Hello everyone. I've been following this quest for a month or so, and I have a question.
Have you ever felt that DEI does not have anything resembling a strategy?
It might have been brought up in the past, but a consistent pattern I'm seeing in the updates is how reactive the plans are. Most of the actions are either responding to the current fire to be put out or responding to someone messing with DEI heroes - both Toffee and Judge Doom ended up on the thread's shitlist because they are a menace to Jaina and Toons in DEI employ, which is perfectly reasonable and based, except... When that menace subsides even a bit, thread switches to other things instead of immediately following up, like with Bonkers, and does not consistently take action against them or prepare for hostile actions from them - even though everyone understands that throwing down with Toffee and Doom is inevitable and will happen at some point. And even disregarding the rivals, there are major holes in DEI intrugue and security, as evidenced by the events of Kataklysm or the Hats muscling in on Tri-State Area - the initiative is consistently not on Doof's side.
It's the same with technology advancement. Other Kings are making major, focused investments and carving out entire sectors where they're the leading player that rakes in power and cash, and DEI is just joshing around with tech based on whether or not it feels cool/is instantly useful. Zero-point energy was available for years at this point, but because it wasn't shiny enough, it was never researched until it was brought to the thread's attention by having someone steal it, and even then it's 50/50 on whether it will get picked in the next plan. DEI has a shitton of potentially revolutionary tech that's just gathering dust on a shelf because it is not immediately relevant, and other Kings are beating them to the punch on multiple fronts because other Kings are consistent and committed.
I've seen the metaphor commonly used to describe Doof playing the game - but while DEI plays Tropico, everyone else is playing Shadowrun, and one can't always play the games they want. If Doof and DEI are to keep up with other Kings, there must be a change in strategy - there has to be a strategy beyond responding to rumor mill and min-maxing Social Links. There have to be clear targets and goals Doof wants achieved, there has to be a synergy between actions during a turn and actions taken over the course of multiple turns, there has to be an understanding that other Kings and heroes aren't static NPCs and do take actions of their own, ones aimed at DEI included, and there has to be an understanding that if you are to stay on top of the game, you gotta strive to act and not react - that instead of watching events happen to you, you must strive to create events on your own terms.
With Doof addressing his issues and a revamp of the mechanics incoming, there has never been a better time for a change like this. This will not make the quest any less entertaining, anymore than Doof getting character development would make him less fun of a protag - in fact, it will make quest a lot more enjoyable in the long run, because it will prevent DEI getting blindsided and suckerpunched like it got with Kat, except with significantly higher stakes.
And at the end of day, besides all that, Doofenshmirtz can be either a supervillain equal of Shego or a supervillain equal of Drakken. Wouldn't you say one of these sounds a lot more appealing than the other?
I think you're 2 turns late with this take. The past few turns we've made great strides towards developing or pre-comitting to two DEI specialties:
Genetics (Dinos included) by getting a Glomgold collab set-up that we just need to work towards finishing, and by putting Janus on the counil, and
Robotics/AI from the multiple turns in a row of AI research (collab with Funtelligence and then finishing the research on our own in Spark). At least, this is what I would say our specialties
should be.
The actions in my current proposed plan for next turn move forward the dinosaur specialty. I would probably do something AI related too but we have high priority narrative learning options (ODI, Transmissions, etc.) and Wendy's status next turn is unknown, so probably better to wait. In addition, we weren't given the full description of what Consumer/Civilian/Military AI options are yet which will change things.
The plan I posted was something I've had sitting on a google doc for weeks now, with the main change being that I swapped the martial action from "TBD" to "Form Black ops group" and that change wasn't even inspired because of the rival reports but the prior interlude. In other words, my plan isn't being overly reactive to the rival reports and is staying focused on the core objectives.
As for Bonkers, DC for Bonkers was simply too high to attempt before council, especially with Mirage as King adding to the DC, and we haven't had the action available for that long. We unlocked the action in March/April turn, meaning our first attempt at it could have been the May/June turn. On the May/June turn, we made our OS and we did the Greevil campaign, which were both two key actions. July/August we had to repair after Kat, and September/October was the MirageQuest turn (which had the DC go up by 20
and a -20 stewardship malus). The good thing about my plan is if we delay Dinos
and form the "ASAP black ops ball", we free enough hero slots that we don't need to restructure immediately, and can attempt Bonkers or shore up Olympia this turn in addition to buying Hoppers. (Can do both if Monogram is available).
DEI has a shitton of potentially revolutionary tech that's just gathering dust on a shelf because it is not immediately relevant
We can't focus on both of our core specialties and also go for all the shiny options at the same time something has got to give. I think the most important shinies (imo) are the Fairy Book, Sublight/Exotic Vehicles combo, and Zero Point. I thought this before the rival reports and still think them now. However, doing something with one of our new specialties and ODI/Transmissions should most likely be done before those 4 shiny options. We just need to be a little patient.
Anyway, referring back to the "you're about 2 turns late to this take" bit, I noticed a similar problem so I made a planning document a few months ago that the
discord members have been using as a shared resource for all of us to construct foundations for planning multiple turns in a row to give us goals to shoot for while also being realistic regarding action economy and less likely to deviate without good reason and understanding the consequences.
You can find it here.
