Lex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest

WheelOfTime said:

The thing is that the DC goes up with each success, and unless you have something you can say "we should aim for this specific thing" and it's completely game-changing, I think we should keep the propaganda ace in the hole hidden for now so to speak, and if it is game changing then we should put more effort to guarantee a bigger result.

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The problem is that there all pretty game changing. This isn't a simple results kind of quest. The vote in question is happening after over half a dozen further threadmarks, including nemesis events, our results, other characters results. These are all likely to influence what the more than a dozen typical voters feel the need to prioritize. I'm taking it hoping to strike at Wayne, but I won't ignore a good opportunity to shift the election if a more desirable candidate is identified.

Shifting the course of the election with a well worded statement from the most popular businessman in America who's currently riding on saved the world PR, is pretty game changing, since we could alter the voter trend in regard to several major issues and influence who sits in the Whitehouse for 16 turns and what agendas they pursue during that time.

Given the whole Lex quest thing, taking a chisel to Superman's vulnerable reputation just as he's starting to investigate Lexcorp on a manner provocative to several of our allies is very gang changing and could lead to America removing it's nominal sponsorship of him that protects him from the VAA.

Wayne has been a competitor and a nuisance for years, and are now openly blocking us from engaging in our pharmaceuticals work in a manner that skirts the law. Hitting them in their wallets while poking them with a stick could be very good for damaging the companies image in a semi permanent way, and could provoke them to do something that might let us attack them in a fully legal manner to claim key bits of tech or territory.

The Cold Engine and Quantum Computing are world redefining technologies. Your average layman doesn't understand this and won't for a long time. Same with improved bone growth serum.

We may even push more than one of these agendas if the roll result is particularly strong is on the table. Overall, adaptability in this quest is key when we talk about targetable, loosely defined actions. We get to see what our enemy has been up to during the turn before we structure the fruit of our efforts. It's not uncommon for a reward votes nature to change in response to something we learned by virtue of observing another characters actions.

Voting go brrrrr

Martial
[X] Continue preparing for Trigon's arrival
[X] Train someone to better use their powers (Carol)
[X] Have someone train in your metahuman training room (Nightshade)
[X] Engage in superpowered crimefighting abroad (Italy)
[X] Improve exo-suit mobility

Diplomacy
[X] Meet with the League of Shadows
[X] Lexpo
[X] Negotiate with the Democratic Republic of Congo
[X] Donate more to reconstruction efforts
[X] Take a Vacation
[X] Meet with Wade Eiling
[X] Donate to Native American communities
[X] Have Rene meet with someone for therapy (Catherine)
[X] Meet with Queen Bee
[X] Meet with Joan Dale
[X] Commission art from Julie Madison
[X] Meet with Veronica Cale
[X] Advertise and promote the Wonderland Races

Stewardship
[X] Build another supercomputer
[X] Continue to repair Metropolis
[X] Give Leslie Willis her own TV show
[X] Develop and produce Costumes
[X] Begin producing music
[X] Expand Lexcorp
[X] Begin production of auto-kitchen
[X] Buy more Gingo fruits
[X] Continue funding the Lillian Luthor Foundation
[X] Donate to Bookworm
[X] Renovate Lexcorp Tower
[X] Provide Diana Prince with further funding for the West Coast metahuman training facility

Intrigue
[X] Create a worldwide spy network
[X] Use Zeta Beam transmat stations to smuggle in restricted materials

Learning
[X] Develop a new standard laser rifle for General Wells
[X] Learn about robotics
[X] Improve necessary tech for the O.D.I.N. system
[X] Attempt to reverse engineer Brainiac's cloaking system

[X] Double Down x3
[X] [Comp] Analyze Dhawan's particle
[X] [Team] Establish a headquarters to meet in
[X] [Team] Train in working together as a team

Randino Treviani said:

Added some job votes to my post.

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I don't think that we should just fire them.

If we are meeting with Queen Bee this turn we can send Elaine her way. Then she can live in royal castle, hunt lions or whatever she prefers to do and one of our allies will have a decent intrigue unit.

Louise is tricker to deal with, but I think there are better ways to deal with her too.

Alex Sol said:

I don't think that we should just fire them.

If we are meeting with Queen Bee this turn we can send Elaine her way. Then she can live in royal castle, hunt lions or whatever she prefers to do and one of our allies will have a decent intrigue unit.

Louise is tricker to deal with, but I think there are better ways to deal with her too.

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I think Elaine will be fine. She's an assassin. She'll find other work.

Randino Treviani said:

I think Elaine will be fine. She's an assassin. She'll find other work.

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But why not boost one of our allies? And eliminate possibility of her working for one of our competitors in the future. Or her getting hired by one of criminals in Gotham and running into Batman. Her severance package can be rich manor in Bialya so our enemies can't get to her and our allies can still benefit.

[X] Continue preparing for Trigon's arrival

[X] Train someone to better use their powers (Carol)

[X] Have someone train in your metahuman training room (Nightshade)

[X] Engage in superpowered crimefighting abroad (Italy)



Diplomacy

[X] Meet with the League of Shadows

[X] Lexpo

[X] Negotiate with the Democratic Republic of Congo
[X] Make a public statement

[X] Donate more to reconstruction efforts

[X] Meet with Wade Eiling

[X] Donate to Native American communities

[X] Meet with Joan Dale

[X] Sell close to home

[X] Begin a hard propaganda push across all of your news sources



Stewardship

[X] Build another supercomputer

[X] Continue to repair Metropolis

[X] Give Leslie Willis her own TV show

[X] Develop and produce Costumes

[X] Begin producing music

[X] Expand Lexcorp

[X] Begin production of auto-kitchen

[X] Buy more Gingo fruits

[X] Continue funding the Lillian Luthor Foundation

[X] Donate to Bookworm

[X] Renovate Lexcorp Tower

[X] Begin creating helicopters

[X] Begin producing handheld consoles

[X] Design and produce small combat drones





Intrigue

[X] Create a worldwide spy network

[X] Search for other viable presidential candidates



Learning

[X] Develop a new standard laser rifle for General Wells

[X] Learn about robotics

[X] Improve necessary tech for the O.D.I.N. system

[X] Attempt to reverse engineer Brainiac's cloaking system

[X] Develop powered armor for the Austrian Government.

[X] Improve Kryptonite bombs

[X] Have one of your employees take the improved Bone formula(Karl)



[X] Double Down x3

[X] [Comp] Analyze Dhawan's particle

[X] [Team] Establish a headquarters to meet in

[X] [Team] Train in working together as a team

Randino Treviani said:

The problem is that there all pretty game changing. This isn't a simple results kind of quest. The vote in question is happening after over half a dozen further threadmarks, including nemesis events, our results, other characters results. These are all likely to influence what the more than a dozen typical voters feel the need to prioritize. I'm taking it hoping to strike at Wayne, but I won't ignore a good opportunity to shift the election if a more desirable candidate is identified.

Shifting the course of the election with a well worded statement from the most popular businessman in America who's currently riding on saved the world PR, is pretty game changing, since we could alter the voter trend in regard to several major issues and influence who sits in the Whitehouse for 16 turns and what agendas they pursue during that time.

Given the whole Lex quest thing, taking a chisel to Superman's vulnerable reputation just as he's starting to investigate Lexcorp on a manner provocative to several of our allies is very gang changing and could lead to America removing it's nominal sponsorship of him that protects him from the VAA.

Wayne has been a competitor and a nuisance for years, and are now openly blocking us from engaging in our pharmaceuticals work in a manner that skirts the law. Hitting them in their wallets while poking them with a stick could be very good for damaging the companies image in a semi permanent way, and could provoke them to do something that might let us attack them in a fully legal manner to claim key bits of tech or territory.

The Cold Engine and Quantum Computing are world redefining technologies. Your average layman doesn't understand this and won't for a long time. Same with improved bone growth serum.

We may even push more than one of these agendas if the roll result is particularly strong is on the table. Overall, adaptability in this quest is key when we talk about targetable, loosely defined actions. We get to see what our enemy has been up to during the turn before we structure the fruit of our efforts. It's not uncommon for a reward votes nature to change in response to something we learned by virtue of observing another characters actions.

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Alright but like, shift to who? We don't like either candidate.

You are listing a bunch of things that could be done and are probably great to do, but you don't really seem to have a course of action or a wider strategy or application in mind.

Alex Sol said:

But why not boost one of our allies? And eliminate possibility of her working for one of our competitors in the future. Or her getting hired by one of criminals in Gotham and running into Batman. Her severance package can be rich manor in Bialya so our enemies can't get to her and our allies can still benefit.

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Well maybe we could but like, what if we can't? You're saying that we should take the risk of facing penalties if we can't do it, in return for the reward of maybe offloading our worst hero units to an ally if we do.

like, that's not an equal trade at all I think

WheelOfTime said:

Alright but like, shift to who? We don't like either candidate.

You are listing a bunch of things that could be done and are probably great to do, but you don't really seem to have a course of action or a wider strategy or application in mind.

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I'm also voting for an action to investigate alternative candidates. King Crimson will provide us with relevant information on them ahead of a vote, as he has in previous turns.

Yes, because we will be informed changes to our situation ahead of voting for it, which will impact the overall nuance of the vote to define the nature of our propaganda before it arrives. There will be much discussion of details once we have said information. There are yet unknown factors to account for which will impact dictate the course of action the I deem most apt. This is how the quest is participated in. Broad goals rolled for with information to follow and rewards voted on later.

For the election depending on whether there is a viable alternative candidate we might boost their reception or undermine the lead candidates. If there isn't we may simply critique one or multiple policies in an attempt to force them to change it or risk losing. A superman slander might focus on his past failures, recent ones, or previous instances of him sticking his nose into delicate situations to the detriment of everyone involved.

The overall goal is to gain an opportunity to advance one of our agenda's, but the fine details aren't going to be defined here, in the first of vote of more than half a dozen to come. There is a certain grand scale to the quest that necessitates flexibility to make the most of the opportunities other characters give us or unexpectedly results from our actions.

Wider strategy?

Election : Make some manner of endorsement or statement to shift public perception of a candidate or their stance on political issues in a manner we can capitalize on later to ensure a more positive outcome. We want to shake up the situation to give ourselves leverage to exploit on future turns

Further attack Superman's reputation while he is Vulnerable as part of our long-term strategy to render him redundant as a hero so the United states will revoke it's sponsorship of him and we can Persecute him under the VAA.

Wayne Industries : undercut one of their other businesses and lambast them publicly for their actions in a manner that will make them rash. Follow up with investigations and other legal and potentially illegal moves when their weakened from Bane's attack to steal what we can from them.

These are all opening moves that set us up to better act against enemies in response to situations and actions we learned of during or after turn 32.

WheelOfTime said:

Well maybe we could but like, what if we can't? You're saying that we should take the risk of facing penalties if we can't do it, in return for the reward of maybe offloading our worst hero units to an ally if we do.

like, that's not an equal trade at all I think

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Do you know what this penalty entails even? I am very much in doubt that it on the same scale as losing one of our heroes, at least not without multiple turns of relevant issues and forewarnings first. We may get some problem that will require dedicated action to fix, or it may even happen to hero unit that we would not mind going regardless, in which case we would not even need to do anything. Penalty may also allow us to see weak links in our hero roster and take action to fix them.

While I am no exactly agitating to take penalty to just see what it consist of, I also not really afraid of getting hit by it. In fact I think losing two heroes without any reimbursement, even such heroes as Elaine and Moon, may very well be a worse and more strict penalty than what QM planned for barely overshooting hero limit.

Is this turn last Ravens child action?

Here are my tentative votes for things which may be subject to change:

[X] Erect wards around Metropolis
[X] Have Ultra-Violet continue her heroic debut by taking down criminals
[X] Design a nationwide guidance system for the surface to air missiles
[X] Continue preparing for Trigon's arrival

[X] Negotiate with the Democratic Republic of Congo
[X] Meet with the League of Shadows
[X] Donate to the police
[X] Recruit competent assistants
[X] Sell close to home
[X] Continue funding the Lillian Luthor Foundation

[X] Provide Diana Prince with further funding for the West Coast metahuman training facility
[X] Hire more workers
[X] Improve Pamela Isley and Katherine Kane's living quarters in LexCorp towers
[X] Create combat planes
[X] Begin creating helicopters
[X] Design and produce small combat drones
[X] Purchase some basic materials on magic
[X] Offer a bonus to any LexCorp employee who purchases a kryptonite car
[X] Build another Kryptonite power plant
[X] Continue to attempt to repair various cities across the world
[X] Develop Alexandria
[X] Continue to repair Metropolis
[X] Build observation satellites

[X] Investigate the Church of Blood
[X] Investigate Walter Reilly
[X] Investigate Thomas Boon
[X] Investigate inside the company
[X] Create a worldwide spy network

[X] Improve Atlantean Rifles
[X] Reverse engineer Merlino mind control devices
[X] Develop powered armor for the Austrian Government
[X] Learn more about cybernetics
[X] Learn about robotics
[X] Learn more about space
[X] Improve Kryptonite batteries
[X] Improve Kryptonite bombs
[X] Improve augmentations
[X] Improve weapons
[X] Improve missiles
[X] Improve Exosuits
[X] Improve combat robots
[X] Attempt to reverse engineer Emmet Vale's superweapon
[X] Develop a laser defense system
[X] Develop a new standard laser rifle for General Wells
[X] Improve necessary tech for the O.D.I.N. system
[X] Develop spacefaring exosuits

[X] Double Down X3
[X] [Comp] Attempt to analyze any movement in space
[X] [Comp] Attempt to map deep space
[X] [Comp] Assist in the design of new combat robots
[X] [Comp] Assist in the design of new exosuits
[X] [Team] Guard Lexpo against criminals and infiltrators.

Alex Sol said:

Do you know what this penalty entails even? I am very much in doubt that it on the same scale as losing one of our heroes, at least not without multiple turns of relevant issues and forewarnings first. We may get some problem that will require dedicated action to fix, or it may even happen to hero unit that we would not mind going regardless, in which case we would not even need to do anything. Penalty may also allow us to see weak links in our hero roster and take action to fix them.

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We get a gauge and mechanic related to our hero management. Probably one that doesn't immediately go away because we drop back down to manageable numbers. This seems like a loss to me. Elaine isn't particularly useful, especially with moon leaving, and Louise is probably leaving soon anyways now that her cold engine contract has been fulfilled. Best to just pull the bandaid.

Fight Club 20 said:

Is this turn last Ravens child action?

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Yes.

Changing my vote to support @ZainAlJester

[X] ZainAlJester

So, can anyone explain to me what restricted materials we want to collect and just based on the amount of untouched stuff from brainiac and intergang, and merlino just sitting in our warehouse, do nothing with, that we are taking the zeta beam action to acquire?

Randino Treviani said:

I'm also voting for an action to investigate alternative candidates. King Crimson will provide us with relevant information on them ahead of a vote, as he has in previous turns.

Yes, because we will be informed changes to our situation ahead of voting for it, which will impact the overall nuance of the vote to define the nature of our propaganda before it arrives. There will be much discussion of details once we have said information. There are yet unknown factors to account for which will impact dictate the course of action the I deem most apt. This is how the quest is participated in. Broad goals rolled for with information to follow and rewards voted on later.

For the election depending on whether there is a viable alternative candidate we might boost their reception or undermine the lead candidates. If there isn't we may simply critique one or multiple policies in an attempt to force them to change it or risk losing. A superman slander might focus on his past failures, recent ones, or previous instances of him sticking his nose into delicate situations to the detriment of everyone involved.

The overall goal is to gain an opportunity to advance one of our agenda's, but the fine details aren't going to be defined here, in the first of vote of more than half a dozen to come. There is a certain grand scale to the quest that necessitates flexibility to make the most of the opportunities other characters give us or unexpectedly results from our actions.

Wider strategy?

Election : Make some manner of endorsement or statement to shift public perception of a candidate or their stance on political issues in a manner we can capitalize on later to ensure a more positive outcome. We want to shake up the situation to give ourselves leverage to exploit on future turns

Further attack Superman's reputation while he is Vulnerable as part of our long-term strategy to render him redundant as a hero so the United states will revoke it's sponsorship of him and we can Persecute him under the VAA.

Wayne Industries : undercut one of their other businesses and lambast them publicly for their actions in a manner that will make them rash. Follow up with investigations and other legal and potentially illegal moves when their weakened from Bane's attack to steal what we can from them.

These are all opening moves that set us up to better act against enemies in response to situations and actions we learned of during or after turn 32.

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I think that we need to have a concrete and specific idea as to why we should do something this big and aggressive that's bound to face at least some resistance and actions from people around us. I also think that your ideas are a bit too small for something this big.

Like, if we find a good presidential candidate, we'd probably need to come to an agreement with them of some kind before promoting them... and we just as easily might not find anyone suitable.

We have plenty of ways to attack Superman and are doing a pretty great job at it at the moment and Diana is apparently already moving in with the president to get his thing revoked (I just checked it) and there's a more covert action to slam Wayne enterprises which I'd prefer.

Personally I think that this action should be reserved to something like a major international move, like spreading our superhero ideaollogy or creating an international metahuman regulatory body like the U.N. or something really really big like that.

Randino Treviani said:

So, can anyone explain to me what restricted materials we want to collect and just based on the amount of untouched stuff from brainiac and intergang, and merlino just sitting in our warehouse, do nothing with, that we are taking the zeta beam action to acquire?

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I can't speak for anyone else but I think I got two solid reasons as to why I personally want it:

1) The action is an autosuccess, which I read as it succeeding maximally all the time, with no element of luck to it, which biases me towards it a bit
2) the stuff that Queen Bee can provide could reduce the DC for other actions. For example if she gives us metahuman samples or some tech she got from fighting the terrorists. Like say if they have a cool exosuit, I think it will lower the DC for learning about exosuits and give us more options when studying exosuits.

All in all it comes down to it being very easy and available and playing into a wider strategy of opening more doors and making things easier for us down the line.

Again I can only speak for myself.

Alex Sol said:

Do you know what this penalty entails even? I am very much in doubt that it on the same scale as losing one of our heroes, at least not without multiple turns of relevant issues and forewarnings first. We may get some problem that will require dedicated action to fix, or it may even happen to hero unit that we would not mind going regardless, in which case we would not even need to do anything. Penalty may also allow us to see weak links in our hero roster and take action to fix them.

While I am no exactly agitating to take penalty to just see what it consist of, I also not really afraid of getting hit by it. In fact I think losing two heroes without any reimbursement, even such heroes as Elaine and Moon, may very well be a worse and more strict penalty than what QM planned for barely overshooting hero limit.

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It took me a while to find an answer to your question but I found it all the same, and the answer is that actions will come up which we will need to take to maintain our grasp over our hero units.

If the price for keeping Louise and vic is say, Arthur VIllain getting into trouble and us needing to put Helena and Jinx on actions to clear him or cover our bases then louise and vic are not worth it.

I also think that sometimes when actions succeed really well we get the option to recruit a hero unit so I want some space for that.

Like, if we build a spy network and succeed super well and get a chance to recruit a very powerful super spy hero unit, then I want to avoid the consideration of a hero cap and just take it straight up.

Another example is if we invite a super scientist to Lexpo and they say "yo your shit is awesome, I want in" I don't want to have to reject them out of fear for a hero cap.

WheelOfTime said:

It took me a while to find an answer to your question but I found it all the same, and the answer is that actions will come up which we will need to take to maintain our grasp over our hero units.

If the price for keeping Louise and vic is say, Arthur VIllain getting into trouble and us needing to put Helena and Jinx on actions to clear him or cover our bases then louise and vic are not worth it.

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Thank you for looking, but it is close to what I guessed.
While high DC possible it is equally if not even more possible that at first it would either be low DC action that could be cleared by far lesser hero involvement, or the one in trouble would be hero we would not actually care to keep. Even in your's Helena and Jinx case it would be one time thing that we can afford.
Moreover it comes into effect only if we fail to send Eleine and Louise to one of our allies. Like for me reward vs danger calculus clearly falls on not immediately fire them side.

WheelOfTime said:

Like, if we build a spy network and succeed super well and get a chance to recruit a very powerful super spy hero unit, then I want to avoid the consideration of a hero cap and just take it straight up.

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This is reasonable, but at the same time we have one turn delay with such things. Dr.Moon still have not left, and despite crossing threshold last turn we still have not got consequences from it. As such if we get more heroes this turn I would assume that malus from them will strike only turn after next. And if we failed to settle superfluous heroes by then then I would consent to just firing them.
Firing them the moment we learned that we may be in a bit of trouble seems like panic response to me.

Randino Treviani said:

So, can anyone explain to me what restricted materials we want to collect and just based on the amount of untouched stuff from brainiac and intergang, and merlino just sitting in our warehouse, do nothing with, that we are taking the zeta beam action to acquire?

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If action exist, then those materials exist too, and frankly just having very secure channel for contraband seems like worthwhile objective. We constantly send things back and forth between us, like live decoy drones and I think there was a certain risk of them being intercepted last time. So we negate such possibility.

WheelOfTime said:

I think that we need to have a concrete and specific idea as to why we should do something this big and aggressive that's bound to face at least some resistance and actions from people around us. I also think that your ideas are a bit too small for something this big.

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No we don't. Based on our discussion thus far, your fundamentally misunderstanding part of the way this quest runs. I'm handling the same way I've handle a bunch of other opportunities dropped into our lap on a number of, and in the aftermath of, and prior to very successful turns. This isn't the quest of every action needs to or even necessarily can be taken with a singular specific outcome in mind. We have a variety of priorities which will shift over the course of this turn depending our and other characters in the quest AU's successes and failures.

Lex's propaganda machine is quite possibly the strongest in the US, covering the entire East coast, and Benefits from his own incredible popularity and reputation for innovation. The avenues of random, spur of the moment resistance is going to be limited.

WheelOfTime said:

Like, if we find a good presidential candidate, we'd probably need to come to an agreement with them of some kind before promoting them... and we just as easily might not find anyone suitable.

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If we find a better candidate option, it's one we pick because there policies are less in conflict with our agenda. The race is coming to a close. We don't have time to try and Hail Mary in a candidate the last turn before election happens.

If we search this turn, meet them next turn, and elevate them with a political statement literally the last turn before the vote happens, odds are fairly low we can change the outcome. If we open up this turn Identifying an alternative candidate and propping him up so he becomes a serious contender int the election with our primed propaganda action, we can meet him next turn to iron out what his gratitude looks like as we continue to build towards his victory with other actions, it has a much better chance of working.

WheelOfTime said:

We have plenty of ways to attack Superman and are doing a pretty great job at it at the moment and Diana is apparently already moving in with the president to get his thing revoked (I just checked it) and there's a more covert action to slam Wayne enterprises which I'd prefer.

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We have a specific opportunity where his reputation is especially vulnerable to attack. Not all attacks or turns are equally good for one given action or another.

What action? I'm not seeing anything in intrigue, unless you mean sabotage, which requires, a strong team, setup, and then we still have to pass the very hard DC.

WheelOfTime said:

Personally I think that this action should be reserved to something like a major international move, like spreading our superhero ideaollogy or creating an international metahuman regulatory body like the U.N. or something really really big like that.

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I think your applying an unreasonable qualifier to the action, on top of fitting the propaganda action into roles we already have filled. Bastion is our answer and endorsement for what superheroics should look like. The VAA is our stance on regulation. Your attempting to box the versatile propaganda action, into a must be taken only for these reasons weapon of last resort, doesn't really work when one strong success or failure past this voting phase can lead to a set of different priorities that see such a plan abandoned.

WheelOfTime said:

All in all it comes down to it being very easy and available and playing into a wider strategy of opening more doors and making things easier for us down the line.

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We have plenty of actions like that. Most of them don't involve tech we've been discussing revealing to allies like Eiling at a Lexpo for a not short amount of time. Instead of taking this action to open doors to look into later, we should be developing drones or helicopters or something to show off at Lexpo and get a good price for off Eiling while he still controls the US department of defense's budget.

Also, opening door and creating opportunities is what I'm attempting to do with propaganda. Pushing a narrative that attacks their recent failings and existing vulnerabilities in a way which creates opportunities for me to capitalize on, or in elections case propping up a candidate so they stay in the running, or attacking certain candidate policies so that their forced to at least adjust them less they lose the election. It's about applying pressure by manipulating the people.

I really don't understand why so few people are voting for propaganda push and swerving for other viable candidates.

The former is perfect for casting shade on Wayne Enterprises and the latter is necessary to helots us make an informed decision about who we want to back for the presidency, especially since the election is on Turn 36!

Randino Treviani said:

Also, we need to fire Elaine and Louise.

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Iirc Louise is meant to be quitting soon anyway, she hates working for us, has accomplished her goal and has lost her apprentice. We might as well milk her for as much as we can before she does,

As for Elaine I'm hesitant about that one. Intrigue is arguably the area where we struggle the most and while Elaine herself isn't amazing for it she's one of the few hero units we have with a decent Intrigue score and co-op scores with Nygma.

Though that being said the thought does occur that if we wanted to get rid of her while nursing a positive relationship with Vlatava we could introduce her to Vertigo? They're both crazy, pompous members of the aristocracy, maybe love will bloom?

Randino Treviani said:

At this point we can definitely form strong hero teams without lex. Emergencies can be dealt with without him, we just have to take hits to goals like studying brainiac tech and other things. We're doing Odin, propaganda, Lexpo, expand Lexcorp, ect. A bunch of actions we've been planning to take for days that become impossible to juggle all of them if we lose him.

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Eh fair enough, not like it's gonna win at this rate anyway.

Now what to replace it with…

WheelOfTime said:

I guess that if we're making a big propaganda push I want a stronger team on it and this turn I can't think of one...

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With the low DC it's an autosuccess just with Lance on it, add Lucy or Marie and it's even more significant one.

Especially since I intend to spend exp to boost Marie's Diplomacy soon.

WheelOfTime said:

The thing is that the DC goes up with each success, and unless you have something you can say "we should aim for this specific thing" and it's completely game-changing, I think we should keep the propaganda ace in the hole hidden for now so to speak, and if it is game changing then we should put more effort to guarantee a bigger resul

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I would argue that "We developed a miraculous life saving medicine but Wayne Enterprises are preventing the public from accessing it through blatantly illegal thuggery" is game changing. Especially since we only have a fairly limited window to attack Wayne Enterprises in when Bruce can't really blame us.


As for the DC going up, it might a little, though just because you successfully push propaganda once doesn't mean it's more difficult to do so later, but it's also fairly easy to lower again just by improving our propaganda machine.

WheelOfTime said:

I can't speak for anyone else but I think I got two solid reasons as to why I personally want it:

1) The action is an autosuccess, which I read as it succeeding maximally all the time, with no element of luck to it, which biases me towards it a bit
2) the stuff that Queen Bee can provide could reduce the DC for other actions. For example if she gives us metahuman samples or some tech she got from fighting the terrorists. Like say if they have a cool exosuit, I think it will lower the DC for learning about exosuits and give us more options when studying exosuits.

All in all it comes down to it being very easy and available and playing into a wider strategy of opening more doors and making things easier for us down the line.

Again I can only speak for myself.

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I may be wrong but:

1) I don't think it works like that. An auto success doesn't mean that it succeeds maximally no matter what, it just means that we can't fail the action. We would still get something no matter what we roll but a low roll would still net us less useful stuff and less of it.
2) This is just my reading but I think for stuff like that we'd need to actually interact with Queen Bee. Rather I think this action would net us stuff that the government would rather a private corporation not have, like nuclear material or chemical weapons, that sort of drug whichever e have no real use for.

@King crimson would you mind clarifying a bit on this?

jonasquinn said:

@King crimson would you mind clarifying a bit on this?

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I'll do my best, trying to unpack what is being talked about here. I do want to open up by saying that I feel like someone could argue that autosuccesses "maximally succeed no matter what" and be technically correct but that it would kind of miss the spirit/intention of the action.

Autosuccess actions do not involve a roll. They can be likened to input output machines where you pick the action and get a set reward. I have tried to give some room for a little bit of variance via hero unit selection (if you put a hero unit on the action even if just out of curiosity, I can occasionally bend the rewards a little bit and give something extra but that's not the most consistent thing), but there's no real randomness to autosuccess actions.

That being said an intended trade-off of this incredible consistency is that autosuccess actions are inherently made to not have the most groundbreaking rewards I could imagine for said action. There's very little variance and so it both "succeeds maximally" and "succeeds minimally" no matter what. Autosuccess actions generally do not have the most incredible rewards one could imagine for said action and inherently cannot become gamebreakers on their own.

On this specific action, what you get is determined by what you have access to/can move.

Now as for the comment about "restricted materials", things like metahuman babies, WMDs, illegal drugs and more are all on the table. I don't want to sway voters, but if you're willing to be actively immoral, this sort of thing makes acquiring genetic material to study metahumans really, really easy (if Queen Bee buys from Shard's metahuman trafficking ring, those metahumans would qualify as things that could be smuggled in).

Has this clarified things?

King crimson said:

Has this clarified things?

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Yes it does, thank you.

So basically while this action could be useful to us at some point it would require us to put a hero unit on it, thus completely undermining the motivation of it being an action that doesn't require a hero unit, in order to get anything particularly interesting or important.

Without one it would likely just be fairly generic stuff.


EDIT: A question to those who don't want to have Fixit on the LMD's this turn. What do you want to have him do instead? Keeping in mind that he can't be assigned to the "learn about robots" action.

Yes. This is random restricted materials from abroad kind of thing, specifically from the area's the teleporters are located in. So Bialya, Tokyo, Italy, since the other three transporters are in American cities. Not seeing a lot of potential to buy particularly worthwhile restricted materials from those locations, and if we are meeting with Queen Bee anyway, we don't need an action to ask her to deliver any leftover stuff to us by dropping it off at the tower in Bialya to be sent over, assuming there is anything even left. Fairly low reward action compared to design and develop small combat drones or improve kryptonite bombs. Currently it's making it in over much better actions.

jonasquinn said:

So basically while this action could be useful to us at some point it would require us to put a hero unit on it, thus completely undermining the motivation of it being an action that doesn't require a hero unit, in order to get anything particularly interesting or important.

Without one it would likely just be fairly generic stuff.

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I kind of disagree with this assessment. I'm not going to comment on it being useful now (don't want to overly sway voting one way or another), but this action does not require a hero unit to be put on it to be useful. If anything it's more contingent on set-up and acquisition before the action is taken and where the zeta beam transmat station is located than if a hero unit is assigned to it.

Edit: Really basic example of how it can be useful without a specific hero unit, if you ever wanted to smuggle a shit ton of weapons into Gotham without tipping off Batman, this action is really solid since because it's an autosuccess, Batman can't interfere in the action and detect it. Admittedly this scenario requires a transmat station in Gotham but I think the general principle is illustrated well.

King crimson said:

I kind of disagree with this assessment. I'm not going to comment on it being useful now (don't want to overly sway voting one way or another), but this action does not require a hero unit to be put on it to be useful. If anything it's more contingent on set-up and acquisition before the action is taken and where the zeta beam transmat station is located than if a hero unit is assigned to it.

Edit: Really basic example of how it can be useful without a specific hero unit, if you ever wanted to smuggle a shit ton of weapons into Gotham without tipping off Batman, this action is really solid since because it's an autosuccess, Batman can't interfere in the action and detect it. Admittedly this scenario requires a transmat station in Gotham but I think the general principle is illustrated well.

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That's fair, I was probably oversimplifying things. That being said I do maintain that at least for now the action is kinda useless to us.

There's nothing that we particularly need or want smuggled into the country, especially from the countries our transmat system has access to right now. The absolute best option would be metahuman DNA but that would still be a total waste because we have enough stuff on our plate already and even if we did decide to go down that route we have far better ways to acquire it without the risk, however slight, of smuggling it into the country.

jonasquinn said:

That's fair, I was probably oversimplifying things. That being said I do maintain that at least for now the action is kinda useless to us.

There's nothing that we particularly need or want smuggled into the country, especially from the countries our transmat system has access to right now. The absolute best option would be metahuman DNA but that would still be a total waste because we have enough stuff on our plate already and even if we did decide to go down that route we have far better ways to acquire it without the risk, however slight, of smuggling it into the country.

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Last time it was LMD and brainwashed scientist that Queen Bee given us. As she gets more trophies from Hive she may have more restricted materials to transfer. Or more brainwashed scientists. It is when secure transport system will become useful.

Alex Sol said:

Last time it was LMD and brainwashed scientist that Queen Bee given us. As she gets more trophies from Hive she may have more restricted materials to transfer. Or more brainwashed scientists. It is when secure transport system will become useful.

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She's stopped getting trophies from hive. We had her back off between waller, Kobra, and the mysterious government official pulling the strings from the shadows. It's unlikely that there is any more to be had at this point with waller and Kobra snapping up what little survive waller in the time since.