Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution

[TheEyes]

And then the actual vote would be (since putting base plans together with actual votes can be confusing to older vote counters):

Plan TheEyes:
[X] Plan Arming ParSec - Dragon Lady Edition
(29,761.42 M-credits, 92,201 Production)
[X] Plan Appia/Virgo Demo Units
(58.52 M-credits, 467.2 Production)
[X] Plan Build the Benning Jedi Academy
(17,891.55 M-credits, 7,000 Production)
[X] Plan Project Diced Calamari
(1,000 M-credits, 0 Production)
[X] Plan Outsourcing Research
[X] Plan Dark Energy Blades

[X][Investigation] Look into mining/mineral survey companies to buy out for our New Gold Rush strategy
[X][Investigation] Investigate the subject of a land/colony-for-ships swap deal with the Alliance foreign affairs committee and/or other appropriate groups. The Quarians don't seem to be eager to set up shop in the hostile Terminus, but maybe a welcoming gesture from a friendly, up-and-coming race might be more appealing. Alternatively, see what it would take to set up Alliance colony worlds, starting with Mindoir, as "safe" places for Quarian pilgrimages.
[X][Marketing] Get people interested in Hyper-modular buildings for convention halls, stadiums and the like.

Spoiler: Budget Breakdown of full plan

Total Fiscal Impact:
Production Cost: 99,753.2
Credit Cost: 48,711,490,000

Before Full TheEyes Plan:
2174-Q1 Budget breakdown:
Starting cash: 2,647,668,740
Guaranteed profit from contracted sales: 45,355,000,000
Unused Production: 154,890.00 (worth 260,000 per point via Lindsey Bradley if unused)
Guaranteed expenses: (950,466,700)
Total after-tax cash available for 2171-Q1 (if no Unused Production is used): 70,388,415,380
Total after-tax cash available for 2174-Q1 (if all Unused Production is used): 38,171,295,380

After Full TheEyes Plan:
Total after-tax cash available for 2174-Q1: 38,171,295,380 + (154,890 - 99,753.2) * 208,000 - 48,711,490,000 = 928,259,780

Research
[X] Plan Superalloys/Gigawatt lasers/Flawless Blackboxing

Personal
[X][Personal] Continue Peak Human Treatment (Full Captain America Upgrade, Part 1/5 Done), maybe chosen twice
-[X] More trying to be a social ghost in the machine. Maybe set up an online gaming account under a pseudonym?
[X] Train
-[X] Biotic Techniques (Sustained Barrier & Throw)

 

[TheEyes]

While I was ruminating over plan formats, I had another new idea: a new drone concept. I know my previous notion of a Hastati drone didn't go over so well, at least by the 1-2 people who looked at it. While I still think a mobile gun turret is a good idea, I sort of missed the point of exactly what role something like this would play on the battlefield, and thus what armaments it really should have. Thus, the new Hastati:


The Aspidai
PI-SDC-04

Spoiler: Description

Role - Mobile shield bunker/gun emplacement
Dimensions - 1.5 ft (50cm) diameter sphere, with four articulating 60-cm guns pointing outward in a tetrahedral shape.
Weaponry

• 4x Hasta Autocannons (60 cm)
• Sagitta Ammo Pod with 250 missiles

Defensive Systems

• Paragon Industries KB-02P Project-able Warp Barrier-equipped shielding system (maximum barrier size 9 ft (3m) diameter)
• 4x RT-01-50E thrusters

Power System

• 3x Paragon Industries Arc Reactors (5GW)

Engine System

• 4x RT-01-50E thrusters

Additional Systems

• Advanced Paragon Industries VI system providing full Fire Control as well as Remote and Autonomous operation.

Cost - 500,000
Production - 2.7

Description:
It's a simple fact of modern warfare that cover simply doesn't cover anymore. Modern mass effect-powered weapons, even pistols, can reliably fire through all but the most heavily reinforced walls, and infantry-scale missiles like Paragon Industries' own Sagitta can fire around corners and through windows, making most forms of cover completely obsolete. These days, if you want protection from incoming fire, you have to bring it with you, and that's just what the Aspidai does.

The Aspidai uses Paragon Industries' newest Warp Barrier shielding technology to provide powerful, enduring barriers that literally shred incoming fire. In addition, the Aspidai also has numerous options for active point defense, in the form of gunship-grade autocannons and a Sagitta micro-missile pod. The drone's four Hasta autocannons are on articulated mountings, allowing the drone to provide full three-dimensional, 360-degree coverage, and can bring up to three guns to bear on any single target that wanders into range. The Sagitta pod is a particularly interesting addition. Live-fire tests with the Tiger IFV have shown that the Paragon Industries state-of-the-art Fire Control VI is able to lock on and disrupt incoming heavy weapons fire by using the micro-missiles as an interdiction system, a feat that we have duplicated and improved upon with this defensive drone.

The Aspidai's primary function is to stand just behind front-line troops, absorbing and intercepting incoming fire. The included RT-01-50E "Repulsor" thrusters provide more than enough thrust to allow the Aspidai to maneuver in three dimensions even while firing at full auto, allowing the drone to participate in bounding overwatch maneuvers without loss of function. Alternatively, the Aspidai can be directed to attack, providing either pinpoint strikes to individual targets or a withering amount of suppressive fire on a target area.

 

[Captain Hunt]

[X] Plan TheEyes.

 

[GulibleLeprecon]

Maybe I should ask for a vote after this votes finished.

I'd like the long timers like @TheEyes, @Yog and @UberJJK to stay on board. The quest is still around not only by my effort but also because players like them show up.

Click to shrink...

What I personally want to be shifted towards CKII quests is voting for a number of choices - because now a few people craft a plan and it takes a lot to convince them to change or not to change something in their plan - basically in financial matters we are bandwagoning. The results are not bad, but it's not exactly what quest are about, right? It's just that a vote for sexuality was a real vote - with stakes, several side in debate and no consensus. Compared to this especially economical votes are exercises in minimaxing.

Tl;dr: it's not the dice I personally want, it's the feeling of choices mattering right now.

 

[Cassiemouse]

Tl;dr: it's not the dice I personally want, it's the feeling of choices mattering right now.

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I agree. Some of the choices we are making are somewhat meaningless. Like manufacturing the equipment to fit our mercenary company with. Of course we should do that. It's not something we should be voting on. It's should that should happen off-screen. Votes should be for things that will actually meaningfully change the story.

Most of the numbers in the manufacturing section don't actually mean anything because they are disconnected from any sort of reference. What is the difference between having five suits of armor and twenty? Why does one suit of armor cost this amount of money rather than a different amount of money? There is no context we can measure these questions against. Now I don't think we need to make the system even more complex by including material costs and such things because we are trying to have a game here not a perfect simulation.

So we need to abstract all these things and try to isolate what sort of game we are playing. So far the game is mostly a business slash science simulation. That is fine, you can make a good game from that. We need goals though, a benchmark for success and some reference to measure that success against.

We do have an end goal of the game. Winning the war against the Reapers. So far our chosen tools are conventional warfare. Our most important attributes are our industrial, scientific, political and military power. We need to be able to measure those things, create a reference for what those measurements mean, then test them against other measurements to have a game on our hands.

The Reapers should already be active in the galactic sphere and we should start getting into conflict with their agents and dealing with the fallout from their activities.

 

[Quincy]

Anyone have examples of good, low-dice CK2/II quests, for those of us who don't know much about them? I heard something about CORE earlier.

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If you want a stable intuitive low dice situation, take something like Gaius' Warhammer Dynasty and add in 5d20 instead of d100.
You will still get a simple % score(5-100), but it will bias much harder to average.

I've though about running a system like this, but I'm not sure I could keep it up. Also, I don't know a game that runs like that.

 

[TheEyes]

I agree. Some of the choices we are making are somewhat meaningless. Like manufacturing the equipment to fit our mercenary company with. Of course we should do that. It's not something we should be voting on. It's should that should happen off-screen. Votes should be for things that will actually meaningfully change the story.

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Well in this case it actually is fairly meaningful, because we're spending around 2/3rds of our total resources on outfitting our mercs with more mini-mechs, IFVs, drones, and anti-starship equipped fighters than we've supplied to any other group, with the sole exception of the SA's Tiger IFV order. That's not a meaningless change: we literally have the strongest infantry tech this side of the Reapers (or maybe a mass drop of Geth Armatures), and we're throwing it all at Anhur next quarter. With all that tech, we might well take over the planet ourselves, especially since some of it, like the Warp Barriers and Accipiter drones, have never seen combat before and will be introducing a threat profile that nobody will be prepared for.

The Reapers should already be active in the galactic sphere and we should start getting into conflict with their agents and dealing with the fallout from their activities.

Click to shrink...

It's early days yet, and Respers are definitely endgame material, given their billion year headstart and the fact that they're an AGI-lead von Neumann autowar machine. The entire Citadel today, working together, probably couldn't even take Sovereign, let alone the entire Reaper fleet. For now, there are no shortage of enemies to cut our teeth on; no need to bring up the bosses yet.

 

[Cassiemouse]

It's early days yet, and Respers are definitely endgame material, given their billion year headstart and the fact that they're an AGI-lead von Neumann autowar machine. The entire Citadel today, working together, probably couldn't even take Sovereign, let alone the entire Reaper fleet. For now, there are no shortage of enemies to cut our teeth on; no need to bring up the bosses yet.

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If not the Reapers then we should be facing some sort of opponent. We could have a competitor company, the Batarians, or something else.

 

[undead frog]

If not the Reapers then we should be facing some sort of opponent. We could have a competitor company, the Batarians, or something else.

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Preferable something not too intrigue focused, that tends to be a major killer for SB/SV players outside of council games, and in consul games most of the intrigue is the players trying to backstab each other.

 

[TheEyes]

If not the Reapers then we should be facing some sort of opponent. We could have a competitor company, the Batarians, or something else.

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We have several:

• The secret cabal of asari matriarchs that think they own the galaxy (and who have been illegally concealing a Prothean data cache for over 2,000 years) are pissed at us for legitimately inventing better tech than they have "invented".
• The Batarians as a species hate us, because they hate humanity expanding into what they perceive as "their" land (that they haven't bothered to claim in thousands of years), and we're the new golden goose in their arsenal.
• Lots of energy companies throughout the galaxy don't like us for essentially killing their business models with Arc Reactors.

Keep in mind that we've been attacked 3 times in the past 18 months: once by a malfunctioning YMIR mech (that we barely noticed); once by a space AK, which is why we're not doing any interplanetary travel until we can build our own well-armed space yacht; and once most recently by some sort of super-Vanguard, his computer hacker, and a bunch of suborned construction equipment.

 

[Cassiemouse]

• The secret cabal of asari matriarchs that think they own the galaxy (and who have been illegally concealing a Prothean data cache for over 2,000 years) are pissed at us for legitimately inventing better tech than they have "invented".

• The Batarians as a species hate us, because they hate humanity expanding into what they perceive as "their" land (that they haven't bothered to claim in thousands of years), and we're the new golden goose in their arsenal.

• Lots of energy companies throughout the galaxy don't like us for essentially killing their business models with Arc Reactors.

Click to shrink...

I feel frustrated because the mechanic systems of the quest are not interacting with these conflicts in any meaningful way. And we don't really have any sort of narrative arc going. So I am unsatisfied in multiple ways. Eek.

 

[TheEyes]

I feel frustrated because the mechanic systems of the quest are not interacting with these conflicts in any meaningful way. And we don't really have any sort of narrative arc going. So I am unsatisfied in multiple ways. Eek.

Click to shrink...

As for mechanics, @Hoyr is currently working on a mass combat system, which I suppose we'll be stress-testing in the Anhur conflict next quarter.

As for narrative arcs, I think the last attack on PI was supposed to start one, but it got derailed by FREAKING DICE! so we kind of got stuck for a bit. My suspicion is that we were supposed to eventually trace that attack back to the Batarians' Leviathan project, which I imagine would have had a lot more resources thrown at it much more quickly than in canon, as a response to the introduction of the Legionary, Pilium, and Tiger to Alliance military arsenals. That's really the only group I can see being active this early that would go for some sort of experimental super-biotic, and then throw the prototype into combat right away like that. The Asari aren't that crazy; our competitors don't have that kind of tech or they'd be selling it; and Jack Harper/Cerberus is still pro-humanity and won't fall completely to Indoctrination for another decade.

(Edit): To be fair our own choices in that mini-event didn't really help us. There was an outside possibility that the hacking attempt was actually the virtual aliens attempting first contact, and just choosing both a really bad way to do it and the worst possible time to do it. That was the reason I suggested that little quip before disconnecting, but I understand why the majority option of immediately hitting the SCRAM button won. What made little sense to me was disconnecting the security server when we did, since it lost us all our forensic data (although it maybe shouldn't have; you can read data off of RAM after shutting down a server up to several hours after shutdown if you're careful about it) and there wasn't any sensitive information to steal from it either.

 

[Cassiemouse]

As for mechanics, @Hoyr is currently working on a mass combat system, which I suppose we'll be stress-testing in the Anhur conflict next quarter.

As for narrative arcs, I think the last attack on PI was supposed to start one, but it got derailed by FREAKING DICE! so we kind of got stuck for a bit. My suspicion is that we were supposed to eventually trace that attack back to the Batarians' Leviathan project, which I imagine would have had a lot more resources thrown at it much more quickly than in canon, as a response to the introduction of the Legionary, Pilium, and Tiger to Alliance military arsenals. That's really the only group I can see being active this early that would go for some sort of experimental super-biotic, and then throw the prototype into combat right away like that. The Asari aren't that crazy; our competitors don't have that kind of tech or they'd be selling it; and Jack Harper/Cerberus is still pro-humanity and won't fall completely to Indoctrination for another decade.

Click to shrink...

I guess this gets back to one of my biggest pet peeves with the whole quest concept. The protagonist needs fail more. They can do all the right and smart things but it shouldn't be enough. The enemy should just be able to do things that the protagonist couldn't predict and pull out a win. Fail is necessary to create the emotional payoff for when we finally win. So we should fail often and spectacularly. Nothing that permanently ruins Revy or the company, of course, but some tough temporary setbacks and painful loses are certainly needed.

 

[tyaty1]

As for mechanics, @Hoyr is currently working on a mass combat system, which I suppose we'll be stress-testing in the Anhur conflict next quarter.

As for narrative arcs, I think the last attack on PI was supposed to start one, but it got derailed by FREAKING DICE! so we kind of got stuck for a bit. My suspicion is that we were supposed to eventually trace that attack back to the Batarians' Leviathan project, which I imagine would have had a lot more resources thrown at it much more quickly than in canon, as a response to the introduction of the Legionary, Pilium, and Tiger to Alliance military arsenals. That's really the only group I can see being active this early that would go for some sort of experimental super-biotic, and then throw the prototype into combat right away like that. The Asari aren't that crazy; our competitors don't have that kind of tech or they'd be selling it; and Jack Harper/Cerberus is still pro-humanity and won't fall completely to Indoctrination for another decade.

Click to shrink...

And Cerberus is not only pro-human, but their very generous Galdius deal practically jumpstarted PI from a unprecedentedly successful startup to a rising megacorp.

 

[Cassiemouse]

Speaking of which if we make a new dice system for the quest then we should tune it for proper narrative flow. Initially we should fail virtually every roll but we should be able to slowly accumulate bonuses that will allow us to succeed.

 

[Hoyr]

Eh, I'll try to stick with this no matter what, this is one of my favorite quests, for many reasons, one of which is that science actually matters here and was allowed to flourish. I also greatly respect the amount of work that goes into it, and thus can't abandon it.

Click to shrink...

Yay!

Too strong an influence of dice might be a problem.

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Not planning on it. Dice are for chaotic random things like combat and even then each side has bonuses and stuff. Other forms of conflict (eg. diplomatic/social) are also possible realms for dice use. Or things that depend on some form of dumb luck. Determining if you build a factory or not is not a place for dice barring an active antagonist screwing with you.

I'm also avoiding the use of dice for world building for the most part. It's not that useful here.

I also enjoy how this is BOTH a company simulator, and a person-based quest, where Revy doesn't disappear into aether of being a CEO, and yet the company's actions also greatly influence her personal life.

Click to shrink...

Not planning on losing that.

@Hoyr What kind of benefits Shepard have if she patents the Prothean Findings

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You have to be more specific, which item(s)? In general though Liara writes papers on just about everything she finds. Patenting would just mean that you have a ~20 year patent and no one else can copy the design.

On another note: As much as I like @Nix's efforts, one problem that can crop up with splitting full plans into small chunks like this is that nobody is checking to see if the compiled plans are fiscally possible, and that it's actually fairly difficult to do so. Give me a little bit to write up a "Base Plan" implementation of my own, see if I can show what I'm talking about.

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I think I'd be best if plans blocks had their production and credit cost totals noted on the outside.

[ ] Base Plan Buy The Moon (620 Trillion Credits, 0 Production)
Buying the moon duh, it'll make building our Death Star way easier.

Spoiler: Details

610 Trillion Credits Government land purchase
8 Trillion Credits Local owner buyout
2 Trillion Credits Moving costs of previous owners

[ ] Base Plan Dreadnought Flotilla (46.42 Trillion Credits, 169.424 Million Production)
Warships, because Reapers

Spoiler: Details

1 Memento Mori Class Dreadnought: Dragon (43.56 Trillion Credits, 159.36 Million Production)
4 Celeres Class Frigates: Bob, Jeb, Bill, Val (2.86 Trillion Credits, 10.064 Million Production)

Combine that with noting the total available production, guaranteed credits and production exchange rate that may help.

On that point for this turn:
Total available production: 154,890
Production exchange rate: 260,000 credits per production
Total after-tax cash available (if no Unused Production is used): 70,388,415,380
Total after-tax cash available (if all Unused Production is used): 38,171,295,380

Assuming TheEyes has it right.

The Aspidai

Click to shrink...

Two questions: About how big is one? How big is the shielded area?

Tl;dr: it's not the dice I personally want, it's the feeling of choices mattering right now.

Click to shrink...

Well the dice are going to be reasonable. I'm in favor of narrative over dice here. I'll use dice and the like but they tend to not strongly effect the meta structure.

Some of the choice are book keeping, but I can tell you that a lot of them do matter.

Most of the numbers in the manufacturing section don't actually mean anything because they are disconnected from any sort of reference.

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I'm going to cut this up a lot but I'll try to answer the questions.

What is the difference between having five suits of armor and twenty?

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Four times as many people in the most effective infantry suit ever? A person in a suit can fight on part with about ten times their number of enemies in pirate gear all else equal.

Here are the rules I cooked up for combat where Revy isn't present and security ages ago I'm in the process of considering revisions as combat is going to be a big part of the future of this game. I'm largely trying to fingure out a better way to handle mixed unit situations, like tanks and infantry. Or Dreadnoughts and frigates.

In detail though the suits are fancy tech so they give a +6 to combat, most pirate gear is crappy so it gives a -2. A numbers advantage of ten to one gives a +8. Thus all else equal ten pirates vs one guy in a suit is a fair fight. They'll probably be tossing a lot of explosives and stuff.

That said I'm all up for better systems this one was meant to be kinda simple as well as less detail oriented.

So five suits or armor are 50 pirates and twenty is two hundred.

Why does one suit of armor cost this amount of money rather than a different amount of money?

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The numbers were chosen by the original QM so I can't speak in depth about his reasoning, but it is within the range of ME hard suit costs.

There is no context we can measure these questions against. Now I don't think we need to make the system even more complex by including material costs and such things because we are trying to have a game here not a perfect simulation.

Click to shrink...

We do have material cost they're folded into production costs but same deal.

So we need to abstract all these things and try to isolate what sort of game we are playing. So far the game is mostly a business slash science simulation. That is fine, you can make a good game from that. We need goals though, a benchmark for success and some reference to measure that success against.

Click to shrink...

I note that there's going to be a lot of fighting in the future I'd like a "fair" way to resolve that.

The Reapers should already be active in the galactic sphere and we should start getting into conflict with their agents and dealing with the fallout from their activities.

Click to shrink...

You're getting into conflict with some one.

The entire Citadel today, working together, probably couldn't even take Sovereign, let alone the entire Reaper fleet.

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Hey now the entire Citadel dreadnought fleet (including all Citadel Races) can kill around 20-22.5 Reapers. In a pitched battle with all their forces in one place. The entire fleet might be able to do in around 60 or so? And there's at least a thousand on them... so screwed.

Of course if you add in the fact Sovereign has totally stolen Arc-reactor tech... so screwed.

I feel frustrated because the mechanic systems of the quest are not interacting with these conflicts in any meaningful way. And we don't really have any sort of narrative arc going. So I am unsatisfied in multiple ways. Eek.

Click to shrink...

I've been trying to avoid bombarding you with, oh shit events. That said you've been engaging the fuck out of the middle one. What kind of stuff would you like to see? You say there's no interaction, what sorts do you want? I'd love to develop narrative arcs more.

That said, next quarter I'm kicking a narrative arc in high gear.

As for narrative arcs, I think the last attack on PI was supposed to start one, but it got derailed by FREAKING DICE! so we kind of got stuck for a bit.

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Well, let's just say that the being loaded into the VR-space would have happened if you won by enough as well. It just would have been your choice instead of the other hacker going, hey I want to talk.

I was expecting to drop some more clues, but they dice said no and I thought... you know sometimes that does happen, okay you go fucked with by a powerful enemy and they failed, but you failed to learn anything of value. Fair enough.​

 

[TheEyes]

I guess this gets back to one of my biggest pet peeves with the whole quest concept. The protagonist needs fail more. They can do all the right and smart things but it shouldn't be enough. The enemy should just be able to do things that the protagonist couldn't predict and pull out a win. Fail is necessary to create the emotional payoff for when we finally win. So we should fail often and spectacularly. Nothing that permanently ruins Revy or the company, of course, but some tough temporary setbacks and painful loses are certainly needed.

Click to shrink...

Thus far there hasn't been many ways to fail in the way you're talking about that don't either kill us or break verisimilitude. I mean, what, were we going to fail the powered armor or IFV competition? We're freaking Iron Man! We have failed to discover who had attacked us all three times it's happened, but you just said you wanted more quest arcs, making that kind of failure bad because it means you lose out on a quest arc.

Like I said, this is early days in the quest. Right now we're just consolidating our win in the economic game, which was frankly inevitable the moment we patented the Arc Reactor in Citadel space. After all, Revy is a Stark expy, and thus needs to be not just a genius, but a billionaire, genius, playgirl, philanthropist; now we've finally ticked, well, three of those boxes. From here on in, we've moving on to the more nuanced and problematic social, military, and political games, which can handle back-and-forth wins and losses better.

 

[Cassiemouse]

Like I said, this is early days in the quest. Right now we're just consolidating our win in the economic game, which was frankly inevitable the moment we patented the Arc Reactor in Citadel space. After all, Revy is a Stark expy, and thus needs to be not just a genius, but a billionaire, genius, playgirl, philanthropist; now we've finally ticked, well, three of those boxes. From here on in, we've moving on to the more nuanced and problematic social, military, and political games, which can handle back-and-forth wins and losses better.

Click to shrink...

There is a saying in writing, 'In late, out early.' If we are still too early in the story to have meaningful conflict then we should just time skip to that point. There is a reason why the Iron Man comics don't start back when Tony Stark is a self absorbed asshole who is not doing anything interesting.

 

[Hoyr]

Like I said, this is early days in the quest. Right now we're just consolidating our win in the economic game, which was frankly inevitable the moment we patented the Arc Reactor in Citadel space. After all, Revy is a Stark expy, and thus needs to be not just a genius, but a billionaire, genius, playgirl, philanthropist; now we've finally ticked, well, three of those boxes. From here on in, we've moving on to the more nuanced and problematic social, military, and political games, which can handle back-and-forth wins and losses better.

Click to shrink...

You know... you are kinda failing at the Repulsor thing.

I had a running tally of thing you've poked the Batarians with. It has become so large it's meaningless.

You've got a lot of the terminus in a bad mood and the Pirate are being more assholish than usual.

You've had intel failures. I'm probably going to have less of those. Or at lest have the intel be very questionable.

Anything I'm forgetting?

 

[Dark Ness]

There is a saying in writing, 'In late, out early.' If we are still too early in the story to have meaningful conflict then we should just time skip to that point. There is a reason why the Iron Man comics don't start back when Tony Stark is a self absorbed asshole who is not doing anything interesting.

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But not everyone one wants that. I am fine with how things are going now, and I DEFINETLY don't want a huge timeskip so we can get to "conflict."

Plus, we are getting into conflict soon anyways.

 

[Cassiemouse]

But not everyone one wants that. I am fine with how things are going now, and I DEFINETLY don't want a huge timeskip so we can get to "conflict."

Plus, we are getting into conflict soon anyways.

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I don't really want a timeskip either but if we are 'still early days' then that might be the correct thing to do. I personally think that since this quest is months and months old we should be further than 'early days' even with the GM problems.

 

[undead frog]

I don't really want a timeskip either but if we are 'still early days' then that might be the correct thing to do. I personally think that since this quest is months and months old we should be further than 'early days' even with the GM problems.

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The Quest exchanged hands at least two times now and each GM needs some to get on their feet so to speak.

I can see how a quest that's been going on for a year still being in its early stages can be tedious though, I guess I've just gotten used to it. Honestly I'm happy it's still running myself.

 

[Cassiemouse]

I've been trying to avoid bombarding you with, oh shit events. That said you've been engaging the fuck out of the middle one. What kind of stuff would you like to see? You say there's no interaction, what sorts do you want? I'd love to develop narrative arcs more.

That said, next quarter I'm kicking a narrative arc in high gear.

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I am a fan of being regularly bombarded with 'oh shit!' events. You need to keep a steady trickle of them so that once we resolve one you introduce the next one. The Batarians and the Asari Matriarchs that TheEyes mentioned would be a nice place to start. Having them do something that knocks us flat on our ass would be a nice way to start a narrative arc.

 

[Hoyr]

I don't really want a timeskip either but if we are 'still early days' then that might be the correct thing to do. I personally think that since this quest is months and months old we should be further than 'early days' even with the GM problems.

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I believe in giving you plenty of rope before I inform you have you've hanged yourself. Also I've been offering time to act in response to the issues I'm introducing. I have to do that.

The Quest exchanged hands at least two times now and each GM needs some to get on their feet so to speak.

Click to shrink...

A lot of this two, we're on my third quarter? Yeah. I shot at you after the competition. Then I had turn to deal with that then I attacked your base, and now we have a turn off.

 

[Cassiemouse]

The way I see it is you want our enemies to hit us with a huge game changing problem at the start of an narrative arc. Something that we have absolutely no answer for, then you want to slowly expand the scope and depth of this problem as we make progress on solving it. Then once we are on the cusp of solving one problem decisively hit us with the next one. etc. Occasionally you will want to give us a break to catch our breath though, usually at the end of each major arc.