Yeah sorry I'm not the best at phrasing things sometimes. I meant more focus then usual. Not throwing everything and the kitchen sink at it.
Last edited:
-
Going forward, links to content from Twitter (now X) will no longer be embedded. Pre-existing links should not be affected.
Lex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest
- Thread starter King crimson
- Start date
- Superhero
Hey when I've suggested stuff before it's either been "I know we can't do this now but I'd like to do it in the future" or "I genuinely believe that this is the best/only time for this"
We don't really know that yet though, partly because we don't know what the actual DC for it will be but also because we'd almost certainly want to guarantee a good success to avoid the possibility that the desperate people we hire are untrustworthy
I would also kinda argue that we've wanted to hire more of the Rogues for a while and the employee shortage is the the kick in the pants we need to do it
I kinda feel like you're crossing wires here, afaik any generic hiring action is to hire people for LexCorp proper not any of our subsidiaries so I don't think it will suddenly result in an upswing for Future Construction, I'm pretty sure if we want that we just have to go in hard in advertising them and the rebuild action
I get you and I'm not against doing it depending on the DC but I don't think it'll have an impact on the construction and as we've discussed before the DC's for actually expanding it are too high to be attempting when we have so much other stuff to do
Though all this talk of construction has me thinking @King crimson is it possible for us to invent improved versions of construction supplies, like better concrete for example, and if so which action would that fall under?
For example I fully support going in hard on producing more news next turn to take advantage of the Daily Planet's brief absence and to get our version of events out sooner, in universe if that action goes well it would probably take the form of releasing stories with details we can only get from our ties with the government, producing as many hard hitting articles about the invasion as possible and if we roll high enough potentially buying out some of our smaller competitors
Sirrocco
Pedantic
I'll agree that the DC matters. It matters a lot. In this particular case, I expect it to be relatively low, for a variety of reasons. If it's not...? Much less interesting.
I'm going to posit that hiring desperate out-of-work people who want to feed their families is going to be lower-risk than hiring ex-convicts, but I'll agree that we don't want to set ourselves up for a situation where we could roll 40 below the DC or something similarly awful.
I'd also note that my understanding is that we're currently a bit short on people, and that my pan is to hire a bunch of people and then immediately suck most of them into Future Construction. I don't think this needs to disrupt any "hire ex-convicts" plans anyone might have. Much of the reason I'm proposing this is that when I was out beating the drum for increasing the size of our construction company before, I recall getting back responses asserting that that was a bad idea because we were already short on people. This is a way to make us not short on people so that it's no longer a bad idea.
Worth remembering - rebuilding infrastructure in our core cities isn't just a massive PR boost. It's not just a way to make money. It's to just a way to integrate more kryptonite and so forth. It also returns those cities to functionality faster so that we can get rid of the applicable temporary debuffs.
Expanding parts of the company and hiring workers are two different actions... but expanding bits of the company strains our worker supply, and makes things harder if we don't also hire a bunch of workers to fill in the space. At least, that's how I understand it to work, based on what I've read. @King crimson - can you confirm or deny?
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
Yes. Off the top of my head "improve nanites" and "learn about chemistry" could work. There might be more but I'd have to check when my brain's less fried.
What you're saying sounds right but I'm not exactly operating at 100% so I might be misremembering stuff. I'll double-check and get back to you some time after I post the update.
Ordinarily I'd agree with you but since we're practically guaranteed to put the Rogues on it and blow hiring ex-convicts out of the water I'm not really worried about hiring untrustworthy people
I'm not sure about others but iirc my main issue with expanding Future Construction is that the DC is way too high for a turn where we have a bunch of other stuff to do
Nice, theoretically us developing concrete that could withstand superhuman strength would be very useful with how much damage tends to get done in the DC universe
Though considering that the DC for learning about chemistry is 113 I have no idea how Ed actually accomplish it
Last edited:
Sirrocco
Pedantic
Hmm....
75 isn't low, but it's at least potentially doable.
@King crimson is there anything in particular we could do to lower that DC?
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
Hire more workers is the first thing that comes to mind. You could also build/improve robots that could either replace people or make construction easier and that would work.
It's potentially doable and I'm not against doing it sometime soon but with all the stuff we have to do next couple of turns I feel like it's too high for now
Sirrocco
Pedantic
Okay. We're going to have a lot of construction work to do in the near future (and expanding Future Construction will help drop those DCs), and we've just gotten a confirm that hiring workers helps lower expansion DCs. So how about we try hiring the desperate this next turn (assuming the DC is reasonable) and then expand our construction business next turn (once that's had a chance to lower the DC)?
It also makes sense as a cadence for such things. We immediately start hiring folks who were out of work off the streets, and once we've gotteen them through a bit of training, then we put them to work as skilled labor on the reconstruction.
Again, hiring the desperate has two payoffs - both a direct "rebuilding the world" PR bonus (and we want to stack as many of those as we reasonably can) and the fact that this is basically the ideal time to hire workers, what with everyone being out of work because the economy is cratering because all of their workplaces got shot up by robots. Like, seriously, hiring the desperate is one of the time-critical things we should be doing with this time.
Assuming it all goes to plan that works for me
Sirrocco
Pedantic
Okay, so... cycling back around to the perennial "what should we try to do next turn" question. Not going to answer that. Just going to try to collect together the things that are particularly worth doing this next turn for one reason or another.
- At least one or two actions on the direct PR push to shape reactions to this horrorshow. As part of this, Oswald needs to be making TV in some fashion..
- Some sort of cold-related research action for Caitlyn and Louise. We're going to lose Louise soon, we want to burn off some of that coop score (so as to improve Caitlyn's with Pamela) and this actually is a good time for improving the Cold Engine if we can manage it. The kind of free energy you can get out of the Kryptonite/Cold Engine paradigm is going to be a really very valuable commodity in the rebuilding... and given that we're rebuilding, we can build it in from the start.
- Low-DC food creation actions that leverage plant growth formula. People are going to need food, so it's quick money and good PR, and we can afford to do it without much/any hero support. In some cases, this will involve using Plant Growth formula in ways that may wind up eventually generating supervillains. For the moment, that's acceptable.
- Rebuilding Metropolis. Carol/Nathan for that. Ideally involving heavy use of kryptonite (in a way that allows for easy Cold Engine integration later).
- Possibly other rebuild actions.
- Hiring the desperate (assuming reasonably low DC) Direct PR bump, and an easy influx of employees. "Easy influx of employees" is a valuable thing.
- Provide Black Adam/Diana/Tala with information on Dekan Drache/Faust (in descending priority order). Should be low DC, makes Faust's life harder, and these are valuable relationships to have.
- Build Pharmaceutical Lab (we want to keep the D'Aramis sisters. This is how we do that thing.)
- Scavenge the corpse of STAR Labs - either recruit away most/all of its scientists, or buy it out while it's in its current severely distressed state (and thus the DCs are, presumably, lower) (This assumes that we can't recruit away most/all of its scientists as part of a loot pick from the event))
- Do things to recruit Raven (the actual timelines here are not entirely clear... though there are reasons to believe that they are not long.)
Things that there are reasons to do soon, but that we might or might not want to do immediately.
- Rebuild the other cities with LexCorp towers in them. (The only reason this isn't on the first list is that I'm not convinced we'll ahve enough hero assets to do both at once.)
- Increase the size of Future Construction
- Renovate Caitlyn's Heat Chamber
- Get better hooks into Dakota City - do more prepwork so that we can be there recruiting when stuff starts to go down. If nothign else, prioritize it in the rebuild.
- Respond to the various other megacorps who dared challenge us in areas we had claimed for our own - ie, vendetta-driven R&D. (We can't really afford to do this immediately, other than maybe low-DC stuff like releasing the autokitchen, but we'll want to do it pretty soon.)
- Maybe one more good shot at the Bone Growth Serum? (preferably not Dr Moon - the point of this is for the quality of life stuff)
- More personal development actions for Cass. More!
- Recruit Criminals (once we can spar the rogues to do it). More rogues more better!
- Start working on Gingko fruit
- Push the LexCar again. Possibly meet with Keystone Motors prior to this, to see if we can activate a good car-focusd stewardship hero with a relatively low DC action.
- Combat training for our superhero types
- Costumes for our superhero types
- We have an obligation to build ODIN.
- Do we still have any obligations from Japan and/or Bialya?
Non-actions that I would strongly recommend (but don't actually know how to vote for):
- Pull Pamela back. She's already been at EPA longer than normal, and she's done about as much with the place as we coudl reasonably expect. Let's get her back home and working for us full-time again. She'll be happier and more effective.
Oh... and if we still have a shot at it, we should absolutely send Pamela in to try to recruit some STAR Labs scientists. Toss on some relatively gentle "You are relaxed and feel generally happy and chill at the moment" pheremones or something similar to get them in a receptive mood, present an appropriate spiel, and see how many we can peel off with the offer of being able to actually get back to work... though at this point it's probably too late. I only just realized that that was the way to do it just now, on the re-read. Bah.
I also ran into *this* useful quote worth considering...
So that's something worth considering.
- At least one or two actions on the direct PR push to shape reactions to this horrorshow. As part of this, Oswald needs to be making TV in some fashion..
- Some sort of cold-related research action for Caitlyn and Louise. We're going to lose Louise soon, we want to burn off some of that coop score (so as to improve Caitlyn's with Pamela) and this actually is a good time for improving the Cold Engine if we can manage it. The kind of free energy you can get out of the Kryptonite/Cold Engine paradigm is going to be a really very valuable commodity in the rebuilding... and given that we're rebuilding, we can build it in from the start.
- Low-DC food creation actions that leverage plant growth formula. People are going to need food, so it's quick money and good PR, and we can afford to do it without much/any hero support. In some cases, this will involve using Plant Growth formula in ways that may wind up eventually generating supervillains. For the moment, that's acceptable.
- Rebuilding Metropolis. Carol/Nathan for that. Ideally involving heavy use of kryptonite (in a way that allows for easy Cold Engine integration later).
- Possibly other rebuild actions.
- Hiring the desperate (assuming reasonably low DC) Direct PR bump, and an easy influx of employees. "Easy influx of employees" is a valuable thing.
- Provide Black Adam/Diana/Tala with information on Dekan Drache/Faust (in descending priority order). Should be low DC, makes Faust's life harder, and these are valuable relationships to have.
- Build Pharmaceutical Lab (we want to keep the D'Aramis sisters. This is how we do that thing.)
- Scavenge the corpse of STAR Labs - either recruit away most/all of its scientists, or buy it out while it's in its current severely distressed state (and thus the DCs are, presumably, lower) (This assumes that we can't recruit away most/all of its scientists as part of a loot pick from the event))
- Do things to recruit Raven (the actual timelines here are not entirely clear... though there are reasons to believe that they are not long.)
Things that there are reasons to do soon, but that we might or might not want to do immediately.
- Rebuild the other cities with LexCorp towers in them. (The only reason this isn't on the first list is that I'm not convinced we'll ahve enough hero assets to do both at once.)
- Increase the size of Future Construction
- Renovate Caitlyn's Heat Chamber
- Get better hooks into Dakota City - do more prepwork so that we can be there recruiting when stuff starts to go down. If nothign else, prioritize it in the rebuild.
- Respond to the various other megacorps who dared challenge us in areas we had claimed for our own - ie, vendetta-driven R&D. (We can't really afford to do this immediately, other than maybe low-DC stuff like releasing the autokitchen, but we'll want to do it pretty soon.)
- Maybe one more good shot at the Bone Growth Serum? (preferably not Dr Moon - the point of this is for the quality of life stuff)
- More personal development actions for Cass. More!
- Recruit Criminals (once we can spar the rogues to do it). More rogues more better!
- Start working on Gingko fruit
- Push the LexCar again. Possibly meet with Keystone Motors prior to this, to see if we can activate a good car-focusd stewardship hero with a relatively low DC action.
- Combat training for our superhero types
- Costumes for our superhero types
- We have an obligation to build ODIN.
- Do we still have any obligations from Japan and/or Bialya?
Non-actions that I would strongly recommend (but don't actually know how to vote for):
- Pull Pamela back. She's already been at EPA longer than normal, and she's done about as much with the place as we coudl reasonably expect. Let's get her back home and working for us full-time again. She'll be happier and more effective.
Oh... and if we still have a shot at it, we should absolutely send Pamela in to try to recruit some STAR Labs scientists. Toss on some relatively gentle "You are relaxed and feel generally happy and chill at the moment" pheremones or something similar to get them in a receptive mood, present an appropriate spiel, and see how many we can peel off with the offer of being able to actually get back to work... though at this point it's probably too late. I only just realized that that was the way to do it just now, on the re-read. Bah.
I also ran into *this* useful quote worth considering...
So that's something worth considering.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
I would like to state a reminder that STAR Labs is not limited to Metropolis. What you've been dealing with is effectively a branch of the company. As such making assumptions on the whole of STAR Labs based off of what happened in Metropolis might be misleading. That's not to say this idea is fundamentally unviable but from the language used I felt like there might have been a misunderstanding that I wanted to clear up.
Can confirm that things are coming to a head soon. I won't clarify the actual timeline but I'm willing to give that much.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
Ah! perhaps not quite as distressed as I had at first thought. Still, the Metropolis branch did get whacked pretty heavily... and I imagine that the other branches would be reasonably high-priority targets for Brainiac, so....
Well, I guess we'll have to see what the "buyout" DC looks like next turn.
We still need to build a Lexcorp building in Bialya. In return we're giving them tech.
In Japan I think it's just investigating the Tokyo troopers. And that's not really an obligation.
On a side note how many actions per turn do we have again?
For this I would very much argue for having him and Lana on creating an Ultra-Violet TV show, it fulfills his request while also getting Carol's name out there more
I'd also argue for putting the Rogues on expanding our newspaper to take advantage of the Daily Planets temporary absence
I might be wrong but I don't think we can work on the Cold Engine until it's finished in a few turns, in its place I'd actually recommend working on the freeze ray a bit, it's the highest DC cold action that's still somewhat possible and would benefit the most from Carol and Louise's co-op being high
An easy potential way to do this is to slap Louse and maybe Lance on advertising them
Thankfully I imagine that this will benefit somewhat from the pharmaceutical lab
Personally my plan for Cass for the next few turns is:
1) Get her next trait in whatever it is we decide
2) Have Jinx teach her how to act, this should hopefully increase their co-op score and her Diplomacy and Intrigue stats
3) Have her meet with Cassie Sandsmark with Oswald, gets her a new friend and with a guaranteed high toll potentially a very useful minion and another Diplomacy increase
4) Have her meet with Antonia Moretti, she should be able to handle this herself by that point and it would get her another future superpowered friend who is also a senators daughter
As a side note to this I really want to get Pied Piper so we can make him the head of our music production company
I still really want to get Kate an exosuit
Somewhat related to this I really think we should upgrade our space building soon, not only would it help with this but we also still need to develop a fully combat capable space ship and spacesuits for Eiling and it would almost certainly lower the DC's for those
Plus it would make things like staring a lunar colony and a manned mission to Mars much easier, both of which I definitely want to do
We still need to build a tower in Bialya but that can wait until we've dealt with our employment crisis and it's not an obligations but I would heavily suggest investigating the Tokyo Troopers and having 5em come WG rain with the SCU some time soon
Plus then she and Kate can get engaged, which we should probably throw a party for
Off the top of my head the best person I can think of for that is Pamela, they're both scientists from Gotham who were rejected by the larger scientific community and whose research can be used to help with farming, though I don't know if Brown would prefer someone more down to Earth…
In that case the two things I would definitely argue for in regards to that are developing Jump City, whic the DC could very well have been decreased with all the destruction, and investigations the local leyline there
As soon as we can squeeze it in I'd like to go over Ivo's old note's. Getting Ivo back (even in AI form) will not only get the AMAZO project back online, but it will be a boon for any other Engineering project's we have.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
No arguments here.
If there's no work to be done on the cold engine, then freeze ray sounds like a fine idea.
No. Stop that. "Increase size of corporate entity" is a fundamentally different action than "do some advertisements". They do very different things. Stop trying to pretend that throwing out some ads lets you check the box on increasing size. It really, really doesn't.
Maybe? We do have a Bone Growth Lab, though.
I have no particular objection to these.
Okay sure? These don't seem like particularly high priority to me.
Again in this case, I left it vague because I have little opinion on the means. I'll leave that to others to argue out, unless I see something that seems like an obvious logic error.
I'm not saying one precludes the need for the other just that advertising a company, especially if it rolls highly enough, makes expanding that company easier
They're more well known, they get more contracts, they make more money, more people want to work for them, etc and if there's ever a time to advertise a construction company it's right after a major disaster has left several cities in ruins
Sirrocco
Pedantic
"An easy potential way to do this" pretty much stats directly that the thing you're suggesting will do the thing that you're suggesting it for. Also, you'd made pretty much exactly that suggestion (advertise instead of expanding) last time we had this discussion. Though if it does lower the DC...
@King crimson - if we advertise Future Construction this turn, would it lower the DC to expand next turn, or does it not have that kid of impact?
I mean, in general, I think that being blatantly out there actually rebuilding things does pretty well as far as getting the word out, but I'm not opposed to tossing out a low-DC action this turn in order to lower a DC for next turn.
I mean that just as an easy way to accomplish or help accomplish that goal that can easily be done this upcoming turn without investing the effort on an actual expansion which we can't afford this turn
I'm fully on board with doing a proper expansion of Future Construction soon, I just think advertising them is a nice easy thing we can do that helps that goal in the meantime
It does but actually advertising the company increases the chances of them getting contracts from other governments and businesses which gets the word out even more
Sirrocco
Pedantic
What goal are you referring to?
The reason I want to expand Future Construction is that I want to make them better/faster/etc at all of the rebuilding of Lex Tower cities that I'm going to want them to do. I expect sheer ability to produce work to be the major limiting factor here. Advertising basically doesn't fix that at all.
You seem to be focused on "get more contracts, make more money" but I really don't expect that that's going to be our major limiting factor here.
Basically the way I'm thinking of it the more contracts and money Future Construction gets the easier expanding them will be because rather than their parent company spending money on a gamble it would just be them expanding to meet the demand for their work
While their will definitely be some limitations based on how much physical work they can actually do I imagine that they have offices in cities other than Metropolis so even if we focus all of the local resources on rebuilding it there would still be people in say Coast City or Jump City that could theoretically be doing more work and by getting them more jobs we make future expansions easier
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
It can have this effect. It's not guaranteed but I wouldn't claim it's particularly hard either.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
Okay. In that case, it makes sense as prep work - and (assuming the DCs are as I hope they are) we'd be looking to expand tur after this upcoming one which would make an advertising run make sense for this next turn.
On a completely unrelated not I just remembered that we theoretically might be getting a new hero unit soon because as part of her infiltration of HIVE Queen Bee discovered a bunch of Life Model Decoy drones, which by the sounds of things are already way better than our Robot Doubles and almost certainly have some useful technologies we could reverse engineer, and has already promised to send us their inventor once she gets her hands on him
Though that reminds me, should we tell Diana that we have an ally on the inside of HIVE to stop them from running into each other?
Though that reminds me, should we tell Diana that we have an ally on the inside of HIVE to stop them from running into each other?