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Bound to Earth: A CK2 Earthbound Quest in an 8-bit Dystopia

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Faction Founding: Final Part
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    • FACTION FOUNDING: FINAL PART​

    You know what methodology you'll use, you know what name you'll be called and what flag will bare. There is much to still decide about your faction...but that must come through your actions, not simply your choices. Yet all groups have a founding basis, a tenet, a personality of sorts to them. Once that is decided, things can truly begin...

    Starting Org. Trait:

    Organizations, much like characters, can possess traits. Starting out your organization will only have one, but as you develop, grow, and make choices, your faction will gain more. Please vote on what trait you'd like your faction to start with.

    [] Thuggish: It's not that they're any better trained, simply that they're better motivated. That or they're trying to mimic how you act. Martial Checks involve mobilizing the manpower of your faction in attacks, riots, or similarly offensive actions gain a +10 bonus.

    [] Critical Thinkers: Don't focus on always being right, just learn from when you're wrong. Should a research or engineering related Learning Action end in failure, a +10 bonus will be granted to the following re-attempt. This bonus is increased to +20 if it's a SMAAASH Failure.

    [] Self-Supplying: They're very self-sufficient, money minded- Okay, no. They're looting. They're very good at looting. Any Funds requirements for actions involving purchases, supplies, materials, or compensated work can be waved at the cost of an equivalent hit to Reputation.

    [] Community Minded: You of all people know how someone is viewed effects everything, the others seem to be grasping onto that too. Whenever your faction receives positive Reputation they receive +2 additional rep. Whenever you damage another faction's reputation, or a faction is put into a poor light by your actions, any negative reputation they receive will be increased by +5.

    [] Discrete: Can't get blamed for something you're not seen doing, right? The cap for Suspicion is increased by +10, giving greater leeway for reckless action or mistakes.

    [] Psychic Gravity: Your faction subconsciously attracts those with PSI abilities, much like a celestial body draws in meteors into its gravity. A small fraction of your faction's starting manpower are very weak non-Hero PSI users. This allows your faction to take certain PSI related actions immediately that would otherwise require time or research. However this might make you more prone to raising suspicion.

    New Mechanics!

    Suspicion: You are going to be waging a secret war against a genocidal alien plot. It was made abundantly clear to you by Buzz Buzz that should the truth of this become known, the Big 3 will attempt to intervene in such a heavy handed manner that the end result would be more destructive then anything Giygas could dream of. As such you must balance your efforts to stop Giygas with avoiding raising suspicions in the public.

    Suspicion has a minimum of 0 and caps at 100.

    Suspicion is raised when rumors, reports, or outright evidence of PSI, aliens, or abnormal activities spreads. Openly using PSI powers, sightings of aliens, and other such actions can raise Suspicion.

    At every 20 points of Suspicion as 'Suspicious Action' will occur, denoting the notice of one of the Big 3. These still start out small, and escalate.

    Should Suspicion reach 100, there may be grave consequences.

    However Suspicion decreases at a rate of -1 point per turn and can be further decreased by taking certain actions that intentionally hide the truth, muddy superstitious rumors with mundane explanations, or simply distract the public or discredit the idea anything is wrong.
    Reputation: Reputation is a general measure of how the public does, or will, see your faction. 0 is neutral, -100 is utterly reviled, and +100 is beloved by all. Your faction's reputation can increase, or decrease depending on actions taken or events that occur. How loved or hated your faction is can effect a variety of things.

    Individual Faction Reputation: However, general rep doesn't govern all. Individual Factions may have a view of you that is divorced from your general reputation. Possibly liking you more or less based on a variety of factors such as your ideology, superficial appearances, or past deeds with them. Some factions may forever irrationally hate you, while others can potentially be worked into the good graces of, or start off as surprisingly welcoming.
    The final stretch. I'll give you all till Tuesday, 6 PM EST to talk things out. Then voting begins.
     
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    • Psychic Gravity looks fun and zany, but Community Minded looks maximum Like A Dragon and helps us dig out way out of the massive rep hit we took by not being Corporate.

    I must meditate on this.
     
    I am torn between Psychic Gravity (because it's fun) and Community Minded. All of the options are good mind, but those are the two that stand out to me right now.

    Discrete could also be very good because the last thing we need is a bunch of corps butting in but after a certain point I'd like to kick their teeth in so maybe not.
     
    My instincts draw me immediately towards Community Minded. Because it fits pretty well with CD wanting to do good by her community, and the themes we have tried for in the previous turns.
     
    Oh I like this. I like this a looooooot. Reputation is pretty standard, opinion going up and down depending on what we do, while Suspicion is (to my knowledge) unique to this Quest. We gotta keep that low

    All of the traits seem very good in different ways. I'm chewing on those for a bit

    Thuggish seems like it would give us an edge in combat initially. Combined with CD's high starting Martial we could get a +24 (26? Not sure if the Baseball bat counts for faction rolls) which is pretty good for just starting out.

    Critical Thinkers is entirely dependent on our learning and research. On one hand, it might go turns at a time without doing anything. On the other hand, +10 after a failure would be a pretty big bonus. It would basically prime us to never fail twice

    Self-Supplying is kind of a short-term gain, long-term loss sort of ability. I fear that it would result in us rapidly tanking our reputation, but being able to shortcut any Funds check would give us a huge speed advantage.

    I want Community Minded I think. I just see it and I'm like. Yes. I want it. I want people to have positive thoughts about C.D. and Community Minded is a path to that.

    Discrete doesn't do much of anything directly but, keeping things on the down low is incredibly important. Having a little more room for error is always good, just not an exciting ability.

    Psychic Gravity is the other one that calls to me. Finding other psychics and more people to train up would be great, though the suspicion is worth mentioning as a downside, and no one said they had to be good psychics.

    (Also since I'm playing with colors let me just say that I hate that the darker side of the color set is basically off the table because this website's standard is dark mode)
     
    I'm torn between Community Minded and Psychic Gravity, with a slight lean towards the former. Thuggish would also synergize super well with CD's high martial.
     
    Thuggish would mean we make one of our main specializations even stronger. An additional +10 towards offensive actions isn't small, especially at the start, but even later on.
     
    I kinda like Self-Sufficient, actually.

    "And where exactly did you get the funds for free healthcare?"
    "We stole them, obviously."

    It is a very 'Young hooligans' trait in that sense.

    In a more meta-sense, it would also push us towards Reputation-gaining actions. Since every point of Reputation we do get would also double as emergency funding.
     
    I like Community Minded A LOT, and Psychic Gravity too. Discrete is alright too, if bit less enticing than the first two. Hate Self-Supplying description and dislike Thuggish too a bit - let's be Lawful Good "criminals" and not take these particular things?

    Critical Thinkers could be pretty great down the line, but Community Minded, Psychic Gravity or even Discrete beats it at the moment - the Org is not very established and would need a less specialized bonus.

    Community Minded it is for me, but I would want Critical Thinkers and Psychic Gravity in future.
     
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    Honestly I'm liking community minded less for the rep gain, and more for the ability to wreck our opponents reputations.

    We can see from how the OPF have been acting just how important rep gain is for giving you room to get away with actions. Same with how the stewardship trait would let us use rep as a kind of fund pool. Being able to deal even more damage on that front could really hinder some of our opposition

    I'd also like psychic gravity and thuggish, but atm, I think we're already a few points up on the suspicion meter due to some of our actions and our battle with Starman awful protagonist Jaeger. Thuggish would be nice for the martial bonus, but we've got some help there via Kyouko, Buzz Buzz, and our sporty trait, so it feels less pressing to get even more martial bonuses.
     
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    Much like everyone else here, I'm torn between Community Minded and Psychic Gravity.

    Community Minded gives us both a better positive reputation, which is important with the sheer amount of heroes that will be showing up soon. Don't want some 'protect the people' Hero to leap on us without thinking it through first.

    Psychic Gravity lets us lean into our factions semi-unique trait of PSI, which would be nice if we wanted to specialise in being an outside-context problem for the other, more robotics focused, factions.
     
    Torn between Community MInded and Discrete, leaning Community Minded. Criminal or no, CD has a good heart, and rep gain is something I think we're gonna focus on hard early on. Picking a Criminal Org means we sorta have to.
     
    Yeah, much as I want Psychic Gravity, Community Minded leans hardest in our foundational "Delinquent Face, Heroic Heart" Trait.
     
    Also want Community Minded, makes the Rep game easier and fits C.D. narratively too.

    Alectai said:
    but Community Minded looks maximum Like A Dragon and helps us dig out way out of the massive rep hit we took by not being Corporate.
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    We already have a cool bat like Ichiban so we may as well go all the way.

    (If we did go corporate though we could've gone the Real Estate route to also go Like A Dragon).
     
    IronBig21 said:
    Also want Community Minded, makes the Rep game easier and fits C.D. narratively too.



    We already have a cool bat like Ichiban so we may as well go all the way.

    (If we did go corporate though we could've gone the Real Estate route to also go Like A Dragon).
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    I mean, nothing stopped Ichiban from becoming a multibillionaire while being a hobo off the streets.

    (Of course, he lost all that money paying for all the collateral damage caused in his antics, but who's counting?)
     
    Right now, Community Minded, Discrete, and Psychic Gravity seem like the best options, it just depends on what kind of organization we want to aim for.
    • Community Minded would be the ideal choice if we want to focus on building up the organization and its resources. There will be a bit of a hump early on as we have to actually put the work in to gain that rep and reduce our enemies, but it's probably the most reliable option for a solid mid-late game powerhouse once we get the ball rolling.
    • Discrete is just a bit of extra leeway, but it would mean that we could afford to play high-risk high-reward if something came up that looked worth it. Useful pretty much whenever, but it's a static buff rather than a ramping one.
    • Psychic Gravity is the mystery box option. It can let us rapidly explore our unique benefits and potentially offers a level of capability and versatility that would otherwise take a long time to develop. However, that would also make us stand out, so we'd have to choose between trying to control the narrative enough that we keep a lid on the news or carefully managing our actions and units to avoid setting anything off. I'd describe this as the best choice for early-game, but how well it carries over into later parts or if it becomes an outright liability depends a lot on how we play our cards.
     
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    I think one of the big advantages of the Community Minded skill is that it's something that applies every rep gain.

    That would make it easier for us to endure hits to our reputation - Lets say we get three instances of +5 to our reputation, and then a small incident happens and causes us to lose 5:

    Normally: 5+5+5 -5 = 15 -5 = 10

    But with community Mindset: 5 +2 +5 +2 +5 +2 -5 = 15 +6 -5= 16

    Those bonuses effectively give us enough of a buffer zone to counter the repuation loss. Even if the decrease was by -10, you'd still be one point above where you'd be normally.

    Given the situation, I think that might be almost as useful as it helping out with the rep malus. It means when we do improve our reputation, it's harder for others to undo the work that we've put into it.
     
    ooh, lot of interesting options. looks these are mostly situational bonuses, so we might want to go for the one likely to be the most relevant?
    initially I'm thinking that the learning, diplomacy, intrigue or ESP perks are the most worthwhile

    learning is good because progressing in tech trees like that is often one of the best ways to expand our options and this will help us here, especially with high priority high DC actions. now normally if we fail a action that's wasted resources and thus should be avoided, it feels like with our lower resources/big challenges high DC actions are more likely to be relevant, and often research actions aren't incredibly time-sensitive (meaning we're more free to take high risk high reward actions). this would help a lot when it comes to major projects and make focusing on important things way easier
    @Crosswire , will the DC reduction stack if it's failed multiple turns in a row?

    diplomacy would help us a bunch with leveraging PR, especially offensively. not sure how often we'd be able to do this, but it might open viable avenues to attack forces that we can't challenge directly, such as influential corps. since the reputation game is going to be hard due to our disadvantages (and we probably shouldn't neglect it entirely) this stands out as a perk that could be important for tipping the scales. if we pick this, it'd probably become way easier to keep regular people/low ranking members of other factions from getting complacent, since we can more effectively publish any info we find of alien collaborators/foul play. (harder for organisations to get away with stuff, and people are less likely to agitate for police to stop us/report activities they see us do)

    intrigue may be minor, but it's completely passive (applies regardless of the situation) and gives us some leeway and possible narrative benefits like decreasing other negative consequences if our faction members are better at avoiding people. might not be as big as others, but it's also really cool :)
    it doesn't decrease the rate suspicion goes up though, so might not necessarily help us in the action economy? (like we'd still need to do the same actions to decrease suspicion if it gets high, just a bit later.)

    ESP is probably the strongest perk so if people aren't directly against it we may want to go for it? could feasibly give an advantage in all areas, especially when it comes to increasing our force projection(so this does what martial does and more). ESP is a field other human factions lack right now, so could be a big leg up? plus it could save us actions that we'd otherwise spend recruiting people capable of ESP, and as a plus mean other factions are less likely to get espers/espers we end up creating coincidentally are more likely to join us
    while it has a negative side effect, it doesn't seem like we'd nescesarily trigger it too.

    not interested in martial because while it's a strong bonus it's also very one-note/requires direct action, and bonuses for this stat are probably easier to get in other ways? actions such as training, equipping, setting traps etc are relatively simple compared to others if our members are motivated enough
    particularly uninterested in stewardship because it isn't always relevant, has a direct negative costs us and we'd probably want to have reliable access to resources anyhow?
    ---​

    all in all, I guess the real question is: are we able to make use of community minded's opportunities for increasing our rep/lowering that of others? as brought up by @The3rdCorinthian , the perk stands out if we're making lots of small actions that increase reputation(since each get increased by a flat amount. we're probably doing this anyhow, but that (and especially reputation attacks on other factions) would be taking actions (probably intrigue/diplomacy). these might be better spent elsewhere? or at least, it's possible the boost to their effectiveness is less than the boost of some other perks in different fields, or that we might not be particularly able to make full use of reputation boosting/lowering actions due to the cost of the actions being too high/a lack of opportunity to take them.

    if that ends up being particularly bad, something like discrete or Psychic Gravity (which are passive) may be kinder on our action economy

    definitely a tough decision! might be best to get something we can't get later on, for example maybe it'd be possible to take pre-emptive suspicion lowering actions/train faction members to be more inconspicuous to get an effect like discrete without a perk, even if it's less effective?
     
    The3rdCorinthian said:
    Honestly I'm liking community minded less for the rep gain, and more for the ability to wreck our opponents reputations.

    We can see from how the OPF have been acting just how important rep gain is for giving you room to get away with actions. Same with how the stewardship trait would let us use rep as a kind of fund pool. Being able to deal even more damage on that front could really hinder some of our opposition
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    To shill further for the Community-Minded - that quote above.

    Not only Community-Minded would work defensively, it would be also an attack tool against other orgs. Delegitimizing their actions (meaning, other characters would less support their activities), legitimizing Outfielders' actions against them (meaning, those same onlookers would positively look at those actions and maybe even support a bit) and so on.

    Very versatile thing.

    Also I expect it would make things (like further options available) more interesting narratively.
     
    hleghe said:
    as brought up by @The3rdCorinthian , the perk stands out if we're making lots of small actions that increase reputation(since each get increased by a flat amoun
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    Size of the action doesn't matter. I just used small numbers to make it easier to understand.

    That would be useful to greatly increase rep over a short period of time, but unless we end up in a rep-war with someone, it's not necessarily that crucial. The advantage as I see it is that it's for EVERY rep gain. Regular rep actions net us some further rep that help to stack the deck further in our favour as time goes on.

    Over the course of a longer timeframe, that small but constant added drip of rep would shift things further and further in our favour.
     
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