Lex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest

[Ryddler777]

[X] Plan Good First Impressions

 

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. Plus, Carl's really good at building prisons, with bonuses high enough to be a virtually guaranteed success. There's almost sure to be some other better use for Moon.

 

[Gumiho]

[X] Plan Good First Impressions

 

[Serpentine]

[X] Plan Good First Impressions

 

[ThatGuyWithIdeas]

[X] Plan Good First Impressions

 

[Tsipouras1997]

[X] Plan Good First Impressions

 

[King crimson]

Clayface Song Idea
It's my show!
I can be like a bird in heaven, I can be like a rabid beast
I can be like a total stranger or even a loved one long deceased
I can be like a stupid human, waltzing around without a clue
I can be anything I want, and maybe if I want to I'll be you

Gather all I want to me
Wealth's only worthwhile while you're having fun
One in a million I may be, yes, but I'm also a million in one
So you can bet that the leading role is mine
The spotlight is something I suit
Act like your part of the play and that soon becomes the truth

I can become a lovely maiden, I can become a holy priest
I can become a king of kings, my repertoire has only increased
Molding a thing to any shape, it's easy enough to recognize
Frankly it's perfect for me, even if it was a surprise

Gather all I want to me
Wealth's only worthwhile while you're having fun
One in a million I may be, yes, but I'm also a million in one
It's something more than some cheap parlor trick
Presentation counts as a matter of style
So cast the role and make your pick
No matter whose shoes you choose, I can still walk a mile

 

[Turamarth]

[X] Plan Good First Impressions

 

[Lockheart]

[X] Plan Chem Cheat Sheet

 

[argonlyzard]

[X] Plan Good First Impressions

 

[Alex Sol]

[X] Plan Chem Cheat Sheet

I like Learning choices there, focus on chemistry is cool, plus Caitlin and Louise on space can help us with space shuttles. Diplo though kind of really weak here. I think it would have been better to put one of Double Down on Push for laws action. And maybe move Mari and Lana to further reinforce diplo actions. Dacota City building can be done by Felicity and Exosuits by Carla and Barbara.

 

[Kolekzionera]

[X] Plan Chem Cheat Sheet

 

[Silvereagle21]

[X] Plan Chem Cheat Sheet

 

[Zale]

@King crimson
1. Should remove the Stagg options from Pamela's EPA actions
2. Nathan Warbow's Building Above and Beyond trait is never going to be used and I believe is a badly designed trait that needs to be reworked. All the other traits our employees have I can see being used/have been used, but not that one. From a mechanical standpoint it doesn't provide a good enough reward for delaying building things (from 4 to 24 turns) when we often want access to the buildings immediately and situations rapidly evolve turn to turn in this game. The game state and our objectives change to much that even a 4 turn delay is terrible, but possibly a 10+ turn delay is insane. It is also unsynergistic with his other trait Better Building Buildings.

That is just a pure mechanical pov. Meta wise that trait feels really bad to use as a player. 4 turns ago (the minimum delay) was in September 2020, 7 months ago. 24 turns ago was turn 2 in July of 2019. To use that trait we wouldn't see any reward for possibly over half a year at minimum to possibly irl years. Even if it was mechanically good (which I don't think it is) psychologically from a player perspective that doesn't feel fun or rewarding to use.

I don't know if the trait is even salvageable in its current form. Maybe if it was restricted from 2-4 turns? Even than I would have doubts it is ever used. I would just seriously consider reworking this trait so that it at least has a chance of being used compared to not even being a thought in the player's head.

 

[King crimson]

@King crimson
1. Should remove the Stagg options from Pamela's EPA actions
2. Nathan Warbow's Building Above and Beyond trait is never going to be used and I believe is a badly designed trait that needs to be reworked. All the other traits our employees have I can see being used/have been used, but not that one. From a mechanical standpoint it doesn't provide a good enough reward for delaying building things (from 4 to 24 turns) when we often want access to the buildings immediately and situations rapidly evolve turn to turn in this game. The game state and our objectives change to much that even a 4 turn delay is terrible, but possibly a 10+ turn delay is insane. It is also unsynergistic with his other trait Better Building Buildings.

That is just a pure mechanical pov. Meta wise that trait feels really bad to use as a player. 4 turns ago (the minimum delay) was in September 2020, 7 months ago. 24 turns ago was turn 2 in July of 2019. To use that trait we wouldn't see any reward for possibly over half a year at minimum to possibly irl years. Even if it was mechanically good (which I don't think it is) psychologically from a player perspective that doesn't feel fun or rewarding to use.

I don't know if the trait is even salvageable in its current form. Maybe if it was restricted from 2-4 turns? Even than I would have doubts it is ever used. I would just seriously consider reworking this trait so that it at least has a chance of being used compared to not even being a thought in the player's head.

Click to shrink...

1. This I agree on and will get to fixing.
2. I actually have more complicated feelings about this. I think that it's actually relatively untested as far as a trait goes considering Pamela, Lex, Cassandra and more all have traits that have been around at least about as long as if not longer than Nathan's Building Above and Beyond Trait so I don't think it's been sufficient time to gauge how worthless it is. The trait is specifically designed to make it so the thread can look at something like a risky DC 300 action and guarantee its success while burning only one hero unit. I think it's actually incredibly powerful and that the design flaw is arguably more that I haven't given you any stupidly high DC building actions to use it on.

If that is the case and there is a design flaw in that sense I still have another solution to it. All I have to do to make it not just useful but incredibly so is take away control from you and make it a trait that activates automatically on failure (if anything that's arguably way too powerful so I'd likely make it failures by 50 or less or something) and suddenly it becomes arguably one of the best traits in the game because it makes it so that you can guarantee certain actions will not fail. I will agree that the trait as it is now isn't the most useful or the thing the quest would want the most but the ability to guarantee the success of any action of a certain type is really really powerful and so I don't think it should be overlooked as "useless".

Again this is meant to be at least somewhat situational so that if you ever encounter something like a DC 200 building action you can just stick Nathan on it and not have to worry about failure. The fact that it can go up to 24 turns is a necessary precaution and balancing measure when the trait can apply to DC 999 actions as easily as it can DC 1 actions. I'm not going to make every action take 24 turns but if you were to decide "lets burn Nathan by guaranteeing the success of a DC 500+ action while keeping all our other hero units free" then you better believe I need to make the cost hefty to make sure you don't constantly grab the best options possible with no room for failure.

I am amenable to potentially lowering the minimum from 4 to 2 to make it more useful for lower DC actions but considering I explicitly designed the cost benefit analysis of the action to only really kick in on DC 100+ actions I think it's pretty good as is design-wise, it's just not getting use because the actions it was made for are really uncommon. All that being said certain actions, like building an underwater city (which people have asked me if it is possible), are made trivially easy with Nathan's trait so there are good niche uses for it once you get high enough down the building construction options.

 

[jonasquinn]

1. This I agree on and will get to fixing.
2. I actually have more complicated feelings about this. I think that it's actually relatively untested as far as a trait goes considering Pamela, Lex, Cassandra and more all have traits that have been around at least about as long as if not longer than Nathan's Building Above and Beyond Trait so I don't think it's been sufficient time to gauge how worthless it is. The trait is specifically designed to make it so the thread can look at something like a risky DC 300 action and guarantee its success while burning only one hero unit. I think it's actually incredibly powerful and that the design flaw is arguably more that I haven't given you any stupidly high DC building actions to use it on.

If that is the case and there is a design flaw in that sense I still have another solution to it. All I have to do to make it not just useful but incredibly so is take away control from you and make it a trait that activates automatically on failure (if anything that's arguably way too powerful so I'd likely make it failures by 50 or less or something) and suddenly it becomes arguably one of the best traits in the game because it makes it so that you can guarantee certain actions will not fail. I will agree that the trait as it is now isn't the most useful or the thing the quest would want the most but the ability to guarantee the success of any action of a certain type is really really powerful and so I don't think it should be overlooked as "useless".

Again this is meant to be at least somewhat situational so that if you ever encounter something like a DC 200 building action you can just stick Nathan on it and not have to worry about failure. The fact that it can go up to 24 turns is a necessary precaution and balancing measure when the trait can apply to DC 999 actions as easily as it can DC 1 actions. I'm not going to make every action take 24 turns but if you were to decide "lets burn Nathan by guaranteeing the success of a DC 500+ action while keeping all our other hero units free" then you better believe I need to make the cost hefty to make sure you don't constantly grab the best options possible with no room for failure.

I am amenable to potentially lowering the minimum from 4 to 2 to make it more useful for lower DC actions but considering I explicitly designed the cost benefit analysis of the action to only really kick in on DC 100+ actions I think it's pretty good as is design-wise, it's just not getting use because the actions it was made for are really uncommon. All that being said certain actions, like building an underwater city (which people have asked me if it is possible), are made trivially easy with Nathan's trait so there are good niche uses for it once you get high enough down the building construction options.

Click to shrink...

While I definitely see where you're coming from I do still think that 24 is prohibitively high, that's literally almost as long as the quest itself and is in universe six years where we just have to completely write off a useful hero unit

Even if we encounter an action with a DC that high the odds of the thread agreeing that the action is important enough to use Nathan's trait but also not so important that we're unwilling to wait 24 turns for it to pay of are extremely low

Based on past experience we're far more likely to go out of our way to try and find ways to lower the DC and then put as strong a team as we can on the action than use Nathan's trait and doing so will probably take use fewer turns as well

 

[King crimson]

While I definitely see where you're coming from I do still think that 24 is prohibitively high, that's literally almost as long as the quest itself and is in universe six years where we just have to completely write off a useful hero unit

Even if we encounter an action with a DC that high the odds of the thread agreeing that the action is important enough to use Nathan's trait but also not so important that we're unwilling to wait 24 turns for it to pay of are extremely low

Based on past experience we're far more likely to go out of our way to try and find ways to lower the DC and then put as strong a team as we can on the action than use Nathan's trait and doing so will probably take use fewer turns as well

Click to shrink...

24 is prohibitively high but I'm leaving myself the wiggle room to prevent exploits. I don't expect to give you many actions that would covert to 24 turns of waiting from the trait but I had to leave this extreme limit in to prevent exploits if you decide to go for something like a DC 999 action (The highest value I've listed for any action I'm willing to potentially give you currently) or even higher if I decide to introduce something even more difficult. It's not meant to be a constant thing but I did want to close a potential loophole abuse of if I didn't give myself a prohibitively high cost to deter certain exploits from not even being considered.

And yes the thread has shown a history of going out of their way to try and lower the DC of high DC actions rather than attempt them directly but that has its own cost benefit analysis of being slower than doing it directly, potentially not getting it as low as you'd like and still containing multiple points of failure. Nathan's trait has no points of failure and the DC cannot prevent its failure. As such it has to be even slower than potentially trying to lower the DC through other actions because if it happened at an equivalent speed then his trait would be the superior choice every time. As such don't think leaving DC lowering as a viable option is a bad thing per se because that invites other costs and problems that the trait doesn't have since the only things limiting the trait are action choice and the time it takes to complete the action.

 

[Zale]

2. I actually have more complicated feelings about this. I think that it's actually relatively untested as far as a trait goes considering Pamela, Lex, Cassandra and more all have traits that have been around at least about as long as if not longer than Nathan's Building Above and Beyond Trait so I don't think it's been sufficient time to gauge how worthless it is. The trait is specifically designed to make it so the thread can look at something like a risky DC 300 action and guarantee its success while burning only one hero unit. I think it's actually incredibly powerful and that the design flaw is arguably more that I haven't given you any stupidly high DC building actions to use it on.

If that is the case and there is a design flaw in that sense I still have another solution to it. All I have to do to make it not just useful but incredibly so is take away control from you and make it a trait that activates automatically on failure (if anything that's arguably way too powerful so I'd likely make it failures by 50 or less or something) and suddenly it becomes arguably one of the best traits in the game because it makes it so that you can guarantee certain actions will not fail. I will agree that the trait as it is now isn't the most useful or the thing the quest would want the most but the ability to guarantee the success of any action of a certain type is really really powerful and so I don't think it should be overlooked as "useless".

Again this is meant to be at least somewhat situational so that if you ever encounter something like a DC 200 building action you can just stick Nathan on it and not have to worry about failure. The fact that it can go up to 24 turns is a necessary precaution and balancing measure when the trait can apply to DC 999 actions as easily as it can DC 1 actions. I'm not going to make every action take 24 turns but if you were to decide "lets burn Nathan by guaranteeing the success of a DC 500+ action while keeping all our other hero units free" then you better believe I need to make the cost hefty to make sure you don't constantly grab the best options possible with no room for failure.

I am amenable to potentially lowering the minimum from 4 to 2 to make it more useful for lower DC actions but considering I explicitly designed the cost benefit analysis of the action to only really kick in on DC 100+ actions I think it's pretty good as is design-wise, it's just not getting use because the actions it was made for are really uncommon. All that being said certain actions, like building an underwater city (which people have asked me if it is possible), are made trivially easy with Nathan's trait so there are good niche uses for it once you get high enough down the building construction options.

Click to shrink...

I have had 7 months to think on the trait. Trust me, I've considered many possibilities and I would still never use it in its current design. If we want to succeed on a DC 200 Stewardship action we can do so easily with a Lex combo.

It is rarely to never worth the turn delay mechanically. 2-24 turns is still not worth the risk. Yes we could get a decent success on a DC 999 action, but we could also than have to wait 24 turns (or 2 IRL YEARS) to see that action completed. It is still unfun and does not feel good from a player perspective and still not great mechanically. Even at a max of 10 turns I don't see it being used.

I don't think you value how much a delay on a build action matters. Cool we succeeded on a super hard DC 400 build action automatically, but will that matter 10 turns later when we are in a completely different situation with other priorities?

 

[King crimson]

I have had 7 months to think on the trait. Trust me, I've considered many possibilities and I would still never use it in its current design. If we want to succeed on a DC 200 Stewardship action we can do so easily with a Lex combo.

It is rarely to never worth the turn delay mechanically. 2-24 turns is still not worth the risk. Yes we could get a decent success on a DC 999 action, but we could also than have to wait 24 turns (or 2 IRL YEARS) to see that action completed. It is still unfun and does not feel good from a player perspective and still not great mechanically. Even at a max of 10 turns I don't see it being used.

I don't think you value how much a delay on a build action matters. Cool we succeeded on a super hard DC 400 build action automatically, but will that matter 10 turns later when we are in a completely different situation with other priorities?

Click to shrink...

I believe you that you've thought it over for 7 months and have come to the conclusion that you would never use it. I've had equally as long to ponder it and I can say that there are situations where I personally would use it.

You can get very high rolls with Lex combos but at the same time that's probably your best hero unit and there has consistently been at least some debate over where to place Lex during every hero assignment plan. This trait only prevents you from using Nathan who as far as hero units go isn't exactly your strongest nor one in extremely high demand.

24 is arbitrarily high yes and I will agree with you that I potentially underestimated how long it could take (two IRL years is a bit much I can concede that, and so even DC 999 actions likely will not take that long anymore) but I still see the benefits to keeping it as it serves as a limiter for if I ever introduce even higher DC options (it might not be fair for DC 999 but if I stuck on another six digits and introduced a DC 999,999,999 option then it's actually rather generous all things considered). 24 turns is not intended to be common at all when using this trait and is instead meant to basically be an upper cap on delays meant to give me enough room to close potential exploits.

On top of that the thread has also proven willing to work a long time and across many turns to achieve something (I don't know how many turns you've worked on the Cold Engine but the thread spend over 10 actions on the AMAZO stuff and potentially will do that again). If there is ever the building equivalent of an action like AMAZO and if people knew that they would likely only have to wait a decent amount longer than if they tried to do it by lowering DC's to reasonably safe levels and they'd get it without any risk then I think people would take it. People have shown a willingness to receive very little for a long term benefit in the past before and they may prove willing to do so again especially when it's coupled with the fact that the action cannot fail. I think it certainly does matter and is relevant to people to have this option in certain situations and that as a whole I haven't underestimated how long people are willing to play the long game for something they think is worth it.

That being said your biggest critique (in my eyes) that this trait is potentially boring and anti-fun is fairly substantial and one I can't fully refute as I do think there is some truth to what you are saying. I do think my best defense here is that the vast majority of traits aren't especially "fun" but that the problem here is one of decision making (by changing it to an active ability versus a passive modifier the choice is potentially no fun as opposed to the ability itself as most abilities would be incredibly boring and unfun if I similarly let you choose whether or not to directly apply them). I'm considering some sort of tweak to it but I do not think the option is "worthless" or even "bad" so much as it is too polarizing and thus not really fun to play with except in incredibly specific scenarios that don't yet exist. I will say that this will likely result in the trait becoming some kind of passive ability though which might make Nathan an objectively worse unit overall even if he's technically a more fun one.

 

[Torgamous]

if I stuck on another six digits and introduced a DC 999,999,999 option then it's actually rather generous

Click to shrink...

So do we need to write in "build a Dyson sphere", or...

 

[HavocOrder0999]

@jonasquinn Can I please bring up one suggestion for your plan? Besides the actual numbers, the info about a stat can affect the results. You put Lady Vic as the hero for arming the US Government with tech, but the reason I put Mick on the action is because the Keystone Motors action will do well without him, and he is an actual US citizen who has used LexCorp weaponry before. Both he and Lady Vic have 5 diplomacy, but Mick will come off as a grunt, while Lady Vic will come off as an arrogant foreigner. The actual text on their diplomacy scores read:

Diplomacy: 5 (Mick is terse and rude but can get along will with others. He is stubborn but is humble enough to recognize when he screws up. He is not a charismatic individual but he can get the job done in a pinch even if he prefers to let his skills do the talking)

Click to shrink...

Diplomacy: 5 (Elaine is not exactly a pleasant person and while she is quite capable of politeness she's generally not a great negotiator and isn't good at getting people to like her or want to listen to her in any meaningful capacity)

Click to shrink...

So while both of their Martial scores can help them pass the action, Mick would probably be the one to make friends or at least be someone that members of the military could speak freely with. One of the reasons for taking the action is to meet other members of the military. I also pushed Elaine with Nygma, in case the investigation goes violent and she needs to keep Nygma safe, they have a .8 coop score which is pretty hard to find for them.

Also having Mick on the action with the other Rogues limits us to one reroll (5 - 4 heroes = 1 reroll).

 

[Lockheart]

I believe you that you've thought it over for 7 months and have come to the conclusion that you would never use it. I've had equally as long to ponder it and I can say that there are situations where I personally would use it.

You can get very high rolls with Lex combos but at the same time that's probably your best hero unit and there has consistently been at least some debate over where to place Lex during every hero assignment plan. This trait only prevents you from using Nathan who as far as hero units go isn't exactly your strongest nor one in extremely high demand.

24 is arbitrarily high yes and I will agree with you that I potentially underestimated how long it could take (two IRL years is a bit much I can concede that, and so even DC 999 actions likely will not take that long anymore) but I still see the benefits to keeping it as it serves as a limiter for if I ever introduce even higher DC options (it might not be fair for DC 999 but if I stuck on another six digits and introduced a DC 999,999,999 option then it's actually rather generous all things considered). 24 turns is not intended to be common at all when using this trait and is instead meant to basically be an upper cap on delays meant to give me enough room to close potential exploits.

On top of that the thread has also proven willing to work a long time and across many turns to achieve something (I don't know how many turns you've worked on the Cold Engine but the thread spend over 10 actions on the AMAZO stuff and potentially will do that again). If there is ever the building equivalent of an action like AMAZO and if people knew that they would likely only have to wait a decent amount longer than if they tried to do it by lowering DC's to reasonably safe levels and they'd get it without any risk then I think people would take it. People have shown a willingness to receive very little for a long term benefit in the past before and they may prove willing to do so again especially when it's coupled with the fact that the action cannot fail. I think it certainly does matter and is relevant to people to have this option in certain situations and that as a whole I haven't underestimated how long people are willing to play the long game for something they think is worth it.

That being said your biggest critique (in my eyes) that this trait is potentially boring and anti-fun is fairly substantial and one I can't fully refute as I do think there is some truth to what you are saying. I do think my best defense here is that the vast majority of traits aren't especially "fun" but that the problem here is one of decision making (by changing it to an active ability versus a passive modifier the choice is potentially no fun as opposed to the ability itself as most abilities would be incredibly boring and unfun if I similarly let you choose whether or not to directly apply them). I'm considering some sort of tweak to it but I do not think the option is "worthless" or even "bad" so much as it is too polarizing and thus not really fun to play with except in incredibly specific scenarios that don't yet exist. I will say that this will likely result in the trait becoming some kind of passive ability though which might make Nathan an objectively worse unit overall even if he's technically a more fun one.

Click to shrink...

I think what we need is a way to determine how many turns the action will take. For example, a turn for every 30 points we didn't meet the requirement of an action on the first roll.

If an action is DC 350, we rolled 50, then the action is complete in 10 turns, and so on.

Then, we will have the chance to improve the trait by using it successfully, and then it will be a turn for every 35, or something.

 

[Sirrocco]

@HavocOrder0999 I'd say that my one serious concern with your plan is that you've got no support at all on the Atlantis diplomatic meeting. "Atantis finally starts opening up diplomatic interactions with the outside world" is huge, and we've basically been positioning ourselves to exploit it for the entire game. Just leaving it as an unsupported 0 feels like a big mistake.

 

[HavocOrder0999]

I'd say that my one serious concern with your plan is that you've got no support at all on the Atlantis diplomatic meeting. "Atantis finally starts opening up diplomatic interactions with the outside world" is huge, and we've basically been positioning ourselves to exploit it for the entire game. Just leaving it as an unsupported 0 feels like a big mistake.

Click to shrink...

There are two options that I can immediately see:
1. I switch Marie Dahl from meeting with Cassandra Craft to being on the Atlantis action (Lucy and Rene stay on the restrictive law action for +39)
2. I put Lucy on the Atlantis action, and Marie and Rene on the restrictive laws action (+33 to the roll).

Please tell me what you think. The Cassandra Craft action is only DC 10 but the laws action is DC 49. I'd be fine with either change.

Edit. Or I pull Pamela off chemistry to go on restrictive laws with Rene (coop 1.2), leave Marie where she is, put Lucy on the Atlantis action, and put Barbara on chemistry with Lex and Karl. I actually like this one.

 

[Torgamous]

Lucy on anti-Superman laws is too perfect to move her.