Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)

[inverted_helix]

Actually, the thread pretty much moved away from that without any prompting. None of the plans on offer use the trick, and we aggreed to get rid of it at on our own.

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Yes... we decided we better be good. So you don't have to punish us with decimals.

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Hmm, the cubes isn't really that significant of a difference for me to shift to decimals, but demon strength would be annoying, since if I move that to decimals I have to switch to d1000s from d100s.

I also wanted to know if my plan of a magical sports day, maybe in the mountains somewhere, was priced correctly.

I have it as costing 1.5 vets, and 0.5 greens (matching the other all group training actions).

Is that good? Are there other costs you want on it?

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Hmm, that should be an acceptable cost, though maybe a grief cube too if you're looking for full magic using instead of just blatantly superhuman play.

Can we bribe him with cubes in exchange? Alternatively, is there any way we can improve his level of support beyond somehow getting the police off our back?

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It's kind of obvious he's punishing you for masquerade damage. Though calling him "annoyed" over it would not really be accurate. You can pay him a cube to shave half a meguca off the rural actions. You can expect his charges for other services to have gone up as well.

 

[Kinematics]

You can pay him a cube to shave half a meguca off the rural actions.

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Is this one cube for all three actions (since you noted it as plural), or one cube for each? Or one cube for two territories, for that matter?

 

[Kinematics]

For my own plans, updating the diplomacy action to do the low-intensity recruiting in areas 3, 4 and 5. Cost will be 1.5 to 2.0 vets, and a cube or two to Kyuubey (depending on the precise handling of his bonus). If it's one cube per territory, I'll probably only spend two so that the vet cost is 0.5/0.5/1.0.

Also added the bit of letting Kyouko and Taya split their time between patrolling and scouting, somewhat based on notgreat's usage.

@inverted_helix : Please clarify if this is valid.

I set up Kyouko and Taya as a pair, giving 2.0 total units.
I set half their time on patrolling, using 1.0 units.
I set half their time on scouting, using 1.0 units.
Since each scout action takes 0.5 units, used their 1.0 units of scouting to apply to two areas: 1 and 9.

 

[Aranfan]

It occurs to me now that we probably could have gotten away with punishing Hianako for the house fight by taking more of her salary. We only take 2ish cents out of every five she makes. The month after the house got wrecked we probably could have managed to get her to accept only keeping 1 cent out of five until some portion of the repairs were paid for.

Too late now.

 

[notgreat]

It occurs to me now that we probably could have gotten away with punishing Hianako for the house fight by taking more of her salary. We only take 3 cents out of every five she makes. The month after the house got wrecked we probably could have managed to get her to accept only keeping 1 cent out of five until some portion of the repairs were paid for.

Too late now.

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Where are you getting that from? From the old post

An internet translating service costs around 5 to 10 cents a word. Hainako has wish grade internal translation so she's essentially able to translate any language instantly. So she's limited by typing speed and reading speed. 30 words per minute is a low average rate of typing. 60 minutes to an hour:
0.05*30*60 = $90 an hour, up to $180 an hour at the higher end of the range which she could easily reach due to perfect quality. That would be 15k-30k a month with a normal 40 hour work week. That would basically render all of your mundane work force free to party or something. So obviously I cut that down to 2 cents a word actually going to her and everything else going to the company, and then halved her hours to account for a school girl.

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We're taking 100% of her income.

Though actually, we should seriously go and train her to read/type faster. And possibly find a better translation company/make our own. Except that there's no way we'd be allowed to do that.
OTOH

You're essentially getting 40 hours a week from each of your girls.

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So... 6k/week?

 

[Aranfan]

We're taking 100% of her income.

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She makes $90 an hour, and works 20 hours weeks. 90*20*4=7200, but we only see 3000 of that.

Edit: I am assuming that the company is referring to us.

 

[notgreat]

She makes $90 an hour, and works 20 hours weeks. 90*20*4=7200, but we only see 3000 of that.

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It's the company that's taking the money, not her. She works through an intermediary online company that takes 3/5 of the money. Specifically

cut that down to 2 cents a word actually going to her and everything else going to the company

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On a side note, my two suggested solutions if you don't like people taking advantage of rounding are
1) Make everything arbitrary precision. Use excel or something, and just store the full 10 digits past the decimal place
2) Use probabilistic rounding, like the battle program. So if we go to 0.51, we only have a 51% chance of favorable rounding.
Both of these would fully eliminate the problem. Decimals would certainly work too, but the advantages of rounding are merely decreased rather than eliminated.

 

[Aranfan]

It's the company that's taking the money, not her. She works through an intermediary online company that takes 3/5 of the money.

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From what I remember, we are the company. The translation service is part of the courier company. Otherwise we would be taking more than 100% of her income, since 2/5 of 7200 is 2880.


Edit: As to rounding, maybe we could just not exploit rounding errors? Like all the other plans being made?

 

[notgreat]

maybe we could just not exploit rounding errors? Like all the other plans being made?

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All the plans are hunting 44.55 cubes to round it to 45. If that's not exploiting rounding I don't know what is. The Kyouko thing I was suggesting was exploiting rounding from 0.22ish to 0. This is exploiting 0.55 going to 1, almost at the 0.5 inflection point.

From what I remember, we are the company. The translation service is part of the courier company.

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I don't see anything to suggest that. I linked to the point where we were having the discussions, do you have a source?
As far as I can tell she's working for a random online translation company.

 

[Aranfan]

All the plans are hunting 44.55 cubes to round it to 45. If that's not exploiting rounding I don't know what is. The Kyouko thing I was suggesting was exploiting rounding from 0.22ish to 0. This is exploiting 0.55 going to 1, almost at the 0.5 inflection point.

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I thought we were caping it at 45, and were assuming that some people would pull in a bit extra but it being acceptable if we only pulled in 44?

Edit: Also, that isn't exploiting rounding, because we're paying for the rounding in demon strength. The rounding with territorial demon strength is making a troublesome condition disappear into the mathematical aether, that's what's meant by exploitation.

I don't see anything to suggest that. I linked to the point where we were having the discussions, do you have a source?
As far as I can tell she's working for a random online translation company.

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Reviewing the plans made at the time it appears I misremembered. The plan that won had her getting employed by a normal company.

 

[Kinematics]

Also, the 44.55 isn't so much exploiting rounding, as being as close as we can get to the target harvest rate given the limits of hunter unit resolution. We want 45. 9 vets gives us 44.55 (within roundable range). 9.5 vets gives us 47.025, a full two points over the target. We can't use 9.09 hunter units to hit it exactly.

 

[Elder Haman]

All the plans are hunting 44.55 cubes to round it to 45. If that's not exploiting rounding I don't know what is. The Kyouko thing I was suggesting was exploiting rounding from 0.22ish to 0. This is exploiting 0.55 going to 1, almost at the 0.5 inflection point.

I don't see anything to suggest that. I linked to the point where we were having the discussions, do you have a source?
As far as I can tell she's working for a random online translation company.

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What Kinematics said. That's not exploiting rounding, that's just the limitations of using only 0.5 exactness in the meguca assignments. Other times we are over the amount and have to round down.

EDIT:

Ahhhh.... I feel so much better now. I came home and crashed for 4 hours of sleep.

 

[Aranfan]

Madoka watched from outside the universe. Not galaxies and voids, though she saw those too, but people.

Anulka finally killed the bastard who ordered her village burned, and allowed herself at last to mourn.

There were so many of them. Trillions on trillions of lives, each full and unique and different. Each with their own triumphs and failures, each so small and so important. So important because of how small they were.

Xclrd skittered on only seven legs away from the fire that was once her home, this at last was too much for even her to take.

Madoka often thought she was something of a failure as a goddess. Not that she failed her task, no. Her wish ensured that every time any of the Incubator's contractees would witch out she was there to stop it. But in how much attention she gave to all the girls under her care. She was deplorably human centric, however much she tired not to be. Most of her attention when not 'on the job' was focused on Earth.

Bell, sadly, did not long survive her pet cat.

Hitomi and Kyousuke were getting on well, even if it wasn't a storybook romance. His first love would always be his music, and Hitomi was still in the middle of accepting that two years on. Kyoko and Sayaka had met at least, finally. She couldn't help but giggle seeing them together. They had graduated to holding hands, even if they seemed to think they had to hide it. Madoka was just happy that it looked like things were going to work out.

7th​ of Green knew her pod needed time to swim to safety, so she used the last of her magic to confund the eyes and minds of their pursuers.

Mami was doing so excellently Madoka's heart would be near to bursting, if she still had one. Tomoe-san had been so lonely for so long, and now look at her. Surrounded by friends, or at least people who liked and depended on her. This was pure favoritism, and it reflected poorly on her, but she felt she owed it to her senpai. She had eased the burdens of the Serene Imperium on several occasions. Nothing overt, that she refused to do even if she were able, but it was within her power to make some burdens weigh less heavily on a person's shoulders, to fan the flame of hope within them. And this she has done exclusively for Mami's group.

It wasn't some great tragedy that did Gretchen in, just a panic attack about homework.

Homura. Oh Homura-chan.

Insane enough to have potential, trusted enough to be offered a contract, loyal enough to wish to reduce entropy, shunned enough to despair.

Madoka watched from outside the universe.

-
OOC: Helix, you have done something to my muse. I should be writing updates for my quest, but all I can make are PMMM omakes for yours.

Edit: Also, assuming dead Hitomi is not Green, because Sayaka didn't spiral.

 

[Elder Haman]

The plans in question:

Kinematics Plan

notgreat Plan

Elder Haman Plan

Mine and Kinematics Hunting Plans are now the same:

12 Vets, 0.5 Greens, Expected Harvest of 59 cubes, -1 for Demon Forecasting, 0% chance of injury, all territories at +0 Demon Strength

notgreat Hunting Plan: 12 Vets, 0.5 Elites, Expected Harvest of 60 cubes, -1 for Demon Forecasting, 0% chance of injury, Main Urban Territory at +0 Demon Strength, Kyouko's Territory at +1

Both Kinematics and my plan has Mami teaching Kaoru, notgreat has it split between Mami and Kyouko. (So that he can have .5 Mami work as a consular for the girls).

notgreat is spending 7 Vets, 1 Green, $2000, and 6 cubes on research for all the non-stats research. Kinematics is spending 5 Vets, 1 Green, $1000, and 4 cubes personal enchanting, and duration. My plan spends 3 Vets, and 1 Green on research for the speed stat, although I'm considering switching to personal enchanting.


My plan for the police is to have Taura (concealed by a stealth girl) to mind read the police and figure out what they are thinking and what they want. Depending on how much they know, perhaps we can frame the Yakuza for framing us? (See @Diomedon idea) Also asking Kyubey for advice. Might as well learn what he objects to so we can placate him and not have him as an enemy.

Kinematics 1 vet assigned to the police, but no specifics.

notgreat does not have anything in his plan about the police.

I have a Magic Sports Day with a Trip to the Mountains (more secluded so we can use magic) that I am using for both the morale boost and to help with Kaoru's training. This costs 1.5 Vets, 0.5 Greens, and 1 grief cube. Kinematics and notgreat both have the mundane sports day at the cost of 1 Vet.

Both notgreat and Kinematics have 0.5 Green working on creating an operations manual. I could do this by switching out 0.5 Green for 0.5 Vets and dropping one of my scouting missions.

notgreat has 1.5 Kyouko and 1 Taya assigned to both scouting area 1 and anti poaching. Not sure how that works, but maybe he means something like Kinematics plane which has 0.5 Kyouko and 0.5 Taya on anti-poaching patrol with 0.5 Kyouko and 0.5 Taya scouting both area 1 and 9.

My plan has 1 Kyouko and 1 Taya full time on anti-poaching patrol.

I had a more detailed plan for a team scouting area 1, but considering the changes to the costs and mechanics of scouting and diplomacy I decided to abandon that and just use the standard 0.5 meguca to scout area 1 again. (Although still using Kyouko so we got the stealth Elite on the job instead of just any vet).

notgreat is scouting area's 9 and 10 with 0.5 Vets each. My plan scouts Area 14 (larger so requires more) with 0.5 Elite (Kyouko) and 0.5 Vet. As mentioned, Kinematics has 0.5 Kyouko and 0.5 Taya scouting both area 1 and 9.

On diplomacy we are all over the map. notgreat has 2 vets on rural diplomacy for areas 3 and 4. My plan has rural diplomacy on area 5 (cost of 1 vet). Kinematics has rural diplomacy on areas 3, 4, and 5 by paying Kyubey 2 grief cubes to help facilitate 3 and 4 (cost 2 vets, 2 grief cubes).

My plan also has Open Relations (the new starting diplomacy action) for both the Area 11 and 12 girls (as they are one group) and the Area 9 girls. Cost 2 Vets.

Kinematics also has 1 Kyouko left that is unassigned.

So I think we still need some discussion around the scouting diplomacy options.

 

[Kinematics]

Created a chart to show currently planned scouting and diplomacy actions, for easier comparison and visualization.

     Area:    1      3    4     5     9      10     11    12    14
Kinematics    SctE   Rur  Rur   Rur   SctE
Haman         SctE              Rur   Rel           Rel   Rel   SctE
notgreat      SctE   Rur  Rur         Sct    Sct


Sct = Scout
SctE = Scouting with Elites
Rur = Rural Diplomacy
Rel = Open Relations

Haman: Given the crit fail in area 11/12 last turn, I'm thinking we want to give them some breathing space before we try to reopen relations.

Mine and Haman's each have 2 scouting actions, while notgreat's has 3. All of us seem interested in area 1. The other choice seems to be mainly between area 9 and area 14. Haman just goes for opening relations with area 9, and uses the scouting on 14. Personally, I think area 10 scouting is probably not necessary, as it's just a small suburban area.

We all go for varying levels of rural negotiations. Just need to decide how much to put into it. Though I'd note that if the area 10/11/12 actions were dropped (for the reasons noted above), that would allow all three plans to get all three rural areas, if they so desired (though I could see going for relations with area 10 for Haman's, instead; actually, paying 2 grief cubes would allow for both).

I could see maybe moving the scouting of area 9 to scouting area 14 for my plan (would cost one more grief cube to free up half a unit) if area 14 info is deemed more important right now. (Edit: Actually, I've still got a free Kyouko that could scout area 14, too.)

 

[notgreat]

Note that if the decimals do go through, some of those numbers for the hunting plans may be off.

notgreat is spending 7 Vets, 1 Green, $2000, and 6 cubes on research for all the non-stats research

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No, I'm missing Secondary Properties Enchantment research. It takes 3 months though and has a 40% chance of failure, which puts its speed at roughly equivalent to the stat research. I'd go for stat research before that one unless we found we really needed it.
edit: Takes on average 3.666 turns vs the 5.3 for stat research, but also requires $1k/month and probably doesn't give immediate benefits upon completion. Still probably worth getting soon though. Also fixed the name.

notgreat does not have anything in his plan about the police.

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Correct, except that I'm planning on revealing to them our "prototype kevlar enhancement" next turn. Or something to that effect. It fits the timeline and gives us a good reason for keeping things hidden (don't want the processing getting out)
1) We tried <something> and discovered an unusual property
2) We bought a single kevlar item and tested it out on it.
3) The next month, we bought a massive load of kevlar (to begin larger-scale testing and production)
It also sorta gives them an idea of what happened to destroy the house- we have to have been testing the vests with something, so we probably constructed some sort of weapon that backfired on us or something. We obviously don't want to go into details, but it's nothing too worrying beyond the fact that so many of the people working on it are so young.

So I think we still need some discussion around the scouting diplomacy options.

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Right now I'm waiting on details that Kinematics asked for about bribing QB for efficient rural diplomacy.

notgreat has 1.5 Kyouko and 1 Taya assigned to both scouting area 1 and anti poaching. Not sure how that works, but maybe he means something like Kinematics plane which has 0.5 Kyouko and 0.5 Taya on anti-poaching patrol with 0.5 Kyouko and 0.5 Taya scouting both area 1 and 9.

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It's basically me trying to get around the half-person limitation. I want .25 kyouko and .25 taya scouting and 1.25 kyouko+0.75 taya doing the patrol. Since I'm like 90% certain the poachers are part of area 1, I figured it'd be reasonable to combine the two and specifically scout to see if my suspicions are correct.

Though I too don't have any particular attachment to my scouting/diplomacy plans. I think we want to grab some more rural territory, but beyond that I don't know. The reason we want to grab it is it's extremely cheap in terms of manpower to obtain, though it doesn't give us much manpower either. Normal territory takes a bit over 0.3 meguca to harvest (assumes pair hunting which we will probably switch to soon for rotating overhunts) whereas the rural territory is around 0.6 (because we need to pay for the stipend and stuff).
That, and getting us into the minds of the rural people is likely to have them come to us in the near-mid future even if the immediate diplomacy fails.

I'm not a fan of opening relations with area 11/12 right now, we explicitly have a diplomacy penalty with them. Better to wait for the penalty to decay some and work on the other territories.

 

[Kinematics]

Correct, except that I'm planning on revealing to them our "prototype kevlar enhancement" next turn. Or something to that effect. It fits the timeline and gives us a good reason for keeping things hidden (don't want the processing getting out)
1) We tried <something> and discovered an unusual property
2) We bought a single kevlar item and tested it out on it.
3) The next month, we bought a massive load of kevlar (to begin larger-scale testing and production)
It also sorta gives them an idea of what happened to destroy the house- we have to have been testing the vests with something, so we probably constructed some sort of weapon that backfired on us or something. We obviously don't want to go into details, but it's nothing too worrying beyond the fact that so many of the people working on it are so young.

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So, we give Keiko a couple pots of coffee before setting her up to 'explain' her new discoveries?

Overall, I like the gist of this idea, except that I'm not sure how well it will go over with Kyuubey. It's skirting the edge of giving out too much info.

 

[inverted_helix]

Also, the 44.55 isn't so much exploiting rounding, as being as close as we can get to the target harvest rate given the limits of hunter unit resolution. We want 45. 9 vets gives us 44.55 (within roundable range). 9.5 vets gives us 47.025, a full two points over the target. We can't use 9.09 hunter units to hit it exactly.

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44.55 is not exploitative. What was exploitative was last turn using my rounding order to go from 35.24 to 36.

It's basically me trying to get around the half-person limitation

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Hah. If I let it creep down further it gets too complicated I think.

For my own plans, updating the diplomacy action to do the low-intensity recruiting in areas 3, 4 and 5. Cost will be 1.5 to 2.0 vets, and a cube or two to Kyuubey (depending on the precise handling of his bonus). If it's one cube per territory, I'll probably only spend two so that the vet cost is 0.5/0.5/1.0.

Click to shrink...

1 cube per territory

 

[Kinematics]

Taking the idea a bit more forward:

First idea was to approach them directly, with the cover of her thinking they might be gangsters. But then there's actually an easier answer: Go to the police directly.

Wall-o-texty Police Defusion:

[] Mami calls the police about suspicious activity near her apartment, as well as near the house of some of her friends, which has frightened them a great deal. She's afraid that there's some gangster (yakuza, in a stage whisper) activity, and that they seem to be targeting young girls in your area.
[] You have not heard of any kidnapping attempts yet, but they've been stalking people obsessively. She'd tried to ignore it at first, but it's been a whole month, and she just can't let it go anymore.
-[] Response A: They withdraw in embarrassment.
-[] Response B: They stonewall or ignore her, as the surveillance is supposed to be undercover, and thus not acknowledged.
-[] Response C: They fess up to the investigation and question Mami directly.
[] In case of Response A, we're done. The embarrassment will linger on anyone involved in the investigation, so probably won't be a directly recurring issue.
[] In case of Response B, Mami will need to confront them directly.
-[] Approach the surveillance van directly and openly. Repeat with stealth if they drive away to avoid her at first.
-[] Question them about what they're doing, and ask if they're yakuza. Make sure to stay in plain view of her apartment building, and note that the police will be called in if they try to do anything to her.
-[] Presumably they will be forced to admit to being police at that point, in which case Mami aggressively questions them about their behavior. Once they point out that they're investigating her, this proceeds roughly to Response C.
[] In case of Response C, introduce the cover story.
-[] A young genius among her friends made what she felt was an amazing discovery. Mami can't fully explain all the details herself, but it had to do with the properties of matter under stress.
-[] Someone had the idea that they could make a fortune if it would work to improve defense materials like kevlar. They purchased a kevlar vest for some initial tests.
-[] The basic idea worked well enough that they decided to risk a more serious investment. Money was pooled, and a full dozen sets of kevlar armor and clothing were purchased for more advanced testing.
-[] Unfortunately the testing on the full product hasn't been working as well as they'd hoped, probably at least partially because they have had to improvise their own testing methodologies, as well as keep it secret from corporations that might try to steal it from the girls.
-[] Yes, the explosion at the house was due to an ill-advised idea in how to set up a better 'stress-test' mechanism. It had since been dismantled.
-[] If they'd like to meet the girl, you can introduce her. Ensure Keiko had several cups of coffee beforehand, and that she could be as mad scientisty as she wanted, as long as she never mentioned magic.
-[] Be reluctant to reveal trade secrets of how the implementation actually worked, but be ready with a simple demo (which can use magic, discreetly).

 

[inverted_helix]

I suppose I should make it clear that they aren't being horribly obvious as I might have made it sound. They're obvious to a bunch of girls with superhuman senses, ability to survey completely invisibly, and who maintain regular scouting of the entire city.

Against a regular group their stakeout wouldn't be quite so obvious.

 

[Kinematics]

I suppose I should make it clear that they aren't being horribly obvious as I might have made it sound. They're obvious to a bunch of girls with superhuman senses, ability to survey completely invisibly, and who maintain regular scouting of the entire city.

Click to shrink...

Hmm. Will have to give some thought to a believable reason to pull the ploy, then.

Also, not sure if the above plan will require a specific meguca cost, or what. Possibly some money spent to set up a believable testing lab (that is not the magic testing lab)?

 

[Elder Haman]

Created a chart to show currently planned scouting and diplomacy actions, for easier comparison and visualization.

     Area:    1      3    4     5     9      10     11    12    14
Kinematics    SctE   Rur  Rur   Rur   SctE
Haman         Sct               Rur   Rel           Rel   Rel   SctE
notgreat      SctE   Rur  Rur         Sct    Sct


Sct = Scout
SctE = Scouting with Elites
Rur = Rural Diplomacy
Rel = Open Relations

Haman: Given the crit fail in area 11/12 last turn, I'm thinking we want to give them some breathing space before we try to reopen relations.

Mine and Haman's each have 2 scouting actions, while notgreat's has 3. All of us seem interested in area 1. The other choice seems to be mainly between area 9 and area 14. Haman just goes for opening relations with area 9, and uses the scouting on 14. Personally, I think area 10 scouting is probably not necessary, as it's just a small suburban area.

We all go for varying levels of rural negotiations. Just need to decide how much to put into it. Though I'd note that if the area 10/11/12 actions were dropped (for the reasons noted above), that would allow all three plans to get all three rural areas, if they so desired (though I could see going for relations with area 10 for Haman's, instead; actually, paying 2 grief cubes would allow for both).

I could see maybe moving the scouting of area 9 to scouting area 14 for my plan (would cost one more grief cube to free up half a unit) if area 14 info is deemed more important right now. (Edit: Actually, I've still got a free Kyouko that could scout area 14, too.)

Click to shrink...

Nice chart, although I have an elite scouting area 1, so we tend to agree there, just difference in how many elite we are spending on it. (I'm spending 0.5, you're spending 1).

I could drop 11/12 and go for the rural areas instead. Might do that.

@notgreat

On the strengthening Kevlar excuse.... that just seems like a really bad idea to me.

1: Our girls range in age from 12 to 17 - is it really believable we are doing testing on improving Kevlar body armor?

2: We don't know how much they know. This would be confirming that we are doing dangerous research (explosions? weapons!) in a house full of young girls. Let's find out what they know first before we start admitting to things that could get us in some serious trouble.

3: Duration takes 2 months, so it's at least two months more before we could show anything. Even then it will be temporary. Are we really going to sell Kevlar that stops working as promised after a month or two?

@Kinematics Confrontation Plan

I do not want to confront the police until we have a better idea of what they know, and what we can and can't lie about.

Confrontation could go very badly for us.

Worst case they raid the house, or Mami's apartment, and in the process confiscate our grief cube stockpiles. We currently have half our grief cubes in the house (under Aiko), 1/4 in Mami's apartment, and 1/4 in Iwata (under Karou). Perhaps we should move 1/4 from the house to other apartments? I'm only hesitant because we don't want the police tracking us moving packages around.

More likely, and almost as bad, the police decide to contact the parents of the girls staying at our house. Some of which are outside Mitakihara, putting us back in a Kaori situation - and possible grounding and or forbidding the girls from contacting us. Confiscation of cellphones.

We are very vulnerable. We don't want confrontation with the police, we want them to go away and look somewhere else.

 

[Kinematics]

I do not want to confront the police until we have a better idea of what they know, and what we can and can't lie about.

Click to shrink...

I could see adding some Taura-scouting as prep for pulling the ploy, for that purpose.

3: Duration takes 2 months, so it's at least two months more before we could show anything. Even then it will be temporary. Are we really going to sell Kevlar that stops working as promised after a month or two?

Click to shrink...

Of course not. Our 'plan' at the moment (as far as we'd tell the police) is to have a workable process in place within a year, and even then may still have to work on the manufacturing side of it. What, you think we can just magic up super-kevlar in a single month?

Worst case they raid the house, or Mami's apartment, and in the process confiscate our grief cube stockpiles.

Click to shrink...

If we directly confront the police, there should be no reason for a raid. A raid is what happens when we let things sit around too long without doing anything.

We are very vulnerable. We don't want confrontation with the police, we want them to go away and look somewhere else.

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Well, we don't want confrontation on their terms, I'd agree. Confrontation on our terms is something else entirely.

More likely, and almost as bad, the police decide to contact the parents of the girls staying at our house. Some of which are outside Mitakihara, putting us back in a Kaori situation - and possible grounding and or forbidding the girls from contacting us. Confiscation of cellphones.

Click to shrink...

This bit, however, could be problematic. I don't think this idea has a particularly high chance of that, but it could happen.

The only thing in yours, though, is poking in people's heads and sort of handwaving an undefined excuse that doesn't really do anything. Framing the yakuza? How, exactly? It's notably lacking in details. And what are the odds that the yakuza find the original police records and use that to track down the people who framed them? Seems to have far higher risks of loose ends.

 

[Kinematics]

Though, with the above said, some more thought does give rise to the idea that we really need to know how much info they're getting in the surveillance. Did they bug the house? Using directional microphones or something? Are they hearing about girls going on hunting assignments? There are certainly some things we can't explain that they may have heard. Going to sleep on it.

 

[notgreat]

I agree that the plan is not perfect- indeed, I mentioned as such when I first proposed it. Still, it seems like the best one proposed thus far. Framing the mob is a perfect way to get the mob very angry at you, and we really don't want to get involved with the criminal underworld. That, and from an outside observer standpoint, it just doesn't make sense for us to have waited a full two months before doing anything with your plan.

While perhaps a year is a bit long, we can definitely tell them that it's in no way ready for production, and our prototypes are still extremely lacking. Show off a prototype in a controlled environment, get them interested, and we might get funding.

I'm pretty happy with Kinematics' wall-o-text plan, that's pretty much what I was thinking but much better defined.
@Elder Haman
They aren't going to raid us unless we give them a reason to.

1: Our girls range in age from 12 to 17 - is it really believable we are doing testing on improving Kevlar body armor?

Click to shrink...

High school science fair project level. I mean, it's pretty obvious that we weren't doing a focused research project, we just happened to come across something and someone realized that it had applications. It'd be pretty weird if we were looking specifically for it, but as a realized application? Seems reasonable.

2: We don't know how much they know. This would be confirming that we are doing dangerous research (explosions? weapons!) in a house full of young girls. Let's find out what they know first before we start admitting to things that could get us in some serious trouble.

Click to shrink...

I mean, we can't really deny that an explosion/damage happened. It's pretty well documented what with the $10,000 trail and all.
Though I can see the use in trying to figure out exactly what they know before committing to our cover story. Not a fan of the framing idea, but the rest of your plan is basically "investigate, and wait for later", and my plan has to wait until next turn anyway so it works out. I'm definitely in favor of talking with Kyuubey, maybe even offer him some cubes in exchange.
Kinematics does have a good point that they might have listened in on us, but if that's the case, there really isn't very much we can do. The casual talk is probably sufficient that there really isn't any way we'd be able to get out of it without a bunch of mind-wipes and messing with their files on us.


As for the rural diplomacy, taking the QB offer is right on the border of being worthwhile. I'm slightly against it, but not significantly. It's a straight up 1 cube->0.5 megucamonth tradeoff, and that's just barely beyond what I'm happy with (I've been doing it as roughly 1 megucamonth as 1.5 cubes, so 1 cube->0.667 megucamonth)
Still, that's a heuristic and not a solid number. Particularly since we're going to be using rotating tactics soon and have a huge cube surplus, which will make cubes worth much less to us.

What was exploitative was last turn using my rounding order to go from 35.24 to 36.

Click to shrink...

Fair enough, but in that case, why not just change it to round afterwards? After all, doing two 0.55 hunts gets us to 1.1 expected but 2 rounded. It's only the difference between doing it twice in one turn and doing it once per turn.
I'm actually in favor of the decimal system though, just wondering as to your reasoning.