An American Mage in Wizarding Britan (HP AU)

Random Tale · Sep 10, 2016

Dark Abstraction said:
Alright, so what do we want to accomplish now, everybody? We should start thinking about our plans for the next turn. Recruiting a few units of Army or Marine soldiers is a necessity, I think, since it'll keep this kind of situation from reoccurring. Anything else we need to do?

You might be interested in plan Security First to help with that, if you haven't already voted for any plan.

At any rate...

Buildings (Near Future): Start converting Zemlyankas into Storage Buildings, so they don't inflict as much of a Base Defense penalty (I'd say convert one of them to a memorial instead, in memory of the lives lost in this battle). Afterwards, start converting the new Storage Buildings into other buildings we need (Armory, Clinic, more Barracks...).
Buildings (A little further down the line): MORE Barracks, and enchant them to make sure they can hold as many people as possible. Another Magic Laboratory and Science Laboratory, for later. A Firing Range, to improve base defense and Combat Arms (whatever that is). Fortifications (I really want that +10 to Base Defense). Another Mess Hall, to be safe. An EWO Shop and Computer Bay would both prove helpful.
Units: MORE Research, Science, and muggle defender units. Magic defenders too, if the opprotunity to grab them opens up. Research and Science units to either improve our rate of research (discovering new items twice as fast), or split our research (two different items at once). Muggle Defenders for defense of the base. We've got an Infiltration team incoming already, and if Security First wins, another behind that, so we should be good in that regard. A couple of Intel Teams to man the suggested EWO Shop and Computer Bay above.
Protection: Cleaning House: search the base for spies (cultists are good at infiltration), look for those who are not supposed to on the base and kick them out. Or, at the very least, make sure they don't get accurate classified information. The translators that came with the girls seem to have disappeared, where did they disappear to?
Research: ...We're in a bottleneck, and not moving fast enough. We can't really do much here except look for ways to improve research rates (with my suggestions above) to widen that bottleneck.
Training: Have the incoming Mage Training Squad spend a month on base helping out, doing various tasks (we could use help converting the Zemlyankas, for example) and getting used to being around the girls (and the girls used to them), and then start spending each month training each magical girl squad in turn to combat readiness. Blackstone gets one of three options (that I can see right now): keep teaching the girls so that they are more likely to lose the ESL traits, train the girls alongside the Training Squad to get all of them to combat readiness in half the time, or join one of the squads permanently. Perhaps the Mage Training Squad can take a break from working with the girls sometime in order to work with one or two of the muggle teams to get them used to fighting against magic.

FullNothingness · Sep 10, 2016

My problem with Plan Security First is the choice for studying Japanese magic tbh... While this might help a bit with the magical girls it doesn't really seem to pan into anything really useful for our actual reasons for being here. Also we can already barely communicate with the girls except through Blackstone, not really optimal for studying the topic if most of the sources are in that same language.

OTOH learning British magic should be useful in a lot of ways. It gives us information about what our enemies have. It is apparently well suited for defending places if the MoM is any indication, which the plan is supposed to focus on. And should help us blend in if needed, something very useful for a intelligence operation. Also we would have very easy access to the required sources and resources since we are obviously in the country in question.

Akritedes · Sep 10, 2016

FullNothingness said:
studying Japanese magic tbh

The reason for studying Japanese ethnic magic is so we can salvage something more from the clusterfuck of our refugee situation. It's looking more and more like the refugees are actually going to become permanent residents or at the very least affiliates of this base, since they don't seem to have anyone or anywhere else to go. If they're sticking around, they represent a huge fraction of our available assets and liabilities, and while it's callous, we need to get as much value out of them as possible.

If we're planning on shifting them elsewhere in the near future, then it's not so much of an issue, but if we're keeping them around we need a solid foundation to understand their abilities and properly train them. Or we could try to naturalize them and teach them some other kind of magic, but they've learned enough on their own and with Blackstone that they may not be willing or able to make the kind of major shift.

I'll reiterate, the total base population is something like ~450 people, and of those the refugees account for ~400 of that. The other fifty are the Greaves family, Commandos, and various Research and Intel departments. I don't care how much more useful British magic would be, we have 400 magical girls who desperately need proper training that we cannot yet provide and who won't really benefit from British magic. Not when we'd need, at minimum, something like four hundred wands just to get them started learning.

FullNothingness · Sep 10, 2016

Akritedes said:
The reason for studying Japanese ethnic magic is so we can salvage something more from the clusterfuck of our refugee situation. It's looking more and more like the refugees are actually going to become permanent residents or at the very least affiliates of this base, since they don't seem to have anyone or anywhere else to go. If they're sticking around, they represent a huge fraction of our available assets and liabilities, and while it's callous, we need to get as much value out of them as possible.

If we're planning on shifting them elsewhere in the near future, then it's not so much of an issue, but if we're keeping them around we need a solid foundation to understand their abilities and properly train them. Or we could try to naturalize them and teach them some other kind of magic, but they've learned enough on their own and with Blackstone that they may not be willing or able to make the kind of major shift.

I'll reiterate, the total base population is something like ~450 people, and of those the refugees account for ~400 of that. The other fifty are the Greaves family, Commandos, and various Research and Intel departments. I don't care how much more useful British magic would be, we have 400 magical girls who desperately need proper training that we cannot yet provide and who won't really benefit from British magic. Not when we'd need, at minimum, something like four hundred wands just to get them started learning.

Except they are FAR more in the liability category than they are assets. We can't use the girls for going out to fight, we can't use them for infiltration and honestly we shouldn't be using them for defense either. To be callous right back, their value to us is in the resources they provide us by being here not in their usefulness.

British magic OTOH actually aids our objectives and safety.

7734 · Sep 10, 2016

FullNothingness said:
OTOH learning British magic should be useful in a lot of ways. It gives us information about what our enemies have. It is apparently well suited for defending places if the MoM is any indication, which the plan is supposed to focus on. And should help us blend in if needed, something very useful for a intelligence operation. Also we would have very easy access to the required sources and resources since we are obviously in the country in question.

The MoM is more defended by 800~ years of duct tape defence spells than anything else.

veekie said:
Get more damned room to put them in ;_;

Mundane Military units can take Temp. Housing at no penalty.

FullNothingness said:
Honestly we need to look into some magical defenses too. I'm not even sure we are blocking teleportation right now. We fought a bunch of stupid cultists this time but if Death Eaters show up next time thing might go very badly. Especially if they bring their more dangerous monsters with them. AFAIK they have werewolves, giants and dementors like in canon. They could also just use the imperious curse to send hordes of mind controlled civilians at us. It'll be a mess.

Yes tele-block, yes mundane repeler. Might want to put some upgrades in the pipe, though.

Akritedes said:
It's looking more and more like the refugees are actually going to become permanent residents or at the very least affiliates of this base, since they don't seem to have anyone or anywhere else to go.

FullNothingness said:
Except they are FAR more in the liability category than they are assets. We can't use the girls for going out to fight, we can't use them for infiltration and honestly we shouldn't be using them for defense either. To be callous right back, their value to us is in the resources they provide us by being here not in their usefulness.

Considering the fact they literally just saved a whole lot of bacon...

Random Tale said:
Buildings (A little further down the line): MORE Barracks, and enchant them to make sure they can hold as many people as possible. Another Magic Laboratory and Science Laboratory, for later. A Firing Range, to improve base defense and Combat Arms (whatever that is). Fortifications (I really want that +10 to Base Defense). Another Mess Hall, to be safe. An EWO Shop and Computer Bay would both prove helpful.

COMBINED Arms is conventional combat ability. As for Fortifications, remembe how the cultists just breezed in like they owned the place? That's what Fortifications prevent. Double down for the Pillboxes upgrade and get concrete forts to fuck over anything that thinks about crossing the fenceline!

FullNothingness · Sep 10, 2016

7734 said:
Considering the fact they literally just saved a whole lot of bacon...

If you keep in mind how much effort went into them we probably could have gotten far more results defensively by investing that effort in regular troops and defenses. Also as presented it seems like nearly all that usefulness hinged on Blackstone.

Quite frankly, investing in the magical girls feels like investing in loss to me. We can get something there by spending effort yes, but not as much as we could by spending the effort elsewhere.

The MoM is more defended by 800~ years of duct tape defence spells than anything else.

Hogwarts wards then, those seem quite solid.

And even the MoM defenses are important to know about because if things go badly and the Death Eaters manage a takeover we will need to get through that duct tape.

Anyways, something I'm wondering... Is the "New England" research the British magic tree? Because if so the name confuses me. But it does seem to have the local potions and such locked behind it.

7734 · Sep 10, 2016

FullNothingness said:
Hogwarts wards then, those seem quite solid.

Anyways, something I'm wondering... Is the "New England" research the British magic tree? Because if so the name confuses me. But it does seem to have the local potions and such locked behind it.

The New England magic branch is not British. Very strong distinction there. That said, it is mostly parallel to the British one. Sort of like the differences between the two languages. As for the Hogwarts defences, they're equal parts Magical High Ground, actually good wards, and Something Something Something.

FullNothingness · Sep 10, 2016

7734 said:
The New England magic branch is not British. Very strong distinction there. That said, it is mostly parallel to the British one. Sort of like the differences between the two languages. As for the Hogwarts defences, they're equal parts Magical High Ground, actually good wards, and Something Something Something.

Close enough I guess... Though @7734, couldn't we just research "British" magic instead of "New England" then to much the same use but without the distinction?

If not then this will do (will edit in British magic if we can do it without major downsides):

[X] Plan Security First (no child soldiers version)

[X][James] Hire New Units
-[X] 2x American Army Team
-[X] 2x American Marine Team
-[X] Infiltration Team
-[X] Gopher Team

[X][Catherine] Stay on Intelligence Operation with Magnum

[X][Blackstone]Teach Magical Girl Team 1

[X][Susan] Continue Study Magical Dueling with Renares

[X][Research] Study Ethnic Magic
-[X] New England

[X][Science] Continue Project

[X][Operation: MoM Watch] Continue operations as normal

[X][Expedite] Transport
-[X] Mage Training Squad by 3 Months
-[X] Gopher Squad by 2 Month

[X] If possible, ensure that the Mage Training Squad has a Japanese speaking member, interpreter, or translator attached. Otherwise, get them English-Japanese teaching books and hope for the best.

Quite frankly, any plan that has train child soldiers as step one is very likely a bad plan. We should do whatever we can not to throw kids into combat, if stuff like that keeps happening our PC is probably going to die from alcohol poisoning and/or self-inflicted gunshot sooner or later. Sure, the girls should get an education but they are NOT assets to be used for fighting in all but the most desperate of conditions.

As such I'm not spending our limited research capability on Japanese magic but instead focusing on a tree that should get us better healing, defenses and understanding of local magic.

7734 · Sep 11, 2016

FullNothingness said:
Close enough I guess... Though @7734, couldn't we just research "British" magic instead of "New England" then to much the same use but without the distinction?

if stuff like that keeps happening our PC is probably going to die from alcohol poisoning and/or self-inflicted gunshot sooner or later.

One, you cannot directly research British magic directly due to a large mess of gobbledygook. Two, if James were the sad sort to contemplate suicide, that would have happened already. Let me state that no matter how worried you are about child soldiers, James solidly has the rest of the base's kill count beat by a solid digit and change. He has been bad places before, and this is not the worst thing he's ever seen.

Akritedes · Sep 11, 2016

FullNothingness said:
As such I'm not spending our limited research capability on Japanese magic but instead focusing on a tree that should get us better healing, defenses and understanding of local magic.

Or...y'know, we could teach them Japanese support magics. And have shrine maiden healers and onmyouji sealing teams. Given that (I think?) we've already made some effort to study their magic and skills, it's at least a more rapid means of giving them any kind of capability beyond "non-combatant" refugee.

FullNothingness · Sep 11, 2016

7734 said:
One, you cannot directly research British magic directly due to a large mess of gobbledygook. Two, if James were the sad sort to contemplate suicide, that would have happened already. Let me state that no matter how worried you are about child soldiers, James solidly has the rest of the base's kill count beat by a solid digit and change. He has been bad places before, and this is not the worst thing he's ever seen.

I'm not worried about about him becoming unstable from killing people. I'm worried about him becoming unstable from deliberately getting eleven year old girls killed as combatants. If we focus our efforts on upgrading the magical girls to useful combatants then if for no other reason than us not pursuing alternate plans instead they are very likely to end up in combat. And even if we win there will be losses.

On a more practical note doing something like that is also likely to poison the opinion of allies we might seek to gain. Dumbledore is still around as far as I know and he is unlikely to look upon something like that kindly. Hell, if someone back home decides to get an attack of morality using child soldiers is pretty high up there on the list of things to go after.

Akritedes said:
Or...y'know, we could teach them Japanese support magics. And have shrine maiden healers and onmyouji sealing teams. Given that (I think?) we've already made some effort to study their magic and skills, it's at least a more rapid means of giving them any kind of capability beyond "non-combatant" refugee.

While support roles are better than frontline fighting it is not a guarantee that they won't be killed in combat. Battlefield healing and sealing are not safe. Furthermore, we probably don't need that much support personnel... We won't have a job for healers who outnumber our soldiers by an order of magnitude. It is also not what we really need most right now IMO.

At the basis of this story what we get out of bringing in the magical girls is that we get more resources to spend in compensation, not that we get use out of the girls. We don't have to get something from these girls. If we can get something more done focusing elsewhere we should. We definitely should if it also prevents us from sending children out on a battlefield.

Researching the closest thing to local magic we have access to makes the most sense as an intelligence operation IMO. It should be practical in many ways and we already have WoG that it leads to useful techs with the potions (a not inconsequential unit booster). Understanding your enemies is never a bad thing either.

veekie · Sep 11, 2016

FullNothingness said:
If you keep in mind how much effort went into them we probably could have gotten far more results defensively by investing that effort in regular troops and defenses. Also as presented it seems like nearly all that usefulness hinged on Blackstone.

Actually, we hardly invested any effort into them besides you know, making room for them. Its pretty much all Blackstone talking to them and training them. Is there any reason why they wouldn't be madly attached to him?

FullNothingness · Sep 11, 2016

veekie said:
Actually, we hardly invested any effort into them besides you know, making room for them. Its pretty much all Blackstone talking to them and training them. Is there any reason why they wouldn't be madly attached to him?

Eating up all those actions is a big investment. We also damaged our base defenses for it and researched tech we might not have otherwise.

And I never questioned why they became attached to him... I just said their combat effectiveness hinged on him. And we only have one of him, we can't use him to boost more units.

Dark Abstraction · Sep 11, 2016

It was an investment that has already been paid out, in the form of a tremendous amount of funding provided to us for taking them in.
We weighed the risks building them housing and decided it was worth it, rather than making them sleep outside and potentially die in great numbers; I see no downside here.
We have not researched anything that we would not otherwise have researched, that point is outright false.
We absolutely can use Blackstone to boost more units, by having him train the magical girls rather than merely command singular units of them. It's literally an option he has. Sp that point is also outright false.

FullNothingness · Sep 11, 2016

Dark Abstraction said:
It was an investment that has already been paid out, in the form of a tremendous amount of funding provided to us for taking them in.

Yeah, that was what I said we got from them...

We weighed the risks building them housing and decided it was worth it, rather than making them sleep outside and potentially die in great numbers; I see no downside here.

Building all that housing is still a downside even if you think the resources were worth it. We spent our most valuable actions on it for months.

We have not researched anything that we would not otherwise have researched, that point is outright false.

Space magic was researched pretty much entirely because of the magical girl situation.

We absolutely can use Blackstone to boost more units, by having him train the magical girls rather than merely command singular units of them. It's literally an option he has. Sp that point is also outright false.

He can't join more units though... Anyways that comment was on usefulness of the girls in our recent conflict which was pretty much entirely due to him.

As for the training... Did you review the stats it gives? Even trained magical girls are not great combat troops.

7734 · Sep 11, 2016

FullNothingness said:
Eating up all those actions is a big investment. We also damaged our base defenses for it and researched tech we might not have otherwise.

And I never questioned why they became attached to him... I just said their combat effectiveness hinged on him. And we only have one of him, we can't use him to boost more units.

Yeah... I'm going to politely ask you to please moderate your posts in the future. For tech, that statement is garbage- none of your researches since you got the girls have affected them in any way. Space Expansion Magic was developed to get more slots for regular units, not the girls in specific.

For the Base Assault, surprise, they happen. There was no correlation between the girls and the assault. None.

Dark Abstraction said:
We weighed the risks building them housing and decided it was worth it, rather than making them sleep outside and potentially die in great numbers; I see no downside here.

This statement is erronus- while temporary housing they are, the zemlyankas are adequate housing for year-round occupation in Siberia if constructed correctly. Considering who built them, they were overbuilt by a large margin. The only reason they're not actually permanent housing is due to the fact they don't have dedicated personal hygiene facilities, attached food handling areas, or a telephone line to the intra-base communications system. That could all have easily been fixed if somebody had said "These sound pretty nice, can we make them permanent housing?" to which the answer would have been "Yes, that's a good write-in."

Ferretshock · Sep 11, 2016

7734 said:
Yeah... I'm going to politely ask you to please moderate your posts in the future. For tech, that statement is garbage- none of your researches since you got the girls have affected them in any way. Space Expansion Magic was developed to get more slots for regular units, not the girls in specific.

For the Base Assault, surprise, they happen. There was no correlation between the girls and the assault. None.

This statement is erronus- while temporary housing they are, the zemlyankas are adequate housing for year-round occupation in Siberia if constructed correctly. Considering who built them, they were overbuilt by a large margin. The only reason they're not actually permanent housing is due to the fact they don't have dedicated personal hygiene facilities, attached food handling areas, or a telephone line to the intra-base communications system. That could all have easily been fixed if somebody had said "These sound pretty nice, can we make them permanent housing?" to which the answer would have been "Yes, that's a good write-in."

P@rt of the problem with the latter train of thought is that a) most of us probably mentally equated them to GP MEDIUM tents, and b) of the list, only the lavatory is actuallynnecessary for permanent habitation.

Dark Abstraction · Sep 11, 2016

7734 said:
This statement is erronus- while temporary housing they are, the zemlyankas are adequate housing for year-round occupation in Siberia if constructed correctly. Considering who built them, they were overbuilt by a large margin. The only reason they're not actually permanent housing is due to the fact they don't have dedicated personal hygiene facilities, attached food handling areas, or a telephone line to the intra-base communications system. That could all have easily been fixed if somebody had said "These sound pretty nice, can we make them permanent housing?" to which the answer would have been "Yes, that's a good write-in."

It is not erroneous, it's perfectly accurate. I said we built the zemlyankas because we didn't want the magical girls to have to sleep outside and die of exposure. That they're impermanent and negatively effect base defense either didn't factor in or was considered an ignorable concern. They provide shelter to people that needed shelter, and were more viable than building enough barracks would have been.

FullNothingness · Sep 11, 2016

7734 said:
Yeah... I'm going to politely ask you to please moderate your posts in the future. For tech, that statement is garbage- none of your researches since you got the girls have affected them in any way. Space Expansion Magic was developed to get more slots for regular units, not the girls in specific.

Which we needed because the girls kept filling up barrack space... Apparently there was another way to handle that but we didn't do that.

Also we are doing magical girl study right now... If that is not because of the girls I don't know what is.

For the Base Assault, surprise, they happen. There was no correlation between the girls and the assault. None.

I never said there was?

7734 · Sep 11, 2016

Ferretshock said:
P@rt of the problem with the latter train of thought is that a) most of us probably mentally equated them to GP MEDIUM tents, and b) of the list, only the lavatory is actuallynnecessary for permanent habitation.

...

...

...

When I described their construction, I said that they were a basement-style foundation with a wood ceiling with quite literally several tons of dirt on top as insulation and roofing.

HOW ON GODS GREEN EARTH DOES THIS SOUND LIKE A TENT?

I have lived for the better part of a year in dirt-roof buildings and almost two in tents. There is literally nothing similar! One of them is practically a house! One of them was wood and canvas held together by a Brown Recluse spider I had to evict from my boots every morning and the other was practically a house! If it wasn't heated by a couple of fat lamps, it would have been one!

[/RANT]

veekie · Sep 11, 2016

7734 said:
...

...

...

When I described their construction, I said that they were a basement-style foundation with a wood ceiling with quite literally several tons of dirt on top as insulation and roofing.

HOW ON GODS GREEN EARTH DOES THIS SOUND LIKE A TENT?

I have lived for the better part of a year in dirt-roof buildings and almost two in tents. There is literally nothing similar! One of them is practically a house! One of them was wood and canvas held together by a Brown Recluse spider I had to evict from my boots every morning and the other was practically a house! If it wasn't heated by a couple of fat lamps, it would have been one!

[/RANT]

Communications issues, because that was loosely the impression I got too.

May be a basic difference in starting point, since it's not like most of us know what living in one is like.

Random Tale · Sep 11, 2016

...

*sigh*

How about we get to the next update, and put this conversation behind us before it completely consumes the thread, hmm?

7734 · Sep 11, 2016

veekie said:
Communications issues, because that was loosely the impression I got too.

May be a basic difference in starting point, since it's not like most of us know what living in one is like.

Point, point. I've got a, lets say broad, spectrum of experiance to draw on for writing.

Random Tale said:
How about we get to the next update, and put this conversation behind us before it completely consumes the thread, hmm?

Hahaha...

That presumes the next update has much done on it. I've got rolls done, and that's about it.

Alfa290 · Sep 13, 2016

Hi guys, I'm new to the quest but I wanted to pitch in my two cents on what we should be planning for. The entire purpose for us being in Great Britain is to re-establish diplomatic ties with the British MoM, protect American interests in the region, and act as a staging point for magical forces in Europe. We've also picked up a position as a refuge/asylum location.

We have access to US military support, why not get some support staff from the Army or Air Force to streamline the supply chain, supply management, and admin duties? Also, we could get a team of Engineers that will be continually building up defenses and new structures. Preferably they'll start with lining the perimeter with concrete retaining walls that can be reinforced with runes and putting in watch towers, an entry control point/main gate, and build bunkers/hardened structures for our non-combatants to hide in if we're attacked again.

Another team to pick up would be a diplomatic team to officially establish relations with the British magical population. Our cafe front could possibly have the "embassy" attached to it allowing our agents in the shop to pick up more information from passing Ministry workers.

As for magical research, I'm on the fence between Algonquin Native American, Blood Magic, and New England. They have good points so it's mostly a question of which one suits our needs best. Algonquin would make our units more durable allowing us to hold on to our more experienced units slightly more easily. Blood Magic is more of an equipment buff at level 2 if I read the description right. And New England is good for being prepared and for the improved recovery time. So Algonquin -> New England -> Blood might be a good research chain to improve unit survivability.

FullNothingness · Sep 13, 2016

Alfa290 said:
Hi guys, I'm new to the quest but I wanted to pitch in my two cents on what we should be planning for. The entire purpose for us being in Great Britain is to re-establish diplomatic ties with the British MoM, protect American interests in the region, and act as a staging point for magical forces in Europe. We've also picked up a position as a refuge/asylum location.

We have access to US military support, why not get some support staff from the Army or Air Force to streamline the supply chain, supply management, and admin duties? Also, we could get a team of Engineers that will be continually building up defenses and new structures. Preferably they'll start with lining the perimeter with concrete retaining walls that can be reinforced with runes and putting in watch towers, an entry control point/main gate, and build bunkers/hardened structures for our non-combatants to hide in if we're attacked again.

Another team to pick up would be a diplomatic team to officially establish relations with the British magical population. Our cafe front could possibly have the "embassy" attached to it allowing our agents in the shop to pick up more information from passing Ministry workers.

As for magical research, I'm on the fence between Algonquin Native American, Blood Magic, and New England. They have good points so it's mostly a question of which one suits our needs best. Algonquin would make our units more durable allowing us to hold on to our more experienced units slightly more easily. Blood Magic is more of an equipment buff at level 2 if I read the description right. And New England is good for being prepared and for the improved recovery time. So Algonquin -> New England -> Blood might be a good research chain to improve unit survivability.

I don't think we are actually a diplomatic mission... So no embassies, official or not. We are here clandestinely.

I do like the idea of getting some engineers to build and fortify our stuff. If nothing else it would be a lot easier to maintain secrecy that way since our alternative is hiring people to do the work.

As for the magic... I believe we have more priorities than unit durability. Especially given what it sounds like Blood magic would cost us there. New England should get us that in addition to several other benefits though.

An American Mage in Wizarding Britan (HP AU)

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