to pull Mami off.
1 Vet, 0.5 Mami - Nagoya, Heaven's Chosen. We've cleared out a sufficient number of the surrounding youma to start actively drawing the attention of the Beholder, while limiting the ability of the other youma to interfere in the fight. Unfortunately, we also have significant issues in the surrounding territories because of the fleeing refugees.
We intend to complete the strike against the Beholder in the middle of the month. For this to be as effective as possible, we ask that Nagoya provide their full assistance on this, with as many elite strike teams as they can spare, who are willing to take the risk of this fight. We will need a brief test run with them with Serena, so they'll be aware of what's going to happen.
We also recognize that they have border issues, though, so would ask Hiko help shore up any weakened areas in Nagoya's borders, or at least provide a significant border space where there will be no conflict. A truce, for the period of time needed to deal with a significantly larger threat.
We will also need Nagoya to allow us to pull our quant team back for the purpose of this fight. They can resume next month.
Well... maybe. Still not convinced that immediate attack is best.
Purchases:
Sachiko credit line: $2 million
Purchase: Abandoned village. Set up contractors to begin renovating 3 homes (amount that can be done at once). $150k, 1 vet, Kyubey assist
-- Assign several untrained greens to clean up the village (and church, if applicable). [10] Clean the streets, weed the gardens, trim the bushes and trees, throw out garbage, all that stuff. Make the entire village presentable, even if the construction workers are only improving a few houses.
Purchase 100 cubes from Nagoya ($400k)
Accept 27 refugees.
Welcome package (bike, phone, shield, misc = $250 * 27 = $6750)
Add 32 apartment capacity ($250 * 32 = $8000) (1.5 vet)
Purchase 2 sets of hard leather armor. $600
Total: $565,350
? Purchase: Kyouko's church ($600k). Arrange renovations work ($200k) (Turn 31 eval), 1 vet?
- Not urgent, but could be a crucial morale boost
Total: $1,365,350
1: I'd rather not purchase the Church with borrowed money. We don't have time for the project right now, and I don't think there will be any advantage to just buying the church if we don't do anything with it.
2: I'd rather not purchase that many cubes unless we have too. If we have to spend money I'd rather spend it on buying more equipment so that we can hunt to a higher DS with more girls or something like that. Since that would give us actual capital equipment that we can continue to use in the future.
Misc mentor-based mixers. Swim day. Hiking day. Sports day. Gaming. Movie nights. Not all together, but lots of opportunities for people to mix with each other. 6 vets (2.5 exp vets, 2 non-exp vets, 1.5 greens), $2000
Purchase personally-engraved medals for all current members, and any who died in fighting in Tokyo, as a signifier/reminder. $720, 1 vet.
Good to brainstorm morale ideas, but we need to polish up these ideas more.
Beholder plans
Kyouclone testing: 0.5 Kyouko, 0.5 Kyouclone, 0.5 Taya
Assault:
Serena group - Serena, 4 elites, 2 vet/elites
Elites - 0.5 Mami, 0.5 Kyouko, 0.5 Kyouclone, 0.5 Taya
Veterans (x2? experienced) - 12/24
Veterans (non-members) - 7
Nagoya elites - 5
Ehh? Serena's friends are all Vets... I guess you mean when they are under her full aura?
We definitely need more planning on how to scout and approach this.
Veterans (experienced) - 4.5
Veterans (untrained) - 12
Greens (trained) - 5
Greens (untrained) - 17.5
That seems like a lot of girl power left unused. Which is why I want to look at the max hunt option. At worst we could send greens out to get jobs.
I forget was there a cube cost applied to this?
Can't remember, there might have been. If I find it while researching other things I'll let you know.
Also as a sort of long term thing I can partially offload on players and I suspect people might actually have a bit of fun with. I am soliciting ideas for techs and goods that other groups might have. My creativity has limits so I try to outsource where possible. Obviously I'll have to adjust ideas for game balance and possibly metaphysics matching, but I'm interested in what ideas people have. It would be nice in diversifying how people develop given tech sharing is minimal people should develop many different things.
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.
Well... I'll have to give it some more thought. Right now I'm focused on catching up for the next turn, but in the meantime I'll suggest a few other possible sources of Magic Tech besides D & D:
Magic the Gathering has a ton of different ideas that might be useful.
The Reckoners series and the
Alcatraz series by Brandon Sanderson has magic type tech that might be useful for ideas. (The Reckoners could provide some very dark ideas for a villian indeed - especially reveals in the third book in the series).
Also, I've tended to think that a lot of Magical Girl "tech" is going to be figuring out how certain magic can be stretched. For example, I've always thought that Homura's weird room must be somehow related to the way witches create barriers. And I've suspected that her "shield of holding" magic could be expanded into being able to create a pocket universe.
If you have some use for untrained refugees that will allow us to expand faster, fine, but I haven't seen one yet.
That one of the reasons I was looking at outward expansion, as a way to use them productively without putting them into storage.
Church cost is $800k.
Borrowed now, that's 3.2% per mil prior to killing the Beholder, 2% after. That's 2.56% pre-Beholder, 1.6% after. The difference is 0.96%, not 1.4%.
At our current income, that difference is $413 per month. Over 8 years (96 months), that's a pay back of $39,629. Double that to account for increased income (an average over tripled income), and we're around $80k, which is 20 cubes. That's the effective premium we're paying to get the church started this turn instead of next.
The number of greens we have free to put in storage without really messing with anything is currently 24. They would cost 0.1 cubes each, which means a net savings of 21.6 cubes. While it would be nice to get this reduction, it's not enough that I'd be willing to take the morale hit for it.
Putting people in storage would be a penalty to our morale. While most of our core group likely has a higher morale, overall average is sitting at a 2. That's not good, and a lower morale will have a hidden cost of more cubes spent on grief spirals.
Buying the church is sending the message that we expect to use it. That is, we expect to still be here after the Beholder is dead, and we're not afraid to spend money supporting that belief. That should be a pretty solid boost to morale.
See... my thing here is that the cost is concrete, but the benefits are very speculative. I don't see why just buying the church would improve anyone's morale other than Kyoko. Actually working on it and preparing it to be a headquarters? Yes that should be a morale boost, but otherwise it's to distant and abstract to have an impact. Certainly not worth 20 cubes.
It's also intended to be the central key element of our new governance. The sooner it's ready, the better, because governance is an issue we're running into head first right now.
Aside: Small idea - Order engraved medals for all current members, to commemorate their efforts to fight the Beholder. A quick check indicates we can get 180 personally engraved medals for about $720. (180 = 147 current + 27 new + 6 who died) (Couldn't find anything for military-quality medals.) A signifier for those actually here for this fight.
Again, I don't think that just buying the church will really help right now with that.
As for the medal idea... again that seems more like something to do after the Tokyo crisis is resolved. Maybe a wall of plaques in our new headquarters?
Wondering if we can do something like the mentor thing, but more group-oriented instead of individual-oriented. Anything we can do to raise morale up from 0 would be a huge help to our situation. Assuming we accept the new refugees this turn, we'll have a total of 100 refugees that we've accepted into our ranks, and we need to continue adapting them to our culture. 39 of those are not currently assigned duties.
I'd focus on trying to find ways to use them, rather than pre-emptively trying to put them in storage. We need ideas, and lots of them. Ignore money limits, because we've got cash to burn. We can trim back anything excessive once we have more ideas to sort through.
I do think we need to divide up mentoring duties more. Instead of 1 to 1 going to have to go to at least 2 to one now. Maybe if we need more experienced vets we can put the ratio even higher.
Dunno. Over the long term, the extra cost is pretty small, while in the short term, the extra morale and government prep is likely to be beneficial. Of course the further you stretch into the future, the more value the cost has, and the less value the startup margins have. I'm not sure it's possible for there to be a 'correct' answer on this, but my gut instinct is to push morale as hard as possible right now, because lots of things can collapse due to low morale.
I wouldn't object to spend money, even borrowed money, on a solid morale booster. It just seems like this is a very marginal morale booster at best, and far less cost effective than even just handing out money.
I guess the obvious question is how long it takes to rebuild the church. I vaguely remember it being three months and by that point we'll want to be expanding into Tokyo, so having our centre of government set up by then could be a major speed up.
I'm not sure that it will help that much. It's more long term benefits than short term, so it seems odd to me to spend money on it now when we don't need it yet.
You know, I'm wondering exactly how big the morale hit would (or should) be in our case. Consider that the refugees we have are the stubborn ones, the patriots and the heroes who decided to stick it out in Tokyo even when Nagoya offered the stasis option to them before. These are the girls who wanted to help, before they finally lost their nerve and fled. Now they're joining up with the group who is kicking over the hornet's nest, making real change and bringing hope where there wasn't any before... except since none of them are trained all we're doing with them is throwing them into mentorship programs, basically telling them that not only can they do nothing to help, but even joining up with the Serene is a burden because you're taking trained soldiers off of the battlefield to babysit them.
Are those the refugees we got? I got the impression that a lot of the girls we got are those that wanted out of the city but rejected going into stasis. So if we try to make them go under, I'd expect a full riot from those girls, not just a morale hit. Now I expect we are also picking up a bit higher percentage of the "heroes" than most other groups, but that's not the all of them.
@inverted_helix Is that correct?
