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Against the Night (Mass Effect post-cycle AU)

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Sorry everyone for the flaw in my plan.

I misread the choice of:
[]Train with your Biotics:
Biotics are a weapon that nothing can take from you. Unfortunately yours appear to be rather more powerful than your flash-education assumed, making them dangerous to use on or near anything you want to avoid damaging. Taking some time to train with them is the only real way to deal with that. (Difficulty: Moderate) (increases your Combat: Biotics skill, improves general Biotics skills)​

As to be the one to improve control because it improved general biotics skill (which I thought included control) as well as increasing the combat biotics skill. Because of its Moderate difficulty, I had assumed that this is what one trained to get better at controlling biotics.


I had thought that:
[] Biotic Control:
your Biotics are much more potent than the training imbued by your flash-education anticipated by several orders of
magnitude. The result is that you require considerable concentration to use them without causing considerable collateral damage or even destroying something you might not want to. Worse, it will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to learn the more advanced techniques without getting a better handle on your powers. (Difficulty: Hard) (Cost: 39 AP) (will allow training in advanced biotic skills)​

Was to unlock future options rather than the way to increase the biotic control skill. I did not make the connection that Biotic Control improved the Biotic Control skill despite its name because I was going on the orange descriptors more than the narrative descriptors.

My apologies and mistake.
 
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yeah, you generally need to read the descriptions. I don't write those for kicks, they convey important information. the orange highlights are the technical stuff, like 'it costs this much' and so on, but the italic descriptions are not just there for flavor.

that said, I'm amending the orange description there to prevent further confusion, because I admit it was a bit vague.
 
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Biotic control was, in fact, the controlling factor on our biotics? Shock. Much surprise. Wow.

Called it.

Not that I fought hard against training biotics (or, indeed, at all), though, since the wording confused me and I wasn't 100% sure either way. The general "training" option did mention precision as well, after all.

But, you know, the intent was there. Control=control and all that jazz.

Edit- also wasn't aware that control actually changed our likelihood to succeed in general training, so there's that. I give this "called it" satisfaction... compatible to winning a coin flip.
 
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One question, though. The description here sounded like we were replacing our machine guns with flame throwers, whereas I thought they'd be in addition to the machine guns. Are we only allowed one type of defense?


[X] Plan: consolidate your gains - Biotics edition
-[X] Develop Autodock Upgrades 3AP
-[X] Flamethrower Turrets 1AP
-[X] Build Secondary Battery Bank 1AP
-[X] Fix the Garage 1AP
-[X] Biotic Control 4AP
-[X] Train with your Omni-tool 2AP

Okay. Work on the two ongoing projects, obviously. Build a second battery bank to maintain the overhead from the new turrets, because letting our defenses run dry in a storm sounds like a bad time. Fix the garage so we can get the greenhouses up and running soon-ish, since nobody else wants to hunt for meat. The rest is put into biotic control and omni-tool, because everybody wants the biotics over the weapons even though we ALSO have unique weapons, and because omni-tool training should also increase our technical proficiency.




[X] Plan: consolidate your gains - Weapons edition
-[X] Develop Autodock Upgrades 3AP
-[X] Flamethrower Turrets 1AP
-[X] Build Secondary Battery Bank 1AP
-[X] Fix the Garage 1AP
-[X] Train with your pistol 4AP
-[X] Train with your Omni-tool 2AP

Then this is just trading biotics for pistol, because that's something we can actually use right now, without years of investment. Maybe decades, if any of our invested actions fail, because biotics is a hard option.

PS: this is my preferred plan.
 
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I like your plans. I know I just misread the last plan, but I thought we had 4 turns of Max AP use before we burn out? Per Turn 1:

However, if you use the maximum amount of action points for too long, you will begin to suffer from Fatigue, and the likelihood of succeeding at a task will drop. After four turns of maximum AP use, you will accrue 4 Fatigue for each turn thereafter if you continue to do so!​
 
MysteryCPU said:
I like your plans. I know I just misread the last plan, but I thought we had 4 turns of Max AP use before we burn out? Per Turn 1:
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We just finished turn 3. Per the wording, exhaustion happens on turn 4. So every fourth turn, at a minimum, gotta get some downtime.

EDIT- or... wait, no. "4 fatigue thereafter"? Is it four turns or five?
 
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Mechanis said:
The listed difficulty accounts for how hard the base check is. As I've said several times, however, other skills do effect how hard the check 'actually' is, in the form of bonuses or debuffs, which are applied after the rolls for a check. A bit of common sense would have told those paying attention (particularly to the skills portion of the character sheet, where it is explicitly stated that prerequisite skills are REQUIRED to train sub-skills, and may need to be at a certain level to do so) that the general training action here would fail without removing some of the penalties you're getting from low Control skill.

If you make poor decisions because you failed to read rules that are not only explicitly posted but highlighted to show importance, that is not the QM's fault.
Edit; for reference, the relevant sections, plus highlights:


Control is the base skill for all biotic powers. why do you think it has twenty five ranks when most of its subskills only sport 10-15?
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What's obvious to you as the GM and what's obvious to us as players are very different things. Your access to all of the information and familiarity with your rules warps your perception of what's obvious and not obvious.

There's no explicit "rules" or "mechanics" post where things get spelled out for us. That already means things are open for our interpretation, which is not guaranteed to be the same as yours.

The fact that the information is dispersed means that we can easily miss information that turns out to be very important. Even people that want to understand the rules won't always read the entire thread to see where important information came up in a GM post that isn't threadmarked.

Then there's the issue that you treat your flavor text as important, when lots of quests don't. Unless it's been made clear to us that it is important, we aren't guaranteed to understand that it is.

Another point is that the rolls are hidden*. If you included some relevant ones at the end of an update in a spoiler, we'd be able to see just how much things are effected. I'll admit I have personal bias here since I understand mechanics better when I can see the results on the rolls.


*I admittedly read this on my phone, so it's a lot easier for something to be hidden to the point I can't find it even if it isn't meant to be

***

I'm not upset that the action failed, but I do want this cleared up before something important goes wrong because of miscommunication about the rules.

Elitist style systems require very clear rules, and the elitist leanings of this quest are at odds with the more populist amount of information provided.
 
Mechanis said:
yeah your lack of biotic control is hitting you with MASSIVE penalties on that training action
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This is why I had us training control first.
Mechanis said:
(Difficulty: Hard) (Cost: 39 AP)
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@Mechanis does this mean we can't train this?

[X] Plan: consolidate your gains - Biotics edition

I maintain that biotics are, by far, our greatest advantage. Yeah, they're difficult to train, but it's the most valuable skill in our arsenal. Bar none.
 
pbluekan said:
@Mechanis does this mean we can't train this?

[X] Plan: consolidate your gains - Biotics edition

I maintain that biotics are, by far, our greatest advantage. Yeah, they're difficult to train, but it's the most valuable skill in our arsenal. Bar none.
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No, that just means we need to invest 39AP into it, not that we need 39AP in one turn. It came down from 40AP.

Unless you meant the "hard" bit, in which case... still no. Just means it's hard to train.

Also, again, this plan will require years of investment. You have the choice of a very powerful tool several years down the road, or a moderately less powerful - But still unique - tool we can use right now.

On a death world.

For the record, this being a death world, I'm not concerned with our defenses failing in several years.

And there is nothing stopping us from getting the immediately useful thing when it is immediately useful, and then spend the time to train our biotics after that. Especially since the training we need for biotics is hard and therefore likely to fail. That increases training time even further. Decades, maybe.



I do not support that plan and literally only made it because I knew people were going to try and vote for it anyway.
 
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Turn 1 and 3 2 was not 12 AP turns. We only used 6/12 AP on Turn 1 and 8/12 on Turn 2 because it slipped everyone's understanding that we could put multiple points on a single action.

So, last turn (Turn 3) was the first time we maxed AP...though only 9/12 were useful.

BTW, that means we've wasted 13 out of 36 AP these past three turns.

Edited: I mis-numbered the turns and went back and corrected the calculations.
 
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Looking back on those turns, I feel better about my mistake. Seems like we've all been having trouble with grasping all the nuances of the rules and action choices so far.
 
MysteryCPU said:
Turn 1 and 3 was not 12 AP turns.
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Turn 3 was. You were involved in the discussion for a while and went back to put 3AP into biotics, which rounded the plan out to 12AP. Only turn 1 skipped out on a bunch of AP.

EDIT- nope, looks like turn 2 also missed a couple.

Okay, so we have until... turn 7 at max AP usage, before we start to burn out. I think. Might be turn 6, depending on instruction wording interpretation.
 
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[X] Plan: consolidate your gains - Biotics edition
-[X] Develop Autodock Upgrades 3AP
-[X] Flamethrower Turrets 1AP
-[X] Build Secondary Battery Bank 1AP
-[X] Fix the Garage 1AP
-[X] Biotic Control 4AP
-[X] Train with your Omni-tool 2AP

Getting some biotic control now is fine by me. While we're too imprecise due to our strength to do anything fancy a Throw that fucks everything in a general direction is still something that is very useful as long as we're not fighting in the middle of fragile things that we want whole like in our first fight. Putting a few points here and there on control to slowly get better while we focus on getting our colony up and running is good.
 
Alayne said:
Getting some biotic control now is fine by me. While we're too imprecise due to our strength to do anything fancy a Throw that fucks everything in a general direction is still something that is very useful as long as we're not fighting in the middle of fragile things that we want whole like in our first fight. Putting a few points here and there on control to slowly get better while we focus on getting our colony up and running is good.
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UUUUugh.

While your reasoning is acceptable - indeed, the only way we'll get biotics down is by chipping away at it, and I would like to get biotics - I would still like to refer you to the fact that we are apparently on a death world, and we may need some kind of personal defense sooner rather than later. That means, ideally, grabbing the low hanging fruit in order to give us time and breathing room with which we may begin chipping away at those biotics.

If we never need the pistol, then we wasted a small handful of turns on it, compared to the dozens to get biotics working for us. If we do need it, then we have it, without having spent all our time on a thing that still won't pay off until long after the reason we needed that pistol.

EDIT- this the last time I complain about this issue. If people want to vote for biotics, I can't stop you. But I do believe this is an issue, or at least has the potential to quickly become one.
 
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Sorry, I meant Turn 2.

Here are the winning plans for the first 2 turns.

Turn 1: (6/12 AP)
[X] Plan Secure and Repair
-[X]Fix the scout rover: This rugged rover would be extremely useful for multiple purposes. It's currently a little banged up, but some work could fix it. (Difficulty: Trivial) (uses 10 Omni-gel)
-[X]Build Basic Security Perimeter: you encountered some hostile wildlife when fixing your pod's power system, and have obviously landed in the middle of a jungle. Having some basic fences and gun turrets to discourage adventurous wildlife would probably be a good idea.
(Difficulty: Easy) (uses 250 Omni-gel, 20 Rare Earths and 5 Element Zero)
-[X]Examine Pod: Your pod has a large number of systems that are now active. Given your initial exploration occurred when the power was out, exploring and learning to use its systems more thoroughly may be a good idea.(Difficulty: None) (Will reveal one-three of the systems present on your pod per use. You may choose to focus on a particular system you've already encountered to guarantee learning about it.)
-[X]Examine Body: you encountered a mummified Asari when you first woke up. You had more pressing things on your mind then, but now perhaps you should examine the body more closely. (Difficulty: Trivial) (????)
-[X]Examine Nearby Jungle: You've landed in the middle of a jungle. Examining your immediate surroundings for useful resources- like edible plants, for example- is probably something you should do at some point.
-[X]Meditate on the Self: You need to cement your identity, if only for your own sake. The first part of that is choosing a name.

Turn 2: (8/12 AP)
[X] Plan: Basic Biotic
-[X] Examine Pod: Your pod has a large number of systems that are now active. Given your initial exploration occurred when the power was out, exploring and learning to use its systems more thoroughly may be a good idea. (Difficulty: None) (Will reveal one-three of the systems present on your pod per use. You may choose to focus on a particular system you've already encountered to guarantee learning about it.)
-[X] Analyze Samples: You took a wide variety of plant samples from the treeline. Analysing them to see if any are edible- or dangerous- will take some extra time. You really hope at least one proves edible, though, you were pretty sick of MREs by the first week. (Difficulty: Moderate)(Cost: 5 AP) (will reveal if there's any notable plants in your immediate area, edible or not.)
-[X] Examine Self: you know that your physiology has been greatly enhanced compared to a baseline Asari. Perhaps a basic examination using the medbay could give you a better idea of just how much. (Difficulty: Easy)(unlocks upgrade options for medbay)
-[X] Biotic Control: your Biotics are much more potent than the training imbued by your flash-education anticipated by several orders of magnitude. The result is that you require considerable concentration to use them without causing considerable collateral damage or even destroying something you might not want to. Worse, it will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to learn the more advanced techniques without getting a better handle on your powers. (Difficulty: Hard) (Cost: 40 AP) (will allow training in advanced biotic skills)


So, we should be fine with 12 AP plans for at least 2 more turns (if not more).
​
 
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you haven't even started the fatigue counter yet. you can go four tuns (that, two years) using all your action points, and as long as that fifth turn has at least one free point, you can return to going full-bore for another four turns afterwards. I'm not entirely sure why this was unclear, considering it's spelled out quite plainly, but there it is.

about costs: cost on things like Biotic Control are, again, just 'how much it will take to do this in a turn.' you'll note that when you spent a point on it, despite the fact you failed the check (unsurprising) you dropped the cost by one permanently. throw enough points at it and you'll eventually succeed- either because the check rolled high enough to succeed despite the onerous penalties your biotics training is currently working under, or because you just out-stubbored the problem. it could take you another thirty turns or more. you could also drop one point on it and roll a crit-success next turn. this is the joy of dice-based systems.

turrets: PBGs are a straight upgrade, filling essentially the same role as an MG, just better. so those would replace existing turrets, because it's a straight upgrade. Flamethrowers OTOH are an upgrade to your defenses but are NOT a replacement for your existing turrets, rather they're an addition to said turrets.
now some of you might be saying "wow dual-barreled heavy flamethrowers and machineguns? isn't that a bit much?'
well no. your planet may not be as insane as say, Catachan, but normal world generally don't produce seven-foot mantiods that can punch through soft steel like Styrofoam or 'literally Biotic Everything' either. Admittedly all the noise and the effects of your presence has been keeping most things scared off, but that's not going to last much longer.

rolls: I've been doing these with my actual, physical dice (yes, really) and adding in all the checks, bonuses, penalties, and ETC stuff, not to mention explanations so you could tell what a given number actually means, would basically triple the amount of time it takes me to write an update; and double or more the actual amount of text.
That would also make this a lot (4-5 times) more work for me, which is bad since it'll stop being fun and start being a chore, at which point I'm likely to stop and go do something else. which I assume nobody here actually wants.

rules: I generally try to post rules in their reliant sections in threadmarked posts. if you are still confused about what a rule means, ask. at worst, I'll go "hm, this problem has come up a few times, maybe that rule wasn't clear and/or detailed enough" and clarify, followed by re-writing the relevant section. that said, if you ask questions already present in the rules and clearly haven't read them, expect to be pointed at the relevant post with a firm "read the Rules please."
again, if you're uncertain, ask. I generally check the thread at least once a day, and I'm not going to bite your head off unless you're asking a really dumb question (I'd also appreciate it if others could do the same) that shows you clearly didn't bother to read the rules that are posted; EG 'How do we carry more guns' or 'what does [stat] do' and so on.

descriptions: I am not MP3.14player, I cannot put out tens of thousands of words a day and keep doing so. If there's text in a threadmaked post, it's important and not just there for flavor.
I have said 'Read the descriptions' several times, with varying levels of emphasis, in threadmarked-post rule segments and in non-threadmarked posts. If you fail to do a thing after a GM tells you "do this thing" multiple times, then that is not the GM's Problem.

I don't expect you to read all the thread, no, but I do expect you to read the threadmarks, and if your still confused to ask the GM.
this is basic stuff, I should not have to explain that 'Ask the GM to clarify' is always an option. or it should be, at least.
 
Blargh! Can we analyze and study the Flora and Fauna of this Planet yet! Cause building a Farm of sort or raising a couple of edible animals here might be worthwhile in the later turns!
 
VexMasterTyrant said:
Blargh! Can we analyze and study the Flora and Fauna of this Planet yet! Cause building a Farm of sort or raising a couple of edible animals here might be worthwhile in the later turns!
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I just had a very cruel thought.

What if we melded with an animal we catch, and then ate it? That's like old yeller, but with weirder, voreish, connotations.
What would the children think?

"Mother, what happened to the one you made us with?"
" Oh, I ate him. It was.....conflicting."
 
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Mechanis said:
your planet may not be as insane as say, Catachan,
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Mechanis said:
Admittedly all the noise and the effects of your presence has been keeping most things scared off, but that's not going to last much longer.
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Yaaaay, deathworld confirmed. It's not just the mantises, and they're coming for us.



VexMasterTyrant said:
Blargh! Can we analyze and study the Flora and Fauna of this Planet yet! Cause building a Farm of sort or raising a couple of edible animals here might be worthwhile in the later turns!
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No, because studying flora and fauna requires going out and collecting flora and fauna. As has just been detailed to us, this is a death world, so we're not going outside the perimeter for anything until we're ready for it, or we're forced to for some specific thing.
 
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[X] Plan: consolidate your gains - Biotics edition
-[X] Develop Autodock Upgrades 3AP
-[X] Flamethrower Turrets 1AP
-[X] Build Secondary Battery Bank 1AP
-[X] Fix the Garage 1AP
-[X] Biotic Control 4AP
-[X] Train with your Omni-tool 2AP

The sooner we can actually make use of our space magic, the better. I feel like something's supposed to be coming to a head at some point.
 
[X] Plan: consolidate your gains - Biotics edition
-[X] Develop Autodock Upgrades 3AP
-[X] Flamethrower Turrets 1AP
-[X] Build Secondary Battery Bank 1AP
-[X] Fix the Garage 1AP
-[X] Biotic Control 4AP
-[X] Train with your Omni-tool 2AP
 
[X] Plan: consolidate your gains - Biotics edition
-[X] Develop Autodock Upgrades 3AP
-[X] Flamethrower Turrets 1AP
-[X] Build Secondary Battery Bank 1AP
-[X] Fix the Garage 1AP
-[X] Biotic Control 4AP
-[X] Train with your Omni-tool 2AP
 
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