Ghostdevil
The Devil of Ghosts
- Location
- United States
Implying that their just broken and not permanently crippled as they do inhumane experiments to determine the best ways to kill them for future reference.
A New Dawn (XCOM/Mass Effect)
- Thread starter Isaacssv558
- Start date
- Crossover
- Status
Fezzes
Knight of King Stannis Baratheon
- Location
- Sydney, Australia
Personally I'm okay with the welfare union not being available for a while as a critfail. Critfails are meant to be critically bad, plus it was an acknowledgement that we aren't the Lizardmen, functioning with a single, united will. I will say that a 1/20 chance to get this happening per action seems a bit too common, but I won't kick up too much noise about it. Things need to go wrong for tension or challenge to be real things in the quest.
- Location
- Anchorage, Alaska
I see what you did there...but still yeah no...X-com needs to kill them, cause having those genocidal aliens with penchant for cloning and turning entire populations into slave soldiers for some dubious goal screams to me that have no fucking purpose other then being like the dark eldar of the setting...with no real purpose other then being dicks.
- Location
- United States
If you intend for critical failures to be this punishing, you may want to adjust their frequency. As it stands, a crit-fail range of natural 1-5 (straight die roll, no modifiers applied) means that you have a 5% (1:20) chance of rolling a critical failure. Every twenty rolls, something should go as catastrophically wrong as this, by statistics. In that same vein, there's a 5% chance of critical success, which has not been shown to be anywhere near this magnitude of positive event.*
Combined, you're looking at a 10%, once every ten die rolls that something critical happens.
*I don't recall seeing any critical success that has the same "wow" factor as totally losing access to an action chain or having a twenty-year blocker slapped on continental unification. The critical success (if that's what a natural result of 97 is) seems to have pretty much resulted in "you get more monies, yey". Which is...not anywhere within spitting distance of the "equivalent" failure.
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Sir LagsAlot
Yandere Dice Magnet
- Location
- In the fridge
I mean if they're just using the filthy xenos for horribly unethical and torturous experiments I'd probably give them a pass...
Ghostdevil
The Devil of Ghosts
- Location
- United States
I mean they could also be using a portion on the flip side to see if they can be killed with kindness!I mean if they're just using the filthy xenos for horribly unethical and torturous experiments I'd probably give them a pass...
- Location
- Anchorage, Alaska
Pretty much this...I mean yeah the money was okay...but seriously we have yet to get anything that's actually worthwhile in the form of the critical success range. I mean the fact that something, somehow, and someway went right just at the right moment at just the right time in just the right place to make a insane thing happen that leaves people baffled it ever did happen because how the ever living fuck did this event happen at all!?! something that would leave historians and people trying to endlessly debate it...that's a critical success and its opposite a critical failure.
where outside and inside influences meet at the exact right points to make it a awesome thing or a horrible thing happen.
Sir LagsAlot
Yandere Dice Magnet
- Location
- In the fridge
"And that's how we discovered what the Etherial version of a lethal dosage of radiation was kids! Now any questions?"
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Fezzes
Knight of King Stannis Baratheon
- Location
- Sydney, Australia
Perhaps a kind of 'minicrit' system? 1-2 and 99-100 are Criticals and then 3-10 and 90-98 are Mini Criticals/Greater Successes/What-have-you?
I mean to be fair, it was money and a turn's reduction on a research action. Still not Critical Success territory, but it was a pretty nice little boost to get.
Ghostdevil
The Devil of Ghosts
- Location
- United States
Hmm
@Isaacssv558 Do we know what they were doing with the Xenos?
@Isaacssv558 Do we know what they were doing with the Xenos?
- Location
- Anchorage, Alaska
hmmm that might be interesting, as that makes sense...I mean at 1-2 the system and everything I said above has to absolutely go wrong at the worst time, place, and people. Its opposite makes sense as well. The 3-10 and 90-98 makes sense for the lesser crit system or something, as it was damn good...just not as earth shattering as the Crit Fail/Success.
- Location
- nullptr
If crit fails aren't serious the quest just becomes a string of successes punctuated by minor setbacks. Every Napoleon must have his Waterloo, every Sauron his One Ring, every Caesar his Brutus, every Alexander his India, every every Feanor his crippling father complex.
There are two factors at play here.
1. Different actions have different ranges of results. The XCOM action early on was the result of a critical success. The Japan action was 'more monies, yay' because the action was basically just 'more monies'. Also, there were strategic benefits which are not easily quantifiable. (You saved Japan from getting annexed by Russia.) You just tend to have critical failures on really important actions. i.e. If you were locked out of selling Japan oil for 20 years it wouldn't be a big deal.
2. I deliberately make critical failure somewhat greater in magnitude than critical success. I do this to give the player's empire a slight tendency towards decay. This helps to maintain challenge and randomly generate problems.
Your excellent relationship with XCOM is a result of a critical success. Last turn you completed two multi-turn actions in a single year.
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- Location
- his hidden lair
5% critical failure when it's so exponentially worse than succeeds, is to put it mildly bullshit. The oil sale was proportionally a rarer roll and saved a single turn on a single action.
That marginal failure wasted dozens of turns for longer than some questers might expect this entire quest to last. It's completely assymetrical and arbitrary @Isaacssv558, it's frankly absurd.
That marginal failure wasted dozens of turns for longer than some questers might expect this entire quest to last. It's completely assymetrical and arbitrary @Isaacssv558, it's frankly absurd.
- Location
- nullptr
I see where you're coming from on the frequency of critical failures. I'll reduce the critical failure range to 1-3 for now and consider further changes.
They're studying them. Specifically, they're compiling a massive quantity of data on characteristics ranging from behavior to anatomy to genetics. This is primarily intended as an advanced version of the autopsy and interrogation techs.
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- Location
- Anchorage, Alaska
that's all we ask good sir...because holy cow the dice are on a roll towards hate at the meat bags that we are!
- Location
- his hidden lair
I mean, even in about of hundred range- that failure was unreasonably brutal.
Failing refinancing was brutal, but it was something we could plan around and a fun challenge to beat the debt anyways. This? This absolutely shits on the foreign policy we've been doing all game, essentially destroying decades worth of effort- because nearly every other meaningful player has already achieved far more diplomatic gains. The CAU have a union/sphere that dwarfs ours and is proportionally far larger. France has rallied the EU behind it and emerged the major political and military leader of the Western EU, Britain has spheres and recolonized at least three different places- and we've placated two countries for over a decade and can't even manage that right. The union was slow and painful enough as is, this just makes me think it was never worth it.
Give us an action to reopen it, give it an election, don't make the voters feel like one of the cornerstones of their plans has been made entirely useless without any warning or anything we could have possibly done to prevent it. Crit fails should hurt, but they should make things more interesting not less.
Edit: and if you're making tiers of payoff or penalties you need to make that apparent and add some degree of risk mitigation the players can knowingly pursue. You've done exactly that in Elijah quest so I'm kinda baffled here.
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KleverKil'Vanya
Ortillery Operator
Got to the welfare bit and concluded that the GM is making this an impossible task on purpose to keep the players contained, no longer following.
Critical Overhaul
- Location
- nullptr
I am overhauling the critical system by popular demand. I've been using the standard 1-5=crit fail, 95-100=crit success up till now. (Yes, I know this is a 6% chance of critical success. If I had a zero based die it would be 0-5=crit fail.) I am changing this because my critical failures are rather serious and a 5% chance on every action is a bit high. Instead, there will be a 1% chance of super-critical failure, a 2% chance of critical failure, and a 2% chance of major failure. The critical success range will remain unchanged. The full range of success and failure can be seen below.
1: Super-Critical Failure
2-3: Critical Failure
4-5: Major Failure
6-94: Normal Roll
95-99: Critical Success
100: Super-Critical Success
1: Super-Critical Failure
2-3: Critical Failure
4-5: Major Failure
6-94: Normal Roll
95-99: Critical Success
100: Super-Critical Success
Sir LagsAlot
Yandere Dice Magnet
- Location
- In the fridge
I mean unless he's fudging the dice rolls we just rolled poorly. It isn't the worst thing in the world and many, many quests have faced far, far worse and come out alright.
Also, I'm happy the crit system is being revised.
- Location
- nullptr
You make a good point. I was thinking about the magnitude of the penalty from the perspective of number crunching. I should have considered its central role in strategic plans. As such, I've decided to lower the duration from 20 years to 10.
I actually wrote your completion of the union into my plans for the next decade. I just like critical failures.
- Location
- nullptr
The dice rolls are public.
Sir LagsAlot
Yandere Dice Magnet
- Location
- In the fridge
Well, that accusation fell apart quick.
- Location
- Anchorage, Alaska
thanks for the effort...and I do mean that, also sorry for blowing up on the whole thing, I went to the rolls and I thought yeah that sucked majorly...but it shouldn't hurt that badly, we can come back to it "Maybe?"....did not expect to be locked out for 20 years and everything going to shit.
also for the debt, I thought it was more of the lines that the narrative was also following the dice rolls of other countries at that time...because the way I saw it yeah we failed...but did the other countries also do their own failures that compounded to the point where we have to pay back the entire loan piece by piece?
also we did get rid of 12% of the loan as of this turn...we keep this kind of dedication we should come into the black soon enough!
- Status