Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)

[racnor]

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.

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It might die down but it likely won't ever stop entirely. It's not exactly a massive priority at the moment, but eventually it's something important to consider. Especially since physical proximity is still not much of a defense against magical theft.

 

[UberJJK]

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.

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I played around with that spreadsheet a while back and while it is certainly useful for getting results it's still very much a blackbox. It doesn't really help you get the intuitive sense of how the system works that's really needed. Instead you just plug in random numbers until a result you like comes out.

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.

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Oh I enjoy the math, complexity, and all that. I still prefer the simplified system because it's more accessible. The more accessible a system the more alternate votes and discussion it will generate. That is what keeps a quest alive and a GM interested. Seeing as I quite enjoy MMEQ I'm happy to see it shifting to a system that will encourage player participation.

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.

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From my experience with quests I'd say this was the wrong way to go about it. I've seen time and time again that if given a blank "write in:" option people will just sit and not vote; hoping someone else will come up with a vote. What seems to work better is to give a couple fixed options plus a write-in option. That way when people inevitably feel unsatisfied by the existing options, generally because they think two could be combined easily enough, they'll go out and make a write-in.

Of course this is all complicated by the fact that empire quests are kinda hard to make write-ins for. It's not simply a matter of writing something that sounds fine within the context of the latest update. You've got to either do a bunch of math to figure out a vaguely appropriate set of costs and rewards or pitch your idea to the GM and pester them into giving you the numbers.


Take the updated versions of existing options I created( by the way what do you think of them?) for example. Some of it was as simple as running a x20 through the vote but others required more effort. The courier business expansions required serious consideration since they are shifting from servicing a population of 740,000 to something more like 13,000,000. In the end I went with a relatively simple approach of multiplying the cost by the area increase and the rewards by the population increase. Obviously this ended up with a wildly increased cost to reward ratio due to the massive densities of Tokyo and Kanagawa. I kinda dealt with that by doubling the costs under the justification that I was already (more or less) doubling the staff (6 Meguca Months vs. 0.5 Standard Chapters) and it would fit with the increased numbers of customers. But it really was a bunch of guesswork that might be completely off and rejected.

 

[Ramble]

Yeah, free form mostly works better for quests when there's options to work off of rather than simply plopping down a set of empty brackets.

We're kinda like kids with a fill in the colors book. Sometime we like to add different colors. Sometimes we'll pick up a pencil and add more details to fill in. Sometimes we'll do something completely crazy and it'll maybe work maybe not. It doesn't work if what we have is a blank sheet though.

I mean, if the quest is compelling enough, we'll argue about things. We'll pull out arguments and justification. We'll bitch and complain at each other. Somebody will pull out numbers. We'll work out how we should probably go about things. Somebody will call the plan stupid. Somebody will pull out another plan. Somebody will call all other plans stupid and post their own. Somebody will call somebody else a faggot. And in the middle of it all, people forget to put down a plan in [ ] brackets.

Then somebody actually does and we bandwagon.

 

[notgreat]

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.

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It was hard for you, now remember that anyone that wants to make a vote has to make that list themselves. An alternative would be to keep the list but make it so that most non-hunting actions have some sort of system of effort rather than direct costs. Having hard costs means that any attempted new option has to be costed through you first. Soft costs would thus encourgage innovation.
There are lots of ways you could do this, here's one example:

Tasks have a hidden value of vet/green ratio. (Some also need elites) If you don't have enough vets then the greens give significantly less.(preferably a defined algorithm) After doing a given task a few times or with enough people this ratio can be discovered (and thus recorded in the options list). Everyone involved does some sort of roll, then the result is called "effort". There are 3 types of tasks
1) Basic: every X effort that goes in results in some effect.
2) Research: We don't know how much effort is needed and sometimes we get lucky and complete it early.
3) One time action: the opportunity passes once the turn ends. The effectiveness of the action is determined by the effort invested.

edit: Since you seem to like direct examples: vets provide 1d6+2 effort, greens provide 1d4+1. If there are too many greens, take the total effort of all greens above the limit and multiply by 0.75*(1-(# of excess greens/# of meguca involved))

So, 3 greens+2 vet in a 1:1 project gives (2d6+4 + 2d4+2)+(0.75*0.8)(1d4+1). Larger projects can deal with more excess greens with them still providing close to 75% effect if we go a bit over the limit.

There are tons of other potential systems, but this seemed closest to a formalization of what you were effectively doing behind the scenes. Or you could just not formalize it and just remove a bunch of costs.

I'm not sure what you mean explaining past practices.

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I read it as: What we actually do in the quest. For example, the research multiplier mechanic isn't stated anywhere as far as I can tell. The whole DS halfway point casualties thing. What our debt situation is. Etc.


Also, I still claim that the chapter system doesn't simplify anywhere near as much as you think. It'll solve the symptoms for a few turns while the chapter count is low, but it solves none of the actual problems besides hunting complexity (by just removing everything to do with hunting beyond a single action)

 

[Aranfan]

@UberJJK, could you please add Skelm's anti-corruption measures to your plan?

 

[Aranfan]

Hmm. On the one hand, most of the votes in the poll are for Notgreat, but most of the votes in the thread are for @UberJJK's plan which uses the chapter system.

This is a bit of a conundrum.

 

[Skelm]

Hmm. On the one hand, most of the votes in the poll are for Notgreat, but most of the votes in the thread are for @UberJJK's plan which uses the chapter system.

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Is there a plan that doesn't use the chapter system?

 

[Snekwitch]

We just got done with an unplanned hiatus due to the failings of the old system. I'm not sure I understand why we're talking about...going back to it?

 

[notgreat]

Is there a plan that doesn't use the chapter system?

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[X] Old Fogey's Dying Breath

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The plan isn't perfect, but I didn't want to invest the time to really optimize since the system is still majorly in flux.

We just got done with an unplanned hiatus due to the failings of the old system. I'm not sure I understand why we're talking about...going back to it?

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Because the new system solves none of the actual problems that the old system had. If you read through the discussion (admittedly quite long) I've actually proposed changes even larger than the "divide by 20" that @inverted_helix was planning on switching to.

The problems were
1) Hunting was way too complicated (solved with either system, though Chapter goes further)
2) People didn't know what to do with their megucamonths

The Chapter system solves 2) by just making the fundamental unit 10 megucamonths instead of 0.5; that solves the symptoms temporarily but doesn't fix the underlying problems. I'm proposing changing something else- clearer option lists or a softer effort system were the two I suggested.

Not sure why @inverted_helix made the poll "leave the rest intact" because I've stated several times that the other parts should be dealt with to a degree, just that the way it was being dealt with in the Chapter system wouldn't actually fix anything.

edit:

It removes much of the strategic tradeoffs. Even in my current calculations for the ultra simplified system that stayed the same.

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I was reading over the discussion and this really struck me- I think we might have a fundamental miscommunication going on here. In my mind there's a distinct difference between the game's systems and the game's balance. Now, some systems are inherently unbalanced and if the balance is bad it doesn't matter what the systems are, but there's still a major difference that seems to be lost here.

The strategic tradeoffs are all in terms of the system; what resources do what. The numbers aren't that important here beyond making sure they're somewhat reasonableish.

Bad balance can mean that you always want to make the same trade no matter the situation which is boring, but your proposed system doesn't have any strategic tradeoffs for hunting (at least, none visible to us) beyond "it takes X chapters hunting". The chapter system kept the balance of that tradeoff (by preserving the numbers) but it didn't preserve any of the gameplay/strategies beyond that single tradeoff. Balance is where all the numbers really matter, what determines if, say, greens are more efficient hunting or more efficient doing work. (In the old system: work, since they took no penalties there but did only 2/3 of the hunting of a vet and needed a lower DS)

Both are important, but I was discussing systems, not balance.

 

[Skelm]

The Chapter system solves 2) by just making the fundamental unit 10 megucamonths instead of 0.5; that solves the symptoms temporarily but doesn't fix the underlying problems. I'm proposing changing something else- clearer option lists or a softer effort system were the two I suggested.

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I'm feeling kind of ambivalent between the choices now.

 

[inverted_helix]

Will likely edit this post a great deal if no one posts after, trying to brainstorm on ways to really fix mechanics in a way that would satisfy the most people, throwing a lot of ideas at the wall to see what sticks in a sense.

We just got done with an unplanned hiatus due to the failings of the old system. I'm not sure I understand why we're talking about...going back to it?

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Essentially I'm trying to satisfy as many people possible with a system I could actually produce. It's a rather complex balancing act. I understand that it's taking a fair bit of time to figure out, and I'm sorry about that, but honestly I still haven't gotten any omake this turn so I'm ungenerous anyway

Tasks have a hidden value of vet/green ratio. (Some also need elites) If you don't have enough vets then the greens give significantly less.(preferably a defined algorithm) After doing a given task a few times or with enough people this ratio can be discovered (and thus recorded in the options list). Everyone involved does some sort of roll, then the result is called "effort". There are 3 types of tasks
1) Basic: every X effort that goes in results in some effect.
2) Research: We don't know how much effort is needed and sometimes we get lucky and complete it early.
3) One time action: the opportunity passes once the turn ends. The effectiveness of the action is determined by the effort invested.

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I fail to understand how this really resolves things. Without players knowing how much effort is required to complete the action, they'd still end up asking me to cost everything out.

The Chapter system solves 2) by just making the fundamental unit 10 megucamonths instead of 0.5; that solves the symptoms temporarily but doesn't fix the underlying problems. I'm proposing changing something else- clearer option lists or a softer effort system were the two I suggested.

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That solves the symptoms for quite a while in a way that I could continue to treat. I mean rescaling things is a temporary solution but a repeatable one. Similar to how games like WoW rescale things each expansion.

Problem is your idea still leaves players with an infinitely scaling set of possible actions to undertake as manpower rises and you have more and more slots to fill. And that's simply not feasible for me either.

It's tempting to go into one of the models where you assign a percent of your manpower to a project rather than numerical values.

 

[notgreat]

Without players knowing how much effort is required to complete the action, they'd still end up asking me to cost everything out.

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Either
1) The action is an action that we've done before, and we know how much effort it needs: these need to be recorded, obviously.
2) it isn't, and we don't.

That is, it approaches reality: we don't know how much effort something needs until we do it a bit. By making effort cumulative for most things, we can still work on a project even if we don't know how done it is without having the effort be wasted.

Problem is your idea still leaves players with an infinitely scaling set of possible actions to undertake as manpower rises and you have more and more slots to fill. And that's simply not feasible for me either.

It's tempting to go into one of the models where you assign a percent of your manpower to a project rather than numerical values.

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What's the real difference between a % value and multiplying that % by our current population? By making the unit "people" instead of "% of population" it's easier to portion things out atomically in bundles, but it's not a huge change. The real problem with %s is that it's really awkward for things like hunting mechanics, since you presumably want to have territory be a serious limiter still and doing % as the unit means that as our population changes, 1 unit causes a different amount of DS. As long as you keep the chart updated that's not really a problem I guess.

Having a fundamental unit of 1% means that we need to constantly re-multiply for things like how much % of our population is working in our restaurants or doing other various tasks, but you already had several upkeeps that were actually %s and just readjusted every once in a while as we grew so I don't think it really matters if the unit is (1 megucamonth) or ((1% of our population)*1 month).

 

[inverted_helix]

Either
1) The action is an action that we've done before, and we know how much effort it needs: these need to be recorded, obviously.
2) it isn't, and we don't.

That is, it approaches reality: we don't know how much effort something needs until we do it a bit. By making effort cumulative for most things, we can still work on a project even if we don't know how done it is without having the effort be wasted.

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Hmm interesting, I suppose that's workable.

What's the real difference between a % value and multiplying that % by our current population? By making the unit "people" instead of "% of population" it's easier to portion things out atomically in bundles, but it's not a huge change. The real problem with %s is that it's really awkward for things like hunting mechanics, since you presumably want to have territory be a serious limiter still and doing % as the unit means that as our population changes, 1 unit causes a different amount of DS. As long as you keep the chart updated that's not really a problem I guess.

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Well essentially would just need to keep updating the % of population needed to keep territory hunted.

It would shift the math burden more to me rather than the players but that's reasonably acceptable.

Honestly this whole long running discussion is making it clear why most empire quests just stick with the CK2 format, it's so simple and easy to do. Of course the downside is you get serious distortions in just how much you can do seeming very limited.

Part of the benefit of an action slot system is that it limits what players can do, and there's less expectation of precision pricing. A GM can give vague indicators and just apply the costs to the budget at the end in a wobbly sort of way. Your budget is rarely so tight that the little wobbles make a difference.

In a manpower tracking system like this, any change in time taken translates to difference in what actions you can undertake.

 

[Dreitus]

That solves the symptoms for quite a while in a way that I could continue to treat. I mean rescaling things is a temporary solution but a repeatable one. Similar to how games like WoW rescale things each expansion.

Problem is your idea still leaves players with an infinitely scaling set of possible actions to undertake as manpower rises and you have more and more slots to fill. And that's simply not feasible for me either.

It's tempting to go into one of the models where you assign a percent of your manpower to a project rather than numerical values.

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When the numbers rise people can just increase them as long as they know what they mean. Right now making a vote requires personally aggregating data from multiple sources.

 

[notgreat]

Of course the downside is you get serious distortions in just how much you can do seeming very limited.

Part of the benefit of an action slot system is that it limits what players can do, and there's less expectation of precision pricing. A GM can give vague indicators and just apply the costs to the budget at the end in a wobbly sort of way. Your budget is rarely so tight that the little wobbles make a difference.

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I don't know which quests you're looking at, but most of the ones I've seen have very strict costs and benefits applied to the vast majority of options. And they generally don't accept write-ins for the empire actions because, well, that's the point. It's "Choose between these options that do exactly this" rather than "do something, anything".

When the numbers rise people can just increase them as long as they know what they mean. Right now making a vote requires personally aggregating data from multiple sources.

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This is the crux of what I've been saying. Don't "fix" the numbers, fix the amount of work it takes to find the information you need to make informed decisions.

 

[inverted_helix]

I don't know which quests you're looking at, but most of the ones I've seen have very strict costs and benefits applied to the vast majority of options. And they generally don't accept write-ins for the empire actions because, well, that's the point. It's "Choose between these options that do exactly this" rather than "do something, anything".

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Amongst all empire quests sure. Because most use a CK2 system. I'm talking about the ones more similar to this quest where you have a couple of action slots you can spend on anything you want. Like Splintered Circle or Grandeur.

 

[racnor]

Essentially I'm trying to satisfy as many people possible with a system I could actually produce. It's a rather complex balancing act. I understand that it's taking a fair bit of time to figure out, and I'm sorry about that, but honestly I still haven't gotten any omake this turn so I'm ungenerous anyway

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If it helps, i'm working on a piece about the teleport interdictor girl. I have an odd urge to flesh out Tokyo's sordid past.

 

[notgreat]

Well, at this point I think @inverted_helix needs to make a choice. The player base is pretty evenly split, but either way the system needs to be chosen and more precisely defined.

The multiplying our fundamental unit makes some sense as a way to prevent arguments about +/- a few meguca on any action, but the chapter system just goes too far (and completely removes everything to do with hunting, which I think is a major loss). Still, making the fundamental unit 1 instead of 0.5 makes quite a bit of sense. (Maybe except for Mami just so that we can do 2 boosted diplomacy actions every turn)

 

[UberJJK]

Since I was bored and since the poll is (marginally) learning towards keeping the old unit system here I figured I'd knock together a plan for it. Just in case.

[] Operation Hard Sock


Meguca Deployments:
Unavailable Meguca: 24 Veterans, 19 Greens, and 1 Associate
Available Meguca: 6 Elite, 80 Veterans, 34 Greens, and Serena's Team (6 Meguca)

Finance Actions: 17 Veterans + 34 Greens

Start Your Own Business (Restaurant) #1: 2 Veterans + 4 Greens
Start Your Own Business (Restaurant) #2: 2 Veterans + 4 Greens
Start Your Own Business (Restaurant) #3: 2 Veterans + 4 Greens
Start Your Own Business (Restaurant) #4: 2 Veterans + 4 Greens
Start Your Own Business (Restaurant) #5: 2 Veterans + 4 Greens
Expand Courier Business (Kanagawa Prefecture): 4 Veterans + 8 Greens
Expand Courier Business (Tokyo Prefecture): 3 Veterans + 6 Greens
​

Hunting Actions: 5 Elites + 36 Veterans

Normal Hunting (Tokyo Prefecture): 5 Elites + 36 Veterans
Serena Hunting (Class 3s): Serena's Team
​

Diplomacy Actions: 1 Elite + 15 Veterans

Aftermath with Nagoya and Kyoto: 0.5 Elite (Mami)
Personal Introductions (New Members): 0.5 Elite (Mami)
Claim Territory (see Territory Expansion map) and Recruit Meguca: 15 Veterans
​

Miscellaneous Actions: 12 Veterans

Group Sports Day: 5.5 Veterans
Grief Use Tracking/Management: 4 Veterans
Demon hunting diary: 2.5 Veterans
Fun With Magic (Permanent): 0 Veterans​

Finance Effects:
Opening Balance: -$1,497,120

Plus Fixed Income: $44,500
Less Fixed Expenses: -$69,170
Net Change: -$24,670​

Available Balance: -$1,521,790

Variable Income: $0
Variable Expenses: -$2,514,000

Finance Actions: -$2,514,000​

Start Your Own Business (Restaurant) #1: -$500,000
Start Your Own Business (Restaurant) #2: -$500,000
Start Your Own Business (Restaurant) #3: -$500,000
Start Your Own Business (Restaurant) #4: -$500,000
Start Your Own Business (Restaurant) #5: -$500,000
Expand Courier Business (Kanagawa Prefecture): -$8,000
Expand Courier Business (Tokyo Prefecture): -$6,000
​

Net Change: -$2,514,000
Closing Balance: -$4,035,790

Grief Cube Effects:
Opening Reserve: 132 GCU

Less Meguca Upkeep: 170 GCU​

Available Grief Cubes: -38 GCU

Hunting Income: 194.9 GCU

5 Elites (Tokyo Prefecture): 36.5 GCU
36 Veterans (Tokyo Prefecture): 158.4 GCU
​

Expenditures: -37 GCU

Start Your Own Business (Restaurant) #1: 4 GCU
Start Your Own Business (Restaurant) #2: 4 GCU
Start Your Own Business (Restaurant) #3: 4 GCU
Start Your Own Business (Restaurant) #4: 4 GCU
Start Your Own Business (Restaurant) #5: 4 GCU
Fun With Magic: 17 GCU​

Net Change: 157.9 GCU
Closing Reserve: 119.9 GCU




I think that is everything that needed covering. If not I'll edit it in. Oh and @inverted_helix - since I don't think anyone else has commented on it I'm still willing to buy Kyouko's church despite the price hike.

 

[notgreat]

I think that is everything that needed covering.

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Your cubes seem all wrong. You aren't counting Fun With Magic, and Grief Use tracking should give us cubes, not cost us. You should probably also subtract an approximate 15% to represent average current corruption. This leaves you at 132(store) -175.6(168 meguca*1.1*.95) +194.9(hunting) -29.2(corruption) -20(restaurants) =102.1 cubes left, net -29.9 cubes from last turn. This seems dangerously low considering we're also expanding our population.

I really question investing that much money into starting new restaurants. We don't have magic cooks for all of them, and that's what made our restaurant so worthwhile. Maybe just buy some real estate and plan to flip it once Tokyo's economy recovers? That should cost us a lot less meguca and be just as if not more profitable.

You're also bringing DS in our main territories to the dangerously low values of -3.4 and -2.6. Any time DS hits negative we start seeing negative effects on the local human population.

 

[Aranfan]

Grief Use Tracking/Management: 16.4 GCU

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I am strongly against this if we do wind up going for your plan. It seems like a very wrong impression to give to the new girls who we want to assimilate.

 

[inverted_helix]

Well, at this point I think @inverted_helix needs to make a choice. The player base is pretty evenly split, but either way the system needs to be chosen and more precisely defined.

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Yeah the even split takes me by surprise and really ends up pushing the decision back to me which is annoying.

The multiplying our fundamental unit makes some sense as a way to prevent arguments about +/- a few meguca on any action, but the chapter system just goes too far (and completely removes everything to do with hunting, which I think is a major loss). Still, making the fundamental unit 1 instead of 0.5 makes quite a bit of sense. (Maybe except for Mami just so that we can do 2 boosted diplomacy actions every turn)

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Honestly multiplying fundamental unit by 2 instead of 20 doesn't reduce the problem of too many actions very much. Though I am sensitive to the idea that optimization is what made the quest more unique.

I think that is everything that needed covering. If not I'll edit it in. Oh and @inverted_helix - since I don't think anyone else has commented on it I'm still willing to buy Kyouko's church despite the price hike.

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I assumed it to be the case, since no one commented.

Grief Use Tracking/Management: 16.4 GCU

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This is effectively adding cubes rather than subtracting.

I really question investing that much money into starting new restaurants. We don't have magic cooks for all of them, and that's what made our restaurant so worthwhile. Maybe just buy some real estate and plan to flip it once Tokyo's economy recovers? That should cost us a lot less meguca and be just as if not more profitable.

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You don't have the education to make real estate flipping profitable. Though yes, restaurants without the benefits of magic will be less profitable than the current one.

You're also bringing DS in our main territories to the dangerously low values of -3.4 and -2.6. Any time DS hits negative we start seeing negative effects on the local human population.

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Negligible effects at that level. You don't start seeing anything too bad on the human population until significantly lower.


Could someone list everything that I need to collect and write up to make the original system transparent enough?

 

[notgreat]

Honestly multiplying fundamental unit by 2 instead of 20 doesn't reduce the problem of too many actions very much. Though I am sensitive to the idea that optimization is what made the quest more unique.

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It wouldn't be to solve the "too many actions" it'd be to just make things easier to deal with. Depending on how long you expect this to go, you might even do something like the chapter system just on a smaller scale: like, once we hit ~250 people we start assigning in groups of 10. That still leaves us with a bunch of options (we started at 21 meguca, we really shouldn't have less options than we started with) but without letting us get into fiddly arguments of "do we assign 48 or 49 people to this task".

Negligible effects at that level. You don't start seeing anything too bad on the human population until significantly lower.

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Really? I remember Kyouko's territory having a distinctly horrible feel to it and it was at -10. While this is only ~1/3 of that, it should still be noticeable, if perhaps not enormous.

Could someone list everything that I need to collect and write up to make the original system transparent enough?

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It really depends on if you take any of the suggested other systems- like, some variant of the effort system or something. Assuming you're keeping it as close to original as possible:

1) Hunting system:The chart needs to be rebalanced. (Make sure you're able to deal with territory size changes though). I'd also recommend considering the DS system I mentioned here as a way to make DS matter more in terms of long-term cubes/territory.
2) Hunting system 2: Inventory: figure out exactly what you're keeping (only equipment but drop to 1 slot?)
3) Take all of the various systems and record them in one place: the research multiplier mechanic, the DS halfway point casualties thing (if you're keeping it), what our debt situation is, corruption, etc.
4) Check over the options lists. I'm pretty sure there are several options missing there. Maybe include some sort of direct notation for variable-cost actions if you don't want to cost them all out.

I would highly recommend switching to some sort of variable-costs system for most actions though. It doesn't matter too much exactly how it works, but having multiple projects we can assign some % of our population to is a very easy way to solve the 'no options really fit what we have available' problem.

 

[UberJJK]

Your cubes seem all wrong. You aren't counting Fun With Magic, and Grief Use tracking should give us cubes, not cost us.

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That was a copy and paste error. The line:

Grief Use Tracking/Management: 16.4 GCU

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should have been:

Fun With Magic: 16.4 GCU

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Of course the value should have alsobeen 17 GCU since I forgot to update it when I realized we actually have to support 170 Meguca not 164.

Both of those been fixed.

As for Grief Use Tracking; I figured the 5% reduction applies starting next month. It just makes far more sense.

You should probably also subtract an approximate 15% to represent average current corruption.

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I'm not sure that's needed. For starters if we look at the reduction in cubes gained:

Hunting this month proceeded mostly as expected, but demon strength crept upwards slightly more quickly than anticipated in both territories. While there was the occasional detection of intruders, it couldn't really account for the losses, nor a number of cubes that you had collected going missing. While keeping them dispersed over each residence was convenient, it did make them rather more vulnerable than you'd like. Northern Demon strength to 6.5, southern harvest shut down early due to climbing strength to maintain limit.

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the problems were:

1. Intruders hunting our territory.
2. Unreported hunting by our girls.
3. Capping DS in the Southern Territory.
4. Theft from reserves.

1,2, and 3 aren't really issues in my plan since we're letting the core territories lay fallow and are instead hunting in the Tokyo Prefecture which has a sustainable hunting level 675 GCU to the ~200 GCU we'll be collecting. Combined with the fact we're way into the negatives there on DS and those three aren't problems. Then of course there is the fact we've got 5 Elites (4 are pre-Tokyo girls) and 36 Veterans hunting. Given the low numbers odds are most/all of those Veterans would be pre-Tokyo since they are the most trained (and trustworthy) girls we have. Oh and finally Demon Hunting Diary should help cut back on hunting corruption since the level of detail involved makes "forgetting" grief cubes here and there a lot harder.

Theft is still a potential problem but overall I feel Corruption should be a lot lower this turn then last.

This leaves you at 132(store) -175.6(168 meguca*1.1*.95) +194.9(hunting) -29.2(corruption) -20(restaurants) =102.1 cubes left, net -29.9 cubes from last turn. This seems dangerously low considering we're also expanding our population.

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With the corrections mentioned above I have 119.9 GCU without factoring in corruption, for reasons also mentioned above. That is definitely lower then I'd like. I could pull the girls off our Sports Day for an extra 24.2 GCU but I think the improved cohesion is more important right now.

As for expanding population; that's a good thing for our grief supply. The problem we've had so far is that we couldn't safely hunt Kanagawa and Tokyo thanks to the Beholder and Class 3s. Now that we can every extra girl represents not a loss of 1 GCU per turn but a gain of 1.855 GCU per Green and 3.355 GCU per Veteran.

We need at least 257 Veterans to hunt our new territory at sustainable levels using regular hunting. Throw in IRT and that goes up to 638.5 Veterans.

Fortunately for us next turn we'll be able to shift an additional 9.5 Veterans to hunting, even without any additional Meguca, which brings us up to 236.7 GCU income compared to our upkeep of 177.7 GCU for a net of +59 GCU less Corruption.

I really question investing that much money into starting new restaurants. We don't have magic cooks for all of them, and that's what made our restaurant so worthwhile. Maybe just buy some real estate and plan to flip it once Tokyo's economy recovers? That should cost us a lot less meguca and be just as if not more profitable.

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Right now we are bleeding money and it only gets worse with every new girl. We desperately need to expand our income streams as fast as possible. Besides setting up five restaurants once we defeat the Beholder has been the plan for ages.

While I'd love to do real estate flipping the GM has, for now, ruled that's not possible. That said it does bring up the reason I'm jumping on expanding our businesses right now; Tokyo's economy, and by extension Japan's, is in the middle of a massive depression so right now is the cheapest it will ever be to expand into Tokyo. Once the economy recovers I fully expect the price of those restaurants to double or even triple.

You're also bringing DS in our main territories to the dangerously low values of -3.4 and -2.6. Any time DS hits negative we start seeing negative effects on the local human population.

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This reminds me of some things we need to add to the list of required info. Anyways we have WoG that it's negligible at that level and since I plan to raise it back up next turn it shouldn't be a problem.

I am strongly against this if we do wind up going for your plan. It seems like a very wrong impression to give to the new girls who we want to assimilate.

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Could you clarify why you think it will give them the wrong impression?

This is effectively adding cubes rather than subtracting.

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See above about that being a copy and paste error.

You don't have the education to make real estate flipping profitable.

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Really? Because with the way the Japanese, and Tokyo's in particular, economy have been described I'd expect to see that the current property prices are at record lows. It really shouldn't take much education to realize that buying cheap land/property in one of the most expensive cities in the world is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Especially when we know prices should jump back to usual over the next couple months as we drive the DS up to positive levels.

Though yes, restaurants without the benefits of magic will be less profitable than the current one.

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Any ballpark figures for how much less profitable? Our current Restaurant clocks in at $9,000 directly plus another $5,500 in deliveries for a total of $14,500 per month. For further comparison the "Start Your Own Business (Restaurant)" option says:

Reward: Income scaling up over initial 3 month startup period to 10k a month after loan payment; potential to increase size of operation.

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I think it's fairly reasonable to assume $10,000/month figure is for a restaurant with a wish magic cook. At the same time however google is telling me interest on a loan, like the one the normal option includes, has repayment rates of around 5.5% per year for a monthly payment of ~$2,300. Given that we're using money from Sachiko, the costs of which are applied elsewhere, for these restaurants the income should be ~$2,300 higher. So one of our restaurants, remember we do have two Cooks, should be around $12,000/month.

As a worst case scenario if we assume the other 4 are halved (~$6,000/month) that gives:

Tokyo/Kanagawa Restraunt #1 - $12,000
Tokyo/Kanagawa Restraunt #2 - $6,000
Tokyo/Kanagawa Restraunt #3 - $6,000
Tokyo/Kanagawa Restraunt #4 - $6,000
Tokyo/Kanagawa Restraunt #5 - $6,000
Total = $36,000​

which is enough to bring our cash flow into the positive, at least for now. Throw in the Couriers which I'm estimating at $13,500 (Tokyo Prefecture) and $18,000 (Kanagawa Prefecture) and we're looking at a total of +$67,500/month. That should definitely help out with our cash issues.

At least in three months time when we actually start hitting those sort of profits.

 

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It wouldn't be to solve the "too many actions" it'd be to just make things easier to deal with. Depending on how long you expect this to go, you might even do something like the chapter system just on a smaller scale: like, once we hit ~250 people we start assigning in groups of 10. That still leaves us with a bunch of options (we started at 21 meguca, we really shouldn't have less options than we started with) but without letting us get into fiddly arguments of "do we assign 48 or 49 people to this task".

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10 would be the exact same as letting people use .5 chapter units.

I'd also recommend considering the DS system I mentioned here as a way to make DS matter more in terms of long-term cubes/territory.

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\That change you were talking about pretty much runs at complete cross purposes to the actual design goals. My early thought of just completely eliminating all the hunting mechanics and managing it automatically would be closer to the original design than that change.

Assuming you have Full Armor for each hunter at $1600 per hunter, with lesser armor types eliminated from scope:

	Cubes	DS Average limit
Green	2.6	5
Vet	4.4	10
Elite	7.3	12
Green RT	2.1	4
Vet RT	3.4	9
Elite RT	5.8	15
Vet IRT	3.4	4
Elite IRT	5.8	10

Calculating DS change using:
Normal = 20*(Harvest-Territory size)/(Territory size)
RT = [20*(Harvest -Territory Size)/(Territory size)]*.6
IRT = [20*(Harvest -Territory Size)/(Territory size)]*.5
DS drops 1/4 as fast when below 0.

Casualty chance isn't calculated as long as you use them below that limit. With the limit being essentially the average between start and ending.
Greens essentially can't do IRT because that ends up in the negatives.

3) Take all of the various systems and record them in one place: the research multiplier mechanic, the DS halfway point casualties thing (if you're keeping it), what our debt situation is, corruption, etc.

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Research multiplier mechanic is essentially a DR curve. You can accelerate research by throwing more and more resources at it but it's less efficient than more time at a lower bracket. Contemplating how best to set that up or if I should ditch it in favor of something else.

Currently it's essentially Resources = Base*(-2)(1-1.5^n)
With "n" being the number of multiples. This reduces to Resources = Base, with just one interval.

what our debt situation is

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Well right now I'm simplifying that to essentially you have had 4% of your equity bought out, and you're now moved to normal interest loans.

4) Check over the options lists. I'm pretty sure there are several options missing there. Maybe include some sort of direct notation for variable-cost actions if you don't want to cost them all out.

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What actions are actually missing from the list at the bottom of this post: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/posts/1837874/ ?

As for Grief Use Tracking; I figured the 5% reduction applies starting next month. It just makes far more sense.

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I'm not sure what you mean here exactly, it's about reducing your use on a month to month basis as needed. So it works the month you run it.

This reminds me of some things we need to add to the list of required info. Anyways we have WoG that it's negligible at that level and since I plan to raise it back up next turn it shouldn't be a problem.

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Okay this is something I can clarify. Essentially you've got some rough brackets:
0 to 10 Humans are a little more positive as it goes up, but not that big a a deal
-10 to 0 Humans are a little more negative, but mostly okay and the average person involved probably won't notice from within
-30 to -10 Humans are noticeably more negative, harder for them to actually do things that rely on having a positive outlook, suicide rates uptick gradually
<-30 Negativity reaches critical levels. Expect large numbers of suicides that scale up as you go lower. Things like businesses trying to think about the future will have their views seriously skewed, it becomes almost impossible for a manager in the area to believe it will ever get better, this results in changes to their economic planning. Though when you deal with more distributed corporations, effects can be weird.
Below -40 it becomes very noticeable to outside human observers that something is wrong, that it's not natural, a lot of deaths where the person just kind of stopped like Miranda in Firefly.

Significant parts of Tokyo have dipped into the -40s. But the Incubators have mass deployed super-advanced anti-depressants. This has put a pause on the mass suicides.

Kyouko kept her territory around -10, because below that the effects on humans were kind of a drag on her by association. Not because the effects on humans were directly affecting her, but because all the humans being depressed has a sort of peer effect. Magical girls don't directly suffer from negative demon strength. But their senses can roughly detect it and it can be likened somewhat to a bad smell: very noticeable on entering, less so if you're living there.

While I'd love to do real estate flipping the GM has, for now, ruled that's not possible. That said it does bring up the reason I'm jumping on expanding our businesses right now; Tokyo's economy, and by extension Japan's, is in the middle of a massive depression so right now is the cheapest it will ever be to expand into Tokyo. Once the economy recovers I fully expect the price of those restaurants to double or even triple.

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Really? Because with the way the Japanese, and Tokyo's in particular, economy have been described I'd expect to see that the current property prices are at record lows. It really shouldn't take much education to realize that buying cheap land/property in one of the most expensive cities in the world is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Especially when we know prices should jump back to usual over the next couple months as we drive the DS up to positive levels.

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Okay so the issue with this is not precisely knowing that value is depressed. The issue is the piles of laws and contracts relating to buying and selling property, the taxes, regulations, etc. You don't have anyone qualified to handle that.

I'm a little fuzzy since it's been a long time, but I believe that even your original restaurant you essentially got one of the girls' wealthy father to kind of set most of it up.

Any ballpark figures for how much less profitable? Our current Restaurant clocks in at $9,000 directly plus another $5,500 in deliveries for a total of $14,500 per month. For further comparison the "Start Your Own Business (Restaurant)" option says:
I think it's fairly reasonable to assume $10,000/month figure is for a restaurant with a wish magic cook. At the same time however google is telling me interest on a loan, like the one the normal option includes, has repayment rates of around 5.5% per year for a monthly payment of ~$2,300. Given that we're using money from Sachiko, the costs of which are applied elsewhere, for these restaurants the income should be ~$2,300 higher. So one of our restaurants, remember we do have two Cooks, should be around $12,000/month.

As a worst case scenario if we assume the other 4 are halved (~$6,000/month) that gives:

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Hmm now you have me wondering why you ended up at 9k instead of 10k. I don't think I originally meant to include the delivery service in that figure.

Halved to start is fair. Though I'd probably give better odds on increasing profit until it reached maybe 9k or so.

As to the loan payments. Your original equity agreement was hugely controversial and was intended for only your initial very high risk period when she was laying odds on you dying to the Beholder. Now you're out of that period and she can offer a more normal interest rate instead of equity buyout angel investment. So something like 5.5% Normal, and 4.5% from Sachiko.



Edit: Many many edits struggling to make a table work. I had a table, tried to make it look nicer, and forum decided I was too uppity and didn't deserve any tables at all anymore.