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A Simple Transaction I

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I wanted to feel satisfaction at seeing the questionable vote for a slower approach's consequences be played out like this but at the same time, I'm not sure if we would've gotten a different result had we voted for my preferred, thus inscrutably better no kappa, option.

But at least Sun Breaker won.

Hunger can now gigabrain himself at least.

I think.

Now tho. Do I want more praxis? The answer is always yes. Do I want them now? The answer is also yes. Does it help our current situation? My smooth brain isn't coming up with definite answers.

Resource Genius type opponents—never again
 
I feel like the shogun would have been a monumentally easier opponent to face. We could just have gotten closing the fist and fusion danced our way into a monumental titan battle. I don't know what to pick this time honestly, my heart says praxis but is it wise to push hunger so far in his training while the battle rages on? Do we have that much time?
 
GenericName said:
I feel like the shogun would have been a monumentally easier opponent to face. We could just have gotten closing the fist and fusion danced our way into a monumental titan battle. I don't know what to pick this time honestly, my heart says praxis but is it wise to push hunger so far in his training while the battle rages on? Do we have that much time?
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Well both Hunger and Dien want time. For Hunger its to proc Pillars(what is the timeline here, it should be soon or I am calling BS) and for Dien to scale. We have 50 Arete in the bank - we could get SJUC + OaF 2(3) for some massive powerups.

Rihaku said:
some spectacular feat of sudden advancement
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Even the plant knows what's up. :whistle:

TooSlow said:
Not really, the 'giga boosted bonobo combination' was choosing it then not focusing on gathering immediate power.
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We got a lot of immediate power through RoP and Trinity to be fair. But we just left zerg like opponent alone with time and resources(humans).
We know for a fact that Shogun would not have done such atrocities and we would have had a cool honor duel 1v1


Current Stats
Lord Hunger, King of Winter
500% Health

Attribute Upgrades
  • Strength: 128 +16 (210% value) +[Willpower]
  • Constitution: 69 +16 (210% value) +[Willpower]
  • Agility: 84 +16 (280% value) +[Willpower]
  • Intelligence: 24 (160% value)
  • Wisdom: 69 (130% value)
  • Wits: 18 +9 (160% value)
  • Charisma: 38 +5 (250% value)
  • Manipulation: 17 (160% value)
  • Willpower: 92 (460% value)
  • Protection: 46 (180% value) [+Charisma]
  • Luck: 15 (130% value)
  • Appearance: 4
Current Stances: All-Defeating, Hero-Defeating (x2)
Current Ruin Damage: 166k
 
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GenericName said:
I feel like the shogun would have been a monumentally easier opponent to face
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I mean, sure. But we've had the peer-to-peer showdown with Vanreir, and the peer-to-robot battle with Procyon. It is exciting to face a new kind of opponent that can't just be solved by grabbing an EFB or three at the climax of our battle.
 
Wow, Gisena is just a fountain of solutions to all sorts of problems. Though Broken Kaleidoscope seems to produce new ones even as it solves existing ones to me, so I'll put this down as 'last resort'.

Anyway, we're having trouble finding Dien, and lo and behold:

[X] A Promising Lead

Would you look at that, a Foremost detector! I wonder how we could make use of that while looking for a genocidal Foremost. It won't deal with his contingencies, but it will give us some breathing time, and time is what we need. And finding the other Foremost is a priority too, whether to help against Dien or to defuse their threat. Dien is the biggest-looking one, but he's not the only one.

Anyway, once we have a way of finding ourselves some Foremost, we need some means of quickly reaching them, thus:

[X] Enough Gun

for Attainment of Quickness or Cold Light of Vengeance if we just want to f*ck up Dien's day or whatever else we think we might need. As long as we know what we want, the Praxis provides.
 
Since we're apparently having salty grandstanding time right now..

By Other Means combined with Blade and Favor if we didn't meet Haeliel immediately was pragmatically speaking, a gamble that we would meet Haeliel in a reasonable timeframe to provide a speed multiplier to war resolution. It was a gamble we lost. I warned people it was a gamble. I backed Ring and Cloak until I got a marker called on me to back Blade and Favor. Im not sure if it would have made a difference but maybe I should have invoked my veto then.


forums.sufficientvelocity.com

A Simple Transaction I Original

We don't know what the new schedule for Haeliel is going to be. If we don't get our next Haeliel meeting until 2 months after we get Blade and Favor it was completely meaningless from a warfighting standpoint. Assuming the best case scenario we get Haeliel encounter and Ordinalism tutoring...
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We don't know what the new schedule for Haeliel is going to be. If we don't get our next Haeliel meeting until 2 months after we get Blade and Favor it was completely meaningless from a warfighting standpoint.
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Next, people underestimated the speed with which the Shards would appear. I said this after divide; conquer.

forums.sufficientvelocity.com

A Simple Transaction I Original

I'm not convinced. Total Annihilation with an option that could reasonably be believed to increase the speed of the war's end vs By Other Means with no speed multiplier from Haeliel not having shown up yet? If we have meaningful prep time before things start(Defined as Shards becoming relevant...
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I'm not convinced. Total Annihilation with an option that could reasonably be believed to increase the speed of the war's end vs By Other Means with no speed multiplier from Haeliel not having shown up yet? If we have meaningful prep time before things start(Defined as Shards becoming relevant issues) without us pulling some miracle of planning out, our earlier decision will have been completely meaningless. At most I think we'd have the next update as our prep time before the shards show up, more probable they show up immediately.
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We got a Dien interlude on the non Blurb library update after Divide; Conquer(Bravado). We took Seal of Ruin as opposed to something cosmically relevant like November Sky(I voted for that in the end) or Perilous Grandeur. Whether or not we will see any benefits from that decision is to be determined. We've got confirmation that Dien uses more than just the Devouring Swarm, as I predicted when I brought up the possibility of Flesh Bud/Curse Seal agents(The reference to Bio-Modded infiltrators this update seems suitably analogous)

forums.sufficientvelocity.com

A Simple Transaction I Original

Alright. Extending on my current line of thought. Let's turn the Chessboard over. What does the Surgeon want? To gain power. To grow to challenge us. He loathes his current state yet persists nontheless. He sees the humanity of the human sphere as a twisted, revolting joke. What...
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Whether it be Biohorror swarms, bioweapon attacks, Flesh bud or Curse Seal afflicted agents, he might also consider stealth operations performed in person if there is a pressing need
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We saw our first sign of his work with Hungers eyes on the update after Bravado(Gauntlet thrown). We then took the PR, wisdom, and Personal combat option, even knowing Hunger wouldn't comprehend fully what was happening but would act better in uncertain conditions. I thought it was hax enough to not be worth a strenuous objection. Especially since paths to victory for Breaker of Suns exist.

In hindsight I'm not so sure.

Whetherer or not it was possible to stop the Surgeon from entrenching like this... I don't know. The point of no return for that was probably November Sky


TL;Dr: This was not about one singular Ethical decision biting us. This was a resonance cascade of questionable decisions across several updates.
 
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BK feels like a trap. It deals with the immediate situation, but at an extreme cost.

And there will always be another "immediate situation". Apocryphal is like that.
 
It's interesting how your guys' earlier choices redounded through the list of 'memorable' enemies. Gisena's presence put paid to such overwhelming opponents as the Librarian and Augustine, and has now given you advance warning of Dien's plans (what would you have chosen in the absence of this glimpse?), but did relatively little against Vanreir and Procyon...
 
We're...we're not gonna go for BK right?

Jeez we have some rough choices ahead it seems :/

Edit: I don't even remember if I voted last time, cus honestly these choices have kinda gotten away from me, I will admit.
 
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Rihaku said:
Even the November Sky might not have shut down Dien's projects without sufficient Rank to ensure truly cosmic range...

Cold Light of Vengeance, on the other hand!
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Sure, but it would slow his expansion down and punish his attempt to tank his stats to expand even faster, thus allowing us to get to next Pillars proc with no fear. We also could have followed it up if we wanted to.

But yeah, at this point we should either get Cold Light of Vengeance or Heaven's Tomb. As far as I can tell, these are our options:
  • Cold Light makes direct use of doubled Praxis casting pool from Breaker, as it translates Praxis casting pool directly into AoE damage. Overall it is very good choice for this foe, and it scales against similar threats in future
  • Heaven's Tomb allows us to capture Dien's clones this foiling his cloning strategy directly, although HT is very weak otherwise
  • Sword in the Stone should be good as Dien's complete disregard for human life should trigger Hour of Reckoning, making it vastly more difficult for him to outscale current Hunger, plus it has a lot of utility after this foe
  • Refinement of Place so we can go places
  • Closing the Fist might be very powerful. It is a super mode, obviously, but we might also do galaxy brain gatai that would let us think really good
 
SitS seems like a good panic button for the Geas task, in terms of preserving enough humans to qualify as a 'sphere'. After that, Cold Light is probably a good way to target the traps & contingency plans (but only if the expanding storm of destruction can be directed exclusively at foes, rather than everybody in radius).

If I were spending the Arete myself, I'd probably go 25 (SitS) + 25 (Cold Light).

Heaven's Tomb is a good alternative & pairs with Seal of Ruin + Imprisoner's Refinement. However, I think that there's room to get screwed on whether clones count as the same person.
 
Just got a theory. What if the true Foremost are gone because they got annihilated by reaching further than they understood on the Lathe of Heaven without being Gisena or Nameless or some other protagonist? They failed Broken Kaleidescope.

If I'm right, the drawback to Broken Kaleidescope
is Gisena becomes Gisena+some number of shards and we have to deal with whatever the implications are.


Estimated Truth Probability: 20-40 percent.
 
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It would be a bad idea to pick Enough Gun and BK.

A good idea to just stay in one place with Praxis and let Gisena find us before anyone does anything stupid.

[X] Enough Gun
[X] Keep it Simple
 
I just genuinely don't understand why people are taking a look at the current situation and going "Man, what we really should have done was kill as many people and commit as many atrocities as possible in order to accelerate the timetable of Hunger laying waste to the Republic."

Come the fuck on.

Dien's going around playing at being Kerrigan and people are seriously saying that leaving as few possible military assets to slow or set back his Tyranid infestation would have had him make LESS progress, not horrifically more.

Dear lord, any day now I feel like someone actually going to come up with a argument like the biotech Apocalypse wannabe who can create biological armanents is unable to use biomatter as long as we kill it first or that Hunger totally would have had the ability to coordinate solar systems worth of troops against him while doing praxis training and personal combat stuff and tracking him down.

Oh, hey, maybe we would have gotten Sword in the Stone, and our diffused inferior rank would have definitely done more to stop this then a full power Hunger with their sword powering up and eliminating as many of Dien's people as possible would have helped this situation. *glances back* Wait, you mean we haven't done that to use on the systems we've already conquered? You're saying we've continually passed up any sort of system scale anti-mook ability in favor of becoming a better duelist when we can't even find the dude we need to put down, and he may in fact be mass producing back up bodies?

Gee, never mind.

I'm glad that when people voted that they wanted to read about The Surgeon as a enemy the most that they also weren't braindead enough to pick the quick conquest option and probably get Hunger's companions, if not Hunger himself, killed.

Anyway, even if my moral gang sensibilities weren't telling me sacrificing the Ring even it it's for billions of other lives should be a last resort, the truth of the matter is we don't really more need personal power as a top priotity to take on Dien. He's already personally lessening himself just to make sure his army keeps pace with Hunger's bs and this update pretty heavily implies if Hunger can just get the man under his gun we could take him out.

In that case, our best bet is just finding the guy, in which case

[X] On the Trail
[X] A Promising Lead
 
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