Vox Vitae: Warhammer AI quest
- Thread starter Neablis
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- Mature Sci-Fi
In addition to this argument if the end goal is to have a strategist seer and a generalist seer, which order we should aquire them in to get both the fastest is definitely Seer first strategist later.
The generalist accelerates everything we do while the strategist only helps with our military rolls.
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As discussed earlier, there is no clear plan for how to get an excellent strategist to go with Seer Gwen. Not all crew candidates are created equal, that's why we didn't move to recruit the zeta diviner the first time we were on Denva.
If you want a strategist as good as gwen, a strategist who is actually better than the plentiful military commanders we want to out-strategize, you cannot just pick one of those common strategists out of a hat and expect to succeed. You'll get what you pay for.
By contrast the Eldar seer is a near-term prospect for us because we've have multiple excellent diplomatic encounters with the craftworld eldar, and because we spent most of the game investing into psy shield technology and getting really lucky at it and having a scrapcode generator to study to accelerate that psy shield tech improvement.
So, no. The ability to designate one project as having a backup roll with malus does not somehow let us find our next crewmember faster. If we make it a priority, we could have that eldar seer before Gwen even hits level 10.
I mean.
Neablis already said what the precognitive strategists among the eldar are. They're farseers, they take multiple boons to recruit, and they would be "more like a partnership than a recruit". It is not my opinion that a strategist-diviner is harder to recruit than an eldar seer, it has been directly stated by the quest master.
And if anyone has an idea of where to get a gwen-quality normal strategist from somewhere else, they haven't volunteered it. I'll advocate for trying to get a quality Strategist candidate if Seer wins, but make no mistake, it will take longer, and be harder, and may come with more compromises and complications than getting an Eldar Seer will.
The QM told us what the recruitment options from the Eldar looked like. We know where to go to trade with the craftworld for that recruitment, and how to get there fairly quickly. We hyperspecialized on the thing they want most, and can now mass produce it.
The things rolls that had to go amazing for us to recruit anyone from the eldar already happened. Our existing diplomatic overtures have gone great, one of the major X factors of our technology, psy encryption, was only unlocked for research from a natural 100, and our ability to make them at scale through SSDIPS and LSDIPS was itself a crit tech. And even beyond the luck, we've invested enormously into it.
And even before all of these improvements, before all of this investment, the regular ass first generation shields in the hull of The Spark was canonically sufficient to quiet the voice of Slaanesh during our first meeting with the corsairs.
Our shield technology has the ability to change the fate of the Eldar race. You don't think we'll be able to get a single boon out of that? Really?
Meanwhile... I discussed my preference vibes wise, strategist/generalist-wise, early and repeatedly and in depth. I didn't obscure anything, I was fighting back against an assertion that the generalist would lead to us being better at war than the war specialist. It was, in fact, a persistent question! The numbers are what won that argument, and you were there applying reactions to Haganeko the whole time, @KyleDaScourge. You know all of this.
You also know that "Go out and find a strategist because they're easy to find" was Haganeko's position, for the same reason. And it is not a huge feat of logic to see that if we can find one quickly "because they are everywhere", then there will be strategists with as much potential as ours everywhere if we don't try harder to find someone exceptional.
So why are you now saying that I was trying to hide the generalist versus specialist dichotomy, when you know I was defending it? When even now, you're acknowledging that I still want a generalist after Strategist Gwen, even if you're skeptical of the path for getting one from the eldar that I've described?
That's just... no, man.
Don't be like that.
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To be fair death has an infinite AP cost. Or to be less extreme about it, military loss has an extreme AP and resource cost
Covering a weakness now or adding to our current strengths now.
Or
Covering our biggest potentially game-ending weakness later on at higher cost with greater quality vs adding to our everything later at decent cost with higher quality.
And I'm repeatedly becoming more and more convinced that a Strategist Gwen is the way to go. Including specializing her, though I'd happily specialize her as an increasingly strong Diviner at her level ups to see how that impacts the combat rolls. Imagine if we could make her a Beta-level Diviner, while keeping her as our strategist. Just… Holy crow.
Eldar are, on average, better quality Psykers than humans, just because they're universally Psykers. I don't know what scale the Eldar use, or how they rate on average in the human scale, but just their innate Psionic abilities are going to be incredible.
Plus it gives even more incentive to eventually go after and free Isha in the distant future, but who's paying attention to that?
Or
Covering our biggest potentially game-ending weakness later on at higher cost with greater quality vs adding to our everything later at decent cost with higher quality.
And I'm repeatedly becoming more and more convinced that a Strategist Gwen is the way to go. Including specializing her, though I'd happily specialize her as an increasingly strong Diviner at her level ups to see how that impacts the combat rolls. Imagine if we could make her a Beta-level Diviner, while keeping her as our strategist. Just… Holy crow.
Eldar are, on average, better quality Psykers than humans, just because they're universally Psykers. I don't know what scale the Eldar use, or how they rate on average in the human scale, but just their innate Psionic abilities are going to be incredible.
Neablis did not say that we couldn't recruit an eldar seer with a penchant for strategy but no military training. If that wasn't something that could happen, we wouldn't be having this conversation because Gwen wouldn't have the option to specialize as a strategist because that's exactly what happened with her.
Neablis did however, say "It's all flexible, and it depends on rolls and what I feel like writing and what actual opportunities get offered."
The things that could still roll poorly and prevent us from recruiting from the eldar are significant. It is very much not a done deal. Everything involving navibean, because if something goes significantly wrong on that front it'll take us much longer to get over there. Everything involving the significant remaining improvements Neablis has told us we should be making to our shields if we want something the eldar will be strongly tempted by. The diplomacy rolls that are going to determine how the eldar react to a historical enemy who is making themselves immune to their primary strategic advantage and may let that immunity slip into the hands of the ruinous powers.
My statements regarding numbers obscuring the actual argument wasn't addressed solely at you, it was at Haganeko as well. I don't know who started posting statistics first to back their position, but on reflection I wish they hadn't done so because it spiralled the argument away from what I consider the actual point, which is that a generalist would help with everything including recruiting a specialist, while a specialist would help with their specialty, which I consider us able to cover our weakness in via things that the generalist would still help with (Research and Diplomacy ensuring we have the best tech to fight our enemies with and allies to help us do so.)
I was there applying reactions to Haganekos arguments because they were at least trying to support the same side of the argument that I'm on, even if bringing statistics into it was a bad move, and so was the argument that a generalist could beat a specialist in their specialty.
I interpreted "Training Gwen as a seer would lock us in to a worse crew" as being your idea because you kept saying things like...
I still think seer Gwen is the better choice, but frankly I'm increasingly coming to understand that trying to argue with people on the internet is terrible for my mental health. So once again, I apologise for any hostility or misunderstandings on my part, and I'm going to step away from the thread for a while.
I just dont think that having our reroll mechanic tied up in military until the distant future where we get a generalist eldar is worth the better military actions. Over that entire time where we wait for our generalist strategist-gwen will be doing nothing half the time.
And how much better is she going to be in the long run? Lets say shes one of a kind and we get about +5 better rolls with her than another strategist diviner thats hard to get or on average +15 better than a normal one.
Im going to be honest the amount of research/alliance building/buffed exploration helps our warpotential way more than a slighty better bonus.
Imagine 2 different fleets against the same enemy.
The first is evenly matched and got strategist gwen to turn a poor success into a good one.
The second is 20% larger and is more advanced and Seer gwen only manages a normal success.
Seems like a pretty even outcome right?
Well, next turn comes around and theres noone to fight for strategist gwen.
Seer gwen in the meantime saved an exploration roll.
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We already have the tools to build an alliance with the Eldar. That's why an eldar seer as a crew member isn't something for the distant future.
One thing that's been stated directly is that neither version of Gwen is especially useful or powerful until they hit level 10. No matter what we pick here, we're not getting the thing we want from Gwen right away - a single reroll on a single project that is far more likely than not to not be improved by it is not a significant increase to our capabilities or growth. Single digit mods to military rolls are not going to move the needle by a whole lot.
It'll be perhaps 8-9 turns before Seer gwen hits level 10 and that changes. She's slower at it, because she has worse perils and that can delay the ability to practice for a turn or so.
So maybe 6-7 for strategist-gwen?
It takes 4 turns from the moment we take Navigator Gestation to have a functional navigator. And once we have him, it takes half a turn to reach the Craftworld Eldar contact. Currently, the leading plan takes the prerequisite to Navigator Gestation.
It is not outside the realm of possibility that we have an Eldar Seer before Gwen hits level 10 and starts popping off. That's if things go well, sure, but even if they don't "long term" is... not a good descriptor for our timelines, here.
Certainly not for the purpose of saying one choice or the other will meaningfully accellerate our progress towards deepening ties with other factions.
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Thats just not true though it will always be better to take the economy boost at the earliest opportunity, the eldar has to lvl too.
Not to mention that we will be investing into our psyker safety anyway because of Cia.
Seer first Strategist second will always be the better longterm option.
Edit: And your timeline is incredibly optimistic i would wager 15 turns minimum until we get anywhere close to the eldar and strategist gwen lvls through combat which will not be happening half the time.
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On a completely other topic, I have been running calcs on our Manufactoring buildout next turn, should we succeed on our negotiations with the Vellkar and get basing rights on Denva Primus.
This gets us an additional 17955 BP. Moving us to 26775 BP build capacity per action.
We can't actually do this, because it would exceed our CP. Whoopsie!
Still a strain on our CP, but at least we are not exceeding them this time 
This gets us an additional 28444 BP Build Capacity, moving us to 37264 BP per action.
Only possible, if we can spend two boons at once for one-time manufactoring.
190 x MS-Spirit Manufactory (23400 BP, 3800 CP) => 17955 BP Build Capacity
36 x Spaceport (3600 BP, 900 CP)
360 x Shuttle (7200 BP, 1800 CP) => 18000 BP Lift Capacity
1 x Medium Void-shield Installation (1000 BP, 50 CP)
Total: 35200 BP, 6825 CP
Command Points 4,824/14,500 -> 11649/14500
36 x Spaceport (3600 BP, 900 CP)
360 x Shuttle (7200 BP, 1800 CP) => 18000 BP Lift Capacity
1 x Medium Void-shield Installation (1000 BP, 50 CP)
Total: 35200 BP, 6825 CP
Command Points 4,824/14,500 -> 11649/14500
333 x MS-Spirit Manufactory (39960 BP, 6660 CP) => 31468.5 BP Build Capacity
63 x Spaceport (6300, 1575 CP)
630 x Shuttle (12600 BP, 3150 CP) => 31500 BP Lift Capacity
1 x Medium Void-shield Installation (1000 BP, 50 CP)
Total: 59860 BP, 11435 CP
Command Points 4,824/14,500 -> 16259/14500 Whoopsie!
63 x Spaceport (6300, 1575 CP)
630 x Shuttle (12600 BP, 3150 CP) => 31500 BP Lift Capacity
1 x Medium Void-shield Installation (1000 BP, 50 CP)
Total: 59860 BP, 11435 CP
Command Points 4,824/14,500 -> 16259/14500 Whoopsie!
Now with MS-Spirit Shuttles (Cost: 17 RP, reduced from 25 by assigning 20 Cogitare)
301 x MS-Spirit Manufactory (36120 BP, 6020 CP) => 28444 BP Build Capacity
57 x Spaceport (5700 BP, 1425 CP)
570 x MS-Shuttle (17100 BP, 285 CP) => 28500 BP Lift Capacity
1 x Medium Void-shield Installation (1000 BP, 50 CP)
Total: 59920 BP, 7780 CP
Command Points 4,824/14,500 -> 12604/14500 much better!
301 x MS-Spirit Manufactory (36120 BP, 6020 CP) => 28444 BP Build Capacity
57 x Spaceport (5700 BP, 1425 CP)
570 x MS-Shuttle (17100 BP, 285 CP) => 28500 BP Lift Capacity
1 x Medium Void-shield Installation (1000 BP, 50 CP)
Total: 59920 BP, 7780 CP
Command Points 4,824/14,500 -> 12604/14500 much better!
This gets us an additional 28444 BP Build Capacity, moving us to 37264 BP per action.
Only possible, if we can spend two boons at once for one-time manufactoring.
Turtling always makes sense if you can be sure no one will poke you, the thing is we can't.
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The economy isn't meaningfully being boosted by either candidate before they hit level 10. The example Eldar seer recruit Neablis gave starts at level 4 and would have a higher mod than their level suggests, so they'd be pretty good right off the bat tbh.
If we have to spend more on psyker safety, that is taking RP away from boosting the economy. We don't actually have to invest significantly in it if we take Strategist Gwen, because the leading plans repurpose the oubliette into a psy lab that keeps all the HP. More than enough for handling SG's far more minor perils alongside Cia.
But if we have Seer Gwen, now we have to worry about things like Dark Summoning that can add a corruptive element on the inside of that shield. This is enough of a concern that I've advocated for getting Faith since it protects against that and is cheap, but with the severe perils Seer Gwen has on top of her being a delta, we'd have to at least get dampening equipment in the near term.
Said perils of course can be expected to blow out personal psy shields considering they were enough to do that to the entire old psy lab, so triple nested shielding isn't a cure for this either.
Regardless, I want a precognitive strategist, and Strategist Gwen is most feasible way to get one.
I want an Eldar Seer too. Have wanted one ever since we thought about getting a seer. We can get that too, don't have to rely on Gwen to have a seer.
These things are just cool, and it's fortunate that circumstances have lined up to make both feasible.
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Look at my comment before, i would say about 5 turns from now that fleet comparison would be fair to make. Seer only ever gets better than strategist from there i dont think thats really "turtling" this isnt something that only pops off in 20 turns.
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...There is no such "long term, one class becomes better than the other". Neablis's caution about how to interpret the choices speaks against that. The math speaks against that. I don't know why you're still convinced it's true, but it's not.
Our build has more need of a military leader than a seer right now, and we have better prospects for getting a high quality seer elsewhere than for doing the same for a high quality strategist. That's all.
The pre req for the sanity module would help many of our other objectives aswell. And i dissagree even lvl 1 seer gwen has a noticable impact on our action economy even if she
only saves 2 actions in the next 5 turns.
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Yes they are equally good in their respective field but one is a static buff and the other grows in time.
Edit2: What i meant was linear and exponential.
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She isn't going to save 2 actions in the next 5 turns, so this point seems moot. How infrequently level 1 seer gwen will help a non-military roll was one of the first things we established when running the numbers, in fact. Neablis was the one who said that neither class is that useful until level 10. He's right.
Sanity Module is very expensive to research, and it is not a technology that is easily sold to build the alliances you want. The space marines won't trust any implant we make enough to put it in some of their for quite some time, and the eldar have a cultural opposition to implants. It's a great technology, but it'll be mostly for ours and denva's use in the short term, probably meaning a delay to alliance building.
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[X] Plan: Nova cannons go boom. Boonhunting edition.
Wasnt it 40% on a non anexa roll with a value between +1-80 ? She also gets slightly better with every lvl.
Seems like 2 out of 5 actions saved to me is not that unlikely or am i missing something?
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That's for protecting one project at level 10. For a non-anexa action at level 1, it's more like 35%, and that's 35% to do anything to the roll at all, even just raising it by 1. This is not guaranteed to be significant... and it'd have to be very significant for it to accurately be called saving an action.
At the end of the day, all that math (and Haganeko's follow-up math on bracket changes) really does is back up what Neablis was and is still saying. Gwen is about as powerful as either class, but for different reasons, yet not powerful at all until level 10. It's our existing build and circumstances that I argue make Strategist Gwen the better choice.
This isn't the humanitarian crisis at Vorthryn. Neablis appears to have tuned the numbers to his intent correctly this time around.
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Right but when you take the average the roll could be improved by isnt it like +40 in the instances where it can be improved? (1-80).
Edit: Or i quess 1-70 because this is seer
gwen lvl1 but thats still +35 on average 35% of the time.
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No, because there's a huge gap in the possible rolls because of Vita's high mods - and when talking about multiple turns, we're probably going to assign her to a diplomacy action where victan will be, right? If she's assigned alongside another crew member, that goes down from 35 to 30%.
Put it another way. Another calc I ran was for how likely it was to increase the bracket success - and each kind. I won't post the full table because it's messy, but I'll be tweaking numbers in your favor:
Level 1 seer gwen's chance to upgrade a non-anexa/victan action to a Good Success bracket is about 11.44%, and 4.2% to upgrade a poor success to a normal success. If we say she gets nat100 overrides, her chance to get one of those is slightly under 1%. Her chance to avert a critfail any given turn she is assigned is 0.89%.
That's a bit under 18% chance per turn to do something significant enough that it might save us from having to use another action - but we'll bump it up to an even 20%. That's 1/5 turns she's assigned - which does not account for her having to wait out any turns because of a severe perils roll - and with her negative mod, she has an above 20% chance each action to roll a failure on her perils each turn until level 5.
It also assumes we never put her on passive training, which is something Strategist Gwen can do when we're not fighting anything without even stopping her from helping if orks warp in to attack us.
But again... all of this just mostly backs up what neablis already said. Seer Gwen has a harder time using her powers, and neither gwen is powerful until level 10.
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