King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
It would be this action in martial
I'm not giving a specific stewardship action to accomplish the same thing as this martial action.
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Lex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest
- Thread starter King crimson
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- Superhero
I'm not giving a specific stewardship action to accomplish the same thing as this martial action.
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Wait. Are we sure this is such a good idea? More people being aware of Lexcorps involvement is a bad thing. Surely there are better options we could substitute with that would limit peoples awareness?
This for instance. We could coopt the local gangs to get the same effect, but without anyone knowing who we are. The fact that the assets are deniable, expendable and we are making sure nothing is linked back to us, makes it a far more tolerable action than just meeting with people and telling them directly what the goal is. We could also use them to more indirectly benefit Helena's attempt, further hiding what it is they were actually hired to do.
Or we could light gotham on fire. A sudden erupting gang war would buy time for the scene of the murder to grow cold and be interfered with to obscure what happened, and increase the number of potential suspects.
Frankly, even simply dropping the local help option without picking a replacement might be better as it consolidates points on the diplomacy distraction and planning(which we don't know the dc of).
I'm eager to hear everyones thoughts as to dropping and possibly replacing assist helena by recruiting local aid. That said, I'll be dropping it myself immediately do to believing that we don't want anyone in gotham specifically aware of our actual goal.
This is the leading helena plan at 9 votes now that I've dropped recruiting local aid because of the loose ends it creates. Nothing else has more than 2 votes.
Fair.
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Honestly I just voted for it because everyone else was. I know that calling in our favor with Catwoman is an autosuccess under that action. So if we don't have anything we're planning on spending the favor on then it's arguably a better option then using other gangs. Especially if she sends Croc out to smash some skulls.
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Well cat woman owes us two favors, so thats not an issue. I just worry about it being tied back to us. If we only meet with Selina quietly after batman is witnessed in Metropolis I guess that could work. Weyland is loyal enough that she can tell him she is repaying a favor and he'll accept it.
A part of me still just wants to start a gang war in hopes it rolls back Gothams reconstruction though.
For getting more of their city repaired when we are the ones with a futuristic construction company. Lets throw a wrench in the works.
Yeah I can't resist.
Hey @King crimson can you tell us exactly how many "Assist Helena" sub actions we can take before we start suffering penalties?
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3 is definitely safe, and if we are bringing Catwoman in it's hard to imagine a hero unit of her calibur couldn't compensate for a 4th one. I think 5 or higher is just too much running around gotham getting things done to not risk some increase of noticability.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
No, because a good number of factors go into it and I want to leave some room for ambiguity and uncertainty.
I've already stated that however many hero units you assign to the action, you can take that many sub-actions safely.
I have a different calculation on the feasibility of trying to do 8 sub-actions with 4 hero units vs. trying to do 29 sub-actions with 25 hero units (more hero units is broadly speaking safer across the board). On top of that I've already mentioned that Helena receives penalties faster than other units (one sub-action faster). I think I've given enough room for people to have a reasonable certainty of what's "safe" while also leaving some room for people to gamble.
I apologize if that annoys people and I can see how my stance on this would be frustrating, but I'm not going to give exact numbers on when penalties would begin to come into effect, especially since I'd have to give a fairly big explanation accounting for a lot of variations and I'd be killing all ambiguity in the decision making process (which I like).
Edit: This might be a controversial opinion but as a pseudo-game designer. I like ambiguity. There's a reason why I have a bunch of options with a DC of ??? for them and it's not just for immersion or difficulty. I like ambiguity in games and I think it makes them more fun. Beyond the fun of letting people gamble a bit, a win when you know the outcome and thus cannot lose is boring, while a win in which you make the right guesses and the right moves feels a lot more earned.
Edit #2: In case I haven't outed myself a bit, I am a big fighting game fan and pretty regularly enjoy them. I think that guessing games and psychological gambles are a ton of fun. I'm also generally a proponent of giving characters more tools so that you can do more weird stuff and take gambles of non-optimal but weird things you can do that your opponent will lose to, not because it's optimal, but because they're not expecting it. I'm not a fan of total ambiguity (I think that's boring and lame) but at the same time I feel like if I lay enough of the tools out for you then its fun for you to figure out how to do things without me giving you a play by play.
Edit #3: Sorry for the potentially weird rant, I just like to geek out about this stuff. I don't really talk too much about game design (I've never formally studied or been employed in that capacity) but I do like porting over concepts from games I like into this quest in some capacity. Admittedly mental stack is a lot more relevant to this quest then anything else but I personally think it's neat to occasionally give a peak behind the curtain and let you see "okay here's a bit of why I think this is fun and why I'm making the decision I am".
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No it's fine. It makes sense that we can't predict how many tasks our heroes can tackle easily, especially since what is required for one task might be more time consuming than another. Identifying and Coopting numerous small gangs discretely is the work of several days at least and happens in multiple areas of the city at minimum. Coming up with a more discrete plan could happen in one room at the end of the rest of the preparations over the course of a dozen hours, or be an ongoing process from start to finish. It's entirely too realistic for an estimation to just be unreasonable in these circumstances.
Fixit can't be assigned to research action as a gameplay restriction for his traits.
That depends on what the trait is. It could be something related to pharmaceuticals or more likely production, but it could also relate to the twins working together on actions.
How do police bases and black sites the equivalent of building a private training base?
Also, seeing as the assist Helena subvote is very fractured but also how everyone voted for 3 sub-actions, would you be willing to take the top 3 sub-actions on that particular vote?
That would depend on what the local aid is I think.
It could just be pulling one of our favors from Catwoman to aid Helena with the assassination, but it could also synergize with the "draw attention elsewhere" Diplomacy action by helping us, for example, set up an event
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
They don't accomplish things 1 to 1 but if you were looking for an area in which you could covertly train people and/or run joint exercises they could function in that role (admittedly the black site was the weakest).
No, I've got my own plan for the assist Helena sub-vote. I promise you that you'll get some more control back later but right now I'm not going to limit people to the top 3 sub-actions. The limitations on the number of sub-votes will come in later, right now it's just voting for the ones you like.
Fair enough.
It's not really annoying. It probably would be if you didn't already give us a guaranteed safe number. But I can't really fault you for not giving us extra information
I can't say I like ambiguity, I usually like to know what I'm getting into either mechanically or narratively. but I can see how it's useful. For example It'd be boring if we just "gamed" killing Superman by getting a martial team together.
It's fine I've gone on plenty of "geek rants" myself.
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Right. That reminds me. About the joker situation. I remembered a crucial detail I noticed way back after the update.
He says he is going to metropolis, not that his whole, greatly expanded gang is going with him, and wouldn't that be the best time to strike back at Krank Co? While all eyes are on him in metropolis?
I don't mean to be a bother, but isn't there a 100 exp for write-ins?
At any rate, I feel that creating a dedicated trianing facility directly is worthwhile enough to be considered its own option. After all, I doubt that stuff like missle training and such can be done covertly so there's a give and take in terms of utility IMO.
Also, does the fact that Lexcorp own a bunch of land around Alexandria factor into the DC of the action?
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
When they're significantly different from existing options yes. There were already ways to achieve largely the same thing, most notably through the "develop X place" options that could get you things.
It's really not. While missile training is a thing that people do IRL and it needs to be distinct, I see no reason to separate it out from the general "train up your forces option" that already exists. There's no "give and take" on the utility because the "utility" you're imagining, requires me to either make existing options worse or to offer overly specific incentives.
There is a difference between a training facility and stuff like a black site or a police base, but there were already broadly speaking options that covered all of the utility in "development subvotes". I've given the action because I can see the value in having a more direct focused way to lower the DC for training your forces, but I don't think it's all that different in functionality than any other option to lower the DC on training your forces.
There would be an argument for the joint training actions but I've already included an option to do that with certain diplomacy actions. IMO the action is not sufficiently divergent to qualify as its own thing instead of a disaggregation. It gets a little close to the line but doesn't cross it.
Yes and no. It matters in the sense that its more land. It being around Alexandria specifically doesn't factor into the DC at all (though it does factor into the way to get a training facility via developing Alexandria).
It was just an example - it isn't meant to "separate" it from the "train up your forces" option but rather it's meant to augment it and reduce the DC for all of these training options among others, and it does make sense to have our a dedicated "professional security/military school" under our ownership- not only for ourselves but also for others (either to rent or to be trained by us).
I think that while we could create a hidden training facility or what have you, it isn't necessarily more advantageous - it'd be a lot harder to build and maintain for one thing, and we wouldn't be able to do certain things there due to its nature. We might be able to train and experiment with more secret equipment, but we wouldn't be able to bring over other people there (training the police or with the SCU for example) and we'd have to constantly worry about leaks and such, not to mention how we wouldn't be able to build over quite as much space, making large-scale training operations unviable.
I think that it could lower the DC on a lot of actions in a way that makes the action more than just a specified variant of an existing option. I'm not saying I'd outright consider taking it (I don't think that it has a good enough cost/return ratio at the moment) but I do think that it should be seen as more than a "throwaway" addition so to speak.
Speaking of which, does our PMC have a home base of some kind? Where does it reside? Also, will we get a "battle report" or something after Vertigo's war is done? You know, how many people died, if our PMC gained more experience and buffs and such?
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
The answer is still no. I'm not giving you 100 exp. I don't think the action is distinct enough from the preexisting options. To counter the one example you gave of training with the SCU or the police, you could already do that with a police base. I'm not giving you the 100 exp and I'm not playing example tennis anymore either.
Maybe you think it would lower the DC on a bunch of actions and that alone is enough to distinguish it from the "develop X place" subvote options that also enable for a DC drop to training actions but I don't. I'm not giving the 100 exp.
If I can be honest, the fact that you straight up don't see the value in it as you're arguing for it being distinct has done more than anything to convince me that this is a throwaway action. Yes we've had goofy write-ins like the Kryptonite statue before, but generally the person suggesting them wanted to do them (even if they gave up because it wasn't practical). Hearing "I'm not saying I'd outright consider taking it" has convinced me that it's throwaway more than anything else.
So I'm going to be honest with you, I don't care to model things in that level of detail. The PMC probably should have a home base of some kind and in universe it definitely does, but that's a level of detail I don't care to go into, nor do I really want it to affect gameplay all that much. Everyone has a point where too much granular detail gets exhausting and while I do think I put a massive amount of detail into the quest, I have zero interest in actually fully accurately modelling everything. The home base of your PMC is one of those things I'm not going to bother tracking.
Also generally speaking, you'll get a report of what happened with the PMC. That being said the experience your forces get will be proportional to the losses they take (to keep things easy for me to calculate) and I'll tell you right now not to expect any major changes to the units capabilities. I'm not going to make it so that sending your forces out to fight accomplishes the same thing as training them up.
I mean, for our purposes we basically already have total control. We don't really have any plans that require us to use them, especially none that are immediate, and pretty much any hero units they might have would probably be mediocre at best.
As for people getting pissed… so what? It's unlikely, because for the most part investors just care about making money, and even the ones who do get annoyed can do precisely nothing about it.
Unless I'm missing something, yes he can.
He can't be put on specific learning actions but the LMD's don't fall under any of his limitations.
Frankly, those other options are terrible IMO.
Getting local aid is as simple as calling up Selina and she has absolutely no incentive to rat us out, furthermore, the DC 0 means that more points can go towards covering things up if necessary.
The other options you present on the other hand not only have much higher DC's but are also much flashier and require significantly more active participation on our part. Sure, theoretically if everything goes extremely well we could get them done with nobody knowing LexCorp is involved but the same degree of success would net us more with local allies with less risk.
There is far more room for loose ends with the other actions than just calling up Selina.
I haven't been paying much attention to the Helena vote but now that I am I have to ask, why the fuck are people voting for "draw attention elsewhere?"
It's a DC ??? Diplomacy action when we're planning on putting a team that isn't great at Diplomacy on it. There are so many ways this could backfire, the least of which is having LexCorp active in Gotham when something major happens again.
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Right. Poorly worded. Meant learn about actions.
Unless nothing major happens. Having a big Lexcorp event that ties up police and maybe a roosting sidekick and has barbara as a guest of honor one place while Krok gets in a fight that draws mandragora's men away somewhere else isn't big by gotham standards.
As for the team, they can get to +40 on just about anything, and +56 on options relating to children, like for instance, to celebrate the work of a certain redhead intern from Gotham Academy/University(I'm not sure which she is in right now)
Though this does beg the question on how the action is rolled. @King crimson I know you want some ambiguity but this seems pretty important to deciding if we can tackle an sub action or not.
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Fair enough.
No but a big shiny LexCorp event just so happening to happen on the same day that Mandragora's would be assassin returns to finish the job is suspicious, especially when Batman is already suspicious of us.
I doubt we'll get an option for a distraction that triggers Helena's trait and the risk with an unknown DC and the potential loose ends just isn't worth it IMO, especially when we might accomplish something similar with just local allies.
Helena, Jinx and Mercy, which iirc are the team we've generally agreed to putting on this, get +38 to Diplomacy actions. With that on the DC 0 action to get local aid it's entirely possible we could just ask Selina to create a distraction for us without any of the risk.
Iirc KC has said that we assign a team to do the Helena actions and the provide the relevant bonuses to all of them, with the leader being swapped out based on the relevant stats as usual.
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Jinx 15, Helena +22(13×1.7) +3 mercy for +40 + 10 from mercy for + 50 total.
At least according to this explanation. So he is rolling for every sub action individually?
But, well, maybe we can push this as an alternative? Nothing big and publicly Lexcorp happening in gotham, we attempt to identify Mandragora's routine and assets ahead of time, plan out our discrete assassination, arrange support with Selina? It's a plan with emphasis on discretion without relying Lexcorp gear.
Jinx only has 13 Diplomacy and Helena has 7 (12 when co-op scores are applied).
So 13 + 12 + 3 + 10 = +38.
As far as I am aware yes.
It's definitely better and I'll add it to my own vote though I do still prefer my original one personally but beggars can't be choosers.
EDIT: I'm starting to think that the Helena vote would have worked better as a plan vote.
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King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
Jonasquinn by and large got the gist of it down but I'll reiterate things in an official capacity.
You assign hero units to the base action ("[] Assist Helena in getting revenge on Mandragora"). From there depending on the sub-actions chosen I use the relevant stats for the hero units on that sub-action (a martial sub-action uses martial of all characters, a diplomacy sub-action uses diplomacy, etc.). Likewise the leader can change between subactions based on point differentials.
Assuming you don't incur any penalties (and I already told you that putting on as many hero units as you have sub-actions will prevent penalties), there's no further complications beyond that. If you do face penalties, some actions will receive less benefit.
I'll say right now that if you're very worried about all of this, I'll be reiterating all of this come the hero vote when it actually matters. For now feel free to vote for as many options as you like as possible, you don't need to worry about the number of sub-votes or the mechanics of hero assignment at this point in time.
Edit: For those of you feeling paranoid, while I am experimenting with things a little bit and not giving you all the information, trust me when I say that you'll be given enough information to make an accurate guess of what's "safe" within the context of various plans.
Edit #2: For people feeling really, really paranoid, be aware that there's a further degree of sub-action selection besides what's going on this turn that'll let you stabilize it for a plan.
And doing the calculations for them individually.
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It's going to be interesting to see how that all pans out in accordance with the different degrees of success. Will it act as a mini event?
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
No, not in the same way as I have mini-events that occur before the results turn.
It might lead to a little interlude of sorts and if you put Lex on the action then maybe I'd do it, but otherwise for the most part this is going to be something that I want to have happen with a minimum of subvotes.
Edit: If Helena and the relevant figures in Gotham were controlled by the thread this would be a mini-event for them but since Helena's nominally acting on her own and you don't control Gotham, it's not really a mini-event even though it kind of functions like one.
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Helena's trait adds +5 to the relevant stat whenever she takes an action against someone she hates so your calculation is wrong.
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