fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
It is a spirit attack. No physical damage.
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Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
How about a simple plan that doesn't require us to immediately face the entirety of a force with unknown trump cards?
[X] Plan: Wait Them Out
-[x] Set up mists between the enemy and the border and hide within them. Retreat if pressed by a prepared offense. Push back when enemy enhancement techniques weaken, or if the enemy makes significant progress to the border. If the enemy splits up, defeat in detail. If a battle is inevitable, hold nothing back.
Seriously. Reinforcements are coming. Ling Qi's faster, her main technique almost certainly lasts longer, and with her recovery skills attrition should favor her. Eventually she'll have to engage no doubt, but why make it easy on them? Harassment has worked great for Ling Qi before, against Shen Hu. It's unlikely the enemy can project enough power at extreme range to be dangerous. If it comes to the worst, having the mists out is exactly what we wanted in the first place, so we're not losing much of note.
[X] Plan: Wait Them Out
-[x] Set up mists between the enemy and the border and hide within them. Retreat if pressed by a prepared offense. Push back when enemy enhancement techniques weaken, or if the enemy makes significant progress to the border. If the enemy splits up, defeat in detail. If a battle is inevitable, hold nothing back.
Seriously. Reinforcements are coming. Ling Qi's faster, her main technique almost certainly lasts longer, and with her recovery skills attrition should favor her. Eventually she'll have to engage no doubt, but why make it easy on them? Harassment has worked great for Ling Qi before, against Shen Hu. It's unlikely the enemy can project enough power at extreme range to be dangerous. If it comes to the worst, having the mists out is exactly what we wanted in the first place, so we're not losing much of note.
Because they can just go around her?
We can move too? Ling Qi isn't immobile. The mists move with us. If they split up, we win more easily than attacking them all at once.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
No, only the ones we're actively maintaining move with us, the ones we leave around by using TE and tying it off don't.
And we can only maintain one at a time.
And our goal is to hold up all of them
Not the half that juke to the right while those on the left make a break for it with the actual prize as if Ling Qi were a particularly inept point guard.
They are as yet probably hours from the border, else we wouldn't have been allowed an hour's prep time before leaving in the first place Killing half won't take hours.
Completely wrong. The mists traveled with us back when we used them and Traveler's End in the Shen Hu tournament battle.
- Location
- United States
I think we're getting a bit distracted by the vaguaries of language (i.e., definitions), so I'm going to take a few paragraphs to try to clarify where we disagree.
Section 1: summarizing positions
My position is that we can't assume Ling Qi will absolutely destroy the unknown green cultivator, and that the unknown cultivator might even be extremely dangerous.
As far as I understand (please correct me if I'm wrong at any point, including your reasoning), your position is that we have very good reasons to believe Ling Qi will dominate the unknown cultivator.
Section 2: your reasoning
You believe that any cultivator that Ling Qi couldn't dominate would be such a rare existence that (1) losing them would be far too expensive a risk for Sun Shao for this operation and that (2) their presence would be proof (beyond reasonable doubt) of the Sun's involvement.
Section 3: why I disagree
Regarding #1 (too expensive to risk), I don't think we know enough about the world, Sun Shao's resources, Sun Shao's mindset, or the goals of this operation for us to be certain that it'd be too expensive to risk such a cultivator (i.e., we do not know the relative value of a cultivator of that caliber versus the potential rewards of this operation, nor how risk averse Sun Shao is).
As for #2 (strong cultivator would prove it's the Sun): I do not agree that the mere presence of a cultivator strong enough to defeat Ling Qi is proof beyond reasonable doubt that would allow Cai Shenhua to openly retaliate against the Sun. Reason (A), the death of either CRX or Ling Qi are not the only possible reasons that Sun Shao would deploy such a cultivator. Reason (B), even if CRX or Ling Qi were killed, their deaths would not prove the Sun's involvement; even if the idea that they were "bandits" can no longer hold up (it still might, we don't know enough about bandits), it's not like the Sun are the only potential enemies that would steal a shipment from Bai to Cai.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
... It was the mist cloud we wound up though.
You advocated leaving a bunch on the border and then thinking they wouldn't punch through.
We... We can't just sit on the border, because they can force their way through and we lose, if that's what you were advocating. And we can't trade space for time either, space is absolutely the last thing we can trade off at this point.
EDIT: I misunderstood because in my head, I was going "Wait why would we leave a bunch of clouds on the border because we obviously can't just literally stand on the finish line".
You advocated leaving a bunch on the border and then thinking they wouldn't punch through.
We... We can't just sit on the border, because they can force their way through and we lose, if that's what you were advocating. And we can't trade space for time either, space is absolutely the last thing we can trade off at this point.
EDIT: I misunderstood because in my head, I was going "Wait why would we leave a bunch of clouds on the border because we obviously can't just literally stand on the finish line".
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Really?
You're sure about that?
Thats quite the generous assumption, that we have that kind of time.
Okay, and like this Id say we're done here if you're going to "clarify" your point by launching a dialectic argument at me.
No thanks.
The proposal was to put ourselves in the way, with the mists.
I see no reason to believe that they are literal minutes from the border, or that just using Traveler's End and winding it up again would take meaningful time in comparison to how fast the enemy will get there. If they could just bolt past the border, they'd be doing that already.
- Location
- United States
The real trick is figuring out which ideas have implicitly assumed stupidity of anti-Cai-Bai people...
I'm not familiar with "dialectic" but google definitions lead me to the response: that's explicitly what I wanted to avoid and I strongly suspect you read the one sentence you quoted and then stopped there.
EDIT: although the wikipedia page makes it seem a bit different... Though now it just seems odd to reject discussing a disagreement because someone decided to resort to "reasoned arguments".
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Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
It's more that an army doesn't move faster than it has to if you're on the march. Active pursuits encourage sprinting on behalf of the ones being chased, which again, reduces how much time we have to act.
And again, they can just *split up* if they see us block them, and we can't chase both halves. As long as even one gets away, that's a defeat on our part.
And again, they can just *split up* if they see us block them, and we can't chase both halves. As long as even one gets away, that's a defeat on our part.
I'll admit that I should be giving you the benefit of the doubt, but after spending hours hashing out plans on discord im really just not interested in an argument about how the logistics involved work. To be fair, you likely dont know how the MoI works, but you really shouldve paid attention when Alectai and I referenced that obliquely rather than ignored the term altogether.
And I'm too tired to look it up for you. My apologies.
And they literally are
Thats why Ling Qis being asked to run ahead and stall them in the first place?
Theres a sense of urgency for a reason, yanno?
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- Location
- Canada
I bring tidings from discord
by word of god "havent measured out exact physic distance, assume you have about two hours if they're unimpeded"
we have two hours before they reach the border
not a lot of time, but not by the skin of our teeth either, however do consider that we must still catch up to them so maybe closer to one hour
Edit: more news "it'd be cutting it really close if the bandits dont get slowed down, like to the point that even a minor delay means that they get away"
so never mind it is by the skin of our teeth after all
by word of god "havent measured out exact physic distance, assume you have about two hours if they're unimpeded"
we have two hours before they reach the border
not a lot of time, but not by the skin of our teeth either, however do consider that we must still catch up to them so maybe closer to one hour
Edit: more news "it'd be cutting it really close if the bandits dont get slowed down, like to the point that even a minor delay means that they get away"
so never mind it is by the skin of our teeth after all
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I do think we have time to to kill one half and then chase the other half.
No. We know that our reinforcements can't catch them in time, on account of the enemy having a 1 hour 15 minute head start. This does not dictate that they will be anywhere near the border by the time that Ling Qi, who moves faster, will catch up.
Oh hey, we have some WoG!
yrs on discord said:
yrs said:
I mean, basically the issue here is that if our CC doesn't work in this scenario which is exactly the scenario where you need CC then there's nothing we can do anyway.
We can raise the possibility of getting interrupted by some wannabe Lu Feng, but we also don't really have time to go on an extended search for him, so unless we can spot him while we're moving in, there's not much we can do to mitigate that other than to have our buffs up and be ready for a gank.
We can raise the possibility of getting interrupted by some wannabe Lu Feng, but we also don't really have time to go on an extended search for him, so unless we can spot him while we're moving in, there's not much we can do to mitigate that other than to have our buffs up and be ready for a gank.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Yeah, so that's one half that's sprinting at maximum pace and however long we need to kill the other half, and the timing is tight enough that the Cavalry basically won't make it without our intervention. it's not a doable plan.
- Location
- Canada
As it turns out we do not in fact have that time
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I mean, yeah, when you plan in secret people won't take the info that went into your planning into account
Again, we are not Cai. We do not reach them at the edge of the border. Cai reaches them at the edge of the border. There are three groups here. The enemy, Ling Qi, and Cai. Ling Qi has time. Cai does not.
- Location
- Europe
This. ^
If the thing we're specced to do best doesn't work then we have no reason to believe we're better prepared any other way.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
The odds of us actualy successfully sweeping them is so remote I'm willing to dismiss it, I refuse to underestimate an organized military formation based on everything we've heard about how much they can get done.
Your plan is fine if you take "We can sweep them no problems" as an axiom. But from a perspective of delay, it risks half of them getting away because we were too busy fighting the other half.
or again, the nightmare scenario, they just fucking scatter and head for the border individually, and we get maybe a small portion of them.