Er, you can colonize if you want to, just move people. The fact that might decolonize somewhere else is a side effect but so what?
I'm hopeful that completing Grace Dawns Eternal would give us enough population that we aren't robbing Peter to pay Paul, but would that invalidate the 3/26 we have for Continual Grace? (Alternately, could we treat that as 3/10?)
You guys were so gun-ho about the gothic sector involvement too.
Was and personally still am. Just gotta tend to some housekeeping first.
? I am almost certain the deathworld thing was not the problem. You could aim for the next point emperor needs help, but the idea behind almost all these quests is that there will exist potential to do it again if you want. So you could build a more basic one just over the border in the calixsus sector or closer to ophelis where it would help being near the edge of the Astronomicon too... the only reason those weren't recommendations is the divination knows the Macharian crusade point will be needed earlier in the timeline.
Still trying to figure out a way to parley "we can build super-temples to the Man-God" without, uh, complications. So far I got nuthin', but hope springs eternal.
You will need to do resource expitions to find those resources. Finding sites for setting up resource exploitation and special mines involves doing those rolls and getting lucky... its not just about optimizing the AP.
So no Moonsilver unless you do resource expeditions on Therak and no starmetal or Adamantium until you do resource expeditions on Valki.
Good to know, I was under the impression that it was just to uncover new resource sites like sulfur or some sort of ground squirrel with an interesting pelt or whatever. Does that mean we need to go searching for the jade deposits on Tocha? Similarly, can Steam pathists be helpful with planetary resource expeditions or just with inhospitable places like Jach'uchil?
I presented my vague ideas. I am not super motivated to make them into full write ups right now.
If a Major oil manse idea is demanded and gets a project written in for it I will write up that one.
No oil anchors cannot be based out of oil manses. Crystal was from Earth, ie the non-gaian element NEEDS to be tied to a Gaian one for it to be a stabilizing force... thats how it works.
Well, looks like we need anchors for Oil, Blood, Bone and Ghost paths. I'm
guessing Morai-Heg is a potential sponsor for Ghostwalkers and there's already an established Blood God (we don't like him much though, I don't think it'd be a good fit), but let's see if we can figure out a way to anchor some of these;
Path of Oil, greasing the gears of social interaction
Flaw: Those who walk the path of oil suffer increased susceptibility to disease. Untreated Morbidity and Virulence of Diseases is increased by the number of steps walked on this Path. This explicity does not worsen the difficulty to Treat disease or the Treated Morbidity.
*Graceful Flowing Discourse: This step is identical to the solar charm "Mastery of Small Manners"
**Palm Greasing Attitude: Spend 3 motes and roll Perception or Wits + Bureaucracy or Socialize as a read intention action against the target's guile. If successful the target must declare if they are going to betray or cheat the user, if they are the user gets a bonus to their resolve equal to their Path rating. This step may determine the target's resources and whether he intends to buy or can be swayed with bribery. (Basically Consumer-Evaluating Glance)
***Slick Tongue Technique: This step is identical to the solar charm Indecent Proposal Method. It basically modified any attempt to instill beliefs, persuade or bargain so that their persuasion sounds delightful, charming, or at least a necessary evil. IE no one thinks ill of you for trying to make the bargain, even if they don't take it.
****Greasing the Gears: This step is identical to the solar Charm "Speed the Wheels" albeit the step uses the lower of the Dragon King's Essence or their rating in Oil path
*****Allegiance Molding Method: 10m simple social attack that inflicts unnatural mental influence on the target that costs 3 willpower to resist. If they do not resist they immediately gain an intimacy towards any subject with any context the user wishes. If they already had an intimacy towards they subject they can change the context. If the target does spend willpower to resist this charm still counts as (steps in Oil Path) scenes spent working toward the requested change baring some other defense on the target's part.
***** *Dynamic Restructuring Technique: 10m 1 wp, This step is a simple effect that replaces a read intention action. Upon succeeding the target must reveal their most desperate desire, which if the user can provide it invokes a servitude effect upon the target, they are also granted at least 6 intimacies that are exposed by the nature of the wish to the Dragon King. If they wish the Dragon King can adopt a new persona, recreating their character from scratch with roughly two thirds of their Experience points to perfectly match the needs of their target as closely as possible. If they included an appropriate disguise ability, they can change their appearance and the target will not be aware the change happened in front of them. All they see is this new person who seems to be the key to fulfilling their deepest desire.
Drawback is purely medical, so an argument can be made for the Verdant Respite Pavilion providing regular check-ups or specialized treatment plans, and could touch on Autocthon's "oil = toxic" angle, the fact that the Pole of Oil is part of the Great Maker's circulatory system (and endocrine system, and immune system). However, most of the steps are social (with one bureaucratic) in nature, so Words Before War manse has a claim as well. There's also the similarities between Oil and Water (as compared to Pyreflame and Fire, Crystal and Earth, Lightning and Air, etc) including the similarities of their elemental benedictions. I'd love to make an argument about how 'put them towards the diplo-manse and call it good' but I'm worried about the "mixes like oil and water" side of things.
tl;dr of the existing manses an argument can be made for either diplo manse or healing manse. Poison manse and waterbender manse would be options if those anchors weren't already claimed.
Technomorphic Transcendence is described in terms like 'cold, unfeeling logic' and 'rational scientific progress' while suppressing Compassion. The Burning Exorcist manse is both spiritual fire (y'know, being an exorcist) and sociable (spreading rumors that 'spread like a burning plague'). This honestly seems like an antithesis to the path more than 'basically the same but with differences', but if Dragon Kings need to lie on a warm rock somewhere for a few hours of the day before resuming their work, a cold-blooded Dragon King can get a dose of Hallmark Christmas Movie to keep from going too deep into their path-induced psychosis.
...y'know, perhaps Morai-Heg isn't the Ghostwalkers' patron. Maybe she's the Eucharist pathists'. One of the key elements to her myth is convincing Khaine to maim her so she can drink her own blood for the sake of knowledge. She also is the type to manipulate people, so there's further synergy there. Whether or not we want a portion of our population beholden to such a divinity is another question; I doubt we can spot-weld another artifact onto her in exchange for letting us brainwash her into being super-duper loyal, but it
is a thought.
That just leaves the Ghostwalkers, which the closest established divinity I can think of would be the Corpse-Emperor, and all my reservations about Morai-Heg having a say on an eighth of our population (or whatever it happens to be) is copied over and bumped up a bit; Asuryan can reign in Morai-Heg, the Emprah has no such restraining influence. For a manse, I kinda like the Green Rider manse for the 'growth and decay, life and death, all things have a season' angle rather than the Underworld's "so you died, that sucks and now it's going to suck for eternity or until you get siphoned off Below (which you do not want)". More than that I'm still mulling over.
5. Teteocon Expansion: This will probably be at risk of decay soon. Building it is possibly what we need to remove our divine bribery costs.
Thus far we have gotten warnings before something decays on us. Are you okay with delaying until that time (or until we get 3 AP to put towards the project?)
I don't know about reducing bribery, I think that's here to stay with us for a while. We are told however that building Teteocon would allow us to build add-ons like Orchards for the Peaches of Immortality, vinyards for Celestial wine and establish the Loom of Fate. The first two items are potential trade goods (we're told that Lockhart would have been far more interested in Celestial Wine had we some available) and the Loom...well, it's a big project and I want to have temples to each of the Maidens built before we start on
that particular project.
6. Understanding Machine Spirits: Until we finish all the Rhino reverse-engineering, we can't gift the original to the Sisters of the Quicksilver Rose. Something we should do before they rewrite history to make us enemies. HLU is Harmonious Lore Understanding manse?
We're on the same page here. And yes, sorry for using shorthand (it will happen again).
(Also, there is an order of the Inquisition whose job it is to obscure Imperial and pre-Imperial histories called the Ordo Redactus. They were established back at the very beginning of the institution, before they were known as the Inquisition. At the same time the Ordo Originatus was formed to discover and preserve human histories. The self-defeating nature of the Inquisition was baked in from the start).
8-12. Alchemical Design Solutions: I am somewhat hopeful these successes are Charms already designed for the Cyber-Engineer and thus not going to decay. But I'm not certain. Like other unfinished projects, they were deemed not urgent in the face of bigger threats.
They are the Charms + Arrays and combos that would be useful for X role. The closer a role is to another the more tools they're likely to share the greater a benefit one gets from the others' completion (as I understand it). My plan is to go Rescuer -> Socialite -> Spy, assess from there. I also want to get at least three Socialites up and running as they represent 3 AP of social actions we can consistently take (even if it is just "saying 'hi' to Ulthwe every turn). Rescuers I want to have on every planet in advance of doing anything against Nurgle as a defense against "hit them with a super-plague and send in plague marines to murder survivors" which would be on-brand for the Plague Father but not very nice of him.
14. Colonize Therak: I don't know when these sux would decay. Therak is where I want to put 20 million colonists as soon as we can spare the AP so we can start rolling for moonsilver discovery. That requires 20 million but not 30 million, we have that much spare now so I don't see a need to wait, except the AP cost. Slicktongue admin is a good idea but I can't follow your abbreviated math here. +8 what? Please use units.
+8 automatic successes, as each Colony Package gives +4 autosux (and a -5 DC, non-stacking) per 10m colonists, pretty much the reason to do Colony Packages in advance (1 Atelier makes 2 packages, can be done in advance of colonization). We have 10/28 for 30m colonists just from the conquest bonus, can add [30m colonists = 3 colony packages = 12 automatic successes] to the completion for 22/28 before we roll any dice and half the project can in theory be paid for by Elementals (so in theory 14 AP out of 28 successes needed, but as you see we didn't need them to get this far) so my recommendation is "pay minimum AP and be able to support it with elementals".
Also with the Grace Dawns Eternal giving +10 million Dragon Kings we should be able to afford the 30m version. (And you don't need to live on a planet to prospect there, just control it IIRC. We don't really live on Jach'uchil, just have an outpost there hauling sulfur out of the ground).
30. Tree Spires: It's supposed to help launch things and it's also frustratingly expensive. I can't find info on Green Riding so I don't know what it does. A wood manse hero?
The Green Rider is a hero manse we built last turn that basically supercharges someone with Wood paths, letting them act as an increasingly potent force on the Realm scale that gives us +1/+2/+3 AP worth of labor for various plant-based tasks (plantations work mostly, but it could be anything from helping to research a martial arts style for Form of the Terrible Ancestors to researching the soul-capturing bulbs). It's also pretty potent in combat but that almost feels like a waste.
Tree Spires will provide -10 DC for projects in orbit around the planet it's at (On Tokat that's basically shipyard tasks) making assigning ships unnecessary, and -5 DC for other tasks in-system like Jach'uchil projects (not sure how that stacks with using mantas and maze skiffs). Once complete it unlocks a project called an Ironwood Girdle we don't know much about but
is Treel-OK and presumably improves upon the bonuses provided in some way.
31. Punching the Warp: The end is in sight but still far off. 120 AP is bigger than Templeships, with smaller discounts for factory cathedrals. This is why I don't want to go to Joura when we know there are cheaper options much closer to home. We're not starving for things to throw AP at. And we can't get a second barracks, the QM said that kind of increase is too broken to allow.
Where did he say we can't build a second Barracks? To clarify I was looking at the All Mountain Fane base + Training Ground on Ophelis so we could do other troop-training actions (Legion Trainee) while also engaging in the Wyld Fighters.
Also Punching the Warp primarily takes Anklok AP (basic training stuff, potentially the whole of the project) while establishing a colony (or outpost) is...not. There's little budget conflict in engaging in two of these at once.
32. Home Away From Home. Extremely expensive, unnecessarily so. The QM doesn't consider Joura necessary, and I want to see actual data on the alternative before I decide which planet to support. I think you're assuming too much about the alternative because you like Joura.
Could you explain to me how it's 'expensive'? We're told if we haven't spent 120 AP on the project (at least) it probably isn't done. I presume any new project with a later due-date aren't going to be cheaper so the only extra expense I can see is the waystation which I see as a net gain. The only one that isn't likely to give us AP producing projects is the cheapest one, and both the unnamed second option and Tanith involve settling someplace, ie getting access to planetary AP somehow.
I'm not trying to be argumentative on this point, I'm just not sure where the breakdown in communication is.
33-34. Lanka and the Golden Throne and The Second Quest quests: Probably also very very expensive and will take a long time and a second Karmic world in another Sector. I would support 50 year divinations for these. I don't want to pile too much on 25 year divinations -- we keep that up too much and we'll end up with a turn in which 7+ expensive, high-DC projects are destined to be easy and we can't afford to finish more than 1 or 2. Let's not do that. And the Aeldari will want to know why we're interested in the Ghostwind. Can we fool them? Can we fool their warlocks? I'm not sure if we should tell them. They have no reason to trust or save Primarchs (yet).
"We found a cool way to travel the galaxy super fast and avoid the Rakshasa, but we aren't sure if it's a fool's errand (in which case we'll assign fools to research it) or a promising new lead. Do you have any records on this place?"
I think we can fool the Eldar (or rather insert enough uncertainty into their conclusions to make them hesitant to do anything about it) but I understand your caution. I will however point out that Hoeth's Tower can provide 1 research autosux without calling the Eldar and telling them about it.
I doubt we'll get to the '7 expensive projects all on the same turn' state any time soon, as we currently only have 5 astrology questions to ask right now and I don't think we've used all 5 on a long term question yet. Usually we're looking at 2 or 3 [25y] questions at time.
35-36. Caches and Talisman of Vaul quests: The next steps are to build specific countermeasures, but we don't have the AP to spare to work on these at all. See, you have reasonable replies to each one of these items, but the problem isn't any single one -- not even the big quests are un-doable. The problem is doing all of them all at the same time with too little AP, because most have deadlines, except maybe the revive Aeldari god quests.
Just building armies doesn't count for the 10-turn timers. Ambushing Khrave is a good idea if we can avoid word getting back to the rest of the species. Observing their raids with the Stalking Mantis, and just watching how the human countermeasures work, might be a better option. It isn't nice but what use would we be without data, right?
My plan hopefully gives us ~+15 AP if all goes well. (+1 Gen from getting +10m people, net +3 Labor AP from Tau'va trade, +2 Resource AP and +1 Mosok AP from Coral Reefs, +1 Research +1 Pterok from Harmonious Lore Manse, complete the cleansing of one of the Ork worlds to get back an AP spent on suppression duties, maybe getting another Labor AP from Legion of Servants and getting Colony AP worth +3 Gen, +2 Raptok, +3 Pterok, -1 Anklok from colonizing a world). I don't know what might become possible after that sort of investment in infrastructure but I have ideas; yet more AP boosting projects, or beginning work on those side projects we keep wanting to see done to make things easier but can't justify, or accellerating the completion of one project just that little bit sooner.
I doubt that the Khrave, having a few of their raiding parties getting ambushed, will immediately jump to think "someone is going to attack us in our floating fortress". The Warhammer universe is just that kind of dangerous; if we have the bandwidth to create some sort of false narritive in the Warp for them to pick up ("Mosok also eat human Psykers, these are predators moving into our turf" or something) it's unlikely they'll look too hard for another, more improbable explanation ("dinosaur men are honoring pacts old and new by setting up to attack the Khrave in their fastness").
I'm willing to work out the details when we want to start operations against them. I also want to redesign the Mantis (or retire it) when we have two sources of stealth to add to it. Right now my leading options are "Night Drive" (getting Ship Design Bureau up lets us plink away at researching that) and researching Notice-Me-Not doesn't
directly lead to a vehicular stealth effect but like the Lightning Gun does when completed lead to something that might IIRC. I hope that Stalking Mantis 2.0 avoids the -2 Mosok AP problem and is at least as good as what is available.
37-45. Rescue Isha and revive other Aeldari gods: these are the only quests without hard deadlines that I know of. But once we revive one god known to have died, the Aeldari will ride our tails to drop everything and focus on all the others. Building their semi-expensive temples is the easy part. The gigantic, galaxy-spanning and crone-world-invading quests are the hard part! Hard, expensive, and for now beyond our means. That's why I want to turn the Eye of Night into an artifact to skip one of the quests, preferrably Hoeth's. I do want to start with Isha, then Hoeth and Kurnous second and third.
I agree with Isha, and can see an argument for Hoeth, but why Kurnous? Is there something specific you want to do there or just you like the symetry of bringing husband and wife together like that?
Also I can see the Eldar getting
rather hot and bothered about the return of their gods, but I'm hopeful that this comes with at least as much carrot as stick. All the scheming the Eldar do to keep treading water being turned to projects that bring them ahead (even if it's just "thanks to Vaul our crafters don't risk madness due to obesssion" and not "all the cool things we used to have got downloaded as blueprints into someone's head"). I don't know if the Eldar quests will cost as much as the Emperor quests (it seems a reasonable expectation that they do) but I rate their quests roughly in this order;
- Isha: first two steps shouldn't be hard, last one is a doozy. Recommend strong plague defenses and military build-up before moving to phase 3
- Vaul: noted as the easiest so far, first step is likely the most difficult but second is easy (we have the facilities) and can probably borrow the Talisman Ulthwe stole if necessary. Alternately we complete the Talisman quest the Emperor gave us to complete the third step.
- Kurnous; Sounds like we need to go a
little out of our way, but probably not, like, a
lot out of our way? See if we can make 'hunting down a specific Keeper of Secrets' part of the general Croneworlds campaign, otherwise reassess when we're closer to actually doing stuff.
- Khaine: "build temple, send hearthstone weilder out whenever we fight Orks" seems a fairly basic timer project with the addendum that that billionth murder will be a doozy. Also maybe do this one once more (or most) of the pantheon is already around to help keep him in line
- Hoec: "build temple, send out the Pillar of Understanding to go poke around at things, do some divinations and enact a ritual". Seems like a slow burn project. Build the temple, hopefully that unlocks the Abraxus project to begin, we engage in some divination (note to self; get more divination sources) and be ready to cut out some hearts if necessary to help the project when it procs.
- Lilieath: Honestly this seems like "now that part 4 is done you can work on part 5", annoying but more an AP tax than a "get everything done by Turn 200".
- Morai-Heg: a simple "are you ready to stick your tail into the crazy house that is the Eye of Terror to attack Crone Worlds? Y/N". This one I will suggest we certainly want to coordinate with Ulthwe about because a) it's right next door, they'll likely be willing to at least help us by securing a jump-off point somewhere b) they have a lot of to-do list items regarding the Crone Worlds that would benefit from a distraction ('go rooting around the Crone Worlds for X' is one of those high-risk projects they occasionally do out of desparation). If we have Kurnous' quest running at the same time it may be prudent to see if they can operate concurrently. Items to bring; Wyld Fighters (cheap to build, near-ideal environment for them), Golden Jannissary TMA artists, or alternately Martial Legionaires with Golden Jannissary and Golden Exhalation styles, maybe some Ordinatii of the 'Hammer of the Dawn', 'Final Phyrium' and/or 'Barrier of the Divine Gate' (depending on what exactly the mission profile is) and absolutely Solar Templeships and better to nuke monsters that show up to annoy us. Probably one of the quests with the greatest lead time before we officially get started, but one that I'm quite looking forward to.
- Asuryan: technically one of the simpler ones, not sure that we want to start this off toot sweet or wait until a few starter gods get built/rediscovered (and probably get the "Abraxus eats Hekarti and Atharti" project completed), but it
seems simple enough
- Gea: ...gonna need to be near the end if we need Khaine up and around. I get the feeling we're looking at making incidental progress on this one as other projects get completed.
46. Defend Ophelis from [?] : Not knowing about Tyrannids in character just makes it harder to prepare correctly. We have no IC reason not to build juicy vegetative technology bait. I also have no guess how much fortification we need before we have a good chance to survive, or when we'll have the AP to afford to start. It's a good reason not to dawdle too long on building up Legions.
We can build out the Major Earth Manses on Ophelis to be Fortresses, and ten of those make the planet count as a Fortress World. Some of the other manses also provide fortress-like effects (Kung Fu City, All Mountain Fane, Hearth of World's Blood, etc) that, while not a dedicated Fortress, still make the place a tough nut to crack. There's also Treel's Tunnels that lets us move stuff around underground faster (greater strategic mobility of defending units) to let us defeat invaders in detail or evacuate overwhelmed troops in good order (this option also provides +2 planetary AP). We can build a void citadel in orbit that basically acts as a defending ship of significant size and potency.
How much is
needed? We don't know now and can't know until much closer to the appointed time. However building out the various manses and getting a void citadel up seems a prudent course of action to work towards until we know more.
47. Unshaped Hunt: Perhaps it can wait until after the Solar Templeship redesign, you mean? I figure if I don't include this nobody will vote for my plan.
I understand and agree with the sentement of including it by necessity. I didn't mean to imply it should wait however.
48. Build Anchors: Yeah we don't even have options yet for 4 of them. I only call this less urgent because it isn't as the Eye of Night but seriously, it's actually still urgent. We have 2 base manses ready and 2 yet to build. 25-year plans are a decent idea, as long as we don't over load on those like I said. I hope Ratatoskr can be convinced to help the Ghostwalkers. All I can think of for Eucharists are Shining Flower (who isn't into lust or shameful secrets) and Khaine (who isn't really a god of blood and can barely control himself, much less other people).
I hadn't thought of Ratatoskr, thanks for the idea.
No, we really can't conquere every planet in the galaxy. I hope you were only joking calling that quitter talk.
I was attempting to be funny, yes. I also quoted the Goddess of Dragon King Conquest, who as you might expect is quite keen on the Dragon Kings conquering things to help inform the bias of the disagreement.
I added the CMA action to use the dojo because I realized I didn't need it for Encourage Martial Arts: the minimum AP is already overkill. I hadn't thought to make it roll over into the next level. @StarJaunter , will extra successes on that go into the next level of Encourage Martial Arts?
Dojo counts for Encourage Martial Arts for 1 AP, so maybe you can free up AP that way?
I prioritize getting more AP when we can, it isn't urgent but it's very valuable. It is more urgent than adding upgrades to Breed manses like the Aetherial Reef and I don't want to build the other Breed manses the way we're doing Peerless Predator Breeding. The sooner we get +1 Breed AP, the better, no need to delay it.
How do you feel about doing a 25 year divination for Peerless Predator Breeding to get a low-DC time to push it all at once?
If we use the Voice of Authority and someone attacks home while it's away, how do we defend? I don't think a flotilla is enough against a serious attack. That's my concern.
I would rate our flotilla against any peer opponents as-is. If the combat is in the Tokat system they have additional support in the form of the Night Faring Gem and three Skyremes. Assuming either the Upgrade or New Build Birds of a Feather project are completed warbird support should be easy to get as well (be it 'we have these stationed on the planet' or 'we jumped in from out of system and got here as fast as we could') and there's a good chance that the
Feast will be available as well. I don't anticipate a overwhelming attack while the Voice is gone. If anything it'd be pinprick raids and the QRF is well qualified to deal with them while the patroling flotilla is better able to be in more places at once than the Voice of Authority.
