Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)

[Elder Haman]

It is entirely possible we came up with crop rotation first.

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On I can totally believe that. It's actually a rather advanced concept. Mami would be the type to come up with it, as would other honor student types. But how many honor student types become magical girls, and survive long enough to get the experience needed, and is social and charismatic enough that she can get a group of girls to follow her?

And has access to the initial grief seed stockpile that Mami had to attract people? Plus we obviously had Madokami looking out for us in those early turns.

 

[Aranfan]

Mami created the Serene's with Diplomacy, but it is entirely possible to create a magical girl group by force instead. Once a meguca group is establish it's pretty hard to dislodge unless it hits one of those fail conditions I mentioned (and hits it hard). If it doesn't have bad luck on the various rolls, and a group founded on force is likely somewhat compartmentalized when it comes to spirals, it's just a matter of time until an "honor student type" contracts into the relative safety of a group and lasts long enough to come up with crop rotation.

If we aren't the first or one of the first groups to form, I'm not sure our excellent starting conditions would let us beat an established group to the discovery.

Basically I think that if we weren't the first, or one of the first, then kyuubey would definitely have some answers or guidelines or even "avoid X" advice on how a group should operate.

 

[inverted_helix]

I gotta admit the lack of objectives besides 'survive' kinda threw me off a bit after a while. It sort of felt like 'expand' oh crap need more money/cubes 'condenses' repeat, and it kinda got a repetitive feeling to me? The sort of, and then we do this 'x' and then we do 'y' and then we do 'x' again, repeat for 30 updates (with different flavor texts).

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Hmm any idea on how to alleviate that? To a degree you're supposed to feel that way, resources are the constraint here after all and it's basically like having an issue with wanting more action slots in a CK2 game (which pretty much everyone always does in such games). However I don't want it to feel too repetitive really. But on the other hand I wanted to keep a bit of the harsher feel of PMMM tempering empire quests usual explosive growth. It's a hard balance and I'm not a good enough writer to do it well, but I'm trying anyways.

I am operating currently under the assumption that Madoka's retcon means no large groups formed prior to the retcon. And that Mami created the Serenes pretty soon after the retcon, since Sayaka was one of the initial greens.

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I took that as more that larger groups are a recent thing. I assume since Madoka's retcon couldn't create too large of puella groups in the far past without completely destroying the timeline.

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Bingo. Madoka's retcon was meant to save every meguca, but she would have thought of the ones she's seen die especially. If the timeline deviated as much as it normally would have from such a huge alteration then Mami and the rest almost certainly wouldn't have been born in the first place. This means to save them Madoka's wish must ensure that they are born, and so the timeline has to stay very close to the original. This means large meguca groups can't have formed in the past because that would cause too much deviation.

Combine that with Kyuubey's statements about how he doesn't really have data on how large groups can deal with the kind of stuff we ask him about, and it points towards any other group being at most as old as we are.

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Dead on as well. The timeline protection aspect terminated and there's a sudden explosion in group formation that from Incubator perspective has no known cause. They are of course quite interested in the why's, but also interested in what impact on their production these groups will have.

 

[LightMage]

Hmm any idea on how to alleviate that? To a degree you're supposed to feel that way, resources are the constraint here after all and it's basically like having an issue with wanting more action slots in a CK2 game (which pretty much everyone always does in such games). However I don't want it to feel too repetitive really. But on the other hand I wanted to keep a bit of the harsher feel of PMMM tempering empire quests usual explosive growth. It's a hard balance and I'm not a good enough writer to do it well, but I'm trying anyways.

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I think you can reduce it in a few ways.

1. Mini-turns, I.E Quest Style updates for important events / crit fails/ crit successes.
So say we roll a crit fail on cube farming actions, instead of just writing out an event, maybe let us RP it through a magical girl and let us influence just how bad the event effects us. It'll be a nice change of pace, and give us something to do besides hope to earn re-rolls like in other quests to deal with bad luck. (Same with crit successes or overall important events like meeting another very large group of girls, or a government faction that's in on it now or something.)

2. Diplomacy Write-In's to directly persuade girls without dice.

This might be a bit too much work, but the idea is that for each group you sketch out a rough background / desires / dislikes for them, and hint at them on a meeting with them and good investigative rolls will give us a profile. We then try and write-in a persuasive argument to get them to join us, or at least ally with us... with the eventual goal of our girls persuading them to join up in full.

3. Overall Bad Luck = Enemy Action or Some *event* we can do things with, and if successful recover a bit from the bad luck / gain new resources with new choices...

I.E lot of poor rolls results in the failures being a result of say, a small group of Yakuza being led by a Magical Girl (or a few) and her Boyfriend / Just guy friends. We can deal with them in a mini-turn (at the cost of ??? cubes depending on how it plays out) and we have to deal with the results of our choices. Say we end up killing the MG's and leaders in an honor duel or something, and thus cause the Yakzua to want to follow us... we get choices on how to deal with that. Or say we get Mami Diplomacy going and persuade the MG's and Co leaders to be REAL MEN/GIRLS and start them fighting other Yakuza groups, thus creating an allied or neutral faction that's always fighting non-magicals with the problems that entails.

Stuff kinda like that.

For the mini-turns combat, I'd say let us write-in battle plans and if we can I.D the enemies probably skill set close enough and/or there's a good strength gap, I.E Kyouko vs Greenie or Non-Combat spec'd Vets we can get an auto win... for more even fights the better we plan, the higher the chance of success is.

Might be quite a bit of work and hard to do, but I think it'd help reduce the repetitive feel by shifting styles and focuses every now and then without removing the PMMM feel. And also give us more chances to fail/succeed in ways that let you give us more complicated choices to make.

 

[Kinematics]

It's seeming like with the switch to rotating tactics (as an analog to crop rotation in some ways) you're breaking free of the resource bottlenecks.

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Yeah, somewhat. Up til now it felt like it was a barely sustainable situation that had almost no chance to improve (grow larger, yes; improve, no). With rotating tactics, there's actually a chance for improvement, finally.

It's also seeming like players don't have quite enough things to spend meguca-power on. Which is troubling.

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I think that's just a matter of time, to figure out something we want to do that fits into the game.

I figured that with people so attached to the girls now that they'd start trying to build up better standard of living just for that sake though.

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Yeah, several of the ideas lean in that direction.

 

[Elder Haman]

@notgreat Meguca Empire quest is back on and we need your mathematical insights for planning once again.

@inverted_helix Omakes (and similar things) not on the front page.

Sora's background

Cost of Business

So You Wanna Be a Hero?

Dragnet: Mitakihara

Getting Strong Now

I intended Getting Strong Now to apply to Karou's Raising Stars training action. I specifically hoped her foot stomp clearing action would help her during the King of the Mountain training activity. That wouldn't be enough to change the outcome would it?

If not I suppose we can just apply it next turn, to Karou's final chance to become an Elite.

I figure So You Wanna Be A Hero would est up Minako's wish powers (barrier) and Nagisa's (talking with animals).

Obviously Kaoru's Training was intended for Rising Stars action. I assume @@FixerUpper intended to apply Lesson Number One the same way. I'm guessing FixerUpper might also have meant his Cost of Business to apply to the cleaning up the evidence actions, but I can't be sure.

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I tend to be pretty lax about how bonuses are applied to my omakes. Inverted_Helix has had to poke me before to get me to choose, but yes, Lesson Number One's specifically to help facilitate the Elite training process. Cost of Business is me going 'Kyouko would never stand for this let's see what she has to say.' Bonus-wise, I'll trust Helix to think of something appropriate for it.

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I think that's all of them.

Hopefully this is helpful.

 

[Elder Haman]

Here I'm just quoting a bunch of posts from the last 4 months or so of the quest that had interesting ideas, comments, ect.

Hopefully they will be helpful, but be warned before expanding them that several of them are long.

This was really good, kind of makes me feel bad for her. Here's the type of magic I came up with that really wanted to say before: Inertia Manipulation. Though limited, ability to proportionally reduce it (or increase it). This is a far more reliable way to provide higher speed than simply giving her stronger legs after all, since that wouldn't have any effect on vehicles that weren't muscle powered. Inertia reduction also gives much better ability to change direction, which is critical to going fast effectively.

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Hmm... maybe we ought to look into sponsoring Akeno in some races? Win a little cash, but mainly get publicity for our courier business. It'd be pretty normal for a courier business to sponsor their fastest person in a race. Make sense as a way to get good publicity.

While it would get us attention, I doubt it would blow the masquerade. People expect a person in a race to go really fast. Even if we are the fastest, it's more of a "how cool" and "humans keep on getting better and better at breaking records" kind of thing. You know, as long as Akeno doesn't straight up break the laws of pyhsics we should be okay. Probably.

Obviously we can't do this right now with the police watching us, but maybe later.

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Another thought on Akeno. In addition to having her enter races, at some point we might want to get her a motorcycle, as she can use her power on motorcycles. Maybe even cars, or planes...

Heck, Akeno is probably capable of becoming a rocket launcher at some point.

Just reposting for the ease of viewing of new prospective voters.


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Here's my cheat sheet, tell me if there's anything I should add.

Useful Stuff

Skill Tiers:

Green: Cube collection x1, Casualties -0%
Veteran: Cube collection x1.5, Casualties -5%
Elite: Cube collection x2, Casualties -15%

Hunting Methods:
Solo: 2 cubes per girl, +20% Casualties, 50% lethality
Pair: 1.6 cubes per girl, +16% Casualties, 40% lethality
Pack: 1.25 cubes per girl, +10% Casualties, 20% lethality

Rural Modifier: Solo becomes 1.5 cubes, Pair becomes 1.2 cubes, Pack becomes .9 cubes

Cube definition: 1 cube represents the number of cubes an average magical girl consumes per month discounting spirals.

Demon Strength X= +X% Casualties (X is a signed value, negative X decreases casualties)
20*(Harvest - Sustainable Harvest)/(Sustainable Harvest) = Delta X
Half of X is applied to same turn casualty rate, all of X is applied to next turn's casualty rate.
Lower Demon Strength indicates higher predation on the mundane human population, causing human misery and suicide.

Harvest definition: Cubes hunted per turn in the territory.
Sustainable Harvest definition: 1 cube per 20k-25k human population in the territory.

Farming Techniques:

Rotating Tactics: +5% Casualties, .66 demon strength multiplier (applies only to +strength)
Crop Rotation: Split territory into at least 2 zones and alternate overhunting (w/RT) and underhunting, this generates a surplus while keeping Demon Strength down.

Combat Training:

Basic Combat: -2% Casualties for all hunting methods
Basic Solo Combat: -1% Pack, -2% Pair, -3% Solo
Defend Others: -1% Pack, -2% Pair
Pack Tactics: -4% Pack

Organizational Support:

Dispatch (2 Vets Clairvoyant): -1% Casualties, +30% Cube Harvest, does not apply to rural
Telepathic Comm Support (1 vet): -1% Casualties
Evac Team: Solo lethality changed from 50% to 30%

Mundane Assets:

Cellphones: -2% Solo, -1% Pair
Arm Shields: -3% (??)
Kevlar Clothes: -4% (12)
Kevlar Vest: -2% (12)



Diplomacy:

Other Big Groups Only:
Open Relations: Cost 1 Meguca, reduces MG cost for all successive actions, 90% chance of success
Safe Passage: Cost 3 Meguca, Mutual Safe Passage, variable chance of success
Business Action: Cost 3 Meguca, Mutual market access, variable chance of success
Aid, Information:Cost 1 Meguca, Reputational effects dependent on utility of information, autosuccess
Aid, Cubes: Cost 1Meguca + Cubes, Reputational effects dependent on cube need, 90% success
Trade: Cost 1 Meguca, trades money/cubes/information for
Recruitment: Cost 4 Meguca, Absorption of other group, variable chance of success


Rural Recruitment: 1 Meguca, may pay Kyuubey 1 cube to reduce cost to .5 Meguca, variable success


Scouting: 1 Vet per territory, special rate of .5 vet on territories 1-10

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I'd probably describe how Delta X works as just saying that 1/2 the Delta is added to Demon Strength for the turn when the Demon Strength is changing. It applies to both increases and decreases in strength.

Might be more useful to define Sustainable Harvest as the number of cubes that can be harvested from a terriotry without increasing demon strength.

We have 1 shield for every meguca. It's part of the basic equipment package.

We also have 29 bikes that provide extra mobility.

Our bonuses to casualties (not including Kevlar) add up to:

Solo: -11%
Pack: -13%
Pairs: -15%
+1% in rural territories because of lack of dispatch team.

When added to the base risk for those territories that becomes:

Solo: +9%
Pack: -3%
Pairs: +1%

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Yeah not sure why she wouldn't? Though you already have her normally employed.
I've dug up my old numbers. The loan payment was around $9,435 a month for 5 years. The profit of the restaurant I estimated as about 10k beyond that. I'd allow you to up it to 550k and that would produce a loan payment of $10,380 a month for 5 years. So profit from the restaurant would commensurately be reduced.

Though you'd also see some variable bonuses to profit from a magic chef. With your money making enterprises the way I do things is that >90 percentile results increase profitability. <10% decreases (though decreases are usually one time losses, while increases are usually more permanent). With a magic chef I'll change the ranges to more along the lines of >80, <5.

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OK, if we take the 550k loan, profit per month will be 9k (because of the higher loan payment). We're currently getting 3k per turn for those three workers, and allowing for 3 others at a nominal $1k each per job-turn means we'll be increasing our effective income by 3k per turn (vs just using those three bodies for normal jobs).

There's a fairly decent chance that we can get 3 more girls next turn from the rural areas (and we should at least get a couple). Between those, and the meguca we'd sent out to recruit them in the first place, we could fill the slots needed for the restaurant.

Altogether, I'd be very inclined to start the restaurant next turn, however I'd rather not do it this turn. Aside from other issues, I'd really rather the police investigation be over before we ping them with getting a loan for half a million dollars.

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Nice remainder on the restaurant options.

So I'm just going to brainstorm about possible and probable failure modes for meguca organizations, based on what we know now and didn't know during the first updates.

Money: Running an organization costs money. So does affording the various mundane assests that are lifesavers like phones and shields, and that's not even mentioning keeping the girls in food and water. We got lucky with our first turn jobsearch succeeding like it did. Otherwise we might have been forced to turn to crime, with all the attendant morale and attention penalties. So money problems is a definite failure mode.

Morale Failure: According to Helix a single hunting death in the first month would have caused us to lose a lot more girls to spirals. A run of bad luck hunting in the initial months could have the rank and file girls give up on the idea of a big organization as not being safer enough to be worth giving up the independence of the wild.

Demons: Assuming an organization manages to establish itself, it is entirely possible for them to be too successful building up a stockpile/surplus of grief cubes and thereby drive demon strength up to such high levels that they die fast enough to tank morale and fall apart. And there are problems underhunting too. Basically the longer an organization is ignorant of the sustainable hunting equation and human-demon-meguca carrying capacity dynamics, the higher the chance of it biting them in the ass.

Insufficient Secrecy: More a problem for the groups that fund themselves through crime, since that is sure to attract attention from both sides of the law, but still a concern for non-criminal groups. If you piss off Kyuubey enough by threatening the masquerade your organization is basically dead.

Open Conflict: Actual physical conflict between magical girls would be a massive drain on both manpower and grief cube supplies. The loss of which can easily tank an organization even if it wins the physical skirmishes.

Resource Denial: The sustainability equation is a harsh mistress. Sustained poaching by either another organization or by smaller groups of wild meguca can do terrible things to demon strength and therefore to cube stockpiles, casualty rates, turnover, and morale.

Bad Luck on the Spiral Roll: Between Madoka looking out for us and Keiko's kitten mulcher we haven't really seen this yet, but the spiral mechanic is a loaded gun to the head of any puella organization. Spirals consume both cubes and girls, massively draining resources. A run of bad luck on the spiral roll can leave a previously strong group a gutted wreck, and shatter one that's already in trouble.

Bad Luck in General: The dice giveth, and the dice taketh away. Bad luck can be anything from hunting poorly to hunting too well, from not making enough money to doing too well on the job, from Kyuubey not contracting enough girls to replace losses to Kyuubey bringing you too many girls to sustain. While not as fatal as some of the other problems outlined, if an organization is spending every turn putting out the fires from last turn, they are much more vulnerable to any of the above problems.

OCP: Helix has hinted repeatedly that there are mechanics we haven't figured out yet, feedback cycles we haven't tripped, and even an "arc boss" we don't know anything about. This being a Puella Magi quest I fully expect these things to shank us in the back out of nowhere.


Summary: We have been amazingly lucky.

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Keiko! Get the kitten mulcher working overtime.

On a more serious note, I think we want to get a to at least a 3 month stockpile of grief cubes. That would give us the time we need to respond to a serious problem.

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Assuming no expansion in organizational size or territory, and nothing disruptive happens (so basically frictionless spherical cow), with our population of 47 girls (Ayase doesn't count for this), an average of 5 cubes per turn consumed by spiral mitigation (# pulled out of my ass), and a sustainable 64 seeds harvested each turn with crop rotation on average. It would take:

(64-47-5)X=47*2
(64-53)X=94
(11)X=94
X = 94/11

Approximately 9 months to accumulate that surplus over the one month stockpile we currently almost have. Longer thanks to Kyuubey's fine and other things I didn't account for.

I'd love a 3 month stockpile, but it's not gonna happen any time soon, especially with all the ways we can usefully spend grief cubes.

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I would probably aim for a 10% cube surplus per turn, over nominal upkeep. That is, for our population, +5 cubes to the reserves per turn after all costs and grief spirals. That gives a full month stockpile per year of activity, roughly.

For the very long term, a 3 month stockpile is probably about the maximum for pure reserves. That would be sufficient to feed an organization over the course of a winnable war without needing to hunt at all (though it's still preferable that some hunting be done, it's more likely to be poaching on both sides). If it takes more than three months of all-out fighting, you were never going to win to start with.

A 3 month stockpile should be achievable for a 4-year-old organization, with the assumption that the first year was spent just scraping by, not building reserves.

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Okay, time to speculate about political breakdowns.

As I see it, there are roughly 3 mindsets in the Serene's at the moment, although a fourth might happen as rural territory expands. Those three are "worker", "idealist", and "pragmatist". The worker mindset arises from the conditions where the puella is almost entirely cut off from combat. The Idealist and Pragmatist mindsets however would find their places in the hunting party, although the idealists would find themselves stronger in the support staff and the pragmatists in the hunters proper.

Workers, as said, are almost entirely insulated from the usual rigors of Puella life. They do their job and then pay their entire wage for the grief seeds they need but did not hunt, thereby supporting the organization that allows them to live a mostly normal life as a magical girl and not have to risk life an limb. Their primary concerns would be for improvements in the quality of life. This faction is where the strongest pushes for things like fun with magic and increased stipends come from. Being insulated from the usual Puella concerns, they don't really have a unified opinion on expansion, territory, or other things.

Pragmatists are concerned with survival primarily, and tend to be rather cynical. Girls who spent time in the wild are more likely to be pragmatists, and for archetypal examples look at Kyoko and Homura. The organization is good and valuable because of the concrete benefits it brings to the girls both in terms of survivability and emotional support, but is not an end in itself. A pragmatist will tend to be against the risks of expansion if the organization has enough territory to sustainable support it's meguca, and strongly in favor of expansion if it does not. Rural territories will be low priority expansion targets in all cases due to their relatively low value. They will tend to be against recruitment as well, unless said recruitment comes with territorial gains to compensate for the additional drain on cubes.

Idealists believe in the mission of magical girls to fight demons and protect humanity. Sayaka types. Girls who contracted into the relative safety of a group, or got recruited early from the wild are more likely to be idealists. They will want expansion into rural territories and even into nomad territories, and this will be the case even if the territory is a (small) net drain on resources. In every case, an expansion in territory or megucapower or money represents an increase in the ability of the organization to fight demons and thereby protect people, so Idealists place high value on increasing all the metrics of organizational power.

Pragmatists are relatively casualty-risk averse, but take less of a morale hit when death does happen. Idealists are relatively casualty-risk tolerant, but take a higher morale hit when death does happen. High turnover tends to produce more pragmatists, low turnover tends to produce more idealists. Resentment of Workers depends on the casualty rate, rather than the general turnover rate since spirals are not connected to the hunter-worker dichotomy. If almost all the deaths are from spirals, then workers are as likely to get hit as hunters, and there isn't really any reason to resent the extra safety. If a substantial chunk of the deaths are from casualties then there is reason to resent the "cushy deal" workers get.

We don't really have enough rural territory to tell if it's different enough to generate another mindset, but I would speculate that rural hunters would be a midpoint between pragmatists and idealists, with the harsher realities of rural hunting leading to both greater cynicism and greater appreciation for the benefits of strong organizational backing.

This is just for the Serene's obviously, although I imagine that something like a pragmatist faction is present in all meguca groups. Idealists would likely be present in most groups that aren't criminal, although much weaker than in the SIMP. Criminal groups would probably have internal splits in the pragmatist group.

I'm probably wrong about something (I'm extrapolating a lot from the house fight and my own speculation), but I think this is probably a good first approximation of the political rifts latent in the Serene Empire.

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Hmm... interesting idea...

Unfortunately Magical Girls need to be more distributed so that they can hold hunting territory. So a single boarding school won't work. Hmm... maybe a system of exclusive cram schools. Gives an excuse to be active together during after school hours. Fits with Japanese schooling traditions. Gets us additional income flow from the parents. Might be a way for us to help girls keep their grades up... Actually, that might be our entry, girls contract, their grades go down, and then we show up offering a cram school experience.

We need instructors though that we can depend on. Perhaps a role for older magical girls - have them go on to get the certs needed to teach cram schools... got to go research that.

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Hmm any idea on how to alleviate that? To a degree you're supposed to feel that way, resources are the constraint here after all and it's basically like having an issue with wanting more action slots in a CK2 game (which pretty much everyone always does in such games). However I don't want it to feel too repetitive really. But on the other hand I wanted to keep a bit of the harsher feel of PMMM tempering empire quests usual explosive growth. It's a hard balance and I'm not a good enough writer to do it well, but I'm trying anyways.

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I think you are doing a great job.

Bingo. Madoka's retcon was meant to save every meguca, but she would have thought of the ones she's seen die especially. If the timeline deviated as much as it normally would have from such a huge alteration then Mami and the rest almost certainly wouldn't have been born in the first place. This means to save them Madoka's wish must ensure that they are born, and so the timeline has to stay very close to the original. This means large meguca groups can't have formed in the past because that would cause too much deviation.

Dead on as well. The timeline protection aspect terminated and there's a sudden explosion in group formation that from Incubator perspective has no known cause. They are of course quite interested in the why's, but also interested in what impact on their production these groups will have.

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Hmm... it's a learning experience for the Incubators as well then. We might want to do something like pay Kyubey to warn us if we start to have masquerade problems again, and to also help us figure out how to avoid them (and learn about problems) in the future.

We just have no resources right now to monitor things on our own.

 

[Elder Haman]

Heading off to bed. Too late tonight to write up a plan. Good thing it's the weekend.

 

[notgreat]

Typically in empire type quests people pour a ton of their actions into research, but that's not really been the case. I mean you guys went 14 straight turns without researching at all as far as I can tell. I suspect because in a game with so much crunch to it, the research actions with their more indirect benefits don't seem as appealing, but not sure how to fix that.

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I've mentioned before, the problem was that research costs a lot of megucamonths and a lot of cubes- and those are our two most valuable resources by far. The benefits are long-term only, and we had to prioritize short-term survival. Most empire quests don't start out in a horribly unsustainable position after all, and the way the cube harvest mechanics worked (only having the growth equation) meant that there was a hard limit on what we could spend our cubes on.
With the rejection of risky harvests or forceful territory acquisition, we really had no way we could afford to pay for the research. And we were about to have a large enough excess, but then we got hit with a 30-cube penalty which just about wipes out that buffer.

It's also seeming like players don't have quite enough things to spend meguca-power on.

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The biggest issue is how inflexible most of our options for megucamonths are. Getting money requires a permanent commitment, research requires extra cubes, territory limits our harvests, and so that really only left scouting/diplomacy.


No plan for now. But I definitely think we should get the loan and start a restaurant (and go for the extra-big loan mentioned previously to give us a buffer to make our success nearly guaranteed)

 

[inverted_helix]

1. Mini-turns, I.E Quest Style updates for important events / crit fails/ crit successes.
So say we roll a crit fail on cube farming actions, instead of just writing out an event, maybe let us RP it through a magical girl and let us influence just how bad the event effects us. It'll be a nice change of pace, and give us something to do besides hope to earn re-rolls like in other quests to deal with bad luck. (Same with crit successes or overall important events like meeting another very large group of girls, or a government faction that's in on it now or something.)

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Hmm I could do something like that, but I've been worried about further slowing the quest down from my already snail like pace. Though I suppose I could do something along those lines much more easily than full updates.

2. Diplomacy Write-In's to directly persuade girls without dice.

This might be a bit too much work, but the idea is that for each group you sketch out a rough background / desires / dislikes for them, and hint at them on a meeting with them and good investigative rolls will give us a profile. We then try and write-in a persuasive argument to get them to join us, or at least ally with us... with the eventual goal of our girls persuading them to join up in full.

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This seems like it would be too much work. Plus really hard to hint at motivations without making it too obvious or too obscure. Things like that are well beyond my ability as a writer. Plus I'm already trying to figure out a better way to determine territory capacities without doing tons of population data research so increasing work like that would be troublesome.

3. Overall Bad Luck = Enemy Action or Some *event* we can do things with, and if successful recover a bit from the bad luck / gain new resources with new choices...

I.E lot of poor rolls results in the failures being a result of say, a small group of Yakuza being led by a Magical Girl (or a few) and her Boyfriend / Just guy friends. We can deal with them in a mini-turn (at the cost of ??? cubes depending on how it plays out) and we have to deal with the results of our choices. Say we end up killing the MG's and leaders in an honor duel or something, and thus cause the Yakzua to want to follow us... we get choices on how to deal with that. Or say we get Mami Diplomacy going and persuade the MG's and Co leaders to be REAL MEN/GIRLS and start them fighting other Yakuza groups, thus creating an allied or neutral faction that's always fighting non-magicals with the problems that entails.

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Might do something like this, I have an idea for a minievent I might do next turn.

I intended Getting Strong Now to apply to Karou's Raising Stars training action. I specifically hoped her foot stomp clearing action would help her during the King of the Mountain training activity. That wouldn't be enough to change the outcome would it?

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I did actually add it in already. You had a +20 modifier on this roll, still wasn't enough.

Heck, Akeno is probably capable of becoming a rocket launcher at some point.

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I'm not sure what this even means. Currently I have her powers basically noted as ability to increase and decrease inertia. So basically she can turn a baseball throw into a cannonball, or get blown away on a breeze. Usefulness varies.

I've mentioned before, the problem was that research costs a lot of megucamonths and a lot of cubes- and those are our two most valuable resources by far. The benefits are long-term only, and we had to prioritize short-term survival. Most empire quests don't start out in a horribly unsustainable position after all, and the way the cube harvest mechanics worked (only having the growth equation) meant that there was a hard limit on what we could spend our cubes on.

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This is to a degree intentional. I'm just trying to strike a balance between making it much more precarious than most empire quests and too repetitive.

The biggest issue is how inflexible most of our options for megucamonths are. Getting money requires a permanent commitment, research requires extra cubes, territory limits our harvests, and so that really only left scouting/diplomacy.

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Not really, it's most efficient with a permanent commitment, but it doesn't have to be.

 

[Kinematics]

OK, trying to rebuild ideas and re-figure out how I set up my Excel spreadsheet and stuff.


Hunting (3.5 elites, 13 vets)

Demon Forecasting [+10% harvest, -1 cube]

North:

Rotating Tactics
3.5 Elite [Solo] (Full armor, -2.0% risk)
8.0 Vets [Pair] (Full armor, -0.0% risk)​

South:

4 Vets [Pair] (0% risk)​

Rural (cap @3):

1 Vet [Solo] ( Full armor, -1% risk)​

Final demon strengths:

North: 11.3
South: -0.1
Rural: 0​

Cubes: 73.6



Training (0)

Elite Training [0.5 Mami, 0.5 Taya + Kaoru + 1 cube]



Admin/Support (8 vets, 1 green)

1.5 vet + 0.5 green demon finding training (+20% grief cubes)
1.5 vet + 0.5 green on pack tactics (-4% pack hunting, -2% pair hunting)
2 vets on dispatch service (+30% grief cubes additive with demon finding, -1% casualties)
1 vet on telepathic communication (-2% pair hunting, -1% pack hunting)
1 vet, paperpushing
1 vet: Spend the month processing the training manual into a more general framework for how to run a magical girl organization, including what's necessary as the organization grows (ie: smaller groups just don't have the manpower to do 'everything').​

Jobs (5 vets, 5 greens)

1 veteran, 1 green, 1 associate working jobs
1 veteran (Hainako) Translation service
3 veteran + 5 green working courier business (Minimum 3 vets)​

Pulling Ayase and the green off their jobs to work at the restaurant instead.

Restaurant (4 vets, 2 greens, 1 associate, 0.5 elite)
Cost: $500k debt, 4 grief cubes, 2 Veteran +4 Meguca

Cook: Akane (magical cook)
Waitress: Kit (17 months of experience waitressing at a maid cafe; extremely cute)
1 Vet
2 Green
1 Vet (temporary, for opening rush)
Ayase (Associate)
0.5 Mami: Assist in initial setup and opening​

Loan: $550,000

$500,000 reserved for the restaurant
$10,380/month debt payment (starting next turn)​

Research (2 vets)

Finish this one from last month:

Enchanting, Duration: Your budding researchers picked up a sort of effect similar to layered insulation holding in heat longer. They would like more resources to investigate this. They might be able to make enchantments last longer after a magical girl lets go of them this way, though they don't have much immediate idea as to the usefulness of that.
Cost:2 months of: 2 Veteran Meguca, 2 Grief Cube, $1000; Reward: Step towards long term enchantments.


Diplomacy (3 vets)

From what's on the (updated) map:

1: Not sure we've ever had a successful scout attempt
2: Not sure we've ever had a successful scout attempt
3: Rejected/avoided offer
4: Declined offer
9: Opened communications
10: Scouting didn't happen
11: Crit fail diplomacy
13: Run out of town​

Light Recruiting in area 10 [1 vet]
Open Relations with area 1 [1 vet]
Open Relations with area 13 [1 vet: Kaoru]


Morale (1 vet)

Sports Day [1 Vet]


Purchases

$1000 for research
$1000 to buy 4x leather sets
$4000 for 4 sets of kevlar clothes
$2400 for 4 kevlar vest

$500 and 1 cube for anonymous PO Box/identity

Total: $8900

Banking

Starting: $0
Debt: $5910

Loan: $550,000
Restaurant: -$500,000
Pay off credit card: -$5910
Purchases: -$8900
Income (excluding restaurant): $16,000
Upkeep: -$13,800

Ending: $37,390


Grief Cubes

Starting cubes: 45.7
Gained from hunt: 73.6
Total: 118.6

Upkeep: 47
Spent: 21 [Masquerade (12), Restaurant (4), Research (2), KyoClone, Demon Forecasting, PO Box]

Remaining: 51.3

Grief Spirals: ??



Also, rather than x'ing all the lines (which just gets really messy), I'm just going to mark this as my proposal post, so it can be found and linked to.

[x] This post

 

[Sereg]

Are we going to be able to get a loan while in debt?

 

[Kinematics]

Yeah, it's a business loan; the debt is a personal loan (credit card, actually, I think).

 

[TheEyes]

1.5 Elite (and haven't decided on distribution, particularly Kaoru's trainer)

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I'm wondering if we should go 0.5 Kyouko / 0.5 Mami for Kaoru's training, and put the other 0.5 Mami into the restaurant. Or, actually I'd almost rather put Mami entirely on the restaurant for the first X months, until we know it's a success: having Mami running front-of-house ought to give us at least as much of a bonus there as a magic chef, and we really really don't want the restaurant to fail, as then @inverted_helix would have to come up with bankruptcy mechanics, which aren't usually kind even to non-megucas.

In fact that begs the question: @inverted_helix can we assign more megucas to the restaurant, especially in the startup month/2 months, to boost the success chances?

 

[Kinematics]

Thinking maybe putting Taya on Kaoru's training. Kaoru's had the Kyouko regimen, and Mami's studious approach. Maybe someone who just recently achieved the breakthrough (rather than two people who've been elites long enough to almost forget what it was like to be a mere veteran) will click with her better.

 

[inverted_helix]

Yeah, it's a business loan; the debt is a personal loan (credit card, actually, I think).

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Yes your current debt is essentially credit card while starting the restaurant would give a small business loan.

In fact that begs the question: @inverted_helix can we assign more megucas to the restaurant, especially in the startup month/2 months, to boost the success chances?

Click to shrink...

I don't really see this as something that throwing more labor at directly improves odds of success really.

Thinking maybe putting Taya on Kaoru's training. Kaoru's had the Kyouko regimen, and Mami's studious approach. Maybe someone who just recently achieved the breakthrough (rather than two people who've been elites long enough to almost forget what it was like to be a mere veteran) will click with her better.

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This is actually related to something I alluded to in this current turn. Most of the Serene have been meguca so long that they don't really think about how different they are than normal. Kyouko suggested they all launch a surprise assault from the trees, and no one thought this really all that odd an idea. For girls like Yuma that's only 10 and spent over 2 years as a magical girl, their capabilities now are essentially mundane to them.

(For reference I've basically pegged meguca untransformed capabilities at around 2-3x fit human levels, this is total headcanon with no canon support, but partly because it makes for an interesting sort of world element, and partly because megucas require grief cube/seed fueling even if they sit around and never transform+never use magic so it seems like it would make sense that some of their enhancements are still active as well.)

 

[TheEyes]

I don't really see this as something that throwing more labor at directly improves odds of success really.

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Weeeeell...

The restaurant business is very much up to random chance, but there are definitely places where having extra bodies around, especially in the early months where everyone is still learning their roles and a failure in service can sink the whole endeavor. In fact a cousin of mine had his startup tank for exactly that reason: he didn't hire enough wait staff for his opening, he got swamped by customers, and service times went up to over an hour. Reviews were terrible; people stopped coming; the end. Smart restaurateurs will have extra temps around for an opening week/month just in case they succeed too well; it's far far better to have to pay too many people for a couple of weeks and let them go than to not have enough people and become a victim of your own success.

But you are absolutely right that it's only going to be a small increase in chances of success. Maybe +3% for 0.5 extra meguca, +5% for 1 extra, +7% for 1.5, +8% for 2, benefits cap at +8%? OTOH, I'd actually expect Mami to be a flat +5-10% herself, wholly apart from having extra waitstaff/sous chefs around; front of house is important in the restaurant business too, and Golden Voice Mami would certainly be a good fit there.

 

[Asael]

(For reference I've basically pegged meguca untransformed capabilities at around 2-3x fit human levels, this is total headcanon with no canon support, but partly because it makes for an interesting sort of world element, and partly because megucas require grief cube/seed fueling even if they sit around and never transform+never use magic so it seems like it would make sense that some of their enhancements are still active as well.)

Click to shrink...

An example of Meguca being a lot stronger while untransformed is Kyouko's interaction with Sayaka on the bridge. (around the time they learn the true nature of soul gems.)

Kyouko easily lifts Sayaka over her head with one arm- thats pretty nuts when you think about it.

 

[Aranfan]

So my little debate with Haman got me thinking on meguca politics again. Thinking about how the formation of the group effects the politics.

There are, it seems to me, four broad catagories of how a large meguca group can form. For the purposes of this discussion I will assume that pre-retcon groups topped out at 5 girls + mundane friends, I will call these "Small Groups". Large groups contain at least ten people.

The four catagories are thus:

1. Small groups coming together diplomatically to form a large group for mutual support and protection.
2. A small group expanding by conquest.
3. A single meguca pushing the idea of a large group diplomatically.
4. A single meguca creating a large group by conquest.

The Serenes are a case of 3. 4 would pretty much require that the meguca be an elite.

The biggest differences that I can think of would occur between the diplomatically formed groups, and the conquest formed groups. These are teenage and prepubescent girls, so cliques and clubs are going to form and recruit from new girls who join later and small groups that are absorbed will likely become their own clique. Such is just human nature, we are social animals.

The difference is how the cliques relate to each other. In diplomatically formed groups, the cliques will by and large be friendly to each other. Everyone is workinng together, and there aren't really and flash points for resentment that weren't taken care of during negotiations. Politics is dominated by mindset, not by tribe. I've already talked in depth about the likely political divisions are for these groups. Due to the relative unimportantce of cliques in internal politices, there isn't much distinction that I can see between 1 and 3.

In conquest formed groups, the cliques resent the hell out of each other. Everyone was press-ganged outside the initial group or initial Elite. The Serenes have done a little press-ganging, and it took much longer to integrate those meguca than ones we recruit diplomatically. In a conquest formed group, full integration is unlikely to ever really happen since everyone has grudges against everyone else. While mindset will play a role, internal group politics will be dominated by clique.

A clique with Hainako will wield disproportionate influence on account of money. While a clique with Kyoko will wield disproportionate influence on account of military strength. Internal politics will be complex enough that if a clique beyond the initial group gains enough influence, either monetary or military or both, they might well be able to take over. This leads into the major difference between 2 and 4.

2 starts off with an already established clique, one that is relatively unlikely to expand. It might expand if one of their mundane friends contracts, or they might try to recruit a healer or Elite to fill out some role in the clique, but the ruling clique is a tight group of friends who are resented by those they have conquered and are unlikely to recruit from the general population of the group due to the particulars of human psychology towards conquered groups.

4 starts off alone. She is likely to form a clique around her, although she is going to focus on befriending other elites so as to maintain her military dominance of the larger group. Organizations in the mold of 4 are therefore more likely in my opinion to be stable than Organizations in the mold of 2, because the ruling clique has much firmer dominance of the other cliques.


Of course, it is entirely possible for a group to change it's character.

It is easiest for a diplomacy group to become a conquest group. If it turns to press ganging for recruitment, and gains girls like this faster than it can integrate them, then it will turn into a conquest group in short order. Albeit one with a large ruling club rather than a small ruling clique.

Transition from conquest to diplomatic is harder, but possible. If a meguca or clique is charismatic enough to overcome the resent between cliques and form an alliance to overthrow the ruling clique, then this new government has the chance to become diplomatic in character provided it does not expand by conquest.


While the diplomatic groups have obvious advantages in terms of unity and togetherness, the conquest groups have the distinct advantage of spirals being unlikely to be contagious beyond the clique it occurs in.


In terms of foreign relations.

Conquest groups are expansionistic assholes. They are more likely to play fast and loose with the lives of their subordinate meguca, both out of disrespect and a desire to prevent a subordinate clique from becoming too powerful. As such, they are constantly in search of more megucapower, which they get by conquest as much as Kyuubey.

If we wind up with a conquest group as a neighbor, then I expect to see a mix of open conflict and resource denial in a bid to break us quickly, so that they can then absorb our now disorganized former members and stockpiles. If we can weather that initial assault, then I find it more likely for them to shatter than us. Like Rome, any conquest group will be a plunder economy and worthy opponents are their bane.

Diplomacy groups are going to be much better neighbors. They are unlikely to be expansionist unless they are in crisis, much like us. They are more likely to be conservative with the lives of their meguca, although probably not nearly to the degree we are. So long as we respect their territory they will likely practice live and let live, respecting ours as well. If crisis does befall them, we can expect poaching and then either escalation or de-escalation depending on how diplomacy goes and outside factors like if the crisis continues.


In terms of recruitment.

It is likely that we'd be able to recruit entire cliques from a conquest group, piecemeal, until only the ruling clique remains. Assuming that we can earn their martial respect and are able to offer them a better deal than their old group and protect them and their families (if any) from reprisal. Unless we out number them by a lot, outright conquring them is highly unlikely.

For diplomatic groups, piecemeal recruitment is unlikely. Maybe we'd be able to entice a meguca who wasn't already part of one of their cliques and who lived on the boarder of the territories to flip, but meh. We are likely to have more success attempting to absorb them wholesale, especially if we are already on good terms with them. The politics of group mergers kinda deserves it's own post though, since it's likely to be quite complicated.


-
This is just a brief overview, not taking into account how criminality or casualty rates or ethnicity would influence things.

 

[Elder Haman]

I did actually add it in already. You had a +20 modifier on this roll, still wasn't enough.

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Dang... get it together Karou.

I'm not sure what this even means. Currently I have her powers basically noted as ability to increase and decrease inertia. So basically she can turn a baseball throw into a cannonball, or get blown away on a breeze. Usefulness varies.

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That's what I mean. Have her increase the inertia of a cannon for example and she could approach putting something into space. Change a sub-orbital ballistic rocket into something that goes to geosynchronous orbit.

Especially if combined with duration research....

This is all long term of course.

Hmm I could do something like that, but I've been worried about further slowing the quest down from my already snail like pace. Though I suppose I could do something along those lines much more easily than full updates.

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We've kinda had a few incidents like this already. Kaori's kidnapping would have been a perfect place for this kind of thing, and we sort of ad-hoc did one when dealing with the police stakeout.

 

[Aranfan]

@Kinematics, I would prefer not to take the girls off odd jobs if possible. I haven't done the math to see if it's feasible, but if it is I really don't want to lose the income from their jobs.

 

[TheEyes]

@Kinematics, I would prefer not to take the girls off odd jobs if possible. I haven't done the math to see if it's feasible, but if it is I really don't want to lose the income from their jobs.

Click to shrink...

Which one of our Meguca has waitressing experience again? Is she still working, or did she get rotated elsewhere?

 

[Aranfan]

Which one of our Meguca has waitressing experience again? Is she still working, or did she get rotated elsewhere?

Click to shrink...

I believe we had her quit her job for something. IIRC she should be available, but I'd need to reread the quest to be sure.

 

[Kinematics]

Which one of our Meguca has waitressing experience again? Is she still working, or did she get rotated elsewhere?

Click to shrink...

From turn 1:

Nonetheless one manages to get employed as a waitress at a maid café leveraging her inherent cuteness to levels bordering on illegal.

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From turn 17:

Kit is asked to quit her job as a waitress after more than a year there as the economic situation has hurt her income there and she'll be more useful elsewhere.

Click to shrink...

Ayase (the associate) was supposed to take her place, however she didn't actually join as an associate til turn 20. She got a job on turn 20, but nothing specific.

So Kit has has almost a year and a half of experience waitressing at a maid cafe. At present, I think her duties are just general hunting, because of the adjustments made on turn 17. We should certainly bring her in.

 

[Elder Haman]

I think we needed a second clairvoyant or something to handle everything we were doing, but I believe we have 4 clairvoyants now.