Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)
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I don't know that I really agree that it's extremely important to understand how it works. I mean understanding how it works allows you to game the system more, but at the most basic level the results mirror what you'd normally see in either new Xcom game, the enemies gradually get stronger as time goes on.
It simplifies the math somewhat but still leaves a huge amount of math to it.
The problem with that is that it reduces the resource intensity. If armor is something that is everyone or no one then the cost balance is far harder to achieve. Charging you for everyone at once would hardly be feasible.
It removes much of the strategic tradeoffs. Even in my current calculations for the ultra simplified system that stayed the same.
The problem with such things is when you have non-limiting meguca months, you can essentially achieve huge benefits from such things.
It was an intention of as close a modeling as possible. But the previous system had quite clear tradeoffs, particularly those intermediate resources. Intermediate resources allowed you to indirectly trade off one resource for another. And generated the very optimization problems that you seem to be wanting to stay.
Yet even that didn't happen. No one even bothered with assigning them to try to get mundane jobs. Or trying to create a new business entirely.
Granted, I threw a bit of a hard real world problem at you expecting you to do something with it. But you're also acting with far more control over things than any real world government has. That is a fair problem though. I could perhaps have reduced the level of output they give as well to represent less willingness to work.
This is very true. However before Kinematics abandoned SV he maintained an excel spreadsheet that integrated everything, which kind of alleviates the problem. Simplifying again from that to allow a redevelopment from base might work.
I'm terrible at plots. I come up with worlds all the time though. I have a half dozen interesting (imo) worlds structured out in various documents with no plots to go in them. (Including a post-apocalyptic future Earth, a fantasy world going through the equivalent of oil running out(as opposed to just getting expensive), a psionic sci-fi setting where many people are a tiny bit psionic but only a handful can move the biggest ships and they're used as the propulsion, and a scifi setting where I basically set out to make boarding enemy space ships actually a legitimate regular battle tactic with as little obvious handwavium as possible.)
I thought trying this; it would actually be pretty easy since we've got so much Territory to harvest in Tokyo that it's simply a matter of putting all free Meguca on hunting the Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefectures. However seeing as I like the new system I decided against it.
Since I'm not feeling up to fluffifying my vote ATM instead I've gone through and messed around with our Turn Actions, listed on the front page, to try and modify them to match up with the modified system.
Demon Hunting:
[] Sustainable Hunting: Your girls deploy all the advanced farming and demon strength management techniques to safely maximize the number of grief cubes retrieved while ensuring the area's demon strength remains constant.
Cost: Variable (minimum 0.5) Chapters + Variable (30 per Chapter) Territory
Rewards: Variable (34.5GCU per Chapter)
[] Slash and Burn: Ignoring any farming techniques and demon strength mitigators that might slow them down your girls focus on collecting grief cubes as fast as possible.
Cost: Variable (minimum 0.5) Chapters + Variable (30 per Chapter) Territory
Rewards: Variable (59 per Chapter) GCUs
Cost: Variable (minimum 0.5) Chapters + Variable (30 per Chapter) Territory
Rewards: Variable (34.5GCU per Chapter)
[] Slash and Burn: Ignoring any farming techniques and demon strength mitigators that might slow them down your girls focus on collecting grief cubes as fast as possible.
Cost: Variable (minimum 0.5) Chapters + Variable (30 per Chapter) Territory
Rewards: Variable (59 per Chapter) GCUs
[] Gather money (Illegally): Chapters assigned to this role will commit crime to gather mundane currency which can be used to improve living conditions, using powers to commit simple burglaries or cheat in games of chance. Your Magical Girls have joined in search of a better life they are unlikely to much enjoy this and wish to avoid harsher crimes. You also lack connections with the criminal underworld, so the take is not all that good. There might also be complications with other criminals or the law.
Cost: Variable (minimum 0.5) Chapters
Reward: Highly variable with an average of $60,000 per month per Chapter.
[] Gather money (Legally): There are not a great number of jobs that will take young girls as workers: working as a bike courier, waitress, or maid are likely options. This project benefits from regularity, and discontinuous execution may have negative side effects. When first assigned roll ([Chapters] * 20)d4 against DC 4. Each success is a Meguca employed. Every following turn roll ([Chapters] * 20 - [Megucas Employed])d4 until all girls assigned are employed.
Cost: Variable (minimum 0.5) Chapters
Reward: $1,000 per month per Meguca employed.
[] Start your own business (Restaurant): Starting a restaurant is a fairly complex proposition. You can get a family rate loan to get the startup capital but it will still be tough going breaking into the market, most restaurants do fail afterall. You at least have the advantage that you count labor costs as a profit to your group though. Smoothing out the paperwork will also be a bit more costly with Kyuubey. You'll have to deal with a tougher market and one you don't have experience in, but the potential market size is much larger if you manage to do well.
Cost: $500,000 + 4GCU + 0.5x Business Chapters
Reward: Income scaling up over initial 3 month startup period to ??? a month; potential to increase size of operation.
Chance of Success: 60%
[] Expand your Courier Business (Kanagawa Prefecture): Running your own courier business has long since proven a very profitable venture. With the Serene's sudden expansion in both personnel and territory it's only logical to expand your business into new areas.
Cost: $90,000 + 6GCU + 0.5x Business Chapters
Reward: Income scaling up over initial 3 month startup period to $110,000/month.
Chance of Success: 70%
[] Expand your Courier Business (Tokyo Prefecture): Running your own courier business has long since proven a very profitable venture. With the Serene's sudden expansion in both personnel and territory it's only logical to expand your business into new areas.
Cost: $60,000 + 6GCU + 0.5x Business Chapter
Reward: Income scaling up over initial 3 month startup period to $160,000/month.
Chance of Success: 70%
Cost: Variable (minimum 0.5) Chapters
Reward: Highly variable with an average of $60,000 per month per Chapter.
[] Gather money (Legally): There are not a great number of jobs that will take young girls as workers: working as a bike courier, waitress, or maid are likely options. This project benefits from regularity, and discontinuous execution may have negative side effects. When first assigned roll ([Chapters] * 20)d4 against DC 4. Each success is a Meguca employed. Every following turn roll ([Chapters] * 20 - [Megucas Employed])d4 until all girls assigned are employed.
Cost: Variable (minimum 0.5) Chapters
Reward: $1,000 per month per Meguca employed.
[] Start your own business (Restaurant): Starting a restaurant is a fairly complex proposition. You can get a family rate loan to get the startup capital but it will still be tough going breaking into the market, most restaurants do fail afterall. You at least have the advantage that you count labor costs as a profit to your group though. Smoothing out the paperwork will also be a bit more costly with Kyuubey. You'll have to deal with a tougher market and one you don't have experience in, but the potential market size is much larger if you manage to do well.
Cost: $500,000 + 4GCU + 0.5x Business Chapters
Reward: Income scaling up over initial 3 month startup period to ??? a month; potential to increase size of operation.
Chance of Success: 60%
[] Expand your Courier Business (Kanagawa Prefecture): Running your own courier business has long since proven a very profitable venture. With the Serene's sudden expansion in both personnel and territory it's only logical to expand your business into new areas.
Cost: $90,000 + 6GCU + 0.5x Business Chapters
Reward: Income scaling up over initial 3 month startup period to $110,000/month.
Chance of Success: 70%
[] Expand your Courier Business (Tokyo Prefecture): Running your own courier business has long since proven a very profitable venture. With the Serene's sudden expansion in both personnel and territory it's only logical to expand your business into new areas.
Cost: $60,000 + 6GCU + 0.5x Business Chapter
Reward: Income scaling up over initial 3 month startup period to $160,000/month.
Chance of Success: 70%
[] Improve Housing (Rent Apartments): You could get some more apartments and reduce the crowding or provide closer locations for hunting in distant areas.
Cost: $5,000 down payment, $2,500/month upkeep.
Reward: Standard Housing for 1x Standard Chapter.
[] Improve Housing (Rent House): You could always get another house. Will still be quite a few people per bedroom, but gives more of a feeling of home.
Cost: $6,400 down payment, $3,200/month upkeep.
Reward: Comfortable Housing for 1x Standard Chapter.
[] Increased Stipend: Giving the girls more money will further improve their morale a little bit.
Cost: $4,000 per Chapter;
Reward: Improved Morale.
Cost: $5,000 down payment, $2,500/month upkeep.
Reward: Standard Housing for 1x Standard Chapter.
[] Improve Housing (Rent House): You could always get another house. Will still be quite a few people per bedroom, but gives more of a feeling of home.
Cost: $6,400 down payment, $3,200/month upkeep.
Reward: Comfortable Housing for 1x Standard Chapter.
[] Increased Stipend: Giving the girls more money will further improve their morale a little bit.
Cost: $4,000 per Chapter;
Reward: Improved Morale.
?
[] Train Specialized Chapter (Hunter): While many of your new girls think hunting is simple a year of research has shown it is anything but simple. Hopefully they'll learn to appreciate the effort required to be a dedicated hunter for the SIMP after apprenticing under one of your existing Hunter Chapters.
Cost: 1x Standard Chapter
Reward: 1x Hunter Chapter
[] Train Specialized Chapter (Business): Operating a business isn't easy. It doesn't matter if you are delivering packages, translating documents, or running a restaurant; they all require interacting heavily with normal people. That requires people skills too many of your new girls are sadly lacking.
Cost: 1x Standard Chapter
Reward: 1x Business Chapter
Cost: 1x Standard Chapter
Reward: 1x Hunter Chapter
[] Train Specialized Chapter (Business): Operating a business isn't easy. It doesn't matter if you are delivering packages, translating documents, or running a restaurant; they all require interacting heavily with normal people. That requires people skills too many of your new girls are sadly lacking.
Cost: 1x Standard Chapter
Reward: 1x Business Chapter
[Free Action] Improve Housing (Increased Space): While all your girls currently have somewhere to sleep, mostly in apartments, things are fairly crowded and that will only get worse as you continue recruitment. While it would be expensive you can give them a lot more space by splitting each Chapter across two apartments/houses.
Cost: Houses and Apartments are limited to 0.5 Chapters.
Reward: Improved Morale.
[] Group sports day: You'll take the time to organize a full group outing to have some fun in a park and play some games, it will have to be fully mundane though as going out to somewhere secluded likely would take too much time.
Cost: 0.5 Standard Chapters
Reward: Increase to morale (group cohesion)
[Free Action] Fun with magic: It's kind of a sad statement about magical girl life that you don't really get to play with your magic, it's too costly to use it much beyond what you need to use to get grief cubes. You might be able to afford to ease up on such restrictions and let people have fun with magic for once.
Cost: +0.1 grief cube to upkeep cost per girl;
Reward: Increase to morale, you actually get to play with magic a little rather than just use it to fight, possible other effects
Cost: Houses and Apartments are limited to 0.5 Chapters.
Reward: Improved Morale.
[] Group sports day: You'll take the time to organize a full group outing to have some fun in a park and play some games, it will have to be fully mundane though as going out to somewhere secluded likely would take too much time.
Cost: 0.5 Standard Chapters
Reward: Increase to morale (group cohesion)
[Free Action] Fun with magic: It's kind of a sad statement about magical girl life that you don't really get to play with your magic, it's too costly to use it much beyond what you need to use to get grief cubes. You might be able to afford to ease up on such restrictions and let people have fun with magic for once.
Cost: +0.1 grief cube to upkeep cost per girl;
Reward: Increase to morale, you actually get to play with magic a little rather than just use it to fight, possible other effects
Research is currently blank because I'm not sure how to go about converting it to the new system just yet. I'll probably do some more work on that later.
Seems like most people who aren't me are fine with the new system, so you should probably ignore me. I'll be using my chart and assuming that Tokyo is sufficiently large that we need to massively expand to actually impact its DS. The chart will need to be adjusted as territory size increases. Since the elite bonuses don't really match up with the actual stats anymore I'm still including them but not taking them into account in the calculations.
104 Veteran Meguca, 53 Green Meguca, 1 Associate
Upkeep: 24 Veteran, 19 Green, 1 Associate
Remaining: 6 elite, 80 vet, 34 green
+Serena's group
[X] Old Fogey's Dying Breath
-[X] Hunting plan: 237.9 cubes
--[X] North:10 greens (29.0 cubes, DS to 0.5)
--[X] South:5 vets (22.0 cubes, DS to 0.7)
--[X] Tokyo: 3 elites (Kyouko clone, Taya, Seto), 40 vets (21.9+176 cubes)
remaining: 3 elite, 35 vets, 24 green
-[X] 1.5 elite (0.5 Mami, 1 Miho), 20 vets, 10 green: Recruit and Claim territory within Tokyo
-[X] 0.5 elite (Mami), 2 vets, 2 green: Aftermath diplomacy with Nagoya and Kyoto
-[X] 3 vets, 6 green: Look at improving record keeping and security for grief cube stores
-[X] 1 elite (Kyouko), 10 vets, 6 green: Sports/Free time and integration/interaction
--[X] Kyouko chosen since she's probably got a mindset pretty close to a lot of the recruits but is now totally on board with us.
Other actions:
-[X] Adjust rations to 1.1 cubes per meguca. Allow for "Fun with magic" or personal storage.
-[X] Serena's group hunts remaining Class 3s (and hopefully gets us some cubes)
Net: ~$25k lost normally, potentially more due to recruit costs
+237.9 cubes, -184.8 (I think) cubes upkeep -35.7 cubes corruption (15%) = +17.4 cubes before spirals. Still pretty low, but I think that expanding as fast as we can is more important. Hopefully the increased rations will decrease the effects of corruption. This also reduces DS in our local territories to 0 which should allow for a nice training ground (and also they'll probably be combined soon due to Tokyo's size)
It's been confirmed that our GC system is pretty much "here's everyone's cubes, plz don't steal". Honestly I'm kinda surprised that corruption is as low as 15%. We're meticulously tracking every cube dropped, we shouldn't stop the tracking once it enters our system.
PS. Right now and for the next few turns as we get Tokyo back up to a reasonable DS we'll probably be going all-out in hunting for a while, which means that solo hunting would be very viable (particularly in our local territory where it's safer)- but I said I'd stick with the chart so I am. It could definitely be rebalanced though.
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Worth noting that this can only tell us that someone is under-reporting their hunting, not who.
That's... not what Vigilance is. Vigilance is the thing that makes it so that when you do a bunch of missions in one region ADVENT pulls in reinforcements from surrounding areas to raise that region's strength but reducing the others'.
With Vigilance manipulation you can get very low advent strength in some regions even in the very late game. (Though since the Force Level is still high and Dark Events are global the enemies will still be pretty tough individually) For example, you could have a region stuck at liberation 3 and just not do it to make the surrounding regions have relatively low ADVENT strength, then when you complete the liberation chain a whole bunch of strength is destroyed.
Then make them have weak effects like the money-gathering operations, or have them be long projects that take hundreds of megucamonths to finish before providing some benefit.
Depends on how many types of equipment you think we'll be getting as the game goes on. If you really think it's useful keeping equipment in isn't too bad, especially since with the chart system all it does is lower maximum DS. It's actually kinda reasonable if you also reduce it to a single equipment slot.
Looking at the spreadsheet, it used to be 8(exp)x3(RT)x3(hunting mode)x3(transport)x4(charms)x7(equipment) = 6,048 possibilities (excluding the x2 from forecasting since we always took that no matter what)
With my system and still all 7 equipment it's 3(exp)x3(RT/mode)x7(equipment) = 63 possibilities
and we'd preferably reduce the equipment down to, say, 3 types (none, light, heavy) for 27 possibilities.
Combinatorial explosion is very much a thing that needs to be kept in check.
You can have interesting optimization problems when the possibilities are reasonable, but the old system just had too many. The hunting complexity was very much a problem of scale. While many of the options were interesting, you just had too many. The interesting optimization problem to me is in how the hunting system interacts with the other systems- do we build up a DS buffer by underhunting, do we need more greens, vets, or elites, do we want more cubes this turn or more cubes in the long run, etc.
IIRC nope, it's not generally worth it to do elite training with only 1 elite candidate (and without significant omake bonuses)
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I thought you said earlier that you liked the level of math seen in Shepard Quest (i.e. the only quest I've ever seen using calculus at all, and rather advanced calculus at that)? I'm rather surprised you'd like the simplified system.
Let me be clear, I liked the old system too. But I felt that with no one creating turn plans for it, I had to get rid of it.
Nope.
Hmm I'm not sure what sort of things could be generated that would fit with that.
Interesting idea you have there. I could do that.
I never looked at it fully in that sense. Though there were a limited number of combinations actually used.
This could be reasonable.
But for someone who hasn't done the analysis before, you can't know which combinations are reasonable and which aren't, which options are the ones you modify at the start and which options are best dealt with at the end. It meant that only the enfranchised players (or those willing to pour many hours into simply understanding the interactions before even starting to plan) were able to try to make a plan.
Wonder if I should take a vote on whether to move to new system, or just revise old one as notgreat outlined, then a second set on whether to keep thread or change thread.
I am curious about opinions on that.
If we do change threads and systems, maybe call it Meguca Macro Empire Quest.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
If we do change threads and systems, maybe call it Meguca Macro Empire Quest.
We might want to save that for when/if we control Japan instead of just Tokyo. Maybe mini empire?
Dreitus
Oh, Canada!
I wouldn't mind the old if all the relevant information was properly organized and streamlined.
I'd argue that it just reduces the busywork by making it so that we don't have to oscillate hunting to the DS limit when we want to maximize cubes/territory. It does change the numbers, but the only strategic change is in how we can't get natural bursts of on/off meguca quite as easily (but we didn't really do that much anyway since steady state was so much easier to deal with) edit: It does remove the "lower casualty % -> more cubes". See below for a potential solution.
If you really liked it you can make it so that RT and IRT may only be used when total DS raise in that territory is >20 and then probably add 1 more option so that there's some decision if we're not raising DS (like, full hunting vs safe hunting) but I'm not really sure what the strategic value is in making us do the oscillations. It was a neat trick when we found it but now that it's been standardized it's kinda just busywork- do we value cubes/meguca or cubes/territory more is the real question there, and by how much.
It might be better to make it so that instead of just -20/turn, you do something like "Multiply DS by 0.5 then subtract 15" so that there's an actual reason to keep DS at higher levels. (To keep effective territory the same we'd need to keep it at DS 10, and then negative DS naturally causes the territory to produce less cubes, bottoming out at -30. DS 15 would give 50% more effective territory than DS 0.) This would preserve the "Lower casualty % -> more cubes" effect.
The way I'd represent that on the resource page would be "South 9.7 -> -10.1" meaning that if we do no hunting there next turn it would drop to -7.7. Our current North 6.5 -> -11.8
edit: This would also nicely resolve the Kyouko problem of "She should have had literally hundreds of stocked cubes (+6/turn)". Since she kept such a low DS she would've only been able to collect a few cubes/turn.
Personally I'd also make it so that DS maximum is checked at both the start and the end of the hunting action to remove the 0.5 exploit that we've been constantly doing ever since RT was discovered. (Though if you decide to implement this I'll need to adjust my plan significantly as it'd become illegal under our current 0% causalty policy) Not relevant to us but I'd do the area calculation to get the actual %casualty- DS max 5, going from 0 -> 10, you'd have a triangle from time 0.5 to 1 with height 5 for 1.25% real casualty rate
Yeah, the old system was a mess of unstated options that were only knowable if you remembered the update or sometimes even dived into the discussions. Losing the list at the end of each turn of all the available actions really hurt clarity I think.
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Dreitus
Oh, Canada!
The miniturns hurt it as well. Also not having the contents of past winning votes visible. That said, I don't think condensing meguca into "chapters" gets to the heart of the problem here. It does deal with the symptoms I guess...
The new system is more a step sideways than forward, but it's not a step in the wrong direction. Still, a more organized first post explaining hunting requirements and our past practices in the quest might be more helpful. I guess this is just how quests develop.
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I ditched that largely because it was painful to keep it up to date. Plus I felt like people acted too much like it was the only options. When the system was always meant for players to come up with their own ideas.
Yes, definitely that is an issue.
I'm not sure what you mean explaining past practices.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Presumably they mean explaining the institutional culture that the Serene's developed in this thread, and that will set the "tone at the top" as it were.
Some thoughts on fraud control:
- The primary reason this is a problem for us is that we can't really vet our members, the way a government agency might, and we can't really justify throwing someone out for something short of murder. But we can try to restrict who holds positions of trust.
- There are essentially two places we can loose GC units:
- Unreported hunting (i.e. poaching)
- We should make some attempt to limit hunter-status to the more reliable refugees and our older members, since it gives a much better opportunity to get away with poaching.
- Make sure the less reliable members are paired with the more experienced ones, which simultaneously gets us training for the new hunter, reliable reporting on demon kills, and hopefully some cultural bleed.
- Rotate who hunts where regularly, to effectively audit the previous teams reporting.
- I think we're probably mostly doing these already by accident, but it's worth making it a policy.
- Some people might try hunting even if they're not on a hunter team. We could render this less of a problem by limit access to hunter equipment, but it's inevitable that someone will try no matter how untrained and ill-equip they are. This is probably best handled through cultural means.
- Theft from GC stockpiles
- Restrict direct access to the stockpiles, and require that deposits/withdrawals are logged.
- There's probably someone already responsible for this at each place, just giving them a safe and a periodically audited logbook should do.
- Make sure to log who they're being withdrawn for, since I could see someone hitting up multiple locations for their GC allocation. Check for these kinds of discrepancies when auditing.
- Restrict direct access to the stockpiles, and require that deposits/withdrawals are logged.
- Unreported hunting (i.e. poaching)
- We probably want to not explicitly mark our fraud control measures, since it makes us seem untrusting (and therefore untrustworthy).
- We need an actual fraud reporting process. Make sure everyone is aware of it, and their responsibility to use it.
So put up a poll since not a lot of people commented and I explicitly and clearly want a consensus on whether I should try to use notgreat's idea and cut down the old system's complexity. Or just toss it.
I can see either way working but I want to know what people really want. Left it so you can vote for both if you really don't care. But I do want to get a pretty full block of opinions on this.
Because either way we go is a huge difference and likely to be that way a while.
Depending how things go I might just use one of the plans already posted based on which system is chosen.
I can see either way working but I want to know what people really want. Left it so you can vote for both if you really don't care. But I do want to get a pretty full block of opinions on this.
Because either way we go is a huge difference and likely to be that way a while.
Depending how things go I might just use one of the plans already posted based on which system is chosen.
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These are all good notions. At the same time, however, I'm of the opinion that a lot of this is going to die down on its own after the Tokyo situation enters more of a steady state. The main reasons we're even seeing these issues right now is that, IIRC, we're primarily relying on lesser-trained vets for hunting and we had most of our True Believers in other cities for most of the month hunting Class 3s in Tokyo, training with the artifact in Hiko's territory, and doing quant work/outreach at the Mageocracy. As things settle a bit we'll be back to having a dozen or more True Believers living in the houses, right alongside the cubes, so fraud and theft should naturally slow.
Even if we might be able to handle things in the old system right now, the Tokyo expansion is going to wreck it. Handling ~800 people 0.5 megucamonths at a time is just completely infeasible.