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Lex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest
- Thread starter King crimson
- Start date
- Superhero
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
If you are meeting at a location of his choosing then you cannot. If he is meeting you at the tower then they are already in place.
You cannot store the pheromones Pamela can create easily
The experiments did help you (mostly with reducing DC's)
Someone else has made a wonderful LexCorp R and D google doc that contains all that stuff that I could link in the informational posts. I'm not responsible for updating it so I can't guarantee when stuff is there but last I checked its accurate and doing so would be very little work on my end. Would that help?
Edit: The link I found was on page 435 and is post # 10,875. If people want I can put the post with the link in the informational section.
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- Location
- The Netherlands
that would help a lot
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
I've added it in (it is located after the bit on Lantern Corps and their rings).
I've also finished the other encountered characters updating I needed to do. In the future I will most likely add a part 3 to it to keep things easier for me.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
It was intentionally able to be read both ways.
It would be totally typical for a nineteenth century writer or just plain ordinary person to describe the way Lincoln felt- and related to his friends, and wrote about- on a day to day basis as "Despair's hooks are in his heart." No time-travelling Neil Gaiman fandom required.
It would also be totally plausible that in the DCQU, Despair of the Endless personally singled out Abraham Lincoln for a lifetime of torment, under which he bore up as bravely as any man ever has.
Because, again, he did in fact spend pretty much his whole life past his mid-twenties having frequent depressive episodes including "your friends hide the knives" incidents. His marriage was at best unhappy and perhaps unwanted. Numerous events in his life and career proved to be failures, or crushing laborious burdens. He talked- and wrote poetry- about suicide frequently. At some point in his forties he seems to have decided that the only thing that could possibly justify his tortured and miserable existence would be if he existed for something, though... And so he did.
And arguably, it was his special ability to continue in the face of total bleakness, but also to never overestimate his chances or view a situation through rose-tinted goggles, that won the Civil War for the Union.
Again, the pheromone spray has not been made subtle. Unless we are very careful, Whale will know we did something to him. Given that the main advantage of our relationship with him is that he leaves us the hell alone, that would be bad.
Are you sure you want to teach a bunch of mooks who hate us and want us to suffer how they can produce mind-altering, brainwashing pheromonal chemicals?
Please try to remember the possibility of prisoners escaping or test subjects turning against the people who experiment on them.
We also know, IC, that kryptonite doesn't cause immediate adverse reactions in humans, even at extremely high exposure levels.
...I hope so too, but for future reference, please remember this possibility.
I don't want our iteration of Lex Luthor to some day go out like this:
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
@King crimson , I'd like to put 1000 XP of my banked 1100 on Lex's Diplomacy score, bringing him up to 31.
(sorry, I meant to add this to my previous post, but forgot, and it has to be a new post or the tagging won't work)
(sorry, I meant to add this to my previous post, but forgot, and it has to be a new post or the tagging won't work)
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
It's cool I'll get on that. I've got Rose's stats up as well if people want to check that out. (Coop scores will come later).
Kkutlord
Prince of Breath
- Location
- Indianapolis, Indiana
@King crimson: Oh, actually... Do we only have the three organ donors left, or were the 10 Bone Metas & hopefully dead Energy Being the only deaths? I'm honestly a little unsure, especially since the Kryptonite and Nth Metal exposees aren't still being experimented on.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
You only have three organ donors left. Everyone else was experimented on in some way and their body was disposed of (bad luck ward inside of him man blew up, Plant metas were eliminated once it became clear that there was no way to recreate Isley's success and they were all inferior, people exposed to Kryptonite and Nth metal were cremated and then disposed off and those that Rebecca practiced on were similarly eliminated to save you resources and make sure no snooping reporters would have something to discover)
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Shame about the kryptonite and Nth metal test subjects.
Hypothesis: a big part of what makes Poison Ivy effective is that she knows a lot about plants. Someone else with the same powers but little or no knowledge of botany won't be as effective with them.
Kkutlord
Prince of Breath
- Location
- Indianapolis, Indiana
Well that's wasteful, especially regarding the Plant Metas. Sure they aren't high-tier, but they still would of been useful for botany related matters. Which, given how valuable Gingo Fruit is, we would of seriously benefited from having 9 Plant Metas regardless of power level.
Whereas we could of at least disposed of the Kryptonite/Nth Metal exposees and Heal subjects by subjecting them to Bone/Gingo/Atom experiments. Plus, I thought we had Pamela experimenting with her Pheromone Spray? We could of just brainwashed them into obedient.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
There was an experiment involving the pheromones that found that those involved would interpret Pamela's commands as literally as possible and that directing them for extended periods of time put them at risk of dying. They could bypass the wards and attack someone but they also wouldn't eat unless ordered to do so. Ultimately they were disposed of as the plant metas that you had were very difficult to direct to use their powers effectively under mind control.
or manage*
Grant, and*
Also the link to Rose Wilsons pic is broken.
Kkutlord
Prince of Breath
- Location
- Indianapolis, Indiana
@King crimson: Very least, we probably could of rigged them up to constantly grow rare plants from their bodies or something. Just awfully wasteful killing 22 test subjects just because we had no immediate plans for them.
Money isn't an issue, they were well secured, and reporters would have to illegally trepass to find them. Also, you didn't answer why we didn't subject the remaining 13 to Meta Human experiments before killing them. We barely got any Gingo Fruit data, after all.
Money isn't an issue, they were well secured, and reporters would have to illegally trepass to find them. Also, you didn't answer why we didn't subject the remaining 13 to Meta Human experiments before killing them. We barely got any Gingo Fruit data, after all.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
I've fixed the grammar problems. Also I got up the coop scores and the important notes.
Is anyone else besides aezeiken having issues viewing the picture? Because when I opened it both on my computer and my phone the image showed up fine. I'm trying to figure out on what end the problem is occurring.
I haven't found the exact numerical breakdown but the individuals who were disposed of were subjected to either magical healing, the Gingo fruit, and/or Kryptonite and Nth metal. Individuals who were not compatible with the human plant integration system got violently ill after being forced to take it and gained no powers. Everyone who died was exposed to some kind of experiment and only the organ donors were not.
Having a human you keep essentially lobotomized in your basement is a mess logistically speaking. Your employees could stumble in on it, people could track why you are purchasing certain things in oddly specific places (if you install a plumbing system in a hidden basement cell or are disposing bizarre waste all of a sudden it looks suspicious), Pamela needs to regularly come in to make sure they don't unintentionally mess with the system and reinforce the mind control so they don't gain free will preventing her from spending her time elsewhere etc..
Also I'd like to point out that these experiments are a horrific human rights abuse and Lois Lane has proven willing to trespass (Santa Prisca certainly didn't want her writing about them) in pursuit of what she thinks is right. It is not as cut and dry wasteful as you are making it out to be. Is it denying you potential resources? Yes it is, but it also is preventing you from getting caught doing frankly rather horrific human experimentation on prisoners you obtained illegally and were citizens of the US. That type of secret is enough to absolutely tank everything you have done PR wise if you get caught doing that (at least by the general public, Eiling would likely try to sneak you out of prison and recruit you).
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Trivia: most of those are real telegrams, with only two being edited and one being made up out of whole cloth. The calls for ammunition and blankets from the fort, for example, were real.
The fact that they are kidnapping victims who hate us and want us to fail/suffer/die means that we can't have them use their powers in public or anywhere outsiders might stumble across them, or where they could plausibly escape.
Most if not all of the other subjects NOT exposed to the bone growth formula were found to be incompatible with it... which suggests that we'd have gotten worse results from trying it on them, and very possibly not have learned anything at all.
Gingo experiments would have been interesting though. On the other hand... are you familiar with the concept of "isolating your variables?" Before you test something in combination with other things, you need a clear picture of how it affects things by itself. When we don't know what exposure to kryptonite is going to do, it's not necessarily a good idea to be experimenting with still other poorly understood treatments and processes.
And of course there's the Captain Atom thing, where each test blows up expensive equipment and/or risks creating hostile energy beings if the process is more complicated than we think.
One of Poison Ivy's powers is immunity to plant-based toxins. Her pheromones are plant-based toxins. The prisoners we turned into chlorokinetics would potentially be immune to the pheromones, or at least able to snap out of it eventually and become dangerous enemies.
Kkutlord, you just answered your own question!
Money isn't an issue. Things we can buy, or spend money to build, are not hard for us to procure or replace.
You keep getting hung up on expenditures of nebulous "resources" that are in fact very easy for us to replace. Things like ways to grow exotic plants. We can build a fucking greenhouse! It's not that hard! We don't need to keep a lobotomized plant-man mutant in a basement cell for some do-gooder on our custodial staff to find out about, when we can spend a few hundred thousand dollars on a hydroponic system and replace the expenses out of the petty cash fund. "Resources" are not magical things to be hoarded at all costs; any object or person can be both an asset and a liability.
And you keep ignoring the costs of maintaining those resources- as @King crimson points out, there are HUGE potential costs to getting caught with kidnapping victims undergoing agonizing experimentation and mind control in our basement labs. This is especially relevant because we have done almost none of the things you'd normally do to make it easy to get away with that. Our ties to organized crime are weak. We don't have friendships with the kind of shady dictatorships that would happily hang onto dozens of prisoners for us. We don't have shell companies that can run shady experiments while we pretend not to control what they do. We haven't made any special efforts to make sure we have a sizeable staff of people willing to commit serious crimes (like detaining a kidnapping victim) for us.
Keeping these prisoners in the long run was a risk, our ability to secure and control them is not and can never be perfect, and the rewards of keeping them are limited given that there are other ways to achieve most of the same results.
Please stop overthinking this and consider that maybe just maybe when our very thorough and meticulous QM portrays a supergenius villain making decisions, those decisions may well be rational for reasons you haven't thought of, as opposed to just being stupid "wastes of resources."
While personally I might have kept around one or two of the kryptonite exposees as long term subjects, just to be sure the green glowing rocks don't actually emit dangerous radiation despite being among the most stereotypically radioactive-looking things we've ever seen... I essentially agree with @King crimson 's arguments.
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- Location
- barking
By the way the rose coop are not in the spoiler tab thought you might want to know
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
Neat. That is a level of detail I was not at all expected but just adds to the overall experience. This quest has ended up teaching me way more than I ever expected it to when I first started and I keep getting astounded by the amount of data out there on stuff.
While I appreciate the chiming in I don't think that Kkutlord is trying to overthink things. I'm fine with the questioning so long as it is done rationally. So far it's been fine and I do genuinely make mistakes so I'm fine with someone questioning my decision making so long as it is done reasonably. I am not perfect and my word should not be taken as gospel on every little thing. I think the main distinction is that I think its fine to ask an explanation for why a decision went a certain way as opposed to arguing with me about it. So far Kkutlord has been asking for explanations (at least as far as I can tell).
I've fixed it but now it's in to tabs and something bizarre is going on with the formatting. I'm going to try and fix it asap
Edit: I've fixed it but I had to do some weird stuff to get it to work. SV formatting once again made things more complicated then it needed to be and once again proved to be the true villain of this quest.
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@King crimson
I think because it's linked to pinterest and being fucky with my privacy/adblocker settings.
I think because it's linked to pinterest and being fucky with my privacy/adblocker settings.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
That would do it. Sorry about the complications. I can try and find another picture if it is a major problem but that will come much later.
Kkutlord
Prince of Breath
- Location
- Indianapolis, Indiana
@King crimson: I'm simply just of the opinion of "waste not", which is why I said as much as I did. Like, I always get annoyed by people throwing out salvageable/repairable stuff for example. Though yeah, I do admit holding prisoners would be messy after a while, especially if we didn't improve our experiments next turn to actually get better results.
Anyways, since the winning vote said we'll meet Whales at a place of our choosing, I'm guessing we'll get a list of options next update? Oh, and what is Lex's opinion of Tobias? Seems important for planning what to do.
Anyways, since the winning vote said we'll meet Whales at a place of our choosing, I'm guessing we'll get a list of options next update? Oh, and what is Lex's opinion of Tobias? Seems important for planning what to do.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
Next update is planned to be Cerise and the TV stuff (mostly some of the characters you meet through it). Then after that you get Whale and after that I am going to try and get action phase 15 up. Also the satellite you worked on way back on I believe turn 5 will finally launch and you will start getting space data.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Analysis on Rose Wilson
So on reflection, Rose is, unsurprisingly, quite skilled in Martial/Intrigue like several of our other hero units. She has a surprisingly good Learning score. She has a great rapport with Mercy and Cassandra, a mediocre rapport with Lex and Carl... AND NOBODY ELSE. With almost everyone else, her cooperation score is so low as to make her largely ineffective. May be linked to her lousy Diplomacy score and in general being a bratty teenage supersoldier.
In a Mercy-Rose collaboration, Mercy will lead in Intrigue and Martial, but only by one and two points in each case. This is actually a bad thing, because if Rose were leading Mercy's trait would fire for an added +10. Hopefully Rose's ability scores will naturally increase, or we can boop them up a little with XP expenditure. Right now, Mercy-Rose Martial teamups are good for (19+(1.4*17)) = +43 on the die roll, and Mercy-Rose Intrigue teamups are good for (17+1.4*15) = +38 on the die roll. Katherine+Mercy is still broadly comparable or barely superior in Intrigue (18+0.7*17+10 equals +40 on the die roll), but not in Martial, where Mercy leads and her trait doesn't fire.
Mercy-Rose Martial and Intrigue collaborations will become really good if and when Rose surpasses Mercy in the relevant stats.
Interesting wild-card option: A Rose-Mercy Learning collaboration. Despite neither of them being a scientist, stereotypically speaking, we'd have (Rose's Learning 12) + (Mercy's Learning 10*1.4 = 14) + (Mercy's Trait 10) = +36 on the die roll, which is not bad for a teamup of heroes we normally think of as Martial/Intrigue. Now, Mercy can contribute effectively to other Learning teamups as long as she gets along well with the team lead (that means Lex, Pamela, Karl, and budding super-scientist Cassandra), but it's worth noting that this is even a useful option, that Rose can be helpful on a Learning action as long as we pair her with Mercy.
ALSO, that suggests a Cassandra-Rose Learning collaboration as an interesting possibility... on a turn where Lex is working on a Diplomacy/Stewardship action Cassandra can't contribute to.
I am not sure what would happen in Cassandra-Rose. Now that the interface has reduced Cassandra's penalties, she is more capable of contributing, which is good. A Cassandra-Mercy-Rose trio would be really strong in Martial or Intrigue, though not as strong as we'd like for now because Mercy would still be leading the collaborations (Cassandra has higher stats, but Cassandra is still debuffed by -5 on the die roll from Living Weapon on most actions, and Rose is still a few points down as noted above). When Cassandra masters language, I'm not sure whether she'll be capable of leading team-ups, given that she's still a child.
The biggest problem with Rose is the short list of people we can team her up with for collaborations, which is a pity; it's possible that if we can improve her Diplomacy score through events or XP expenditure, she'll get along with people better. I don't think it's coincidence that all our characters with Diplomacy scores of 1, 2, and 3 ALSO have terrible co-op scores all around, except with a handful of individuals who match their outlook.
I feel like I've been getting that kind of feedback from @Kkutlord a lot, and have had to defend my own ideas repeatedly by explaining that I'm trying to be cautious and protect us from blowback. Which I try to do by considering the ways that a cunning strategem for extracting 100% of the imaginable benefit out of something, as opposed to 90%, might backfire.
It gets frustrating having to reprise, not the same argument, but the same structure of argument over and over with the same person.
For example, it's a bad idea to drive ten miles (consuming time and burning a large fraction of a gallon of gasoline) to save 2% on the price of gasoline (which on the tank size of the typical automobile doesn't pay for the cost of the gasoline burned to get there). It's worth "wasting" money up front to avoid actually squandering resources in a different way later on.
In almost any complex situation, there are ways to take a good plan and 'optimize' it by adding an extra step for resource extraction or post-processing or salvaging materials. This is not always worthwhile, because it adds complexity, involves more people working on the project, consumes more time and energy, or doesn't return you resources that justify the costs.
"Waste not, want not" is a truism, but so is "the perfect is the enemy of the good," and it becomes very exhausting to constantly have to defend your plans against someone who repeatedly accuses you of failure-to-optimize while often faling to consider all the reasons you might have chosen NOT to do something you see as costly and unrewarding.
So on reflection, Rose is, unsurprisingly, quite skilled in Martial/Intrigue like several of our other hero units. She has a surprisingly good Learning score. She has a great rapport with Mercy and Cassandra, a mediocre rapport with Lex and Carl... AND NOBODY ELSE. With almost everyone else, her cooperation score is so low as to make her largely ineffective. May be linked to her lousy Diplomacy score and in general being a bratty teenage supersoldier.
In a Mercy-Rose collaboration, Mercy will lead in Intrigue and Martial, but only by one and two points in each case. This is actually a bad thing, because if Rose were leading Mercy's trait would fire for an added +10. Hopefully Rose's ability scores will naturally increase, or we can boop them up a little with XP expenditure. Right now, Mercy-Rose Martial teamups are good for (19+(1.4*17)) = +43 on the die roll, and Mercy-Rose Intrigue teamups are good for (17+1.4*15) = +38 on the die roll. Katherine+Mercy is still broadly comparable or barely superior in Intrigue (18+0.7*17+10 equals +40 on the die roll), but not in Martial, where Mercy leads and her trait doesn't fire.
Mercy-Rose Martial and Intrigue collaborations will become really good if and when Rose surpasses Mercy in the relevant stats.
Interesting wild-card option: A Rose-Mercy Learning collaboration. Despite neither of them being a scientist, stereotypically speaking, we'd have (Rose's Learning 12) + (Mercy's Learning 10*1.4 = 14) + (Mercy's Trait 10) = +36 on the die roll, which is not bad for a teamup of heroes we normally think of as Martial/Intrigue. Now, Mercy can contribute effectively to other Learning teamups as long as she gets along well with the team lead (that means Lex, Pamela, Karl, and budding super-scientist Cassandra), but it's worth noting that this is even a useful option, that Rose can be helpful on a Learning action as long as we pair her with Mercy.
ALSO, that suggests a Cassandra-Rose Learning collaboration as an interesting possibility... on a turn where Lex is working on a Diplomacy/Stewardship action Cassandra can't contribute to.
I am not sure what would happen in Cassandra-Rose. Now that the interface has reduced Cassandra's penalties, she is more capable of contributing, which is good. A Cassandra-Mercy-Rose trio would be really strong in Martial or Intrigue, though not as strong as we'd like for now because Mercy would still be leading the collaborations (Cassandra has higher stats, but Cassandra is still debuffed by -5 on the die roll from Living Weapon on most actions, and Rose is still a few points down as noted above). When Cassandra masters language, I'm not sure whether she'll be capable of leading team-ups, given that she's still a child.
The biggest problem with Rose is the short list of people we can team her up with for collaborations, which is a pity; it's possible that if we can improve her Diplomacy score through events or XP expenditure, she'll get along with people better. I don't think it's coincidence that all our characters with Diplomacy scores of 1, 2, and 3 ALSO have terrible co-op scores all around, except with a handful of individuals who match their outlook.
I guess what sets me off is when the potential downsides of doing X are completely ignored and someone just says "why didn't we do X, not doing X was pointless or a waste of resources."
I feel like I've been getting that kind of feedback from @Kkutlord a lot, and have had to defend my own ideas repeatedly by explaining that I'm trying to be cautious and protect us from blowback. Which I try to do by considering the ways that a cunning strategem for extracting 100% of the imaginable benefit out of something, as opposed to 90%, might backfire.
It gets frustrating having to reprise, not the same argument, but the same structure of argument over and over with the same person.
Remember that in real life, people throw things out for a reason. While it's often theoretically possible to contrive a way to salvage something, there are opportunity costs associated with doing so.
For example, it's a bad idea to drive ten miles (consuming time and burning a large fraction of a gallon of gasoline) to save 2% on the price of gasoline (which on the tank size of the typical automobile doesn't pay for the cost of the gasoline burned to get there). It's worth "wasting" money up front to avoid actually squandering resources in a different way later on.
In almost any complex situation, there are ways to take a good plan and 'optimize' it by adding an extra step for resource extraction or post-processing or salvaging materials. This is not always worthwhile, because it adds complexity, involves more people working on the project, consumes more time and energy, or doesn't return you resources that justify the costs.
"Waste not, want not" is a truism, but so is "the perfect is the enemy of the good," and it becomes very exhausting to constantly have to defend your plans against someone who repeatedly accuses you of failure-to-optimize while often faling to consider all the reasons you might have chosen NOT to do something you see as costly and unrewarding.
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King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
That is fair and I understand where you are coming from. I'm sorry that things have been getting frustrating for you. The thing I will say is that you do not need to always engage with others (so long as you remain civil). As QM I feel obligated to at least respond to questions posed to me but you do not have to. If your plan has already won you do not need to defend it and the reasons for it. I don't have an easy solution for this situation.
On the one hand you are right having to reiterate the same few things again and again gets annoying fast. On the other hand I don't think Kkutlord is being malicious and I don't want to discourage asking questions. It's a fine line that I'm trying to walk and I don't have any good solutions. I'm thinking about maybe putting in an apocryphal post on my thoughts for how to criticize something and such but that feels a little too restrictive and controlling to me and I don't know if it would be an effective tool for others to use and I'm worried it might come off as patronizing. I'm thinking over some stuff to hopefully try and improve the situation. I empathize with you and I'm trying to find a viable long term solution to try and reduce this kind of issue.
Kkutlord
Prince of Breath
- Location
- Indianapolis, Indiana
@King crimson: For what it is worth, this is the first Supervillain Quest I've been a part of. So the Test Subject experiments was quite the rare and unusual experience, and doing villainy things is something I'm actually interested by in general for stories.
Speaking of villainy things going wrong... How much analysis was done regarding the dissolved Project Atom subject? Does Lex believe they could replicate the result, or does it appear to be an unique outcome?
Speaking of villainy things going wrong... How much analysis was done regarding the dissolved Project Atom subject? Does Lex believe they could replicate the result, or does it appear to be an unique outcome?