“Human Resources” Shouldn’t Be This Literal: A PMMM/ProjectMoon Quest

Kdblya said:

We're going to throw all these injured girls at the Adult (and her considerable forces) to be tortured, maimed, or killed to try to save one person.

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Saving private Ryan didn't have the possibility of the one person being submitted to a fate worse than death and the nature of what happens to our force should we lose doesn't change whether or not we attack now or later anyway.

But letting the Adult secure Madoka and prepare traps in peace does increase the risks if we wait.

Private Ryan was in a situation where they wouldn't have attacked if not for the soldier taken, we intended to already and will no matter what, the calculus is different.

It also doesn't have the possibility that if this one soldier is converted to the enemy's side, he'll be stronger than all the rest of our forces combined, there's that too, the many would be grateful if they didn't have to deal with something like Gretchen, thank you very much.

Kdblya said:

but the team is already in really bad shape

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No, Homura is, Mami Sayaka and Kyouko didn't take much damage during the fight.

Well, Sayaka did take some to her arms and legs, but she's the healer/buffer, she don't need those.

questioningmeme said:

Aren't you aware of the idea of fighting a magus in their own workshop vs outside of it?!

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You mean, the thing we will do anyway?

Waiting won't stop the fact we will have to fight in the magus' workshop, it just means the magus has more time to prepare said workshop for us, suddenly coming in hot is far more reasonable, don't you think?

questioningmeme said:

However, this is a bit irrelevant since the current vote can't include plans.

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It still shows incentive to prepare for the future and the fact that we fan do more than just attack with Homura in tow if we attack now, and can help future discussions for when the plans can be voted on.

Edit:

questioningmeme said:

I'm just saying to atleast make sure to not indulge in Homura's suicidal tendencies and actually get her killed.

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Hence my indication that we can well go without her in my plan, you know.

And for her timestop and co? We have proof positive the Adult is able to counter them, hard, that makes her potential contribution far inferior.

But if we send just her to recover and attack when not expected, she can more easily sneak in a timestop surprise the Adult won't have prepared for.

Edit2:

On the private ryan comparison, the film also doesn't take place in an universe where friendship literally can do miracles, it's a film about war, we are not remotely in a comparable situation.

Both the Project moon universe and PMMM have themes of friendship being a tangible source of victories, and abandoning your friends being the same as abandoning your heart, waiting is countertheme to that, we don't want to be Phillipe, do we?

We already established that part that's for sure.

No matter what there are 2 specific things we need to do.

1. Get Homura, Hitomi, and the kids' parents to safety. Given the fact that the Adult managed to get to Madoka, we need to shore up potential hostages.

The awfully convenient missing parents of Sayaka are getting more and more awfully convenient with every passing second.

We would need to send Argalia to go look for them regardless of which vote we choose here.

Though given that the Adult has the Puppeteer under her employ...well, let's hope the kids don't get the Roland experience.

2. Get the Magic Bullets, though that weapon brings its own set of risks (the devil snickered when your hand touched the last bullet), but the properties (Dark Flame and guarantee hits are two nice buffs to us) will be useful in catching the Adult by surprise.

Extra is to Pray that Homura would see reason and listen when we say that she should stay put.

Just saying, it'll be mighty better for Homura to join us in the fight instead of her being stuck as a crippled. Mainly because with Homura in tow, I'm infinitely more at ease with the safety of the rest of the magical girls.

Their magical girls aren't slouches either and are more than capable of matching anyone of our kids but Kyoko and Homura (maybe Mami can hard carry here, but without Homura, our kids are outnumbered), especially since one of their magical girls can summon clones to help fight or something.

X and Argalia will have their hands full dealing with the Adult alone + the fake Ensemble (And that's without accounting for the fact that the Adult might send one or two of the Distortions to help her own magical girls). If it's just Mami, Sayaka (hopefully she can heal from the green crystals), and Kyoko vs the enemy magical girls plus help from whatever other tricks the Adult has up her sleeves...

That's a risky gamble. I want to take a break because I believe no matter what preparations the Adult cooks up, having Homura healthy and ready to fight is way more worth it than just charging in without her.

questioningmeme said:

Get Homura, Hitomi, and the kids' parents to safety.

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Library for Hitomi and Homura, frankly, parents I don't think we can do much about Sayaka's, they either are already in the Adult's clutch or they are not in danger at all if we attack quickly, we can't really change that.

questioningmeme said:

I'm infinitely more at ease with the safety of the rest of the magical girls.

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questioningmeme said:

That's a risky gamble. I want to take a break because I believe no matter what preparations the Adult cooks up, having Homura healthy and ready to fight is way more worth it than just charging in without her.

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I'm not, we saw the Adult can counter time shenanigans, and the exact fact we relied on them to protect our girls is precisely what led to Homura being in her current state.

Don't rely on something you have already seen don't work in your plans.

The Adult can prepare more anti Homura traps if we let her have time alone, whereas if we attack quickly she won't have time to make them which means that if Homura manages to recover quickly enough in the library she will contribute more.

Nyarky said:

I'm not, we saw the Adult can counter time shenanigans, and the exact fact we relied on them to protect our girls is precisely what led to Homura being in her current state.

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Yes, the ADULT herself is a problem, however, even if she can counter it, having Homura be alongside the kids is still way way safer than having the kids without her.

Homura is still a Distortion the enemy magical girls have 0 knowledge on, with decade of experience in fights.

She fought on the same level as Mami even when she doesn't have time stop for her to rely on.

The problem of her getting countered by the Adult is less her time stop not working and more The Adult is an ALEPH level abnormality. I'm not bringing her along so we can throw her at the Adult. I'm bringing her along so our kids have a strong anchor to work with.

Homura herself is an exceptional combatant against normal non-ALEPH level opponents even without her time stop due to sheer experience and gear alone.

It also helps even more that she's a Distortion and therefore is superior in combat to most normal magical girl opponents anyway.

Really, the only big problem with her time stop usage during the fight with the Adult was that she went in alone instead of say, pulling Mami and X in with her (the string trick) so that she can stall with X and Mami.

Homura is currently our only nonfunctional combatant, and Kyouko is also an exceptional combatant that is a distortion, I think you are concentrating too much on homuhomu and not enough on our other factors.

Homura alone is not so big a difference that waiting only for her beats not letting the Adult prepare more IMO.

Is she a safety net? Yes. Does the Adult knows that and would prepare her magical girls and static defenses in accordance? Also yes, she already showed she can interfere with timestop, she has no reasons not to prepare traps specifically for our biggest asset that isn't X shaped. (Of course she would also prepare traps for the X shaped one)

Interestingly enough, she seemed surprised to see Argalia there, so she probably hasn't much prepared for him yet, and every second we let her alone is another where she can correct that potential hole in her defenses, coming back to having more advantages out of our combatants if we don't wait.

Nyarky said:

Kyouko is also an exceptional combatant who is a distortion

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Kyoko is also someone who has a habit of friendly fire.

It's good when she was under control but if she's hit too hard it will be problematic for the rest of the group to keep a team cohesion around her as an anchor.

Sayaka herself is also another downed combatant. We just aren't sure of how serious her side of the injuries is.

Nyarky said:

Interestingly enough, she seemed surprised to see Argalia there, so she probably hasn't much prepared for him yet, and every second we let her alone is another where she can correct that potential hole in her defenses, coming back to having more advantages out of our combatants if we don't wait.

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Even if she expected him, Argalia is still a Distorted Color.

She could also be surprised by the sheer speed he arrived to help us instead of being surprised he was with us.

And as seen with that giant crack from the Mimicry bitch slap X dealt her, the brute force of a Color is something she has a hard time handling...outside of her City anyway.

However, thinking it through I think it might not be too bad to rush for Madoka after all.

I still hate how risky it is, but I suppose it's not too bad. If nothing else, I can just say I told you so later.

There are a lot of chances for it to go wrong. Mainly with Homura being a foremost expert on murdering other Magical Girls being present would help out a lot.

[X] Pursue Into The Emerald City
You better pray that Homura listens to us and don't just push us to bring her along regardless.

[X] Retreat and Recover in the Library

Let's not put everything on one risky decision

I'm actually not too worried about the Adult doing anything bad to Madoka even if we delay. From her perspective, it probably looks like a chess match where she's just trapped the opponent's queen. In these circumstances, it's sometimes a waste of a move to take it immediately, especially if the opponent's preparing some counterplay.

I think the best argument in favor of pursuing right now is that we aren't in much danger of losing completely even if we go understrength. Realistically, I expect this encounter to end in one of three ways: either the French crew bail us out, or X makes a wish, or someone dies. I don't see us beating the Adult without these. Like, she just fought us from the worst position possible (no defender's advantage or 'allies') and still won. It feels like there's not much difference in our chances of succeeding 'cleanly', preparation or not.

It's pretty interesting how pursuing immediately actually seems to be the lower-variance strategy here. I still think we should recover first, though. Trying to do things cleanly without giving anything up (and, well, usually failing) is the very definition of the magical girl grindset, not to mention X's own tendencies. Remember that this is the person who did a no-agent-death run of Lobotomy Corporation.

Hm...Yeah I suppose so.

[X] Retreat and Recover in the Library

questioningmeme said:

once

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twice
[x] Pursue Into The Emerald City

Trexfromants said:

twice

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Technically not a true death, but true.

diplomacy said:

Realistically, I expect this encounter to end in one of three ways: either the French crew bail us out, or X makes a wish, or someone dies.

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These are not the only scenario, X wishing is a hard no, for one, way too dangerous, like, *earth explode is a realistic outcome* dangerous, I would argue strongly against no matter the scenario.

But also, the most likely negative scenarios are more Madoka distorting, The Adult mind controlling her, or both, and she has no real reasons to wait on those, she just got what she thinks is our main weapon because we waited to use it from her point of view, so I would be surprised if she didn't decide to try and crack that egg now to remove a piece from our side.

She hasn't pinned our queen, she has obtained the opportunity to get her on her side with mind control.

Edit:

Like, I am absolutely serious when I say that I expect waiting to get us either Agnus principle or love town 2.0, the adult is the kind of sadist who will want to affirm her superiority against us by doing what she thinks we couldn't, and thus she will be inclined to use the mind break we *forgot* to apply to get a Madowish for herself.

Even if she fails with Madoka wishing against her, we would still have a gretchen shaped problem to deal with, plus an Homura shaped one, if you think Homura's mental state was bad before, wait until she sees a worse version of her worst nightmares, something the Adult would be happy to provide.

Nyarky said:

love town 2.0

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This one is probably unavoidable. Even discounting those close to us, the Puppeteer has been active for a while.

The thing we should be more afraid of is an Angelica situation.

Faceless horrors are scary, but an Angelica situation would almost immediately force a mental breakdown on non-City level crazy people and even then City folks are likely to breakdown too (Not even Xiao would withstand that kind of mental damage).

Madoka's status isn't exactly our queen, she's the king.

The real queen on the chessboard is X herself.

The lost of Madoka will result in a full reset due to Homura.

Actually I think we should do something different.

[X] Evacuate Homura and Hitomi to the Library, starts gathering up Madoka, Sayaka, and Hitomi's families and send them there too if possible. Then rush to save Madoka.

It's useless for the rest of the group to stay in the Library, however Argalia will have his hands full trying to juggle both Sayaka and Hitomi's families.

So lets be proactive and start shoring up our hostage candidates first.

However the biggest threat here is Madoka's family. Do we know of their current status?

Because they are an extremely easy path to force Madoka to do literally anything you'd want.

I must reiterate that write-ins are not an option here, and while future specific planning can be made or not made depending on the vote, the only choice that is being made right now is "Go directly to the Emerald City to try and rescue Madoka" or "Return to the Library and wait until everybody is fully recovered to then do the same thing".

Actions which are obviously a good idea, such as having Hitomi and her family as well as Madoka's family and potentially Sayaka's moved to a safe location, regardless will be done irrespective of votes.

There are only two options that you are voting on right now.

questioningmeme said:

This one is probably unavoidable. Even discounting those close to us, the Puppeteer has been active for a while.

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I'm not talking about the situation for the town in general, I am talking about the situation for Madoka in particular, where she is the one that get love towned.

questioningmeme said:

[X] Evacuate Homura and Hitomi to the Library, starts gathering up Madoka, Sayaka, and Hitomi's families and send them there too if possible. Then rush to save Madoka.

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You know that's basically my plan written in one line right? And that you were the one that told me *no plans* when I did it?

Lepi said that we can take this kind of decision in the next update, you can simply vote for the *going now* option and keep that for when we have the actual discussion on how to do it, as is, this just split the vote.

And in fact:

Lepidoptera said:

I must reiterate that write-ins are not an option here, and while future specific planning can be made or not made depending on the vote, the only choice that is being made right now is "Go directly to the Emerald City to try and rescue Madoka" or "Return to the Library and wait until everybody is fully recovered to then do the same thing".

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Looks like Lepi confirmed what I was saying while I was writing.

So, Meme, vote for going now, that's the gist of what your new vote is for in these conditions.

Oh right. I suppose it is too much like a plan.

[X] Retreat and Recover in the Library

I suppose its back to this one then.

Well, this sure was an intense round of discussion. In the end, I believe you made the correct choice, though if it's also the right choice will remain to be seen.

I feel a little bad closing this one when there could be so much more wonderful discussion to be had, but I think everyone's said their piece by now and taken their positions. And besides, I just can't wait for what's coming! I'm going to try and pick up the pace writing-wise to get to the juicy bits sooner!

Oh, and the excitement was also shooting me full of adrenaline for the past two days and I really don't think my blood pressure could take a third.

This situation reminds me less of Saving Private Ryan and more of the Mass Effect 2 suicide mission, where a bunch of your crew gets kidnapped and you're given a choice between going after them immediately or taking time preparing first.

Going immediately let's you arrive in time to save (almost) everyone, taking time means they all die horribly, with one of them cursing you before their demise.

I really don't want Madoka to die. Or worse.

I'm guessing Sayaka can't just heal Homura, right?

Ah crap too late.

questioningmeme said:

[X] Retreat and Recover in the Library

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Really, just, really?

You vote for a plan to go to the emerald city now and when it is pointed out you can't do a plan but what you want will happen anyway you vote for the opposite?

Redsoff said:

This situation reminds me less of Saving Private Ryan and more of the Mass Effect 2 suicide mission, where a bunch of your crew gets kidnapped and you're given a choice between going after them immediately or taking time preparing first.

Going immediately let's you arrive in time to save (almost) everyone, taking time means they all die horribly, with one of them cursing you before their demise.

I really don't want Madoka to die. Or worse.

I'm guessing Sayaka can't just heal Homura, right?

Ah crap too late.

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This is what I've been arguing since the beginning, and seeing the vote taken by a one difference in this situation leaves a bad taste in my mouth right now.

Like, Meme's vote before he changed back was for going to the city, not the library, and it feels like a betrayal to have that go back to going to the library.

Nyarky said:

Really, just, really?

You vote for a plan to go to the emerald city now and when it is pointed out you can't do a plan but what you want will happen anyway you vote for the opposite?

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I'll be honest...I made that vote when I just woke up.

I'm questioning what 5 in the morning me thought about when doing that vote.

Ok, since we are going to the library, I am going to treat it as if it worked like Mass effect 2 as told earlier.

What this means?

You have time to do one thing or your crew dies. (And the only thing you actually should do in Mass Effect 2 there is Legion's loyalty mission, as it is the only thing you can't do before)

We can do things in parallel, but we can't do anything too long.

I want to go see Binah about EGO extraction in urgency, but if she even implies we can't, moving on.

Homura takes more than three minutes to heal? She can be the cavalry.

Sayaka is the same.

Argalia can't find Sayaka's parents in a very quick check? They are in the emerald city and that's it. (And I don't even really want to go search for them in the first place).

We are in a time crunch, and by WhiteNight will we act like it.

Nyarky said:

I want to go see Binah about EGO extraction in urgency, but if she even implies we can't, moving on.

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Didn't we already do this? I see you brought it up a lot but I don't see how meeting Binah again will suddenly make us more capable of pushing for E.G.O manifestation than X already is with Lobotomy + her understanding of Madoka's character. I think we should start discussing with Chesed more what kind of knowledge on the Adult's spells he has to minimize the possibility of us getting surprised (like we did with Homura's time stop) later on.

On Argalia, I want to suggest telling him to kidnap Madoka's parents and evacuate them to the Library first and then Hitomi's afterward with Sayaka's parents being the last priority since...well...it's just a hunch from our pov, they could be in the Emerald City, but they could also be hanging in the Judgement Bird's forest.

Again, Madoka's family is a really big weak point that I'm kinda worried about the Adult targeting. She somehow got to Madoka without us knowing so the kids' families are definitely vulnerable too.

If anything, we should start talking to our kids about things to not do once the siege starts, such as watching out for illusions, traps, and the like; sticking close to each other, and not splitting up if possible.

Hammer it into Homura that the next time she uses time-stop make sure someone is there alongside her for support. Make Mami give everyone a string or two for Homura to easily connect them into a time stop.

sigh.
Fucking school made me miss this choice. I hate this.
But, as much as I hate leaving madoka alone, I feel like it is necessary because well, if we lose our shell because we are going to be fighting the entirety of the emerald city without our full team thus causing X to use her other self, it'll be worse.
Because multiple distractions. We didn't do any of our originally planned things, such as figuring out teleportation, such as figuring out where is the 5 friends, Such as getting the seeds done.
So we are underprepared, literally.
And facing an abnormality on the level of the Adult without Preparation?
We need this little bit of time, we almost certainly need it.

kaillll said:

such as figuring out teleportation

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We did though. We literally used it to help Argalia out in the battle.

kaillll said:

such as figuring out where is the 5 friend

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They are all still in the Library. Lepid mentioned before that we can't carry those EGO gifts/gears out of the Library. The only stuff we find outside and on the floor Da'at.

kaillll said:

So we are underprepared, literally.

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We aren't too unprepared. In terms of our offense team, even without Homura, we still have Kyoko (Distortion who is tankier than X and Argalia; two color-level combatants), Mami (Goddess of war herself), an upgraded Sayaka due to her training with Geburah, and of course Argalia + Leonia, two really helpful Distortions working for us.

Honestly, if not for me forgetting this morning, we would be attacking the Emerald City right now, since X herself is an offensive threat that can challenge the Adult.

questioningmeme said:

Didn't we already do this?

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We talked about Binah about safe and sanitary ways to do it.

I am talking about balls to the wall *better to try than have Madoka die or wish (and become a witch) and if she distort it will still be better than what the Adult has in store* level of it, a last resort because I full well expect it to become a relevant choice and thinks it is better if we have even a hint of how to do it sanely instead of a complete improvisation.

Something to make Madoka go from hostage to asset, give her an actual choice that we can tell her with confidence the risks on, rather than the very likely chance we end up having to extract her from a coming fate worse than death.

questioningmeme said:

Again, Madoka's family is a really big weak point that I'm kinda worried about the Adult targeting.

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I'm not, The Adult has difficulty understanding humans and their relationship, so I'm not sure she even grok family. But also, if she wants them as leverage, there's no real reasons why she already didn't take them while we weren't looking anyway, so we would be too late anyway.

kaillll said:

Because multiple distractions. We didn't do any of our originally planned things, such as figuring out teleportation, such as figuring out where is the 5 friends, Such as getting the seeds done.
So we are underprepared, literally.
And facing an abnormality on the level of the Adult without Preparation?
We need this little bit of time, we almost certainly need it.

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It's funny you think we are underprepared, because I personally think we are in this situation because we overprepared, and let the Adult carry her plans along without interference when we know she grows stronger doing so.

It may well have been a better idea to attack right after our first scouting session, when she couldn't have been ready for an alliance between us and Argalia.