Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)

[Elder Haman]

[X] Pack Hunting: Magical Girls will hunt in groups vastly reducing the danger, but because they are not covering as much area their efficiency is reduced. Death is significantly less likely.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward 1.25 Grief Cubes per Meguca assigned; 10% base casualty chance

[X] 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. Chance of success 25% per Meguca, following up on a previous month's success brings the chance to 100%.
-[X] Maintain current 4, newest girl is also assigned to go find a job (can the current maid/waitress recommend her and so increase her chances?). Reward: $1,000 per month per Meguca assigned. (For current 4 keeping jobs $1,000, 2x $1,200, and $1800 guaranteed success.)
-[X] Instruct the current couriers to not show off when people are looking (no more winning races with a motorcycle) (Expected effect: less attention, no chance for a raise).

[X] Stipend: Giving your magical girls a small amount of money to spend on themselves. At their current level of lifestyle this no longer really further boosts their morale, but will help prevent its decay. Cost: $50 per Meguca; Reward: Maintained morale. Chance of success: 100%

[X] Upkeep on current training (Find Demons and Pack Hunting): 2 Meguca

[X] Central Dispatch, Demon Finding: Dedicating the most sensitive Veterans to snifing out demons and pointing them at others means they get much less tired and can search for longer finding more demons. Requires cellphones, only once per turn. Cost: 2 Veteran Meguca; Reward: +25% grief cube acquisition from hunting actions, -1% hunting causality rate.

[X]Training, Solo Tactics: Sometimes solo Magical Girls are taken out by surprise from their blindspots, training may help them learn to use their demon sensing ability to avoid being taken by attacks from outside of their vision. Cost: 2 Meguca; Reward: -3% Dispersed Hunting casualty rate, -1% Pack Hunting casualty rate

[X] Scout Area NorthWest: You can deploy a veteran to scout out one of the territories around you stealthily. They should be able to gauge the demon strength there and the magical girls status there without tipping them off, hopefully.
Cost: 1 Veteran; Chance of success: 70%; Reward: information on demon strength, support capacity of the territory, and status of current magical girls in the territory, bonus to diplomatic efforts.

[X] Scout Area Eastern Peninsula: You can deploy a veteran to scout out one of the territories around you stealthily. They should be able to gauge the demon strength there and the magical girls status there without tipping them off, hopefully.
Cost: 1 Veteran; Chance of success: 70%; Reward: information on demon strength, support capacity of the territory, and status of current magical girls in the territory, bonus to diplomatic efforts.
EDIT: Added another scout, since we want to be under 20 on our grief cube harvest.
[X] Scout Area NorthWest: You can deploy a veteran to scout out one of the territories around you stealthily. They should be able to gauge the demon strength there and the magical girls status there without tipping them off, hopefully.
Cost: 1 Veteran; Chance of success: 70%; Reward: information on demon strength, support capacity of the territory, and status of current magical girls in the territory, bonus to diplomatic efforts.

Costs:
2 Vets for dispatch
3 Vets for scouting
5 Greens for money (we need more income as we will be increasing our territory and number of girls)
2 Greens for Upkeep on training
2 Greens for Solo Hunting training (lets get that permanent -1%)
Leaves 3 Green, 3 Vets, and 1 Elite (Mami) to hunt <20 expected grief cubes.
Money flow is expected to be +$750 to + $1,750 depending on success.

Thoughts:

Very interesting on the demons. Since our territory can support 20 grief cubes, I assume that means that whenever we gain more than 20 the demons could increase in strength (and the more above 20 we are the more they increase.) If we gain less then they decrease in strength?

We need a slightly larger source of income, to increase the stipend, and future housing costs. 25% chance, so we should start sending our greenest out to get that job now.
<20 expected income means our Grief cube supply will continue to decrease, but slow enough that we can get new territories, which we are going to need. At <20 the demons will not increase in power. As our girls become veterans the grief cube flow will stabilize- we just need to increase the territory.
Need to scout new territories quickly. Get that bonus to diplomacy.
@inverted_helix What happened to the Western Territory? Also, will we get an assessment on how many grief cubes we can safely harvest from the new territory?

@inverted_helix I think we definitely want to have the option to assign teleporters as evacuators to reduce injuries and deaths. Even if that means we have to start tracking wish magic.

 

[inverted_helix]

Very interesting on the demons. Since our territory can support 20 grief cubes, I assume that means that whenever we gain more than 20 the demons could increase in strength (and the more above 20 we are the more they increase.) If we gain less then they decrease in strength?

Click to shrink...

Yes they'll decrease in strength if you harvest less than 20 and stay put at 20.

@inverted_helix What happened to the Western Territory? Also, will we get an assessment on how many grief cubes we can safely harvest from the new territory?

Click to shrink...

Mostly the Western territory seemed too small, and it seemed like you planned to move towards Kasamino anyways so I removed it for simplicity of the map purposes. "support capacity of the territory" on the scouting action is what you're asking about.

@inverted_helix I think we definitely want to have the option to assign teleporters as evacuators to reduce injuries and deaths. Even if that means we have to start tracking wish magic.

Click to shrink...

Ugh that sounds painful to track. I'd essentially have to come up with wish-magics for every meguca. Also not as helpful as you think. I mean it's not like you have whole teams being overrun and wiped out, so calling for evac from overwhelming forces isn't the scenario. Teleporting to help someone escape damage midfight is already rolled into the various packhunting modifiers.

If people come up with around a dozen ideas for general types of "wish magic" I suppose I'd be more willing. Right now all I have is healing and teleporting. Keeping in mind no super high end effects like Timestop are allowed anymore.

 

[Elder Haman]

Yes they'll decrease in strength if you harvest less than 20 and stay put at 20.

Mostly the Western territory seemed too small, and it seemed like you planned to move towards Kasamino anyways so I removed it for simplicity of the map purposes. "support capacity of the territory" on the scouting action is what you're asking about.

Ugh that sounds painful to track. I'd essentially have to come up with wish-magics for every meguca. Also not as helpful as you think. I mean it's not like you have whole teams being overrun and wiped out, so calling for evac from overwhelming forces isn't the scenario. Teleporting to help someone escape damage midfight is already rolled into the various packhunting modifiers.

If people come up with around a dozen ideas for general types of "wish magic" I suppose I'd be more willing. Right now all I have is healing and teleporting.

Click to shrink...

Well, I tend to support going towards Kasamino, but others might not, and at some point we are going to want to go after that big city to our south, and the Western territory is on the way.

Perhaps some large "rural" territories might be available (marked with a different color), with resulting adjustments to their modifiers. Much less magical girls in the territory, but lower hunting returns. Probably even lower for pack hunting compared to solo hunting? But maybe with less risk, since there is less chance of getting mobbed? I would note that an organized group has a much better ability to handle the rural areas, as we can cover the area, and girls who don't get a demon to hunt will still get grief cubes from those that do.

We're going to have to absorb at least one rural area on our way to Kasamino.

Maybe it's too early for wish magic, but I think that eventually we will want to start using it, as it's too useful to ignore. Let me think about it and see if I can develop a way to make it easier to track.
EDIT:

Edited my vote to scout the third area as well, this way we are <20 expected greif seeds, so the demon power should decrease.

 

[inverted_helix]

Well, I tend to support going towards Kasamino, but others might not, and at some point we are going to want to go after that big city to our south, and the Western territory is on the way.

Click to shrink...

Okay just made a quick edit to add the Western territory back in with a suitably large slice of greenery.

Perhaps some large "rural" territories might be available (marked with a different color), with resulting adjustments to their modifiers. Much less magical girls in the territory, but lower hunting returns. Probably even lower for pack hunting compared to solo hunting? But maybe with less risk, since there is less chance of getting mobbed? I would note that an organized group has a much better ability to handle the rural areas, as we can cover the area, and girls who don't get a demon to hunt will still get grief cubes from those that do.

Click to shrink...

Hmm an interesting thought. I had figured you'd delay incorporating much rural area for a while given the reduced returns. I'll likely have to spin up some rules governing your income from territories. I'd originally planned to just lump them all together into a single territory measurement of capacity, but I could at least break it down into urban vs rural territories. You can expect them to be suitably horrible returns on hunting there though. While an organized group means higher survival rate so long as the overall group is in the positive, it doesn't actually improve the collection rate over the area much (though it can set up somewhat more efficient patrol patterns of the area so people don't waste time recrossing territory).

Maybe it's too early for wish magic, but I think that eventually we will want to start using it, as it's too useful to ignore. Let me think about it and see if I can develop a way to make it easier to track.

Click to shrink...

It's too useful to ignore I'll grant, but it's surprisingly hard to come up with a way to do it that doesn't result in needing to customize for every girl. And my goal is to create a system that can potentially scale. While making individual powers for 20 girls is possible, doing so for 200 is less so. The only thought I currently have is to develop a dozen or so general categories to fit people into, but coming up with those categories is pretty hard, and I expect that a lot of wishes don't really produce secondary powers. Like Kyouko for instance didn't seem to get any specific powers because her wish wasn't about herself directly.

I expect a lot of girls probably wish for someone to be healed or something and get healing powers, or wish they could be free or such and get teleporting powers. But other than that I'm not sure.

It's a really tricky thing to manage.

Also probably going to just put Dispatch as an upkeep cost since you guys always select it even when it doesn't increase your grief cube return. (It's also kind of gradually evolving into a more general sensor corps.)

 

[Elder Haman]

Doesn't it always increase of grief cube return? It says it still does...

 

[mastigos]

Yes they'll decrease in strength if you harvest less than 20 and stay put at 20.

Click to shrink...

So the basic setup is that we need to temporarily overhunt to build up a surplus, then decrease hunting but compensate using the surplus, and then start over again when the surplus runs out. All while training to be better at combat and thus able to slowly increase our baseline hunting.

Actually ... is the strength increase a runaway adjustment? By which I mean, if we hunt at 25 cubes per hunt, do they eventually stabalize at a certain strength or do they just keep getting stronger? And if they stabilize, would then increasing to hunting 30 cubes also increase their strength? Does their overall strength have an upper limit?

Oh, and would regularly shifting between different combat/hunting styles help prevent their evolution? Stuff like "week 1: teleport spam, week 2: long range sniping, week 3: melee, week 4: teleport spam"

 

[inverted_helix]

Doesn't it always increase of grief cube return? It says it still does...

Click to shrink...

I meant versus just having the two vets you're spending on that task go hunting on their own. +25% bonus cubes for everyone else isn't always greater than just throwing 2 more vets at the problem. Though I might bump it up to 30% for having so much experience with it now.

So the basic setup is that we need to temporarily overhunt to build up a surplus, then decrease hunting but compensate using the surplus, and then start over again when the surplus runs out. All while training to be better at combat and thus able to slowly increase our baseline hunting.

Click to shrink...

A truly basic setup would be to just hunt at the sustainable point.

 

[mastigos]

A truly basic setup would be to just hunt at the sustainable point.

Click to shrink...

That's below our sustenance point. And under the control of the dice.
Also, what about the rest?

 

[Elder Haman]

Cool if Dispatch is increased to 30% bonus.

So, my thoughts on how to manage wish magic in large populations:

In each "class" (class of greens, vets are one class I suppose, Elites are evaluated individually) you identify which % of girls have wish magic of the various categories. We can add categories as they become important or needful, so maybe some girls won't belong to a category they will stay "unassigned." More particular descriptions of the wish magic, describing exactly what they can do only applies to Elites. Maybe Elites/Vets can belong to multiple categories? I'll explore that later. For right now we don't need to get into that.

So, a percentage of a class is in certain categories. Lets say we have 50 girls in a class, 10% are teleporters, 20% are healers, and the rest unassigned. Lets say we have 10 Grief spirals in that class. Then how do we assign the Grief Spirals? First assign ranges on a 100d, 1-10 = teleporters, 11-30 = healers, and 31-100 = unassigned. Roll a 1d100 for every Grief Spiral. If the roll falls in the designated range then it is applied to that category of wish magic. If the number of rolls exceed the number of girls in the category, re-roll those rolls. Example in this case is that there are only 5 teleporters. If 6 of the grief spirals rolled between 1 and 10, all 5 of the teleporters have grief spirals, re-roll the 6th one until you get a result other then 1-10.

For other cases where the rolls apply to a subset of girls (ie hunting personal injury rolls), we must also determine if that category was involved in the activity. If we specifically assigned certain categories to other actions then those are taken from the pool and percentages are determined on the remainder. We assume random normal chance that the remainder was assigned to hunting duty. Example: We have 12 girls in a class. 5 of them are clairvoyants. We assigned 2 of the clairvoyants to dispatch duty, and 8 of the girls in the class to hunting. Thus there is a probability 3/12 * 8/12 = 24/144 = 0.166 that a clairvoyant was assigned to hunt, based on this a range of 1 to 17 is set for clairvoyants. Perform a similar calculation to get the range for each other category in the class of girls that went hunting. For the 8 girls we got 4 rolls for personal injuries (wow, that bad). For each injury roll we now roll a 1d100. If that roll is 17 or less then that injury roll is applied to a clairvoyant, up to 3 times. A fourth roll for a clairvoyant is rerolled until you get a range other then a clairvoyant.

What?! That seems like a lot of math and rolling for you to do? Pppbbtt... if you think that is a lot of dice rolling then you ain't never GM'd a real game before. If it really bothers you, you can just ask us to do the math and roll the dice. Plenty of other GMs do that. All you have to do is keep track and post the number of girls in each class, and the % or number of girls in that class in each wish magic category. If we fail to assign a particular class to tasks, then you specify which class went to which job.

After that it's just math and dice rolling, which SV players are plenty good at. You will have to require we use the forum dice roller though, as we could game off site dice.

How do we determine percentages for each category? First: we determine a new category of wish magic. Second, we roll a 1d10 to determine the percentage of girls have that type of wish magic. Perhaps a bonus or penalty is applied based on GM ruling of how likely that wish magic is. (ie Healing might be more common than clairvoyants). Next, for each current girl in the unassigned category we roll a 1d100 to determine if that girl falls in that category. Any time a new girl is recruited, we assign ranges (as we did for the grief spiral rolls) for each category and roll a 1d100 for each girl to assign her to a category.

Perhaps special events can result in a girl being in a specific category, skipping the roll to determine it. (ie We recruited a girl we already had dealings with, so we know her wish magic is related to baking.) Since you already told us we have teleporters and healers, you can just word of God the number we have.

Now the fun part, categories of wish magic:
(Mining TTS and canon for categories). Link to TTS chapter discussing wish magic types and Pack Hunting strategies.

Teleporter
Healer
Clairvoyant
Telepath (beyond telepathy, they can mind-read)
Barrier
Stealth
Illusionist (canonically not every girl gets illusionist powers, you can just retcon though that 1 or 2 of our vets are illusionists)
Magic efficiency/grief resistance (canonically, one of the comments to Sayaka by Kyubee strongly implies that this is Mami's wish magic, explaining her ability to survive despite starting out with only ribbons, and explaining her excellent enchantment abilites, and explaining why when Mami grief spirals she goes on a murder spree instead of witchifying. In TTS this ability is confirmed as Mami's, and also given to Homura x100 as it applies to girls around her too. I would suggest that this is extremely rare - perhaps you rule it as only applying to Mami as an Elite perk - thus Mami is resistant to grief spirals. It would be game breaking otherwise.)

Perhaps we can narrow some of these down. Stealth and Illusionist for example are very similar in nature and effect.

It's getting late, so I'm going to bed. I'll pick this up tomorrow.

Other TTS links you might find useful:
Enchantment and Magic Modding
TTS Original MSY Charter

 

[inverted_helix]

Illusionist (canonically not every girl gets illusionist powers, you can just retcon though that 1 or 2 of our vets are illusionists)

Click to shrink...

I know that in canon that isn't the case, it was simply a very useful deviation to explain how you would do things that require adults.

I'll consider these statements but I don't know how closely I want to skew towards TTS.

Also kind of surprised only 1 vote this time. A lot of my usual suspects don't seem to have said anything.

 

[wtdtd]

[X] Elder Haman

 

[drake_azathoth]

[X] Elder Haman

 

[inverted_helix]

I've been doing various things and haven't had a chance to write an update. I've been thinking heavily on some of the mechanical issues that have cropped up.

Actually ... is the strength increase a runaway adjustment? By which I mean, if we hunt at 25 cubes per hunt, do they eventually stabalize at a certain strength or do they just keep getting stronger? And if they stabilize, would then increasing to hunting 30 cubes also increase their strength? Does their overall strength have an upper limit?

Click to shrink...

The reason I hadn't answered this before was because it raised an interesting question about how I'm numerically modeling the territory mechanics and I needed to put some serious thought into it. With the new mechanics I've drawn up they'll eventually stabilize at a certain level dependent on how much you're overhunting. It will take a while for it to stabilize though. In your example if you hunt at 25 until it reaches the stabilization point and then push to 30 you'll see increasing strength again. Also considering putting a hard cap on how much you can grind out of an area even at maximum overhunting since the demons simply don't spawn infinitely fast, but honestly probably unnecessary since sustained overhunting will be super lethal.

Oh, and would regularly shifting between different combat/hunting styles help prevent their evolution? Stuff like "week 1: teleport spam, week 2: long range sniping, week 3: melee, week 4: teleport spam"

Click to shrink...

Yes it would help reduce their evolution. It would result in an immediate higher casualty rate though because it prevents the superior combined tactics route. So an immediate increase in % casualties for a reduction in the rate of the demon strength increase with overhunting. Also I think this line was not in your post when I last read it.

Teleporter
Healer
Clairvoyant
Telepath (beyond telepathy, they can mind-read)
Barrier
Stealth
Illusionist (canonically not every girl gets illusionist powers, you can just retcon though that 1 or 2 of our vets are illusionists)

Click to shrink...

I've been thinking about it, and I tend to agree that your idea here is workable. My current thought is to use the following:

Teleporter 10%
Healer 15%
Clairvoyant 5%
Telepath 5%
Barrier 10%
Stealth 5%

Illusionist has been removed/combined with the stealth one but I'm not retconning your vets as illusionists. Instead I'm just adjusting it slightly. Anyone can learn enough illusion magic to change their own appearance. People with wish magic specialized in stealth/illusion can do far greater illusions. I figure that healer is probably the most common type of wish magic, going off of the idea that a lot of girls would wish related to sickness or injury, while barrier magic comes up in relation to wanting to protect someone, and teleportation from wanting to be free from situations. Telepath, clairvoyant, and stealth being much rarer.

50% of girls don't have any particular wish magic at all, or what they do have doesn't fall into standard categories. Stuff like magic-baker.

"Magic Efficiency" was something I was just thinking of as coming with practice. Much like TTS. This is also represented in the fact that someone like Mami can throw around attacks in demon hunting that would take much larger amounts of magic for lesser meguca.

The bigger issue I run into with subdividing the meguca like this is actions like training being difficult to abstract now. Before when it was more representative of a general work-hours pool having it take 1 unit to maintain training made reasonable sense. Now when I subdivide it into individual girls with particular powers that abstraction falls flat. I feel like I need to come up with some new way of imposing upkeep costs on training that maintains plausibility. I'm not sure how to do that though which is one of the reasons I was loathe to do so.

Another concern was I didn't want to clone TTS too much by stealing its categorizing system, even though I don't think Hieronym cares too much if I cut the line a little closer.

 

[notgreat]

Like Kyouko for instance didn't seem to get any specific powers because her wish wasn't about herself directly.

Click to shrink...

IIRC, supplemental canon states that Kyoko had illusion magic, but lost it when she became disillusioned with what her father was doing.

Anyway, I'm against the specialization system that's being debated here. It seems to add a lot of complexity for very little additional benefit. What it grants can really be just abstracted away relatively easily I think, and assume that for any special actions we'll have enough of that type of magical girl unless it becomes completely outrageous.

Fun fact: once we get Solo Tactics, we'll be at a 0% casualty rate for hunting (assuming no positive modifiers like the demon difficulty one).

Central Dispatch is giving +30% bonus, not +25%
Aside from that, [x] Elder Haman

 

[paintedspear]

[X] Elder Haman

 

[Elder Haman]

I've been doing various things and haven't had a chance to write an update. I've been thinking heavily on some of the mechanical issues that have cropped up.

The reason I hadn't answered this before was because it raised an interesting question about how I'm numerically modeling the territory mechanics and I needed to put some serious thought into it. With the new mechanics I've drawn up they'll eventually stabilize at a certain level dependent on how much you're overhunting. It will take a while for it to stabilize though. In your example if you hunt at 25 until it reaches the stabilization point and then push to 30 you'll see increasing strength again. Also considering putting a hard cap on how much you can grind out of an area even at maximum overhunting since the demons simply don't spawn infinitely fast, but honestly probably unnecessary since sustained overhunting will be super lethal.

Yes it would help reduce their evolution. It would result in an immediate higher casualty rate though because it prevents the superior combined tactics route. So an immediate increase in % casualties for a reduction in the rate of the demon strength increase with overhunting. Also I think this line was not in your post when I last read it.

Click to shrink...

Sound like an option: Rotating Tactics, -X% in increased demon strength, +Y% increased risk of injury

I don't intend to take it anytime soon, but it's an option.

I've been thinking about it, and I tend to agree that your idea here is workable. My current thought is to use the following:

Teleporter 10%
Healer 15%
Clairvoyant 5%
Telepath 5%
Barrier 10%
Stealth 5%

Illusionist has been removed/combined with the stealth one but I'm not retconning your vets as illusionists. Instead I'm just adjusting it slightly. Anyone can learn enough illusion magic to change their own appearance. People with wish magic specialized in stealth/illusion can do far greater illusions. I figure that healer is probably the most common type of wish magic, going off of the idea that a lot of girls would wish related to sickness or injury, while barrier magic comes up in relation to wanting to protect someone, and teleportation from wanting to be free from situations. Telepath, clairvoyant, and stealth being much rarer.

50% of girls don't have any particular wish magic at all, or what they do have doesn't fall into standard categories. Stuff like magic-baker.

"Magic Efficiency" was something I was just thinking of as coming with practice. Much like TTS. This is also represented in the fact that someone like Mami can throw around attacks in demon hunting that would take much larger amounts of magic for lesser meguca.

The bigger issue I run into with subdividing the meguca like this is actions like training being difficult to abstract now. Before when it was more representative of a general work-hours pool having it take 1 unit to maintain training made reasonable sense. Now when I subdivide it into individual girls with particular powers that abstraction falls flat. I feel like I need to come up with some new way of imposing upkeep costs on training that maintains plausibility. I'm not sure how to do that though which is one of the reasons I was loathe to do so.

Another concern was I didn't want to clone TTS too much by stealing its categorizing system, even though I don't think Hieronym cares too much if I cut the line a little closer.

Click to shrink...

I don't think this really prevents abstract cost of training for things like like Pack Tactics Training, or any of the more generic ones. After all, the training is to make do with what you got. There's always a trade off between complexity producing realism and abstracting things in a way that makes it runnable.

Rather I think you would identify some specific Training/Researching tasks as requiring specific wish magic. Just as you've specified some require Veterans. Others you might give a bonus for specific types of wish magic being assigned. For example, Central Dispatch gets an additional +2% per a clairvoyant assigned to it.

Just my thoughts, but whatever you decide, I'm sure it will be fun.

 

[inverted_helix]

Turn 7​

With the startling information acquired last month Mami realizes that the previous condition was unsustainable as she passes out this month's allowance. To keep your girls supplied you decide you need to begin to expand. So you assign several of your veterans that you think could manage to be subtle to scout out the areas surrounding your territory for possible expansion. (-$1050)

You also run your whole group through some exercises in using their demon sense to detect demons in a combat environment rather than just for detecting them at range. Hopefully it will reduce the incidence of demons surprising meguca from outside their vision. For the most part they practice with mock combat and with the various girls involved carrying grief cubes, which give off a similar signature to demons to meguca senses.

On your money making efforts you assign an extra girl to see if she can get a job in a café with the help of the girl already employed at one. Unfortunately even with the recommendation she wasn't able to get a job; there simply wasn't any need for an extra worker this month. Mami makes sure that Akeno and the other couriers know that they shouldn't show off anymore and should try to keep their antics within human norms. They're a tiny bit dejected but they understand. There are no real incidents this month as a result. (+$5200)

All three scouting missions go well and avoid detection. It's not particularly hard to do so since untransformed they aren't any different from normal girls to the senses. The mission to the northwest has by far the most promising results. There appears to only be one veteran meguca there, and she appears to be doing poorly, merely going through the motions. It appears to be a fairly sizeable territory capable of supporting 4 grief cubes a month as well. To hold such a good territory implies the veteran must be quite capable of fending off attacks, but she seems rather emotionally deadened from what was observed. (+50% diplomacy modifier northwest)

The other two territories are less helpful. The eastern peninsula has two green girls managing to get by with a territory that can probably produce 3 cubes a month safely. They seem to be doing alright for now, but the odds are definitely not in their favor. The northeast is quite disappointing. Three veteran meguca hold the territory and are doing quite well for themselves. They don't seem to be strongly associated with each other like your own group, but they do meet with each other a couple times a week. They seem to be living reasonably well also. (Diplomacy bonus +20% for eastern peninsula, no bonus for northeast.)

Hunting goes well this month with the reduced number of girls deployed to the job, and with the dispatcher unit growing increasingly skilled there aren't any injuries in spite of the strong demons inhabiting Mitakihara these days. In fact your dispatchers have grown a bit better at their task from long experience and they are just a bit faster at their routes with a bit more sensing range. The greens you brought out to the hunt this month even do quite an admirable job, each one of them pulling their weight easily. (+18 grief cubes)

With morale rising again there were only a couple grief spirals this month. Yuma spent a week clutching a Grief Cube, sure something horrible was going to happen, and she'd need to use a large amount of Magic to make things right. She stayed up late, downed gallons of coffee, and skipped a few classes. By the end of that week, she was shaking, possibly from a caffeine overdose, and the resulting stress had built up a great deal of unnecessary Grief to be purged. Reiko who Kyuubey had just brought in last month was walking home when a car started speeding. She ducked into an alleyway, resolved to take the long way 'round, and witnessed a man answer his door, and receive his ordered shotgun sandwich. She spent the next two nights cradling a Cube to sleep, managing to use them even while unconscious. (-3 Grief cubes)

Another three of your original girls make it to Veteran status as well. Though you find it kind of strange to think of little Yuma that just turned nine as a veteran magical girl. (-3 Green Meguca, +3 Veteran Meguca)

________________________________________________________________________________________
Resources

• 9 Green Meguca, 11 Veteran Meguca, 1 Elite Meguca (Mami +10% diplomacy)
  • Upkeep: 3 Veteran, 1 Green
    • demon finding training (+20% grief cubes)
    • on pack tactics (-4% pack hunting)
    • Dispatch service (+30% grief cubes, -1% hunting casualties)
• Grief Cubes 14
• Money: $7500
  • $400 upkeep on cellphones (-2% solo hunting)
  • $3000 upkeep on apartments
• Morale: [Medium] Morale continues to build but the grief cube supply being so low is starting to be critical.
• Assets
  • Tiny household shrine: Somewhat reduces losses to morale from deaths.
  • Basic Shields: -2% Casualties
  • Basic General Combat Training: -2% Casualties (May decay with losses or recruitment).
  • Basic Solo Combat Training: -1% Pack Hunting, -3% Solo Hunting (May decay with losses or recruitment).
• Mitakihara Demon Status: Strong

Turn 8 Options

Spoiler: Demon Hunting, Specify amount dedicated

[] Dispersed Hunting: Magical Girl will individually hunt demons throughout your territory and gather the grief cubes for the central supply. This can be dangerous.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward: 2 grief cubes per Meguca assigned. 20% base casualty (significant injury or death) chance.


[] Pack Hunting: Magical Girls will hunt in groups vastly reducing the danger, but because they are not covering as much area their efficiency is reduced. Death is significantly less likely.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward 1.25 Grief Cubes per Meguca assigned; 10% base casualty chance

[] Optional addon, Rotating Tactics: You could have your meguca rotate their ability use week by week in order to reduce the level of adaptation the demons develop. While it would result in an immediate increase in casualty rate due to loss of effectiveness compared to the current approach, it would reduce the ability of the demons to adapt.
Cost: +5% casualty rate; Reward: Reduction in rate of demon strength increase from overhunting, exact value unknown

Spoiler: Money Gathering, Specify amount dedicated

[] Gather money, illegally: Magical Girls 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, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward: ~$3,000 per month per Meguca assigned, but it is highly variable


[] 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. Chance of success 25% per Meguca, following up on a previous month's success brings the chance to 100%.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward: $1,000 per month per Meguca assigned. (For current 4 keeping jobs $1,000, 2x $1,200, and $1800 guaranteed success.)

Spoiler: Money Spending

[] Improve Housing: More Apartments: Currently the girls are packed in around 5 to an apartment. You could get some more apartments and reduce the crowding.
Cost: $6,000 and 1 Veteran Meguca; Reward Normal Apartment minimum housing level (for up to 25 Meguca), ongoing cost +3000$ per month or you get kicked out. Payable at the begining of the month. (not repeatable)

[] Improve Housing: Small house: Instead of a dinky apartment you could pool your resources for a small house, giving everyone a bit more room. Will still be quite a few people per bedroom, but gives more of a feeling of home.
Cost: $10,000 and 3 Veteran Meguca; Reward Cramped Small House instead of homeless as minimum housing level (for up to 25 Meguca), ongoing cost 5000$ per month or you get kicked out. Payable at the begining of the month. (not repeatable)

[] Stipend: Giving your magical girls a small amount of money to spend on themselves. At their current level of lifestyle this no longer really further boosts their morale, but will help prevent its decay.
Cost: $50 per Meguca; Reward: Maintained morale. Chance of success: 100%

[] Increased Stipend: Giving the girls more money will further improve their morale a little bit.
Cost: $100 per Meguca; Reward: Increased morale. Chance of success: 100%

[] Start your own business: It will take more than a bit of creativity to start a real business, and some significant startup funds. You'd likely also need some help from Kyuubey to cover up the details with some false identies. It would provide a much greater ability to rotate girls through the roles though and more flexibility in how much to provide each month as well though.
Cost: 20,000, 4 grief cubes, 3 Veteran Meguca; Reward: Your own business, more ability to rotate roles, slowly increasing income starting below the current legal income but able to go higher. Chance of Success: 60% (future attempts build on this and are only ¼ the resource cost)

Spoiler: Training

[]Training, Raise Veteran: Raise one of the Green Girls to be a veteran
Cost: 3 Meguca, 1 Veteran Meguca; Reward: Raises one Green Meguca to veteran status.

Spoiler: Miscellaneous

[] Enchanting, Secondary Properties: Further investigate the secondary properties that individual materials exhibit. Including buying some simple tools to test more properties.
Cost:2 months of: 2 Veteran Meguca, 1 Grief Cube, $1000; Reward: Information on deeper effects of enchanting.

[] Enchanting, Duration/Charge: It was noticed that the effects of enchanting rapidly faded when the object was set down. Also the stronger magical girls could produce somewhat greater effects. Perhaps you could investigate ways to extend the charge period, or allow Mami to charge effects that other girls could maintain so that others might benefit from the stronger characteristics she could imbue.
Cost:1 month remaining of: 2 Veteran Meguca, 3 Grief Cube, $500; Reward: Allow Mami's grade of enchanting to be carried by all girls, step towards long term enchantments.

[] Demon strength meter: It should be possible to compose a set of guidelines and record keeping standards to allow you to more accurately gauge the current strength of the demon population.
Cost: 1 Veteran, 1 Green; Reward: Demon strength listed as a specific number (the modifier to the casualty rate) so long as some sensing action is done that month (currently the dispatch action)

[] Scout Area X: You can deploy a veteran to scout out one of the territories around you stealthily. They should be able to gauge the demon strength there and the magical girls status there without tipping them off, hopefully.
Cost: 1 Veteran; Chance of success: 70%; Reward: information on demon strength, support capacity of the territory, and status of current magical girls in the territory, bonus to diplomatic efforts.

[] Expand territory X, by force: The demons in Mitakihara have grown strong, but you could try to take over adjacent territories where they aren't as strong. The magical girls in those areas probably won't take kindly to this.
Cost: PvP combat; Reward: New territory with weaker demons

[] Expand territory X, by diplomacy: If you can convince them to join your group you may be able to safely incorporate others' territories. (Replaces normal recruitment option)
Cost: 1 Green, 1 Veteran; Reward: Meguca from territory recruited, new territory; Chance of Success: 30% (Mami bonus applicable)

-[] Addon, Bribery: Giving the girls some money might help them realize just how good for them cooperation could be.
Cost: $150 per girl in the territory; Reward: +1d10% success chance

-[] Addon, Intimidate: Bring additional Veterans to intimidate the other girls into accepting if they know what is good for them
Cost 1 extra Veteran, -morale of new girls if successfully recruited; Reward: +5% chance of success. Can be chosen repeatedly.​

[] Recruitment, via Kyuubey: Ask Kyuubey to tell other Magical Girls in the area about you. He'll want something in return though, and he makes no promises of the efficacy.
Cost: 2 grief cubes; Reward: 1-3 girls; Chance of success: 50%

________________________________________________________________________________________
Just added dispatch to upkeep since you do it every time, though you can of course choose to cancel it to free up labor if needed. Also upkeep on training was adjusted from 2 green to 1 green 1 veteran to represent the time expenditure better now that over half your force is veterans.

I'm unsure if it's worthwhile to change over to tracking wish magic like Haman wants or not. I'd like some other people to weigh in on that. I've laid some of the groundwork for it, but it would add a big layer of complexity that I'm not sure is worth it.

Still open to suggestions on ideas for actions. Not at all sure on tuning for hunting rotation. I definitely don't recommend it right now when the demons are already strong though.

 

[Elder Haman]

Not a bad turn at all. No reduction in Demon strength due to being under 20 Grief cubes harvested this month? Or was the decrease just too small for us to register?

Our constant upkeep for our current forces are 21 + Grief Spiral (~3). Our current area can support a harvesting of 20 Grief Cubes.

Adding the Northeast gains us a veteran, and adds 4 to our harvest, bringing us to upkeep ~25, harvest 24.
Adding the Penninsula gains us 2 Greens, adds 3 to our harvest, bringing us to upkeep ~27, harvest 27.

That barely covers us, and we only get a 60% chance at the Pennisula, even if we assign Mami to it.

And the path to Kasamino is blocked

Forcing girls out in a fight would probably have negative impact on morale and certain is not Mami's style. Well, Mami might fight if diplomacy failed. Hmm....

We need some actions that increase our chances at diplomacy.

EDIT: Changed to reflect the GM's rulings:
Possible add-on actions to diplomacy option:
Bribery: Give them $150 per a girl so they realize what they gain from cooperation: -money, +1d10% chance of success (Just roll a 1d10 in addition to the 1d100 and add it to the roll total)
Intimidate: Bring additional Veterans to intimidate the other girls into accepting if they know what is good for them: Cost 1 extra Veteran, -morale of new girls if successfully recruited, +5% chance of success. Can be chosen repeatedly.
Duel: Challenge the girls to a duel to demonstrate your girls are better then theirs. -1 Grief Cube per participant in the duel, 3% chance of injury for each participant, if you win the duel +2d10% chance of success. Vetoed

I'm wavering between going on an all out hunt to consolidate grief cubes, or expanding. Right now I lean towards expanding:

[X] Upkeep (3 Vets, 1 Green)

EDIT: Calculated wrong, was underestimating the # of grief cubes we would get. Recalculated after reassigning some vets to intimidate
[X] Pack Hunting: Magical Girls will hunt in groups vastly reducing the danger, but because they are not covering as much area their efficiency is reduced. Death is significantly less likely. 2 Greens. 5 Veterans est. ~18 Grief Cubes.

[X] 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. Chance of success 25% per Meguca, following up on a previous month's success brings the chance to 100%. Current 4 keeping jobs $1,000, 2x $1,200, and $1800 guaranteed success.)

[X] Stipend: Giving your magical girls a small amount of money to spend on themselves. At their current level of lifestyle this no longer really further boosts their morale, but will help prevent its decay.
Cost: $50 per Meguca; Reward: Maintained morale. Chance of success: 100%

[X] Expand territory Northeast, by diplomacy: If you can convince them to join your group you may be able to safely incorporate others' territories. 1 Green, 1 Veteran; Reward: Meguca from territory recruited, new territory; Chance of Success: 30% + 50% (from scouting) = 80%
-[X] Bribery: Give them $150 per a girl so they realize what they gain from cooperation: -money, +1d10% chance of success (Just roll a 1d10 in addition to the 1d100 and add it to the roll total) In this case -$150, +1d10 to chance of success.

[X] Expand territory to Eastern Peninsula, by diplomacy: If you can convince them to join your group you may be able to safely incorporate others' territories. 1 Green, 1 Mami; Reward: Meguca from territory recruited, new territory; Chance of Success: 30% + 20% (from scouting) + 10% (Mami bonus) = 60%
-[X] Bribery: Give them $150 per a girl so they realize what they gain from cooperation: -money, +1d10% chance of success (Just roll a 1d10 in addition to the 1d100 and add it to the roll total) In this case -$300, +1d10 to chance of success.
-[X] Intimidate: Bring additional Veterans to intimidate the other girls into accepting if they know what is good for them: 2 extra Veteran, -morale of new girls if successfully recruited, +10% chance of success.

I hate the hit to morale, but we got to have this territory. That brings us to ~75% success rate for the Peninsula, and ~85% for the Northeast...

[X] Mami calls a full team meeting, and serves cake and tea when everyone arrives. After allowing the girls to eat and chat a little, Mami calls for everyone's attention and speaks to the group about the grief cube situation. Mami explains the need to increase our territory this month: The Demons have been getting stronger because they are over hunted. Mami uses charts to show the increasing Demon strength as we have been hunting. Mami compliments the group our how productive they've been when hunting. Mami then returns to the problem: We can safely harvest 20 grief cubes a month from our current territory. We currently need 24 grief cubes a month. With the addition of the Northeast and the Easter Peninsula territories we will be able to safely harvest 27 grief cubes a month without increasing the demon strength. Our focus this month will be to expand our territory into these two locations. The group assigned to hunt this turn are expected to bring in 18 to 19 grief cubes, which is the maximum safe amount we can harvest with our current territory. This should put our grief cube stockpile at between 8 to 10 grief cubes. Next month we will have a major hunt, including our new territory to restore grief cube stockpiles. Preliminary estimates are for 35+ grief cubes that month. Following this large hunt to restore our stockpiles we will return to a safe hunting target of 27 cubes, which should be enough to meet our total monthly grief cube needs. Mami reminds them that we would never have figured this out if we weren't all working together. Each magical girl is essential for the group to succeed. Mami calls for everyone to work together in their designated roles this month to ensure that we are successful can pull off the plan Mami has just outlined.

 

[inverted_helix]

Not a bad turn at all. No reduction in Demon strength due to being under 20 Grief cubes harvested this month? Or was the decrease just too small for us to register?

Click to shrink...

It's too small to register in the values that I'm giving. Take the demon strength meter research action if you want to know exact values. I cut off the upkeep cost that I had on that one. It was a relic from a previous iteration of it.

Forcing girls out in a fight would probably have negative impact on morale and certain is not Mami's style. Well, Mami might fight if diplomacy failed. Hmm....

Click to shrink...

It might have a negative impact on morale, but Mami is quite willing to do it if needed to protect their lives. Though of course she always favors diplomatically resolving it.

We need some actions that increase our chances at diplomacy.

Click to shrink...

You can't always resolve things diplomatically. Sometimes you'll have to fight for territory.

:
Bribery: Give them $100 so they realize what they gain from cooperation: -money, +1d10% chance of success (Just roll a 1d10 in addition to the 1d100 and add it to the roll total)

Click to shrink...

Hmm that's kind of a tricky thing for me to balance though. It really won't scale right over time. Plus there hasn't been a whole lot to do with money yet. Though I suppose that's actually a point in favor of this. I'll up it to $150 per girl in the territory and allow it. I need to come up with more ways to make money useful. The problem is most of the things I can think of that players would like are out of scale with your income.

Intimidate: Bring additional Veterans to intimidate the other girls into accepting if they know what is good for them: Cost 1 extra Veteran, -morale of new girls if successfully recruited, +3% chance of success. Can be chosen repeatedly.

Click to shrink...

This one I'll allow. Even bump the value up to +5% per veteran. Be aware that morale is a critical stat though.

Duel: Challenge the girls to a duel to demonstrate your girls are better then theirs. -1 Grief Cube per participant in the duel, 3% chance of injury for each participant, if you win the duel +2d10% chance of success.

Click to shrink...

This one I'm going to veto. With the way my PvP combat system works Mami would win 99% of the time against a single veteran. (Mami is afterall your hero unit.) She's balanced as being 50:50 odds against 3 veterans in PvP combat.

Dice were quite kind this turn. Except for putting a fairly strong group in the direction of Kasamino.

 

[Elder Haman]

Okay, edited to add the Bribery and Intimidate choices. Also, I mis-calculated our expected grief cube return, I underestimated it because I forgot one of our modifiers. I've corrected that now.

Also, I added an action for Mami to speak to the group about the Grief Cube situation. I expect we will have around 8 Grief cubes left next month which is very low, but I think we have to expand first before we perform a major hunt. Addressing the issue directly should clam nerves and buy us one more month to deal with the problem.

My rough plan (assuming we get both new territories):
Next month, everyone except working girls and upkeep girls are devoted to hunting. Expected that we get ~37 to 40 Grief cubes. -27 expected upkeep and spirals. so a 10 Grief cube net.
Following month we scout, research, and hunt more jobs so we can get money to improve our housing and stipend. Aim for ~26 Grief cubes (so slightly under our upkeep, but also under the level that will increase Demon strength).
3 months from now, we expand again so that our upkeep is below the safe hunting level.

At that point we should be fairly stable and can start looking at long term improvements in research, our own business, and better housing.

@LightMage You didn't comment last turn, I'd be really interested in what you think about my plan for this month and future months. Do you have any alternatives?

 

[LightMage]

It seems good. We need more territory ASAP so we can increase the amount we hunt without over hunting and increasing the chance to have causalities.

[X] Elder Haman

For the future, I'd say we go for # of grief cubes sustainable from the new territories, and under it for our main one. With the goal being to scout+research with the excess Puella.

 

[Elder Haman]

It seems good. We need more territory ASAP so we can increase the amount we hunt without over hunting and increasing the chance to have causalities.

[X] Elder Haman

For the future, I'd say we go for # of grief cubes sustainable from the new territories, and under it for our main one. With the goal being to scout+research with the excess Puella.

Click to shrink...

Agreed. Though I think we have to do a full max hunting turn next month to rebuild our grief cube stockpiles.

 

[wtdtd]

It seems good. We need more territory ASAP so we can increase the amount we hunt without over hunting and increasing the chance to have causalities.

(X) Elder Haman

For the future, I'd say we go for # of grief cubes sustainable from the new territories, and under it for our main one. With the goal being to scout+research with the excess Puella.

Click to shrink...

And money! dont forget money!

 

[notgreat]

I'm not so sure the intimidation is necessary/useful. Morale is a super important stat, and that territory only gives us net +1 GC (though getting two extra girls is very useful) More importantly, we can just try again next month.

I'd prefer to get some more legal income so that we can fund an upgrade our housing and more research, give larger bribes, and up our morale.

 

[Elder Haman]

I'm not so sure the intimidation is necessary/useful. Morale is a super important stat, and that territory only gives us net +1 GC (though getting two extra girls is very useful) More importantly, we can just try again next month.

I'd prefer to get some more legal income so that we can fund an upgrade our housing and more research, give larger bribes, and up our morale.

Click to shrink...

I know the morale hit is going to be bad. But it should only effect those two new girls, and frankly the benefit of those two girls is far outweighed by the new territory. Even though it only increases our sustainable grief harvest rate by 1, the bigger benefit is that the demons there are going to be less powerful, together with the other territory that should significantly reduce the average strength of our territories demons. I figure Intimidation is better then flat out driving them out of the territory.

If you don't want to go the Intimidate route, then I would suggest you either reassign the two Veterans to one of the Enchanting research actions (hopefully we get something that improves safety fighting demons), either one takes 2 Veterans.

Or the get the Demon strength meter (1 Vet, 1 Green) and Scout the Western Territory (1 Vet):

Demon strength meter: It should be possible to compose a set of guidelines and record keeping standards to allow you to more accurately gauge the current strength of the demon population.
Cost: 1 Veteran, 1 Green; Reward: Demon strength listed as a specific number (the modifier to the casualty rate) so long as some sensing action is done that month (currently the dispatch action)

That would reduce our hunting group by one green, and cut our grief cube levels even lower, but it would set us up with a lot of options next turn in case we fail to get the Peninsula.

Put up your vote and maybe other people will choose it. It'll be kind of nice to have competing plans on this quest.