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 .
That query was if you would let me make the offer after rescuing Kaori using the strike force as the numbers to make the offer (Mami bonus, Vets Intimidate, etc). As opposed to notgreat who thought he had to add additional resources to make the offer. Of course, I'm counting my strike force as them dedicated to that for the full month, so maybe it all works out even either way.
Ah, yes I'll let that work. Keep in mind though that intimidate comes with a minor morale penalty. Though somewhat less due to circumstances in this case. (Your girls probably won't feel guilty about it given the circumstances, but the girls you pressgang in may be less happy about it.)

Put up the usual default list of actions.

Also something to keep in mind is your moral standards here. What do you intend to do with the kidnappers? They were just trying to survive after all. Are you going to kill them over that? Kick them out of their territory to probably starve?

I'm surprised it didn't draw more thought.
 
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I was very hesitant to break things down to fractions of people but it seems unavoidable at this point and it really doesn't make sense for it to take all her time.
I mean, I'm fine with everything being whole numbers, but you started it with the 0.5 upkeep counts ;p

Hmm logically this makes a bit of sense, but it could turn into a very convoluted bit of math if you're using different tactics/personnel for that territory.
We don't actually know what's going on behind the scenes there, we have the average numbers but how those convert to real cubes is a big unknown to me. So I can't really comment on the convoluted math.

Since the QM is willing to accept my organization of the diplomacy offer I think my method is the better one. We get Mami's bonus, and have an extra green to go job hunt. What do you think?
I'm going to have to rearrange some things to make it work out, but yeah, I'm going to collapse that into the main combat action. Still keeping the bribe though.

Also something to keep in mind is your moral standards here. What do you intend to do with the kidnappers? They were just trying to survive after all. Are you going to kill them over that? Kick them out of their territory to probably starve?
They kidnapped one of ours. No attempt at diplomacy, no begging for cubes or anything. I vote No Mercy. We kill them, and dump their bodies into a miasma. Not to mention that they're at what, +6 or something? That's not very high compared to what we've fought through before.

Do we get a diplomacy bonus to the veterans for planning on driving out the greens? If so we might not want to count all the veterans as intimidation, since the morale penalty is cumulative I believe.
 
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I might belong in the corner, but those who're literally advocating killing little girls and dumping their bodies in a place where they will never be found...

 
I might belong in the corner, but those who're literally advocating killing little girls and dumping their bodies in a place where they will never be found...
:(

Yeah, kind of surprising to me too that people jump straight up to lethal to be honest. Though if you disagree you should start a nonlethal vote. (You don't have to do all the work of setting up a new vote really, just adapt one of the existing ones with a nonlethal addon.)

Not to mention that they're at what, +6 or something? That's not very high compared to what we've fought through before.
In fairness here you had like -10% casualty modifiers (and loaded dice).

Though maybe it's partly on me for not having done some intermediate turns of begging, but from my perspective it was basically a bunch of girls starving while one is getting food packets from home. In that condition forcing the issue is going to make sense to a lot of people.
 
No killing after the battle. If it happens in battle because they fight too hard, well that happens. But after being beaten we kick them out of the territory. We did not hunt in their territory, and we are trying to survive too. We could have easily taken their territory before this but we didn't.

Maybe, maybe we tell them that after a month if they want to join us we'll consider it, but for the next month they are to stay out of our territory, because it is ours now.

Afraid we have to apply Ahb logic to this fight. We didn't start it, but we are certainly going to end it.

EDIT: Modified my plan to include releasing the survivors, but banning them from the territory.

On using all the Vets for intimidation... that still only gets us to 65.5% probability of success. Not sure how much we get for driving out the other girls. At most I figure it might double our intimidation effect, so that would put us at 85.5% chance of success. We definitely need to have more girls down in Itawa to make us too hard a target for other girls.
 
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I mean, I'm fine with everything being whole numbers, but you started it with the 0.5 upkeep counts ;p
In my original naive thinking it was simply because I had 2 upkeeps with each costing 5% of your pop so collectively 10% so when you reached 30 it made sense to up the upkeep to 3 split between them. Unfortunately that opened a can of worms. Though I suppose fractions really make more sense for a lot of actions. So I don't regret it too much.

We don't actually know what's going on behind the scenes there, we have the average numbers but how those convert to real cubes is a big unknown to me. So I can't really comment on the convoluted math.
My current thinking is that a grief cube "unit" from your main accounting is around two dozen small "real" cubes. And you use a bit less than 1 small cube a day in general operations to power a meguca. (I originally before I started this quest at all considered whether it would cost more for a meguca to be hunting than just holding a job, but then decided that I could consider that abstracted away in the returns for hunting as being net returns.)

Mami currently keeps your stockpile in egg cartons in her closet. Though each apartment/house keeps some Units on hand for grief spirals and day to day use, and girls tend to carry a couple small cubes in their pockets. Leaving grief cubes close to each other isn't too bad, but you don't want them touching each other for prolonged periods. (That is, you can keep a handful in your pocket while hunting, but generally not safe storing them touching each other, it can cause them to turn back into demons.)

I meant convoluted math in terms of the casualty rate when you have mixed casualty chance for arbitrary periods of time mostly. As well as once I open the runoff can of worms you might run with it further, and I don't look forward to calculating the return on .17832 green meguca and .39233 veteran down the road.

Though lately I have been considering maintaining grief cubes to a .1 decimal instead of only whole numbers.

I don't recognize this, what does it mean?
 
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I'm of the opinion that when we go in, we should hold nothing back.

If they surrender, we accept it. We do not ask for their surrender however, it should be entirely of their own initiative.

Those that surrender or get captured should be given a GC and told to take a hike, with the understanding that this mercy will not be offered a second time.
 
Abh is a reference to the Crest of the Stars series.

They are notorious for not declaring war, but once war is declared they never step fighting until the enemy has been completely destroyed or assimilated. Basically, once you declare war on the Ahb it's win or die time.

EDIT: We also might want to consider if egg cartons in Mami's closet is really the best place to store all our grief cubes...
 
[x] Elder Haman

They're just attempting extortion. No need to immediately jump to killing them.
 
I think I'm going to hold off on voting for a few hours, seeing as there is a good chance of last minute revisions.

@Elder Haman , you have some nice contingencies in your plan, but I noticed that you don't have one for a potential dead drop scenario. Is this intentional?.
 
I might belong in the corner, but those who're literally advocating killing little girls and dumping their bodies in a place where they will never be found...
So you support kidnappers? Extortion? Gender and age should not matter for crimes as serious as this. It may not be the death penalty normally, but when kicking them off their territory is almost certainly going to lead to their death anyway...
EDIT: Modified my plan to include releasing the survivors, but banning them from the territory.
You do know that's basically killing them, right? Only you also get other people in surrounding territories angry at us as well.
It also leaves them a chance to become recurring villains on the off chance that any of them do survive (possibly with a sob story about how a big mean group of meguca forced them off of their territory when they hadn't done anything wrong)

Though maybe it's partly on me for not having done some intermediate turns of begging, but from my perspective it was basically a bunch of girls starving while one is getting food packets from home. In that condition forcing the issue is going to make sense to a lot of people.
Makes sense, people are stupid, but them forcing the issue immediately rather than actually trying diplomacy first means that my impression of them is extremely bad. And since they're a large enough group to do pack hunting they should be at 16% casualties- less than several of the other girls we've met so far (who had to do solo hunting)


I meant convoluted math in terms of the casualty rate when you have mixed casualty chance for arbitrary periods of time mostly.
Well, easy solution is to keep casualties at 0% so it's not a problem :)
But what I was actually referring to was what/how many rolls were done during hunting and how that turned into grief cubes obtained from the hunting action.

Though yeah, we may want to invest in a better system than egg cartons in a closet.
 
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I think I'm going to hold off on voting for a few hours, seeing as there is a good chance of last minute revisions.

@Elder Haman , you have some nice contingencies in your plan, but I noticed that you don't have one for a potential dead drop scenario. Is this intentional?.

We refuse a dead drop, and demand proof of life if they ask for one. If they ask for a dead drop then we demand they come to the meeting with Kaori so that we can see she's okay. Also, since these are Greens I very much doubt they have the hard won experience as Magical Girls to demand a dead drop.

I guess if they truly insist on a dead drop then we probably better bring Sora instead of Kaoru and go for the stealth option.

@notgreat On releasing them instead of killing them. It's true that drastically reduces their chance to survive, but that's not the same as cold blooded killing. We can justify this as them reaping what they sowed. As for other girls in the surronding territory, it might also give them the notion that they do not want to mess with the Serenes. In fact I see that as a positive on letting the girls go - we want a reputation that if you mess with one Serene you mess with all of them.

Becoming reoccurring villains? Okay. It'll be interesting.
 
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So you support kidnappers? Extortion? Gender and age should not matter for crimes as serious as this. It may not be the death penalty normally, but when kicking them off their territory is almost certainly going to lead to their death anyway...

You do know that's basically killing them, right? Only you also get other people in surrounding territories angry at us as well.
It also leaves them a chance to become recurring villains on the off chance that any of them do survive (possibly with a sob story about how a big mean group of meguca forced them off of their territory when they hadn't done anything wrong)

Your right, of course. but on the other hand, can we afford not to accept surrenders?

If we develop a rep for leaving no survivors, future opponents will always fight to the death, and that will cost us.

Makes sense, people are stupid, but them forcing the issue immediately rather than actually trying diplomacy first means that my impression of them is extremely bad. And since they're a large enough group to do pack hunting they should be at 16% casualties- less than several of the other girls we've met so far (who had to do solo hunting)

I'm in total agreement with this- they were desperate, it is true. That does not excuse their behavior, diplomacy was always a viable option for them.


Well, easy solution is to keep casualties at 0% so it's not a problem :)
But what I was actually referring to was what/how many rolls were done during hunting and how that turned into grief cubes obtained from the hunting action.

Though yeah, we may want to invest in a better system than egg cartons in a closet.

We should probably consider storing long term stockpiles in safety deposit boxes, and keep remaining stock dispersed throughout our holdings.

Speaking of long term plans, our morale is getting rather low and that is going to be an issue. Maybe we can send Not!Ami on tours to help up morale next turn?.
 
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Who? :)

I don't know who you are talking about. :D

If you were thinking Kaoru, for one thing Kaoru has only decent grades, B- average really, and she has black hair. And despite all her effort she still cannot cast any water based magic at all.

Of course, she is rather introverted, and I get the feeling she wishes she were Ami, but that's another thing entirely.
 
Makes sense, people are stupid, but them forcing the issue immediately rather than actually trying diplomacy first means that my impression of them is extremely bad. And since they're a large enough group to do pack hunting they should be at 16% casualties- less than several of the other girls we've met so far (who had to do solo hunting)
To a large degree to me this seems like a matter of statistics. If you place a bunch of groups of people in the same conditions some of them will react in some ways and some will react in others. It seemed reasonable to me that some would immediately jump to this. If anything I think the cross section you've been given so far have been remarkably rational.

Also the conditions are somewhat different than what you've previously done since in previous cases they've all encountered your members as fellow hunters and members of the same lifestyle, just doing better jobs at it. Whereas with Kaori she was apparently not doing anything in exchange for her grief cubes. It's a different circumstance.

Well, easy solution is to keep casualties at 0% so it's not a problem :)
But what I was actually referring to was what/how many rolls were done during hunting and how that turned into grief cubes obtained from the hunting action.
So basically how the hunting system works is extremely simple compared to PvP, mostly because of a matter of how often it has to be done (since a significant portion of your pop is going to be hunting every turn). It's one roll typically. If you roll less than casualty chance you're injured and lose .25-.5 grief cubes depending on how low the roll was compared to casualty chance. If you roll below the death chance*casualty chance then you die and only half what that girl should have gathered is collected (if it's on the borderline I will roll a second dice). If you roll 91-95 you get +.25 grief cubes times your skill modifier only, 96-100 gives +.5 grief cubes (again times your skill mod only).

When you use half of a meguca at non-zero casualty chances I use square root to determine the chance of injury in that half-time.

If you attempt to use less than half of a meguca I cry in a corner.

Maybe we can send Not!Ami on tours
This really made me struggle to understand, lol. I'm actually glad Haman pointed out what you meant.

Though yeah, we may want to invest in a better system than egg cartons in a closet.
I've actually mentioned this before to try to bait people into an action towards it.
We should probably consider storing long term stockpiles in safety deposit boxes, and keep remaining stock dispersed throughout our holdings.
I've actually considered having someone steal some of your grief cubes, but it's really not feasible for anyone that isn't in SIMP to penetrate that deep into your territory easily and know that you actually have a stockpile to steal, and your morale level and safety in SIMP has deterred people from feeling the need to steal them.

Though one issue you'd have with locking them in a bank at this point is right now much of your supplies need to be immediately useful. If someone is grief spiraling you might not have time to run to the bank to open a safe deposit box. Your volume is actually a tad large for most safety deposit box transactions as well. Plus you use a lot of them in terms of daily upkeep. I mean you go through around 1.3 units a day just as normal living. Which is largely supplied by your daily hunting yes, but running a zero inventory model of a necessity of life is not a good plan. You only have about 20 days worth in storage.

Plus with something as necessary to life as food or water, you'd make people mighty uncomfortable if they didn't have at least some available to them whenever they need it. Handing them out day to day would be a lot like ration lines.
 
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Though one issue you'd have with locking them in a bank at this point is right now much of your supplies need to be immediately useful. If someone is grief spiraling you might not have time to run to the bank to open a safe deposit box. Your volume is actually a tad large for most safety deposit box transactions as well. Plus you use a lot of them in terms of daily upkeep. I mean you go through around 1.3 units a day just as normal living. Which is largely supplied by your daily hunting yes, but running a zero inventory model of a necessity of life is not a good plan. You only have about 20 days worth in storage.
A rifle type gun safe might have been feasible for semi-secure on-site storage, but Japan = lol! guns.
 
This really made me struggle to understand, lol. I'm actually glad Haman pointed out what you meant.

I've actually mentioned this before to try to bait people into an action towards it.
I've actually considered having someone steal some of your grief cubes, but it's really not feasible for anyone that isn't in SIMP to penetrate that deep into your territory easily and know that you actually have a stockpile to steal, and your morale level and safety in SIMP has deterred people from feeling the need to steal them.

Though one issue you'd have with locking them in a bank at this point is right now much of your supplies need to be immediately useful. If someone is grief spiraling you might not have time to run to the bank to open a safe deposit box. Your volume is actually a tad large for most safety deposit box transactions as well. Plus you use a lot of them in terms of daily upkeep. I mean you go through around 1.3 units a day just as normal living. Which is largely supplied by your daily hunting yes, but running a zero inventory model of a necessity of life is not a good plan. You only have about 20 days worth in storage.

Plus with something as necessary to life as food or water, you'd make people mighty uncomfortable if they didn't have at least some available to them whenever they need it. Handing them out day to day would be a lot like ration lines.

You misunderstand. We'd be locking up only a percentage of the grief cubes, basically an emergency "this is our bottom dollar" stash.

That way, if we get robbed we still have just enough to get by.

The rest should be dispersed throughout our holding- although we should try to make sure they stay in the possession of Loyal PM's.

Edit: also, that girl is trying so hard to be Sailor Mercury that it's actually kinda funny.
 
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I'm sure we could buy a valuables safe, there are safes for things besides guns. Of course, safes aren't going to be much help against Magical Girls, and to ordinary thieves a safe just says "steal me" while they probably won't even touch old egg cartons in the closet.

Actually, egg cartons in the closet is probably the best option right now. We might want to spread them out a bit more to the house and other apartments so that we aren't vulnerable to Mami's apartment burning down.

Once we have more than a months worth of grief cubes we might want to start storing the excess in a safe deposit box in a bank (in egg cartons - really, they are perfect for this, Mami is pretty practical here).

On the subject of Kaoru's Mercury obsession. I was developing her story, and I knew I wanted her to have a single mother, and then I thought "What would be a good magical girl for her to want to emulate?" Well, I have two sisters 2 and 4 years younger then me who were just at the right age for the Sailor Moon thing to hit them hard. One of them liked Mars, and the other liked Mercury, and thus I was subjected to numerous, extensive, and detailed debates about their relative merits. I remembered that Mercury had divorced parents, and I vaguely remembered she had a harp attack. So I went searching for it on Yuotube and found the song as well. Yeah I remember that episode too, it became one of the key points in the debates as to whether it showed she would consider leaving the team, or if it showed she was willing to put the team above her dreams.

And thus Kaoru's obsession was born. The way I sort of figure it, she was a latch key kid, and old thrift store Sailor Moon VCR tapes featured prominently in her youth. Of course she would gravitate to the shy magical girl with the single mother (the fact it was an idealized rich genius just made it even better). Add in that she has an insert song about sharing griefs together and her mother was a singer, well it all just fit so nicely together I decided to run with it.

PS: I have also decided that when Mami was a little girl, she was a Sailor Venus fan, but Mami tries very hard to pretend that she never was, and none of the other girls know her embarrassing dark secret.
 
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I'm sure we could buy a valuables safe, there are safes for things besides guns. Of course, safes aren't going to be much help against Magical Girls, and to ordinary thieves a safe just says "steal me" while they probably won't even touch old egg cartons in the closet.

Actually, egg cartons in the closet is probably the best option right now. We might want to spread then out a bit more to the house and other apartments so that we aren't vulnerable to Mami's apartment burning down.
The current situation really is quite reasonable. A magical girl can carve through your average home safe given a little time. And as you say a mundane thief looks in the closet and sees stacks of egg cartons with little cubes in them and doesn't think them valuable, while if it's in a safe it means it's something worth stealing.

I actually looked at prices for safes a while back to think of offering you guys the option to buy one without prompting. I'd probably price it at around $1500. I decided it probably just wouldn't be that useful though for the reason you caught on to here though.

And thus Kaoru's obsession was born. The way I sort of figure it, she was a latch key kid, and old thrift store Sailor Moon VCR tapes featured prominently in her youth. Of course she would gravitate to the shy magical girl with the single mother (the fact it was an idealized rich genius just made it even better). Add in that she has an insert song about sharing griefs together and her mother was a singer, well it all just fit so nicely together I decided to run with it.
A very interesting backstory you've built up.
 
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Since the official options got posted I updated my plan with the new numbers for expanding the courier service. Also added a totals section for an idea of how we will be after this turn.

Both Grief Cubes and money are worrisome now. Even with Itawa we will still be marginal on the grief cube front. I think we may have to do an overhunt and accept some risk for the next couple months. While also scouting for new places.

Hmm... going to add a bit to question the Vets we are recruiting down in Itawa for their knowledge on the girls surrounding Itawa and their territories.

If we can get Kyouko to let us harvest the full 8 from her territory and give her 4 of the grief cubes that will actually make us stable.
 
Ok, a few questions.
1) The courier service is listed as "Minimum 3 vets" This is outdated information from before the contamination, correct?
2) Will the official combat rules be used? Since it seems like they were made for cat-and-mouse distributed battles rather than a single solid strike.
3) Is the cap->runoff system of grief cube harvesting acceptable?


@Elder Haman The money situation is a lot better than it looks since we get positive money as soon as we make the business (It'll give 1.5k the first turn presumably) and within 3 months we'll be getting over 3k/turn in income again. And we can go $15k in debt for $250/month, so ever if we fail the expansion multiple times it'll only cost us a few hundred dollars at most. (We should only get a couple thousand into debt which is linearly less interest)
Also if we're making an outpost in Itawa then we should be able to expand the courier business there (though it'll cost us another apartment certainly)

Also, job searching though normal legal means just isn't worth it anymore. 1k/month isn't much compared to couriers giving us 1.5k/month. Scouting area 2 again is much more useful, and I suspect that assigning someone dedicated to interacting with the veteran group with provide us with some bonuses to our diplomatic action with them so I'm keeping one green on there. (Also the only thing the green could do would be try to find a job which as previously mentioned is not worth it anymore)
 
1) The courier service is listed as "Minimum 3 vets" This is outdated information from before the contamination, correct?
Yes corrected.
2) Will the official combat rules be used? Since it seems like they were made for cat-and-mouse distributed battles rather than a single solid strike.
Hmm I suppose you have fair point. I might simply roll combat dice for each side at the two engagement points. Honestly either way against the force you're deploying it's rather obvious what the result will be.
3) Is the cap->runoff system of grief cube harvesting acceptable?
Going to say no simply because of how annoying it would be to compute. Once isn't much, but I'd rather not set the precedent. It really doesn't matter in this case though. 3.96 is 4 with rounding. Even if I changed to going to a decimal place it would still round to 4.0
 
Going to say no simply because of how annoying it would be to compute. Once isn't much, but I'd rather not set the precedent. It really doesn't matter in this case though. 3.96 is 4 with rounding. Even if I changed to going to a decimal place it would still round to 4.0
Actually it was more for my rural action (since I want a harvest cap of 1 there to make it go back to 0% strength) but I can just hunt with 0.5 veterans instead and that works out pretty nicely.

Also, we don't have any scouting penalties to the areas we failed at this turn, correct?
 
We're starting to need an internal management structure.

Also it's important to remember that the kidnapped girl is a magical girl
  • she needs at least one grief cube per month to survive
  • given her current situation she's likely to grief spiral
  • as such her kidnappers are more likely to run at a deficit for this. When they could just join us instead

Something else to consider is that we're starting to reach a generation of magical girls for whom SIMPs has always been around for as long as they've been a magical girl
 
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