... Amanda is Red Rose I presume. I really want to do that mission now, so much potential history to uncover.
Honestly? I'm really looking forward to writing out Soul Collector. That entire mission is going to delve into the time before the Goddess Four hit the top of the list, and who the Old Guard were. Their achievements, their story, and how it all went wrong for them.... Amanda is Red Rose I presume. I really want to do that mission now, so much potential history to uncover.
My take on this is the feeling of "Someone else's story" is in full swing here. It would be interesting to explore but it feels disconnected from the other things that are going on in the quest.Artemis I'm a bit torn on writing because while it reveals a lot more of whats happening between Gaia and Shiva, you guys haven't really had much of an interest of those events. Sure, they're important, but due to lack of interest has me unsure of how I'm going to do them.
He was only able to tag her twice with his Libras spell.@crystalwatcher, I'm seeing a slight issue. Shouldn't have Samael also gotten a Fire Affinity spell, since he managed to get Conquest and Legend Spells of Sixth Heaven?
Which is reasonable. It was meant to be the main story line if you guys went independent and hooked up with Gaia down the line.My take on this is the feeling of "Someone else's story" is in full swing here. It would be interesting to explore but it feels disconnected from the other things that are going on in the quest.
Yup.... Amanda is Red Rose I presume. I really want to do that mission now, so much potential history to uncover.
She did, but she's kind of broken between having a breakdown of being in a fight so far above her league its comedic, and trying to find as much Solid Core and Judgement Core merchandise as she can.And Didn't MECA Force get XP? She probably did, by it wasn't stated.
...oh why not? Sure, I'd like to.
Go for it.So who all wants to see something horrible?
She did, but she's kind of broken between having a breakdown of being in a fight so far above her league its comedic, and trying to find as much Solid Core and Judgement Core merchandise as she can.
Michele is her younger to be precise. More in the mission.
If we return to base, it would be better to not buy extra levels of Celestial Severance yet. Practicing Synchronize will result in Nepgear learning a lot of new spells, and we'll probably want to get all of those to at least level 5 before our next mission.[X] Plan Upgrade
[X] Return to Base
Looks like we DO have time to practice our skills first. We NEED to get the collateral damage under control ASAP.
When you guys go to sleep, it's at a time where you'll get the best rest. (Nepgear's reliable like that.)@crystalwatcher does sleeping at night use up base actions, and if so, how many actions is a good rest?
The Difficulty is the summary of how fucked the Allies are going in on their own. If anything does go wrong, it'll be within at least one difficulty change. So maybe a raise to "Medium". The next day will show the current difficulty if anything went wrong or not.I kinda want everyone to be fully rested and trained up before Operation: Artemis, because despite looking like a really easy mission, it's possibly the most dangerous mission on the entire list if anything goes wrong.
This is a mission we have to leave for a while. As awesome as we are we just can't fight the Army of the Apocalypse yet. Going by these numbers:[] The Road to Elysium (Operation: Charon)
It was the greatest portal Humanity has ever made. A permanently open gateway to Hope, with a two-way highway twenty lanes wide. Thousands moved through it daily, both ways. Rush hour was a bitch, but we didn't care. It was a monument to our future, a symbol of what awaited us all... but now it lays dormant. That cannot stand. The Highway to Elysium needs to be reopened, but doing so presents a risk that we can't reasonably take without proper preparation. We need forces, a lot of forces... and we know exactly where to get them.Difficulty: Low. No foreseen problems cropping up.The Fairy-Elf Fortress at Milidia has been all that's held Earth's flank ever since Reluxus fell. Forty thousand Elves, Ten Thousand Fairies, and nearly an entire division of Human soldiers hold it against an endless tide of raving demons. But its true strength lies in the more than fifty Magical Girls that man its walls and turrets. It's a concentration of power that has held Hell itself at bay for half a decade now, but we need those Girls if we're going to retake Hope. But we can't leave Milidia undefended, otherwise the Fairy Home Realms will be overwhelmed. So we're going to insert a strike team to close the Hell Gates that feed the Unified Darkness reinforcements and rip their legs out from beneath them in one move. But it's not going to be easy.
Launch Date: Day 26
Known Allies: Crimson Hood, Flawless Paladin, Sumire Saber, Sakura Saber, Madama Morte
Confirmed Enemies: Hell's Seventh Legion
Possible Combatants: Army of the Apocalypse
We'd need Starshine Level 28 to scratch the army, without factoring in whatever new abilities we'd get. At 4 castings per turn Level 34 would be the point at which we could eliminate the army in a single turn.the Army of the Apocalypse, aka Goddess Reds personal summoned army. Fighting that is a horrifying prospect, as we know she summons 1d30,000 per casting, and at one per turn, which is 10 seconds, that means that with an entire hour dedicated to summoning her troops, she'd have around 5,400,000 Spawn of Chaos.
Even with the Hostile Divinity and Purification, we're looking at a total Resilience of 842,400,000, which is 5.5 times what Starshine at level 20 would do. And even if it picks up something like Juggernaut, the army would have a Health of 8,100,000,000, and we need to reduce that to 0, or none of the army dies.
Definitely a high priority. We want to clear out Reluxus ASAP since it drains a massive amount of Hell's forces. Seriously they only have eleven Legions and if sufficiently successful we could eliminate three of them. The problem is each of those Legions clocks in at around three billion demons. So we'd have to[] The Reluxus Super Gate (Operation: High Tide)
The Elves' Super Gates create a trans-dimensional super-highway that allows them to move resources and manpower across their kingdom at a rate that is nearly equal to Humanity. The problem is that there are very few of them, and they are nearly prohibitively expensive to build. Reluxus, before it's fall, had the only Super Gate the Elvin Empire had at the battle front. If they are to bring their full might to bear against the Darkness, this Gate must be retaken.Difficulty: Extreme. Do you even have to ask?The Elves are unable to build a new Super Gate in time for the Offensive, even with the aid of Humanity. So if they are to help pull this insane plan off, the Reluxus Gate must be reopened. Otherwise, the Unified Light will drown underneath the sheer numbers their enemies can bring to bear in their place.
Launch Date: Day 40
Known Allies: Variable. (Currently: Carnage, White Knight, Goddess White)
Known Enemies: Hell's Second Legion, Hell's Third Legion, Hell's Fourth Legion, The Fortress of Tears
Possible Combatants: ????
We just took down one old-timey legend so deploying against the others does make sense. Nepgear and Co are probably one of the few groups out there who can handle former Top Tens aside from current Top Tens like Red Rose. So it's quite logical for us to be deployed to assist her in hunting them down. What's more this also presents a golden opportunity to both build rep, not that Nepgear and Co are lacking in that, and play a significant role in the buildup to the war. Where Red Rose can, probably, only rekill these girls we can potentially recover them. Denying an enemy valuable assets by taking them for yourself is one of the most basic and successful strategies in war.[] The Victorious Dead (Operation: Soul Collector)
Do you remember the Old Guard? They were the first. The Originals. It was their era that gave birth to the List, the Rankings. Some of them are still around, but others are long dead... and even today some of their names are still known household by household. Whispered in awed reverence, or with a tremor of fear. White Soul, Red Rose, Sixth Heaven, Silver Hero... Before the Goddess Four. Before the WEAPON. Before the Maidens... They were the legends, the names that everyone feared coming across on the battlefield. And they're coming back.Difficulty: Unknown. Possibly VariableTeam GEAR's run-in with Goddess Red at the West Wall Memorial Cemetery brought to light a very disturbing fact. The dead aren't staying that way. And their clash against the Nightmares in Boston revealed something even worse: they're not on our side. We've collected lists of where some of the most terrifying Girls of their times had been interred for their eternal rest. Most of them have already been hit. Red Rose is on the move, hunting down old friends, and enemies alike. She has her apprentice with her, but we're not sure if she can do it alone. Even if she is the Avatar of Victory.
Launch Date: Day 27
Known Allies: Red Rose, Insight, ????
Confirmed Enemies: White Soul, Silver Hero, Grey Champion, Solar Radiance, Lunar Radiance
Possible Combatants: Goddess Red, ????
Honestly this mission suffers from us not taking Operation Whoopass. We learned about Gaia, her WEAPONs, Sil-Shiva, and their Maidens all in one mission. Since then there just hasn't been much build up or info on them, even though we took the Gaia interlude. So this mission has us jumping into a conflict we're fairly uninvolved with, our only connection is the fact Nepgear keeps what little stuff she has on Earth, with no idea what is going on.[] The Pale Light of The Moon (Operation: Artemis)
Can you hear the whispers? The voices of the beasts upon the wind? They whisper of hate, and a desire for the end. To be alone in the cosmos with the one they love.Difficulty: Low. Unlikely anything is going to go wrong.Something is happening between Gaia and Shiva. And no one has a clue what it is. Their last clash would have ended in failure if it wasn't for Team RIOT's intervention, but they were almost killed regardless. The girls of any strength capable of standing amongst these gods are few and far between, but we need someone on the ground, with eyes and ears capable of telling us what's happening.
Launch Date: Day 25
Known Allies: The Four Horse(wo)men
Confirmed Enemies: ????
Possible Combatants: Gaia's WEAPONs, Maidens of the Apocalypse
it lets Nepgear summon a servant of whatever being is behind the ???? Core. I would say avatar except an Emissary is a messenger. Still just because they are a messenger doesn't mean they aren't strong; after all Gabriel is often portrayed God's messenger.Wrath of the Gods (Pending) - Dedicated kill-teams for casting Warbook: METEOR upon fortified enemy positions. Allows the Fairy Forces to summon an Emissary of Mistilin to the field.
Given the important of Celestial Severance (killing hard to kill foes) has on our next mission, Starshine (killing armies) has on our future missions, as well as the increased defense and offense of high speed flight/combat (too fast to hit/too fast to block) plus the utility of improved ICORE when dealing with high level foes I propose we get a modified version of this list:1) Flight Level 20 (1,350xp)
Nepgear is very well off damage wise with Purifier Beam, Celestial Severance, and Starshine. Speed wise however she is still rather slow since the Demon Summoners could outrun her. While Level 20 is an awfully big jump it's an important once because it takes Nepgear out of the range of what HSC 2 can detect. That makes Nepgear maneuverable enough, since her flight is Boosted, that almost no one can hit her.
2) Purifier Beam Level 20 (850xp)
Level 20 Purifier Beam means a Base Damage of 43,606. That is an insane amount of damage. For reference:
Considering Apocalypse is already described as:
that sorta damage is crazy.
Grabbing this ASAP is important because Nepgear already knows she has splash damage issues so it's better to start on the higher damage soon so she can learn to get a hold of it faster.
Furthermore since Nepgear's ability to cast spells is tied to her Attacks Per Turn Level 20 is extra important since that's when she unlocks her fifth APT. Oh and Purifier Beam probably gains Faith as an Affinity or another ability.
3) Celestial Severance Level 15 (600xp)
On average Celestial Severance deals ~100k damage per swing when Double Cast and Echo are factored in. This is good but Starshine deals 32k on normal mode and 16.2 million on Anti-Army mode. By bringing up Celestial Severance's level we increase it's average damage, including Double Cast and Echo, to around 3.7 million which is more in line with the "Fuck you and everyone else in your direction" spells Top Ten girls tend to have. Plus as you've seen from Purifier Beam above and Starshine below Celestial Severance needs the level boost to avoid becoming redundant.
4) Starshine Level 15 (600xp)
Let me just say it: Literal Skyfalling Damage. 2,246 Base Damage equates to 100,824 after Rain of Light and Quadra-Magic. Against armies, who would be foolish enough to field such a thing against Nepgear, we're talking 1.25x Brahmastra damage at 50.4 million damage.
5) INDESTRUCTIBLE CORE Level 16 (750xp)
I've demonstrated the math before but Level 16 ICORE raises Nepgear's effective NST to 8,976 which lets her ignore almost every attack out there. It also means that anyone who can bypass that needs to deal at least 630,000 damage per turn just to keep Nepgear from regenerating away the damage. An attack aimed at actually killing her in a single blow her must fall into the 841,700+ damage range.
All of that is if they are lucky enough to attack her in the opening round of combat. After three turns of building up Health, because so little can injure her, Nepgear would stand at 13,650 Health, 2,730,000 Effective Health, 15,213 NST, and still be gaining 630,000 Health per turn.
What's most crazy about all this is that the total XP count for those upgrades comes to just:
1,350 + 850 + 600 + 600 + 750 = 4,150XP
It's alright. Tempers were running high across the board, so no hard feelings.Right I'm back sorry about before crystalwatcher. My night had gone straight to shit and I got out of control. Sorry about that.
I always love when you do this.
This is why I love having a Shepard Quest Vet like you here Uber. Your math is greeeeeat.This is a mission we have to leave for a while. As awesome as we are we just can't fight the Army of the Apocalypse yet. Going by these numbers:
We'd need Starshine Level 28 to scratch the army, without factoring in whatever new abilities we'd get. At 4 castings per turn Level 34 would be the point at which we could eliminate the army in a single turn.
Starshine Level 28 is 3,510xp away and Level 34 is 5,400xp away. Which admittedly with our new rapid XP growth isn't unreasonable but it's definitely not something we can afford anytime soon.
Definitely a high priority. We want to clear out Reluxus ASAP since it drains a massive amount of Hell's forces. Seriously they only have eleven Legions and if sufficiently successful we could eliminate three of them. The problem is each of those Legions clocks in at around three billion demons. So we'd have tokill six billion demonskill nine billion demons.
Yet another case where a high level in Starshine is a priority. If we assume Hell's Legions consist primarily of Hell's Soldiers and Hell's Ground Commanders and further assume that there is one Commander per Company (~200 soldiers given the size of Hell's armies) then each Legion should have 15,000,000 Commanders and 2,985,000,000 Soldiers. Combined that gives:
Base Resilience: 15,000,000 * 100 + 2,985,000,000 * 50 = 150,750,000,000which would require Starshine Level 51 to scratch and Level 58 to kill in one turn, barring all the abilities that would unlock. Fortunately we'd only need Level 51 since unlike the Army of the Apocalypse they die as we kill them which makes the Legion as a whole weaker. Factoring that in and at Level 51 it would take 75 castings for a total of 19 turns or about three minutes of sustained bombardment.
Health: 15,000,000 * 1,500 + 2,985,000,000 * 750 = 2,261,250,000,000
Still given that Level 51 requires 12,710xp and Level 58 15,980xp it would probably be worth the extra ~3k xp just to cutdown on time.
We just took down one old-timey legend so deploying against the others does make sense. Nepgear and Co are probably one of the few groups out there who can handle former Top Tens aside from current Top Tens like Red Rose. So it's quite logical for us to be deployed to assist her in hunting them down. What's more this also presents a golden opportunity to both build rep, not that Nepgear and Co are lacking in that, and play a significant role in the buildup to the war. Where Red Rose can, probably, only rekill these girls we can potentially recover them. Denying an enemy valuable assets by taking them for yourself is one of the most basic and successful strategies in war.
Plus Nepgear gets to show Rose-sensei how much she's grown! That and all the amazing backstory being hinted at makes surely makes this number one.
Honestly this mission suffers from us not taking Operation Whoopass. We learned about Gaia, her WEAPONs, Sil-Shiva, and their Maidens all in one mission. Since then there just hasn't been much build up or info on them, even though we took the Gaia interlude. So this mission has us jumping into a conflict we're fairly uninvolved with, our only connection is the fact Nepgear keeps what little stuff she has on Earth, with no idea what is going on.
I kinda feel sorry for @crystalwatcher as this one looks like a hard mission to make interesting. Especially after the awesome of Operation Starborn and just how amazing Operation Soul Collector is sounding like.
ExperienceWe currently have 3,881XP available, no shop items we can purchase (only reserve), and a whole bunch of stuff that could be upgraded. We also have at least one, and likely two, missions up ahead before returning to base so saving XP for then, when we can practice Synchronization and potentially unlock some new spells, isn't a major concern.
I suppose the first question is whether or not Emissary To The Core is worth reserving or if we should wait until we know more. On one hand it is a Super Ability and connected to Progenitor Frame, which has been stated as being super powerful, so it should be pretty amazing. On the other hand it would mean dropping a significant chunk of XP on something we have no idea the use of. My best bet of what it does is that going by:
it lets Nepgear summon a servant of whatever being is behind the ???? Core. I would say avatar except an Emissary is a messenger. Still just because they are a messenger doesn't mean they aren't strong; after all Gabriel is often portrayed God's messenger.
Still it doesn't feel right spending XP on a blackbox with no idea when we might even see a return.
Instead let's look at that list I created earlier:
Given the important of Celestial Severance (killing hard to kill foes) has on our next mission, Starshine (killing armies) has on our future missions, as well as the increased defense and offense of high speed flight/combat (too fast to hit/too fast to block) plus the utility of improved ICORE when dealing with high level foes I propose we get a modified version of this list:
1) Celestial Severance Level 15 (600xp)
2) Starshine Level 15 (600xp)
3) Flight Level 20 (1,350xp)
4) INDESTRUCTIBLE CORE Level 16 (750xp)
That leaves 581xp for either upgrading Purifier Beam (Level 18 for 19,381 damage) or saving in case something else proves worthwhile.
I'd also like to remind people we got +500xp from successfully completing a mission. While sure it's likely to go down as that becomes more common it still shows were getting into the big XP leagues now.
So with all that in mind I suggest:
[X] The Victorious Dead (Operation: Soul Collector)
[X] Plan Flying Battleship
-[X] Purchase Celestial Severance up to Level 15 (600xp)
-[X] Purchase Starshine up to Level 15 (600 + 600 = 1,200xp)
-[X] Purchase Flight up to Level 21 (1,200 + 1,350 = 2,550xp)
-[X] Purchase INDESTRUCTIBLE CORE up to Level 16 (2,550 + 750 = 3,300xp)
We already have Word of God that James is capable of soloing this mission immediately without any aid from the rest of the team, but we aren't allowed to do that. Any upgrades for it are overkill.This is a mission we have to leave for a while. As awesome as we are we just can't fight the Army of the Apocalypse yet. Going by these numbers:
We'd need Starshine Level 28 to scratch the army, without factoring in whatever new abilities we'd get. At 4 castings per turn Level 34 would be the point at which we could eliminate the army in a single turn.
Starshine Level 28 is 3,510xp away and Level 34 is 5,400xp away. Which admittedly with our new rapid XP growth isn't unreasonable but it's definitely not something we can afford anytime soon.
So there's no chance of Nepgear going in, doing something that Gaia doesn't like, and winding up fighting against all 3 WEAPONS and the two Maidens simultaneously (taking into account that due to our earlier actions, Shiva-Sil will probably want to murder Nepgear the moment we appear)?The Difficulty is the summary of how fucked the Allies are going in on their own. If anything does go wrong, it'll be within at least one difficulty change. So maybe a raise to "Medium". The next day will show the current difficulty if anything went wrong or not.