- Location
- Classified
How many actions do we have, again?
-
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Lex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest
- Thread starter King crimson
- Start date
- Superhero
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
It says twenty-five.
Honestly I don't have brain juice to figure out a sequence for this kind of thing. Things I want to remind people to include in their lists:
1) Building a new HQ or two isn't a bad idea.
2) Make sure to include some low-DC actions that are likely to succeed without heropower, and/or where failures aren't a big deal. This is desirable for so many reasons. We have LOTS of heroes, but not so many that we can afford to ensure successes on every action.
3) Conversely, Lex can only be in one place at one time. Lex-led megacollaborations are the best way for us to clear actions with very high DCs.
4) Be careful about budgeting multiple 'magic' actions, because we only have one magician on payroll
5) Remember the value of infrastructure. We can, for example, lower the Cold Engine DC by working on a specialized cold lab- it may make sense to assign Louise to that project even if her terrible co-op scores make her likely to fail.
6) Cass and Jinx's education actions are not irrelevant and often have very powerful benefits. While Cass makes an amazingly effective 'enhancer' for Lex's own rolls, and Jinx is surprisingly useful with the right grownup as a collaborator, we should seriously consider them.
6a) In particular, this may be a good turn to put Cass+Oswald on "Socialize Cassandra with children," because if we want her to be, y'know, socialized, we need to get on that stat.
Honestly I don't have brain juice to figure out a sequence for this kind of thing. Things I want to remind people to include in their lists:
1) Building a new HQ or two isn't a bad idea.
2) Make sure to include some low-DC actions that are likely to succeed without heropower, and/or where failures aren't a big deal. This is desirable for so many reasons. We have LOTS of heroes, but not so many that we can afford to ensure successes on every action.
3) Conversely, Lex can only be in one place at one time. Lex-led megacollaborations are the best way for us to clear actions with very high DCs.
4) Be careful about budgeting multiple 'magic' actions, because we only have one magician on payroll
5) Remember the value of infrastructure. We can, for example, lower the Cold Engine DC by working on a specialized cold lab- it may make sense to assign Louise to that project even if her terrible co-op scores make her likely to fail.
6) Cass and Jinx's education actions are not irrelevant and often have very powerful benefits. While Cass makes an amazingly effective 'enhancer' for Lex's own rolls, and Jinx is surprisingly useful with the right grownup as a collaborator, we should seriously consider them.
6a) In particular, this may be a good turn to put Cass+Oswald on "Socialize Cassandra with children," because if we want her to be, y'know, socialized, we need to get on that stat.
KnightofTempest
The Man who would be King
- Location
- Chicago
We should do Learn about Magic.
Not only are we racing against Circe to try and uncover her plans, which that will help with, but Superman is also Weak to Magic so it provides another avenue of attack against the Big Blue Boyscout
Not only are we racing against Circe to try and uncover her plans, which that will help with, but Superman is also Weak to Magic so it provides another avenue of attack against the Big Blue Boyscout
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Problem: Getting good results out of that action almost certainly requires us to assign Lex and Rebecca. We've repeatedly seen that assigning no magic characters to a magic action leads to disappointing results.
This is a problem because we are ALSO dealing with the Cerise problem and may well need a Lex-led megacollaboration to meet the DCs required for it.
- Location
- California
@King crimson I think we're missing the actions for Mari that opened up last turn
It would be good to have Mari as another magic Hero, the actions will hopefully reduce or remove the malus over the next turn or two.
a new action that could help with the Cerise that has opened up is to hire Zatanna as a 34 D.C stewardship action to deal with the problem. it may be useful to bring in some outside help. If things go well it could even lead us to being able to hire her on in a more permanent fashion.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
Keep in mind that I'm dead tired as I answer this stuff so it might be a little incoherent
It's a little variable. You don't actually have to succeed in most of the stuff you just have to attempt it (granted succeeding is better than attempting once to fulfill the letter but not the spirit). That being said the expectation is you'll attempt things within a year and results will vary depending on what kind of opposition you encounter but you are expected to deliver results eventually.
Yes but first you've got to get Black Adam has to get legally set up to do so. Diana will work on it this turn and unless the dice hate this thing you'll be good to take this action next turn.
25 not counting special actions.
I'll include the option. I don't feel confident in my ability to edit as I am but it'll be something like [ ] Have Mari explore magic which is DC 0 (higher roll is better) and requires Mari to be assigned to the action. I'll post a reminder once I edit things before I open the vote and am confident in my ability to not mess up due to lack of sleep.
KnightofTempest
The Man who would be King
- Location
- Chicago
See I feel that if we got the DC to actually figure out how magic works, the Circe DC would drop because we would then actually understand the forces we're dealing with.
Right now, Lex has no idea how magic works so assigning him to anti Circe actions doesn't really do much. . .
- Location
- California
I think we should take
[ ] Develop an algorithm to track Batgirl
DC 67 Batgirl is a brand new vigilante in Gotham. However by tracking her and figuring out who she is you might find out more on Batman. After all a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and this might boil over in such a way that you can find out the caped crusader's secrets through his imitator
either this turn or the next. It gives us a chance to track down Batgirl and start giving her a better impression of Lexcorp by supplying her with better gear for her patrols, and gives us experience with tracking algorithms which could make it easier to make one for Superman. The one for Batman is DC 94, for Superman is DC ???. We could put Cerise on this to keep her occupied this turn. Just don't assign Barbara to it! Hopefully Nygma can be assigned to it due to investigating Batgirl's routine (if it counts as clues, like seeing which direction she heads at the end of her patrols, if she eats food from brands sold only in a few spots in Gotham).
[ ] Create a specialized lab
DC 34 LexCorp's labs are absolutely state of the art. However as of right now the labs are rather generalized. Constructing specialized labs might make it so that your new discoveries come even faster in certain fields.
This is one we absolutely need to take this turn, we promised Meena, and if it rolls well we can also get a second lab for the cold engine.
[ ] Develop an algorithm to track Batgirl
DC 67 Batgirl is a brand new vigilante in Gotham. However by tracking her and figuring out who she is you might find out more on Batman. After all a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and this might boil over in such a way that you can find out the caped crusader's secrets through his imitator
either this turn or the next. It gives us a chance to track down Batgirl and start giving her a better impression of Lexcorp by supplying her with better gear for her patrols, and gives us experience with tracking algorithms which could make it easier to make one for Superman. The one for Batman is DC 94, for Superman is DC ???. We could put Cerise on this to keep her occupied this turn. Just don't assign Barbara to it! Hopefully Nygma can be assigned to it due to investigating Batgirl's routine (if it counts as clues, like seeing which direction she heads at the end of her patrols, if she eats food from brands sold only in a few spots in Gotham).
[ ] Create a specialized lab
DC 34 LexCorp's labs are absolutely state of the art. However as of right now the labs are rather generalized. Constructing specialized labs might make it so that your new discoveries come even faster in certain fields.
This is one we absolutely need to take this turn, we promised Meena, and if it rolls well we can also get a second lab for the cold engine.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
YES PLEASE.
I will vote for this action, if no others.
Worth a try.
Yes, but to get any benefit from that we have to defer any Cerise/Circe-related actions by one turn... and we may not want to do that.
That depends on the kind of action. If the action is Diplomacy (Lex talks frankly with Cerise, asks her what she wants and what she's playing at), then while Lex may not know much about magic, he knows a lot about negotiations and seeing through deception. If the action is Martial (Lex coordinates a complex trap to hit Cerise with overwhelming firepower), then Lex's good relationships with numerous Martial hero units and his overall genius may be very effective even if he isn't a magic specialist.
On the other hand, Lex's ignorance of magic would lead him to underperform in areas like "Intrigue check to detect specific magical threat" or "Learning check to analyze specific magical threat," yes.
ALSO, IMPORTANT NOTE:
While we have every reason to think Cerise is affiliated with Circe, the mythological demigoddess and foe of the Amazons... We have no compelling reason to think Cerise is Circe. And good reason to think otherwise, because Cerise was knocked into a coma for 4-6 months while working in our service, when we were investigating the Brotherhood of Evil and their telephone god. I'm pretty sure the real Circe wouldn't have been quite that easy to smack down- indeed, I think it fairly likely that part of what hit Cerise was that the backlash interfered with some link between her and the real Circe.
So to be clear, we infer that Circe is taking an active hand in events, and we have good reason to think Cerise is an agent acting on her behalf. We do not know that Cerise, personally, is actually Circe.
Putting Barbara on the action would be admittedly hilarious. Yes, obviously she'd sabotage the project; that's the point.
Putting Cerise AND Nygma on the action (they get along well) would be a good idea, I think.
@King crimson
How does this action work again? Could we take it twice in one turn and specify:
[] Create a specialized lab- Physics for Dr. Dhawan
[] Create a specialized lab- Cold Engine research support for Dr. Lincoln
If nothing else, it DOES seem logical that we could take multiple actions to build multiple specialized labs in the same turn if we were so inclined.
Um.
We may also want to take this action for other fields of research, like computer science. It may well be that we've been missing low-hanging fruit all along by NOT taking this action, if it consistently lowers research DCs by, say, 15 points across the board in the relevant field of study.
KnightofTempest
The Man who would be King
- Location
- Chicago
I mean it isn't as if Circe hasn't made simulacrums of herself before in the Comics to use as deniable agents. . .
- Location
- California
We may also need
To keep the D'Aramis twins from leaving LexCorp for Wayne Enterprises.
- Location
- Philippines
I doubt they would shift to Wayne not after one of the sisters got a nat 1 and started distrusting the company. Also the sisters knew what they were getting in to we did not hire them to be pharmacists but to be managers and executives so long as we assign them to actions that do not ruffle their sensibilities they should not be in danger of leaving.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
WELP. That clinches it, for me.
I didn't specifically know she'd done that exact thing in canon, but I suspected she'd done it here.
If Cerise is a Circe simulacrum, and knows she is, it might explain why she got all giggly-enthusiastic about playing Circe on TV. Which she gets to.
Putting both D'Aramis twins on that action would give it an acceptably high chance of success, or at least of not failing by an embarrassing margin.
The thing is, they don't actually have any good reason to work for Lex Luthor that isn't an equally good reason to work for Bruce Wayne. Lex Luthor pays them a lot of money. So would Bruce Wayne. Lex Luthor would have them work on exciting challenges on the cutting edges of business and technology. So would Bruce Wayne. Lex Luthor is a world-famous and prestigious employer. So is Bruce Wayne. And so on. And so on.
So the one big question they have to ask themselves is, "which of them will let us do what we really want to do with our time and lives?" And if Bruce Wayne has a pharmaceuticals division, and Lex Luthor doesn't... well, that question comes down in favor of Bruce Wayne.
This could actually be an advantage, while at Wanye they have to work with an existing pharmaceuticals division, at LexCorp they could build up a new division entirely molded after their own wishes. Futhermore we know that Wayne has to spend a lot of actions on internatal issues, corruption, intrigues etc. compared to that the blank slate they would be handed at LexCorp might look very appealing.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
Still not fully awake but getting there
Yes way it works is you roll first, pick the number of labs you want in part 4 of the results (splitting how good they are) then in part 5 you specify what you want. Make sense?
KnightofTempest
The Man who would be King
- Location
- Chicago
Its not something she does often, she's not Victor "Secretly a Doombot" von Doom. But she has done it before. . .
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yes, but for that to work, we'd have to let them START a pharmaceutical division... which brings us right back to where we started.
Uhh. Are you sure we couldn't just specify what kind of lab we want in advance? I mean, that's how we do it for (for example) building new HQs. We tell you what city we want to build in ahead of time. Then you just handle the rolls directly, without the back-and-forth being needed.
What benefit is there to doing it that way? It would seem to just add unnecessary complexity by requiring us to vote on three separate occasions for the same lab facilities, instead of only once.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
You could but it would require you to fly blind a lot of the time or it would require me to list out a massive amount of information that also technically shifts when doing things. With cities its one and done because there is no variance between options. As is every building is more or less the same regardless of location. As such the only relevant factor to consider is the DC especially since you're only ever building one at a time per action. This is not the case with specialized labs.
With specialized labs the amount of listed information would be massive just from the fact that the DC would fluctuate depending on what is preselected. Let's say you can preselect building one to three labs on a turn. From there you have five types of lab (biology, chemistry, physics, magic, metapowers) and then on top of that you can build the lab to five individuals specification (Frost, Meena, Helfern, Moon, Rebecca). In this alone each possible unique combination would need to be listed with its DC. As such this would get immensely hectic quickly because there is simply an absolutely massive number of potential combinations of DC's I'd need to list. The example above is a simplified example and even that breaks 50+ options fast (I haven't done combination math in a while so I might be a little off but I think I'm correct. If I'm wrong someone else could correct me). There's also additional wrinkles that you could potentially preemptively upgrade the labs along specific paths or get potential extras. As such I can't perfectly copy the building style of doing things and just give you the final DC's.
I could give you the formula I'm using and the various component DC's but even that would be a lot of information and I'm not sure how useful that would be because it would force people to do more math themselves (I don't want to give any option where the thread has to calculate the DC as opposed to me doing it for you guys because that way lies madness). I could also potentially solve the problem through a call and response system where people ask about the thing they specifically want and then I list the DC for that but that in and of itself is liable to its own problems and will slow down voting.
The advantages of the solution I went with is that it's relatively simple to implement on my end (I don't have to do any additional list work) and it is something that is intuitive for users to get involved with. I don't think anyone here is incapable of seeing that you have x amount of points, choosing how many labs you want in advance and then spending the points however you wish in order to get things to go a certain way. Admittedly I could just put the whole thing in a single point-buy subvote if people prefer that but I prefer having it the selection of what specialized labs you build be after the fact since it'll potentially make failure less punishing (the DC for some labs are higher than others meaning you could unintentionally fail harder if you go for a specific lab) and cut down on the overhead and work required by me while also keeping as much player choice as possible.
Does my reasoning make sense?
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
The Mari learning magic option and the exp Swedish15 earned have been updated into a post.
On an unrelated note do people want an Aftermath in Gotham interlude now that the Menagerie Riots have finished? Feel free to let me know or if there is some other loose end or side character you'd like to see in an interlude (if you've got exp you can even purchase ones you'd like).
On an unrelated note do people want an Aftermath in Gotham interlude now that the Menagerie Riots have finished? Feel free to let me know or if there is some other loose end or side character you'd like to see in an interlude (if you've got exp you can even purchase ones you'd like).
- Location
- Philippines
A gotham interlude sounds interesting if only to see how the city is doing and how the riots were stopped. Also a tentative list of the actions I will be voting for
[ ] Bring any building behind on defense up to standard levels
[ ] Improve exo-suit user interface
[ ] Improve exo-suit mobility
I do not really see a pressing need for martial actions this turn so reinforcing our weakspots should be done and improving the exo suits as always is something we have to do if we want to keep being competitive in this new age of metahumans
[ ] Meet with Volcana
We need to get her on board if only to stop a potential PR disaster from happening having her be rescued by superman and be interviewed by Lois should be avoided
[ ] Meet with Zatanna
[ ] Hire Zatanna to deal with Cerise's runes
We need some extra magical help to combat Cerise and fix whatever happened to jinx
[ ] Rebuild Metropolis
This will greatly boost Lexcorp's PR
[ ] Locate Kobra
We already picked a fight with them no reason to leave a job half finished
[ ] Attempt to enter Azerath
Since we are recruiting magic users may as well see if we can go here
[ ] Doublecheck everything Cerise has ever done
We know she did something to Lexcorp towers we need to know what
[ ] Bring any building behind on defense up to standard levels
[ ] Improve exo-suit user interface
[ ] Improve exo-suit mobility
I do not really see a pressing need for martial actions this turn so reinforcing our weakspots should be done and improving the exo suits as always is something we have to do if we want to keep being competitive in this new age of metahumans
[ ] Meet with Volcana
We need to get her on board if only to stop a potential PR disaster from happening having her be rescued by superman and be interviewed by Lois should be avoided
[ ] Meet with Zatanna
[ ] Hire Zatanna to deal with Cerise's runes
We need some extra magical help to combat Cerise and fix whatever happened to jinx
[ ] Rebuild Metropolis
This will greatly boost Lexcorp's PR
[ ] Locate Kobra
We already picked a fight with them no reason to leave a job half finished
[ ] Attempt to enter Azerath
Since we are recruiting magic users may as well see if we can go here
[ ] Doublecheck everything Cerise has ever done
We know she did something to Lexcorp towers we need to know what
- Location
- Singapore
On the other hand WayneTel is catching up to us in the Smartphone market amd we need to get our nigh-monopoly back.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
I'm not quite pedantic enough to have people wait another 10 minutes exactly or so. This is close enough to 10 hours that I'm going to just kind of let things go. As such the vote is now open. Have fun with the voting because I guarantee you a lot is going to happen this turn.