Dragon Ball: After the End
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Not even slightly.
One, Berra already knows that's possible since Poptart told us that was one of his contingency plans for the nuclear attack situation. If Berra isn't already doing it, he thinks it would be a stupid idea, and asking him to do it probably wouldn't have any useful effect.
Two, it might not even work. These aren't the scouters from Frieza's army, or probably aren't. We know their ships are designed to mask ki signatures up to ten million or so, which suggests they know and deal with entities on that power level, and their scouters are resilient enough to survive it. To blow out the scouters, I suspect Berra would have to go so high that it would constitute an infohazard to do so near the aliens.
Uh... no, that is a totally different thing and is in no way a logical extrapolation of the reasons why I was thinking of powering up a little. It's more like an offensive parody of my reasoning.
Powering up to super-saiyan-like power levels means the aliens immediately know something is massively wrong, and unless we straight up murder them all (and every one of them on the planet is here) we have an instant Masquerade breach that will eventually result in the galaxy learning how powerful the beings on Garenhuld are. It's also a major 'fuck you' to Berra's plans, which he's taken considerable effort to enforce, and risked the lives of some of his soldiers to uphold. Maya will immediately know we've been lying to her all along, too.
Powering up to 600 or 700 thousand does NONE of this, and causes NO infohazard except MAYBE the part where Maya gets vaguely suspicious or where the fence-sitting aliens decide our action is a threat.
So I'm actually a bit insulted that you're talking as if what you're saying is anything like what I'm saying.
All right, point- that excuse wouldn't work well because Maya apparently has a better idea of Karen's (notional) power level than we-the-players have of hers* in between 'adventures.'
That said, we really should be trying to show Maya a level of power that's reasonably close to or consistent with her own, even if we're letting her stay ahead. For one, it'll be better for her own training if she has more people to work with who punch in her weight class. For another, it means we don't have this exact problem come up again and again, in situations where we have to artificially limit ourselves more than our goals require because Maya is convinced that she's 50% stronger than we are, compared to being 10% or 20%.
I know the plan involves Maya thinking she's the strongest girl in the world, but that doesn't mean we can't at least try to do a better job of keeping up with her than, say, Vegeta managed of keeping up with Goku. Especially since unlike Vegeta, we actually HAVE the power to match her, rather than actually having no clue how to keep up with our 'rival.'
*[Actually, it is nice when we get a mention of Maya's current max power level every time we get into a dangerous situation involving her, right at the outset. Since how strong or how vulnerable she is plays a big role in our decisions. @PoptartProdigy , you've done it pretty well so far; is it something you already plan to do every time? If so, thank you!
]Basically, the attacking reinforcements put them in an untenable position. Their only choices are then:
1) Take hostages like they planned to, but do it really fast, which leads to the remaining hard-core no-surrender types focusing on us, OR
2) Flee for their lives.
In case (2) our powering up by 100-200 thousand more won't hurt anything. In case (1) it might just save our asses or enable us to save Jaron's ass.
I wasn't talking about blowing the Scouters.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Then you are talking about an info hazard that our dad has gone to a great deal of trouble to stop.
What part of "tempted" do you not understand?
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
My idea has nothing to do with your idea. It's all me, and I did not mean to imply that it was a logical extrapolation of what you wanted.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
You seem to be voting for it.
- Location
- Somewhere
Not even slightly.
One, Berra already knows that's possible since Poptart told us that was one of his contingency plans for the nuclear attack situation. If Berra isn't already doing it, he thinks it would be a stupid idea, and asking him to do it probably wouldn't have any useful effect.
Two, it might not even work. These aren't the scouters from Frieza's army, or probably aren't. We know their ships are designed to mask ki signatures up to ten million or so, which suggests they know and deal with entities on that power level, and their scouters are resilient enough to survive it. To blow out the scouters, I suspect Berra would have to go so high that it would constitute an infohazard to do so near the aliens.
Uh... no, that is a totally different thing and is in no way a logical extrapolation of the reasons why I was thinking of powering up a little. It's more like an offensive parody of my reasoning.
Powering up to super-saiyan-like power levels means the aliens immediately know something is massively wrong, and unless we straight up murder them all (and every one of them on the planet is here) we have an instant Masquerade breach that will eventually result in the galaxy learning how powerful the beings on Garenhuld are. It's also a major 'fuck you' to Berra's plans, which he's taken considerable effort to enforce, and risked the lives of some of his soldiers to uphold. Maya will immediately know we've been lying to her all along, too.
Powering up to 600 or 700 thousand does NONE of this, and causes NO infohazard except MAYBE the part where Maya gets vaguely suspicious or where the fence-sitting aliens decide our action is a threat.
So I'm actually a bit insulted that you're talking as if what you're saying is anything like what I'm saying.
All right, point- that excuse wouldn't work well because Maya apparently has a better idea of Karen's (notional) power level than we-the-players have of hers* in between 'adventures.'
That said, we really should be trying to show Maya a level of power that's reasonably close to or consistent with her own, even if we're letting her stay ahead. For one, it'll be better for her own training if she has more people to work with who punch in her weight class. For another, it means we don't have this exact problem come up again and again, in situations where we have to artificially limit ourselves more than our goals require because Maya is convinced that she's 50% stronger than we are, compared to being 10% or 20%.
I know the plan involves Maya thinking she's the strongest girl in the world, but that doesn't mean we can't at least try to do a better job of keeping up with her than, say, Vegeta managed of keeping up with Goku. Especially since unlike Vegeta, we actually HAVE the power to match her, rather than actually having no clue how to keep up with our 'rival.'
*[Actually, it is nice when we get a mention of Maya's current max power level every time we get into a dangerous situation involving her, right at the outset. Since how strong or how vulnerable she is plays a big role in our decisions. @PoptartProdigy , you've done it pretty well so far; is it something you already plan to do every time? If so, thank you!
Basically, the attacking reinforcements put them in an untenable position. Their only choices are then:
1) Take hostages like they planned to, but do it really fast, which leads to the remaining hard-core no-surrender types focusing on us, OR
2) Flee for their lives.
In case (2) our powering up by 100-200 thousand more won't hurt anything. In case (1) it might just save our asses or enable us to save Jaron's ass.
Why exactly is it so important for Maya to think she is the strongest? I get that right now in the middle of a fight, it would shock her, but in the long run wouldn't keeping up that delusion turn her a bit arrogant? That was the reason Roshi fought Goku and Krillin in the first World Martial Arts Tournament, to make them realize that there would always be someone better, and that they should never stop improving themselves.
Do we have any idea of how long we want to keep up this secret?
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I'm voting for us to find it out, tell Berra, and then let him decide what, if anything, he does with that information.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
He already knows all of that information.
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No he doesn't. I asked before.
[x][ORDERS] Do as Dad said, and glue yourself to Jaron throughout the fight.
[x][IFF] Engage only those scouts which you can confirm as actively hostile.
[x][AIM] Forget the fight; make certain that the four scouts showing signs of trying to figure out what to do don't join the fight. Get them to surrender.
[x][IFF] Engage only those scouts which you can confirm as actively hostile.
[x][AIM] Forget the fight; make certain that the four scouts showing signs of trying to figure out what to do don't join the fight. Get them to surrender.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
It's Berra's idea, and I agree with it. The plan is to transition the Masquerade from "saiyans disguise themselves as ordinary humans of Garenhuld" to "saiyans disguise themselves as native ki-using humans of Garenhuld." Saiyans would thus be free to use their powers (while Masqued), giving them much greater freedom of action on Garenhuld as a whole.
In this plan, Maya's job is to be the adorable poster girl for this, because she is indisputably and truly human. Outside aliens with the ability to sense power levels will look at her and go "yep, some of the humans on this planet have some freaky power levels," but will hopefully not make the connection to "oh wait all those other empowered humans are actually members of the long-thought-extinct saiyan race, living under magical disguises."
For this plan to work, we have to keep up the pretense that Maya is (one of the) strongest beings on the planet, if at all possible. We have to keep it up for the aliens' benefit by not spiking to power levels of millions and millions. And we have to keep it up for Maya's benefit in the short term, at least.
Personally, I don't think that 'crossing' Maya would have bad effects on her if we did it in a way that DIDN'T arouse suspicions that we're secretly holding nigh-unlimited power in reserve and are just toying with her.
I suspect that Berra plans to maybe let Maya in on the secret eventually, but keeping the Masquerade fully secret from all humans is deeply ingrained in Exile society. Telling her is not an easy or politically safe decision for Berra.
...What?
Okay, Gore, you're being kind of unclear to me, but... it sounds like your plan is to ask the aliens (?) what the limit of the alien scouters' sensitivity is, then tell Berra this information.
Except Berra most likely captured an alien scouter when the reptile-scout we fought earlier surrendered, and very possibly captured several (spare) alien scouters when he captured the aliens' ship. Even if he didn't, he has a live alien scout to interrogate, and asking Meerak about the scouters would be an obvious thing to do. Hell, he can probably forcibly read Meerak's mind and learn everything Meerak knows about the scouters that way!
So we have every reason to think Berra already knows the performance limits of the scouters. He certainly knows that if he and Kakara went to full super-saiyan power abruptly the scouters would blow up, because he explicitly made a (backup) plan relying on that information. And how would he know that without examining the scouters?
Then, you propose that we suggest to Berra that he pulse to the maximum the scouts' scouters will be able to measure.
This is not in itself a bad idea if you don't agree with Berra about Masquerade plans. But since it's Berra's plan in the first place... Berra will say "no, that's a terrible idea, you silly girl! Because literally my whole plan is based around not letting the scouts know we're vastly stronger than they are!" He already knows he can do what you suggest, he just developed an entire complicated strategy based around NOT doing it.
So basically, you're planning to tell Berra something he almost certainly already knows, then suggest a course of action he is almost certain to reject out of hand because it contradicts the letter and spirit of his own existing plan.
rkyeun
Cabbitus Maximus
- Location
- ◕ ‿‿ ◕
[X][ORDERS] Do as Dad said, and glue yourself to Jaron throughout the fight.
[X][IFF] Engage only those scouts which you can confirm as actively hostile.
[X][AIM] Fight to withdraw you and your friends from the press and help the teams protecting the civilians.
Edit: I am stupid.
[X][IFF] Engage only those scouts which you can confirm as actively hostile.
[X][AIM] Fight to withdraw you and your friends from the press and help the teams protecting the civilians.
Edit: I am stupid.
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- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
You are not capable of utilizing styles in which you have only an Incipient rank.
He was going to tell her when she turned 18, but he instead intends to do it before the Fleet arrives, which will be some time next year, or the year after. Because, you know, alien invasion, no one is going to hold back.
Also, the plan is for to reach the hundreds of millions mark eventually IIRC.
*facepalms* What part of "No he doesn't, I asked" was hard to understand? I asked if the Scouter limits were known, they are not. Presumably, Berra either didn't think to ask, or Meerak wasn't comfortable revealing that info, and we've been avoiding Mind Delving him.
And I'd like to point out that you outright mentioned a contradiction: if he was so concerned about keeping the high PL's secret, why would his back up plan have been to go Super Saiyan so they blow?
Honestly, a big concern of his not letting Maya know, and that is more "doesn't want to burden her or get her overly involved". Which is kinda a thing with him.
Oh, and so he can surprise the Fleet, I think that might be another reason.
Question: can we have more then one AIM vote, especially if we vote to use Multiform at the same PL?
And can Kakara have a talk with Berra, to keep her properly in the loop? Trying to protect her from a lot of stuff is just causing her more stress and worry.
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- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
If you Multiform, then yes, you can do more than one thing effectively. Good luck getting that vote to pass, though. Y'all are stingier with that than an RPG player with a, "restore health," potion. :lol
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
1) Part of what you've written here reduces to "don't be gratuitously stupid for no reason." Your sub-vote under the IFF vote boils down to "don't completely ignore the possibility that some of the fence-sitter scouts may decide to attack."
@PoptartProdigy has consistently not played Kakara as some kind of moron-child who ignores obvious threats unless the players explicitly vote to deal with them. They have in fact written several scenes in which Kakara successfully deals with terribly dangerous threats entirely on autopilot, with no player input whatsoever.
Amusingly, the one time the players did take detailed control of Kakara's actions in a fight with an elaborate write-in plan (the fight against the lizardman scout), we actually fucked it up and did much worse than Kakara herself usually does on autopilot.
It is probably unnecessary to specify things like "and remind Kakara to watch out for 'uncommitted' scouts deciding to attack after all."
...
2) Regarding your AIM subvote, it sounds like you are planning to very aggressively attack the scouts, albeit to attack with nonlethal weapons. Much of what you propose is liable to cause the scouts to think they're being attacked indiscriminately, in which case they are all going to fight back.
You may say "ah, but we're not using any lethal attacks." To which I reply "remember when Kakara first went super-saiyan?" Jaffur didn't actually use a killing attack on Berra either- but in the heat of the moment, Kakara thought she did, and in a split second decision, she went on the attack in response. The aliens may do the same, although hopefully not by massively powering up through a transformation.
...
3a) ... Um. Kakara is a child. She is largely unschooled in Tien Style or for that matter Goku style. She is not going to be able to masterfully duck, weave, bob, and outfight multiple trained martial artists whose power levels are at least close to her own. She's at five hundred thousand right now. That means she's no faster or stronger than many of the scouts. Any of several of them could outwrestle us, blow a ki attack past our guard, or other
Even if we use multiform, well, that just means there are three of us to get tangled up in ugly, complicated brawls with three more or less equally powerful aliens, all of whom have more combat experience than we do.
...
3b) Remember the fight against the lizard-man alien scout? Yeah, we actually had a significant power advantage in the first part of that fight. More so than we do over the heavy hitters of this group. And we still only were able to make it an even fight, because the lizard-man was very skillful. I doubt the other scouts are significantly less skillful than he was, and we haven't gotten that much better.
So I doubt that our dizzying, amazing maneuver style will effortlessly leave them in the dust wondering what the hell just happened. To do that Kakara would have to power up significantly, to gain the ability to move faster than the aliens, hit and dodge out of range before they can react, and physically outwrestle them despite having the body of a young girl against the body of multiple adult aliens.
A fully grown future Kakara who's spent years honing her skills might well fight this battle exactly the way you describe. In the present, I think a plan like this would be writing some very large checks that Kakara's actual combat skills won't be able to cash.
...
4) Finally, your plan includes the idea of detecting machine ki. We can't do that consistently yet, as you will see if you reread the post in which Kakara and Berra engaged the nuclear missiles.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Right. The plan is to do so later, not now. Since there is no need to change the plan just to deal with a dozen aliens, Berra is not going to agree to change the plan to deal with a dozen aliens. The fact that "we were going to tell her eventually anyway" does not negate the fact that Berra has no intention of telling her right this minute. He plans to tell her as part of a larger, more nuanced overall strategy, not just to gain a fleeting tactical advantage against one lousy bunch of aliens that he already has outnumbered and outgunned.
I'm sorry, I honestly missed the part where you asked this and received the answer. When did you do so?
I must confess, it did seem highly likely that Berra would have somehow obtained this information.
Because he's willing to throw away his plans if it's important enough. To save millions of lives, he's willing to breach (part of) the Masquerade by revealing that Garenhuld is home to ultra-powered beings with power levels in the tens or hundreds of millions.
This does not mean he is willing to do so in order to gain a fleeting tactical advantage over one little band of aliens that he already has outnumbered and outgunned.
Yes, I agree those are among his motives.
The Masquerade serves many purposes. Different parts of it serve different purposes, in different ways. Relaxing it in some ways may continue to serve some of those purposes, and undermine others. It is a complicated, nuanced thing.
However, for that very reason, the basic standing rules and plans for how to handle the Masquerade, which have been composed after careful deliberation, should not be set aside lightly. Breaching parts of the Masquerade to save many lives is one thing. Doing so just to gain a fleeting tactical advantage over a small band of outnumbered, outgunned aliens? That is probably not a good idea, however sensible it seems at the time.
I'm not sure Berra is keeping Kakara out of the loop right now. He's offering her chances to avoid tasks that might otherwise be stressful for her. Tasks like giving advice on whether to risk the Masquerade in order to stop nuclear missiles. But I'm not sure he's withholding any important information about his plans from her, though by definition if he's keeping secrets from Kakara we may not be able to tell.
[X][ORDERS] Do as Dad said, and glue yourself to Jaron throughout the fight.
[X][IFF] Engage only those scouts which you can confirm as actively hostile.
[X][AIM] Fight to withdraw you and your friends from the press and help the teams protecting the civilians.
-[X] Create two Multiforms at the same PL level to accomplish other tasks at the same time.
--[X][AIM] Forget the fight; make certain that the four scouts showing signs of trying to figure out what to do don't join the fight. Get them to surrender.
---[X] Ask them about their Scouters limitations, and relay that to your dad.
--[X][AIM] Go straight for the leader.
---[X] Pin him down, without harming him. If needed, go up to 1 or 1.5 million. If you need more then that, you should probably leave it to dad.
[X][IFF] Engage only those scouts which you can confirm as actively hostile.
[X][AIM] Fight to withdraw you and your friends from the press and help the teams protecting the civilians.
-[X] Create two Multiforms at the same PL level to accomplish other tasks at the same time.
--[X][AIM] Forget the fight; make certain that the four scouts showing signs of trying to figure out what to do don't join the fight. Get them to surrender.
---[X] Ask them about their Scouters limitations, and relay that to your dad.
--[X][AIM] Go straight for the leader.
---[X] Pin him down, without harming him. If needed, go up to 1 or 1.5 million. If you need more then that, you should probably leave it to dad.
There's confusion over why stuff has been mandated, and whether or not it's allowed/appropriate to break/do something.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I feel like it's fairly clear why stuff has been mandated. We know why Berra is trying to keep power levels low, and is reserving super-high power levels as his "nuclear option" that he would prefer not to exercise if he can avoid it. It is not hard to understand, and it is not mysterious. The reason is, quite simply, to enable a smooth, graceful transition from "saiyans conceal themselves as mundane humans" to "saiyans conceal themselves as human superheroes native to Garenhuld."
This serves the twin purposes of giving saiyans more freedom to act on Garenhuld, and of making it easier to hide the presence of saiyans from the galactic community at large. This second is all the more important, now that the galactic community has 'discovered' Garenhuld and we're going to wind up having to interact with alien beings.
Accomplishing the first purpose is relatively simple. But accomplishing the second purpose is much more difficult if the "human champions" of Garenhuld suddenly start slinging around ki powers at absurd, unprecedented levels.
We want Garenhuld to seem defended, but not defended by anything that much stronger or more impressive than other planets in the galaxy. And that requires hiding the true power levels of our greatest warriors, and possibly even the true power levels of all our warriors.
...
Again, I don't feel like this is confusing or hard to understand.
Nor is it hard to understand the idea of being willing to break an existing rule and discard an existing plan to save millions of people, but not to gain a fleeting tactical advantage over a small, outnumbered, outgunned band of invaders.
This serves the twin purposes of giving saiyans more freedom to act on Garenhuld, and of making it easier to hide the presence of saiyans from the galactic community at large. This second is all the more important, now that the galactic community has 'discovered' Garenhuld and we're going to wind up having to interact with alien beings.
Accomplishing the first purpose is relatively simple. But accomplishing the second purpose is much more difficult if the "human champions" of Garenhuld suddenly start slinging around ki powers at absurd, unprecedented levels.
We want Garenhuld to seem defended, but not defended by anything that much stronger or more impressive than other planets in the galaxy. And that requires hiding the true power levels of our greatest warriors, and possibly even the true power levels of all our warriors.
...
Again, I don't feel like this is confusing or hard to understand.
Nor is it hard to understand the idea of being willing to break an existing rule and discard an existing plan to save millions of people, but not to gain a fleeting tactical advantage over a small, outnumbered, outgunned band of invaders.
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Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
@PoptartProdigy Does the Power Level vote need to reach a certain threshold to be counted?
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Probably, and I doubt it will, and I'm not that worried about it. I think suddenly powering up by 100-200 thousand more points wouldn't be the worst thing we could do.* But we can probably pull this off without doing so, assuming the reinforcements do as Berra expects, and assuming Kakara doesn't try anything too ambitious.
___________________________
*For that matter, convincing Maya that our power levels DO still rise, and that we tend to get stronger or pull miracles out of our hats in a crisis, would be very helpful. We really need to display power levels a bit closer to Maya's in the near future; the next time Karen and Maya are put to the test, we may need a power level significantly over 500,000 just to not be an active liability on a battlefield that credibly challenges Maya. At this rate she'll break a million before the year is out...
And while I can accept Karen playing Vegeta or Piccolo to Maya's Goku for the sake of the Masquerade, I'm damned if I'll settle for Karen playing Krillin or Yamcha to Maya's Goku.
___________________________
*For that matter, convincing Maya that our power levels DO still rise, and that we tend to get stronger or pull miracles out of our hats in a crisis, would be very helpful. We really need to display power levels a bit closer to Maya's in the near future; the next time Karen and Maya are put to the test, we may need a power level significantly over 500,000 just to not be an active liability on a battlefield that credibly challenges Maya. At this rate she'll break a million before the year is out...
And while I can accept Karen playing Vegeta or Piccolo to Maya's Goku for the sake of the Masquerade, I'm damned if I'll settle for Karen playing Krillin or Yamcha to Maya's Goku.