Magical Girl Home Base Quest

Simon_Jester · May 13, 2020

Derpmind said:
I mean. I tried to get the thread to vote for the somewhat dangerous but potentially very useful research on the Kolobok for its healing abilities. Building a single trinket isn't the kind of large-scale option that'll help dozens of MGs.

Medicine Boy, the only healer in their social network, getting knocked down and out for four weeks from radiation sickness won't help dozens of magical girls either. There's a limit to how willing I am to take high-risk/high-reward options at the beginning of a major crisis.

But the thread is largely unwilling to take the risk of the research action, or take another infrastructure (building or workshop) action either.

My dislike of being on the receiving end of broad-spectrum sneers for "unwillingness" is large enough that it's been known to cause me to vote against options out of spite.

Note to advocated of workshop/kolobok/whatever:

Please stop this. Seriously. Stop disrespecting people who don't share your priorities. Find ways to express "I think we should do X" that don't involve sneering at people who haven't supported your desire to do X.

...also, in regards to our funds,I think I've got this correct: We have 9 Mundane right now, and we have an income of 2 Mundane a week and a spending of 4 Mundane a week, with an extra 3 Mundane having being spent this week due to the building upgrade. So next week we'll go from 9 Mundane to 7 Mundane; assuming we build the Trinket since that should only cost us supernatural resources. Basically we shouldn't run out of Mundane next week or the week after. Unless I'm completely wrong, in which case maybe panic?

If the numbers you cite are correct, we have 9 Mundane. Add 2 for rent and we get 11. Spend 4 for routine expenses and 3 for upgrades to the building and we'll have 11-7 equals 4. In theory with no further expenses we could stretch that for one to two weeks before the last pennies in the piggy bank are gone at a time when we need to make a purchase, depending on how the accounting goes.

In practice, I don't like being 1-2 weeks from running out of money and having to flea-sale and dumpster-dive our way out of that situation. Especially since that will be during the peak of the crisis, which has yet to fall upon us. Right now we're in the "hasn't even started yet, batten down the hatches" phase. So being able to quickly sell something for cash that will see us through the mundane costs of the crisis (and perhaps finance the next workshop upgrade even!) strikes me as a good idea.

RebelYell said:
Wait would we be able to feed all of them if were in the red grabbing food and expect them to pay for a costly trinket?
Might change it if some cant even pay for their own food and prices increasing.

The trick is that if the magical girls are scoring loot, someone will be able to pay us cash or something easily sold for cash. Individuals may be struggling to make rent, but the collective group should contain at least someone who's doing better.

7734 said:
Pretty much this. There is no 'one true way' to victory, and if I find one I created by accident, it gets destroyed. Instantly.

True though I fondly hope you're not opposed to things getting better, just to things getting trivialized by us making the "obvious right choice."

Derpmind · May 13, 2020

Simon_Jester said:
My dislike of being on the receiving end of broad-spectrum sneers for "unwillingness" is large enough that it's been known to cause me to vote against options out of spite.

Note to advocated of workshop/kolobok/whatever:

Please stop this. Seriously. Stop disrespecting people who don't share your priorities. Find ways to express "I think we should do X" that don't involve sneering at people who haven't supported your desire to do X.

Sorry, I didn't mean for my statement to be personal in any way. I've accepted that I've lost the vote and I'm not trying to argue for it anymore. "This is what the thread has done", not "this is what you've done." Edit: I don't mean for 'unwilling' to be an insult. Like, say, being unwilling to stick one's hand in a buring-hot toaster. Not every risk should be taken, regardless of my opinion on the matter.

In general, when it was clarified that the crisis could last 5-ish weeks I tried to get the thread to go for the research option because I think any infrastructure option was probably more helpful than building an item. If upgrading the building or the workshop had support I'd have tried to drum up votes for that instead. But, like, I'd rather not rehash the past anymore? We should just wait for next turn and see what that brings.

Icipall · May 13, 2020

KreenWarrior said:
As for a medicine center, we may still be locked out of that? We chose not to get that upgrade and the QM hasn't offered it again - we were told we could get it again, but it would take time. And I think there was a comment that the one we made for spider-girl is going to be used up once we de-spider her.

We're still locked out of medical center, we need to unlock it first before we have a chance of building it. And yes, what we're using to keep Joselyn's body alive will be lost when we take it out of ice.

Derpmind said:
...also, in regards to our funds,I think I've got this correct: We have 9 Mundane right now, and we have an income of 2 Mundane a week and a spending of 4 Mundane a week, with an extra 3 Mundane having being spent this week due to the building upgrade. So next week we'll go from 9 Mundane to 7 Mundane; assuming we build the Trinket since that should only cost us supernatural resources. Basically we shouldn't run out of Mundane next week or the week after. Unless I'm completely wrong, in which case maybe panic?

Simon_Jester said:
If the numbers you cite are correct, we have 9 Mundane. Add 2 for rent and we get 11. Spend 4 for routine expenses and 3 for upgrades to the building and we'll have 11-7 equals 4. In theory with no further expenses we could stretch that for one to two weeks before the last pennies in the piggy bank are gone at a time when we need to make a purchase, depending on how the accounting goes.

In practice, I don't like being 1-2 weeks from running out of money and having to flea-sale and dumpster-dive our way out of that situation. Especially since that will be during the peak of the crisis, which has yet to fall upon us. Right now we're in the "hasn't even started yet, batten down the hatches" phase. So being able to quickly sell something for cash that will see us through the mundane costs of the crisis (and perhaps finance the next workshop upgrade even!) strikes me as a good idea.

Derpmind has it right, unless we build/craft something that costs mundanes (whether the trinket we're crafting next week costs mundanes, we don't know) we're good for 4 weeks with our current mundanes, since we gain 2 every week from rent but spend 4 due to maintenance.

Nottheunmaker · May 13, 2020

Icipall said:
We're still locked out of medical center, we need to unlock it first before we have a chance of building it. And yes, what we're using to keep Joselyn's body alive will be lost when we take it out of ice.

Derpmind has it right, unless we build/craft something that costs mundanes (whether the trinket we're crafting next week costs mundanes, we don't know) we're good for 4 weeks with our current mundanes, since we gain 2 every week from rent but spend 4 due to maintenance.

Employees, not maintenance. One Mundane each for Medicine Boy, Homer, Chris and Joselyn. Though I'm not sure where the money's going with Joselyn. I assume most of everyone else's pay goes into feeding them, maybe a few niceties like the recliner. Joselyn I'm pretty sure can't eat, and I know she can't leave the building. Maybe she's got savings?

Icipall · May 13, 2020

Nottheunmaker said:
Employees, not maintenance. One Mundane each for Medicine Boy, Homer, Chris and Joselyn. Though I'm not sure where the money's going with Joselyn. I assume most of everyone else's pay goes into feeding them, maybe a few niceties like the recliner. Joselyn I'm pretty sure can't eat, and I know she can't leave the building. Maybe she's got savings?

Hey, I'm just repeating QM's terminology, and they said that employees cost maintenance.

In Joselyn's case her body's organic parts probably require something to be maintained, as well as maybe needing something to keep the mechanism holding her human body intact.

7734 · May 14, 2020

Simon_Jester said:
True though I fondly hope you're not opposed to things getting better, just to things getting trivialized by us making the "obvious right choice."

myself and @Spectral Waltz actually had a pretty interesting discussion on this, and things do get better fairly consistently. What they do not do is get better quickly, though, and as the writer it's actually really funny how the audience misses the forest for the trees in terms of quality of life improvements. You've got a dedicated cook who's actually good at it now, showers twice a week and a dedicated laundry day, actual social gathering spaces in the lobby and rec room, and most importantly you're a reliable meal, and have been for weeks.

At this point you could probably ask the girls to steal you a car out of a dealership lot, and they would ask for a make, model, and color.

Icipall · May 14, 2020

Yeah, it is easy to overlook, with the devil threat looming over us, how much we've already achieved.

Spectral Waltz · May 14, 2020

Icipall said:
Yeah, it is easy to overlook, with the devil threat looming over us, how much we've already achieved.

The trick of this quest is to balance short term survival with long term improvement, what we're hitting right now though is well... For one thing, this is short term time, we have an imminent crisis and girls that need weapons.

The bigger problem though is that we focused too much on the long term in these first 12 weeks. We have a rather decent setup in terms of comfort and amenities for magical girls, but our girls are at present underequipped and underprepared for a major operation like this.

So there are going to be casualties. Such is the nature of consequences. All we can do is minimize them. Outright preventing them is impossible at this juncture.

KreenWarrior · May 14, 2020

I don't know that we ever could have prevented all losses. It doesn't sound like it.

Simon_Jester · May 14, 2020

Spectral Waltz said:
So there are going to be casualties. Such is the nature of consequences. All we can do is minimize them. Outright preventing them is impossible at this juncture.

The thing is, there would be casualties anyway. If we'd focused on maximizing our output of magical equipment, we'd be sheltering fewer girls and we wouldn't be able to act as a point of coordination for larger-scale operations. More girls in the area would be more vulnerable to getting picked off when isolated and vulnerable.

Instead, we've got a couple of squads' worth of girls who can mostly at least operate, who are all talking to each other, and none of whom are going to be distracted during a field operation because they haven't eaten in two days or caught a cold on account of having slept in a wet culvert for the past three weeks.

Weapons and logistics are both important. We'll never know how much our focus "should have been" on logistics versus weapons, because there was never any way @7734 was going to let us get through this without casualties.

There is no One True Path. There is no golden ending. Somebody dies, somebody suffers. You do the best you can with what you have, and you'll usually never know if you could have done it better if you'd done things differently.

Naron · May 14, 2020

Something else of note, seeing that it might have been forgotten by some again, is that when we vote for crafting next time, it should not be another trinket.

Aside from oversaturating the market with T3 trinkets and having no locals who can pay for them, we have confirmation that a 10 on the roll for another item type improves Medicine Boy's skill at crafting that type. So we should next go for wands, costumes, or bombs. Probably either wands or costumes, we are good on bombs anyway.

KreenWarrior · May 14, 2020

Yeah I think the purpose of the Trinket was to get money to pay for the foreshadowed spike in costs next week and possibly future upgrades. For that, a T3, even to a non-local, makes sense.

Surprising no one, I will heavily vote for workshop next turn, all other things being equal. Item duplication may only be one possible result of many, but that doesn't mean the others are bad, and as we're seeing, our industrial base needs expanding so we can have some hope of meeting demand. If nothing else, it'll make low durability rolls sting less, especially on costumes.

Simon_Jester · May 14, 2020

I too will vote for a workshop, as long as I don't get insulted into the ground by the long-time workshop advocates.

veekie · May 14, 2020

Spectral Waltz said:
The trick of this quest is to balance short term survival with long term improvement, what we're hitting right now though is well... For one thing, this is short term time, we have an imminent crisis and girls that need weapons.

The bigger problem though is that we focused too much on the long term in these first 12 weeks. We have a rather decent setup in terms of comfort and amenities for magical girls, but our girls are at present underequipped and underprepared for a major operation like this.

So there are going to be casualties. Such is the nature of consequences. All we can do is minimize them. Outright preventing them is impossible at this juncture.

Not really, the long term has only been a focus a tiny fraction of the time.

We've focused heavily on the immediate problem instead. If theres one girl requesting a particular item? Get it right now. Another girl without a place to stay? Upgrade amenities. The place sucks to live in? Upgrade amenities. We're running out of resources? Make a trinket and sell it for the resource we need right now over the most useful/rare/valuable one overall.

Generally what we spend our action on is usually the last problem mentioned. Thats the opposite of long term thinking. The Long Term isn't a consideration. The Mid Term is considered, but its a struggle to get.
Thats why we have a relative hotel and a handful of random powerful items, but the main infrastructure we got were basically accidental, and our only real long term assets are the very happy experienced magical girls we had went to significant extent to keep happy and not dead from early on.

Olivebirdy · May 14, 2020

[X] [WORK] No, you want to work on your workshop instead.

As it seems that Kolobok isn't going to make it, and there's a lot of support for a workshop upgrade next turn in thread, I'm going to switch from Kolobok and try for a last-second Hail Mary landslide since I think it's better to upgrade the workshop this turn than next turn.

Icipall · May 14, 2020

Man, remember the time when 7734 thought about closing the votes after either 20 votes, or 4 days having passed?

Those really were the times.

Nottheunmaker · May 14, 2020

If it gets any more support from the rest of the thread, I will happily vote for the workshop. I'm only voting trinket because that's beating our Kolobok, and I really don't want that to win. More trinkets I think are a bad move at this point really, we should be working on costumes for the new kids around the building. More kill or a fancy utility power aren't as important to them as something that gives them room to make mistakes and learn from them.

Spectral Waltz · May 14, 2020

veekie said:
Not really, the long term has only been a focus a tiny fraction of the time.

Actually according to our QM... I believe he specified that we've spent 5/12 actions so far on the long term instead of the short term?

That's not a tiny fraction, it's in fact a rather substantial fraction.

Simon_Jester · May 14, 2020

veekie said:
Not really, the long term has only been a focus a tiny fraction of the time.

We've focused heavily on the immediate problem instead. If theres one girl requesting a particular item? Get it right now. Another girl without a place to stay? Upgrade amenities. The place sucks to live in? Upgrade amenities. We're running out of resources? Make a trinket and sell it for the resource we need right now over the most useful/rare/valuable one overall.

Generally what we spend our action on is usually the last problem mentioned. Thats the opposite of long term thinking. The Long Term isn't a consideration. The Mid Term is considered, but its a struggle to get.

This sounds like an extended passive-aggressive way of saying "y'all are idiots for not having done what I wanted, and I know a lot more than y'all about what will be beneficial in the long run."

Was that your intent?

Because for crying out loud, we have literally been GUARANTEED that there is no one true "make stuff better" button that would fix everything if only we were real long term thinkers. Indeed, we have been guaranteed that if we think there is such a button, and we push it, it will crumble to dust under our finger.

This is one more time I've heard "y'all are stupid" from the... I'm assuming pro-workshop crowd. Please stop doing this before I decide to never vote for a workshop upgrade again.

Olivebirdy said:
As it seems that Kolobok isn't going to make it, and there's a lot of support for a workshop upgrade next turn in thread, I'm going to switch from Kolobok and try for a last-second Hail Mary landslide since I think it's better to upgrade the workshop this turn than next turn.

The one concern is running out of money without the sale, especially if we come up with or find yet another reason not to sell an item next week.

Nottheunmaker said:
If it gets any more support from the rest of the thread, I will happily vote for the workshop. I'm only voting trinket because that's beating our Kolobok, and I really don't want that to win. More trinkets I think are a bad move at this point really, we should be working on costumes for the new kids around the building. More kill or a fancy utility power aren't as important to them as something that gives them room to make mistakes and learn from them.

Ehh. The complication is that a Tier 2 Wand or a Tier 3 Trinket may actually do more to keep them alive than the Tier 1 Costume did. There are arguments both ways, but "stick to what you're good at during an emergency" isn't the worst advice you can have.

Derpmind · May 14, 2020

Nottheunmaker said:
If it gets any more support from the rest of the thread, I will happily vote for the workshop.

I'm siill certain that the vote's dead by now, and only a few of us are still discussing all this. But there's no harm in putting my vote where my mouth is.

[X] [WORK] No, you want to improve your workshop instead.

Edit: This is the worst timing. Why. Why did I have to post this seconds after the previous post.

RebelYell · May 14, 2020

[X] [WORK] No, you want to work on your workshop instead.

Shakin some jimmies with this, Kolobok is in no danger of winning so switching votes

Naron · May 14, 2020

Simon_Jester said:
This sounds like an extended passive-aggressive way of saying "y'all are idiots for not having done what I wanted, and I know a lot more than y'all about what will be beneficial in the long run."

Okay, stop.

Veekie was calmly laying out the facts from their point point of view, nothing else. They provided their opinion and explained it. Again.

The only one who keeps making this a matter of personal insults is you. Veekie meant to harm and was merely joining the discussion. Just because someone argues their point of view does not mean they look down at anyone who acted differently, it does not mean they think the rest is stupid, and it does not mean they imply that anyone is an idiot.

Everyone here tries to convince the rest to their own thoughts; tearing into people for properly laying out their reasons and trying to debate because they argue that a course of action you support(ed) was suboptimal is bad form, especially when immediately assuming any such argument to be implied namecalling.

So please let others have their opinions and do not immediately assume they are looking down at you or anyone else for expressing them.

notgreat · May 14, 2020

[X] [WORK] No, you want to work on your workshop instead.

Edit: including the other vote too, even though it's basically uncontested.
[x] [GIRLS]: Partner the junior girls up with the senior magical girls; it'll probably increase their odds of survival.

Nottheunmaker · May 14, 2020

[X] [WORK] No, you want to work on your workshop instead.

Very nervous about switching before bed, but I gave my word.

Simon_Jester · May 14, 2020

Naron said:
Okay, stop.

Veekie was calmly laying out the facts from their point point of view, nothing else. They provided their opinion and explained it. Again.

The only one who keeps making this a matter of personal insults is you. Veekie meant to harm and was merely joining the discussion. Just because someone argues their point of view does not mean they look down at anyone who acted differently, it does not mean they think the rest is stupid, and it does not mean they imply that anyone is an idiot.

This isn't the first time I've heard "if we'd just done workshop upgrades we'd be fine, but "the thread" (by which I can only assume they mean "everyone who didn't vote for workshop upgrades") just doesn't think or isn't thinking long-term or isn't seeing what is so obvious about the benefits of the workshop."

I don't mind people laying out why they think workshop upgrades are beneficial. There are good reasons to think workshop upgrades are beneficial. Everyone's got a right to vote for what they want, and to say "what I want is good" and even to say "this is why what I'm voting against is bad."

There are plenty of people who are doing this. I could name names, but they might want me to leave them out of this. However, I have only respect for their pro-workshop opinions.

But it has literally only been a week since the last time Veekie, personally, was beating the "we're screwed now because we didn't do the obvious right thing (namely, what I wanted to do all along)" drum last time. Now they're at it again.

...

I'm getting tired of people deciding that what's really important, in order to convince the quest voters to do workshop upgrades, is to tell everyone they've been stupid. I'm getting really really really tired of it. Especially when it involves constantly relitigating the entire vote history of the quest to date.

That is the one thing I hate most in quests. The one single thing. Worse than morality debates, worse than husbando/waifu wars, even worse than plan-voting-when-there's-no-need-for-a-plan.

I hate it when someone decides to debate a vote by saying things that reflect poorly on the majority of questers, who didn't already do what they want, especially when there is a dearth of concrete supporting evidence that things would be better if only we'd done what they said and they're just doing it based on their own conviction of personal righteousness.

...

It just plain is not that much to ask, to expect people to promote their own ideas without calling everyone who voted against those ideas in the past something like 'short-sighted' for not having seen that they were right all along.

So yes, I'm getting a bit insistent about asking that people stop doing that specific, single thing. Because this isn't the first time today, and it isn't the first time from this person in the past week.

Spin arguments for why a workshop upgrade is a great idea all you want. People were doing that. Spin arguments for why the alternatives are dangerous (Kolobok) or unnecessary (trinket) all you want. People were doing that too.

But don't call me stupid or short-sighted, and expect me to support you afterwards. That's all I ask.

Magical Girl Home Base Quest

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Scatterbrained Writer

mook.

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