Magical Girl Home Base Quest

[Icipall]

Yes and no? The problem with the Kolobok was that it was a risk-reward option, and in every instance I've presented a risk-reward option the quest-goers have chosen to avoid risk. That's not a sustainable mindset, and I'll be getting into it more when I write the QM debriefs.

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If one wants questers to take a specific option, it must be presented as a mystery box. People always go for those.

Yeah, none the building options seem risky in the slightest. I suppose real bad rolls could make them explode or something, but right now they just seem like something that has a long term pay off. I'm pretty sure none of them will be done in time to affect the outcome of the current crisis.

Maybe that's the risk? Spend time working on something that won't help with what's happening right now, so it's ready for the next crisis? Doesn't quite click with me, but maybe I'm missing something.

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That's how I saw it as well. All of the build options are good in different ways, but won't be finished before this crisis is over.

 

[Sentient Tree]

Word of QM would be more accurately surmised as 'this story is based upon my experiences working in soup kitchens and clothing donations centers and reflects the realities of endemic poverty' since my work with the Baldwin Center of Pontiac was the direct inspiration for a lot of the scenes involving food and the mess hall. I'm not going to lie, when I started this I had a morbid curiosity in how SV's best and brightest would handle something this... I suppose I'll say grounded?

And now I know.

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What is playing it safe or not playing it safe in regards to real life?

 

[catDreaming]

Well, we're here now. We've made mistakes, apparently many, so here's my guess at how we could have avoided this burnout:
When producing Wands/Trinkets, which we did a lot of, not produce the highest quality possible at all times.
Sure, it definitely helped our newer or veteran MGs survive. The higher firepower put out definitely helped. But, it also meant that Medicine Boy was spending large amounts of time in his workshop. He wasn't able to sleep as much, or take as good of care of himself due to having less time available.

So, if we had reduced the exertion Medicine Boy himself under when producing items for our local MGs, then what? At that point, we could have voted for a riskier option, like the Koloblok (I hope that I didn't misspell it). With Medicine Boy possibly in better shape overall, any failure achieved would have hit him when he was healthier, meaning that he could have had less time spent in recovery to get back up to a functional state. At that point, not going all out with producing the highest quality items would also reduce the strain on Medicine Boy overall.

There's also the option that Medicine Boy spent less time in the workshop, period. Giving Homer more time in the workshop to build something other than more of his bombs seems like a possible idea going forward. Medicine Boy didn't come up with any of the three building projects we have now, but we could have found out about them from Homer if he had more time in the workshop to do his thing.

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I don't know, just some thoughts on what we could have done, and might want to do in the future. Sums up to: Don't always operate at full production output, take more risks, and give Homer more time in the workshop.

 

[Naron]

I don't know, just some thoughts on what we could have done, and might want to do in the future. Sums up to: Don't always operate at full production output, take more risks, and give Homer more time in the workshop.

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My problem with this "don't be in the workshop so much" is that implementing it is harder than one makes it sound.

I need to check back, but there should have only been three or four crafting actions thus far, in fifteen weeks. There were at least five building upgrades (done by MB), and two workshop upgrades.

If crafting had a negative influence on Medicine Boy, I would say it is comparatively minor when compared to the stress of the current crisis. You might still have a point though, seeing that it seems the workshop is not just for crafting; research happens in there, I think Joselyn's treatment happened in there, almost anything magical that takes more than five minutes probably happens in there.

So basically, "use the workshop less" translates to "do not do anything overly magical and hope no events force MB in there for the week". Which is easier said than done.

 

[catDreaming]

So basically, "use the workshop less" translates to "do not do anything overly magical and hope no events force MB in there for the week". Which is easier said than done.

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I don't think it will happen if we don't work at it. Magic will happen; This quest has shown that even if we don't utilize it actively during a week, something with it will happen. But we look at the mundane side of things, where our MGs are human beings? There's plenty to work on there that Medicine Boy can do, and that gives Homer or whoever a chance to at least start on things in the workshop. And if they don't finish for whatever reason, Medicine Boy will probably want to know what they've been doing. That informs us of options.
Anyway, this is similar reasoning to why I voted for the Area of Purification. As far as human resources, I would say that both the Area Of Purification and the other non-condenser option will both help the Magical Girls handle being human beings with human needs. I felt like the health benefits were more important than the elevator, but as I write this, I'm reconsidering. If we can open up rooms on the higher floors, that would also let us spread out our occupants over more rooms. People don't like being jammed together, after all.

 

[Storyteller]

The second option was less ambitious, but still an increase in power for the hostel: an Area of Purification. Health and wellness was hard to keep up in the still-blighted squalor of the hotel, and the complaints about how you were collectively handling sewage had been legendary when Calypso lost her temper in the mess hall one day. Equally importantly, this would work for spiritual purification as well, meaning that some of the more deliberating wounds that the girls had suffered and scarred over could possibly worked on- including, a part of your mind insisted, Jocelyne's.

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I'm voting for the Area of Purification primarily for the health benefits. Not just the scarring and wounds - but the girls being able to bathe and above all dealing with the sewage. I'm really worried about the sewage honestly - there's a reason why good plumbing and waste disposal is a huge part of health control. Especially as the majority of the staff at our hostel do not have the Magical Girl physiology. Joselyn may not have to worry about it with her spider body but Medicine Boy, Homer and especially our cook? They can get sick and given that we run ourselves ragged at the best of times...

Yeah - fixing the no toilet situation to a slightly better no toilet situation is a big deal.

[X] Build a Room
-[X] Area of Purification: Increase item yields, grants health benefits.

 

[Strypgia]

WHAT!? That's 49.1 in celsius. MB should be dead! Or in a ice bath in intense care unit in a hospital!

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Technically you bust out the ice baths at 103 F, but yeah he's doing Not Good. Considering clinical brain death is expected after a few hours of 105+, though, there's still some margin.

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I was going to say 'I got stuck sitting in the medic's waiting room for 5 hours with a 102.4 fever in Basic Training, and all they did was give me zithromax and 3 days bedrest, it's not that bad', but then I see that.... er...

So no, players not picking the risky option is not the players' fault.

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The problem with the Kolobok was that it was a risk-reward option, and in every instance I've presented a risk-reward option the quest-goers have chosen to avoid risk. That's not a sustainable mindset,

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We are in a deep hole, and consistently picking the less- or no-risk option has only dug us deeper. Straight WoG is this is not a viable long-term path. And the problems with this were noticed and pointed out. What made you think the other options were risk-free? Every crafting roll has a chance of problems. And continuously picking 'no risk' in the week-to-week options just builds up the larger problems and risks we're not grappling with because of that avoidance. We have a major demon problem coming in 2 weeks, and we've frittered away our time. And that is the voters fault.

 

[Spectral Waltz]

All of the information on mechanics and rolls has been available from the word go, and all the information on The situation we're in has been coded into the narrative for a while now.

Whether it is the voters fault for failing to correctly compile that information and draw the correct conclusions or the GMs fault for not spelling things out more clearly is up to your opinion, but I feel like this game was very much intended to be a test, and open book tests aren't really tests at all.

 

[KreenWarrior]

All of the information on mechanics and rolls has been available from the word go, and all the information on The situation we're in has been coded into the narrative for a while now.

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Err... this doesn't sound right. The mechanics were dealt out piecemeal and some were changed partway through. We still don't know if our equipment has any mechanical impact or if so, what it is, or how Intel works besides how it's generated.

There's broader questions here. What's a win state? Are we actually in a fail state now, just because we caught a fever? We've been told that avoiding the MC collapsing required a faster run. We were also told there was a "fastest, bloodiest route", which implied speed had a correlation with loss of magical girls.

 

[Spectral Waltz]

Err... this doesn't sound right. The mechanics were dealt out piecemeal and some were changed partway through. We still don't know if our equipment has any mechanical impact or if so, what it is, or how Intel works besides how it's generated.

There's broader questions here. What's a win state? Are we actually in a fail state now, just because we caught a fever? We've been told that avoiding the MC collapsing required a faster run. We were also told there was a "fastest, bloodiest route", which implied speed had a correlation with loss of magical girls.

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The win state is surviving long enough to achieve stable sustainability.

Reaching that end with no deaths and no sacrifices is impossible though.

EDIT: I still need to vote

-[X] Area of Purification: Increase item yields, grants health benefits.

 

[Sirrocco]

So... I think I see something, and it is ugly.

Basically, I think we've been playing this wrong. We can't save everyone, and trying to save as many as we possibly can is straining us to the breaking point.

Medicine boy lives in an ecology where new magical girls are being drawn in with false promises all the time, with the solid expectation that most of them are going to die early when their initial toys break and they don't have anything to replace them.

We have to just... not save everyone. We have to prioritize increasing our long-term ability to help and provide over any sort of short-term "save this one" or "save them all". If it's enough to make it through the current catastrophe, and it's enough to put resources on the table, then we need to work on cranking up our ongoing ability to provide for yet more... because if we're at all successful, more will be coming.

The natural ecology, after all, assumes that places like we have here don't exist. It expects magical girls to be largely disposable. The more we save this week, the more there are to be cared for next week... and if we put everything we had into saving them last week, then we don't have the capacity to help out more now.

What does crafting new regalia do, after all? It empowers specific magical girls (thus keeping them alive) and gives us resources. We already have gobs of resources. We have way more than we need for item crafting... and we already have so many magical girls under our roof that it's straining basically everything, and that's without the ones who are hovering around the edges of the property.

We are never going to lack for magical girls who need a bit more help this week. Saving individuals does not actually solve any of our meaningful problems. We need to think long-term, even if that means that magical girls that we like and care for wind up dead in the short term... because they're going to wind up dead *anyway*.

 

[Derpmind]

My biggest problem with the Purification is that it takes longer. We need the kind of big upgrade we can get from either option, but I don't think it's worth waiting a few weeks longer, especially when right now we've got an excess of resources.

We are never going to lack for magical girls who need a bit more help this week. Saving individuals does not actually solve any of our meaningful problems. We need to think long-term, even if that means that magical girls that we like and care for wind up dead in the short term... because they're going to wind up dead *anyway*.

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If it weren't for the crisis, we would have been making steady progress towards giving every local MG at least one item each. Which kinda does help everyone stay alive and advance the area's overall sustainability. Unfortunately things completely changed with the crisis, and even after it's over we can't just go back to crafting an item every other week. But before the crisis I don't think we were making wrong decisions, just perhaps unoptimal ones.

 

[Spectral Waltz]

before the crisis I don't think we were making wrong decisions, just perhaps unoptimal ones.

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Suboptimal decisions are wrong decisions you goof...

 

[Derpmind]

Suboptimal decisions are wrong decisions you goof...

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Suboptimal means "not the best". Wrong would mean we did something that we outright shouldn't have, rather than something that was one of several choices with differing levels of positive results.

Pre-crisis, we've made some silly choices in what order we go about upgrading vs. building new items, but none of our weekly actions outright hurt the progress we were making. (And making optimal decisions is impossible when results rely on random chance.)

 

[Spectral Waltz]

Suboptimal means "not the best". Wrong would mean we did something that we outright shouldn't have, rather than something that was one of several choices with differing levels of positive results.

Pre-crisis, we've made some silly choices in what order we go about upgrading vs. building new items, but none of our weekly actions outright hurt the progress we were making. (And making optimal decisions is impossible when results rely on random chance.)

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Yes, and making decisions that weren't the best was in fact wrong.

There was a certain degree of leeway we had, but we squandered that and then some, to the point where any decision other than the optimal decision became objectively wrong.

At a certain point, our weekly actions did in fact start to hurt our progress simply by the fact that they were insufficient.

 

[Sirrocco]

If it weren't for the crisis, we would have been making steady progress towards giving every local MG at least one item each. Which kinda does help everyone stay alive and advance the area's overall sustainability. Unfortunately things completely changed with the crisis, and even after it's over we can't just go back to crafting an item every other week. But before the crisis I don't think we were making wrong decisions, just perhaps unoptimal ones.

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No... you're missing the point. Having them stay alive doesn't enhance the overall sustainability. Cities are not regularly falling to shadowy threats, and the Powers That Be behind the magical girls don't see anything wrong with the results they're getting. By extension, the standard technique of "constantly create new magical girls and throw them into the grinder" actually works. Having said magical girls triumph and thus survive much more often is great and all, but it doesn't actually do all that much for the kind of sustainability we're looking at here. Right now, our issue is "more magical girls than we can support", not "insufficient magical girls to face the current threat", and we can basically expect that to continue.

We need to do the things that will enhance our ability to help long-term, not just do the things that will help right now... and "give everyone an awesome wand or whatever" is effectively on the "help right now" list.

 

[........]

On top of taking longer, Purification doesn't pay out until it's actually finished.

Meanwhile, more crafters is more crafters. No matter how much you upgrade that workshop, Medicine Boy isn't going to be able to keep all of those girls geared up by himself, and a certain cat happens to know of a uniform maker who'd probably love having a roof over her head and an actual workshop. And that's just the start. It's honestly the biggest power multiplier we have available right now, the sanitation problem will just have to wait a bit.


Poor poor Paternoster, potentially amazing but we haven't even finished cleaning out the second floor yet. You'll eventually have your time in the sun, it just won't be now.

 

[Sirrocco]

On top of taking longer, Purification doesn't pay out until it's actually finished.

Meanwhile, more crafters is more crafters. No matter how much you upgrade that workshop, Medicine Boy isn't going to be able to keep all of those girls geared up by himself, and a certain cat happens to know of a uniform maker who'd probably love having a roof over her head and an actual workshop. And that's just the start. It's honestly the biggest power multiplier we have available right now, the sanitation problem will just have to wait a bit.

Poor poor Paternoster, potentially amazing but we haven't even finished cleaning out the second floor yet. You'll eventually have your time in the sun, it just won't be now.

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I'll note a really severe difference between "this will men that it's possible to get new crafters eventually" and "we will totally get at least one new crafter soon if we do this". Let's not sell ourselves the latter when the truth is the former.

That having been said, while I like the purification room... yeah, that thing takes time.

I still assert that (unless something major changes) trying to keep all of the girls geared up is basically a losing game. There are simply too many of them, and powering them up one at a time does not scale.

 

[Derpmind]

No... you're missing the point. Having them stay alive doesn't enhance the overall sustainability.

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You're missing my point. You're confusing the pre-crisis events and the current situation. Before the crisis, keeping all local MGs alive was a reachable goal by keeping them all stocked up on at least one item each, and using those resources and influence to help upgrade our infrastructure. Remember, we've got three employees working with Medicine Boy. That's a major thing we accomplished that we couldn't have if we hadn't worked on those social connections. Not to mention the efforts to solve the current crisis are being spearheaded by the veteran MGs we cultivated.

When the crisis started, that all changed. I personally was strongly advocating we switch gears and get the Kolobok researched ASAP, since we couldn't build enough items to arm even a fraction of our inflated MG population. We needed to do riskier things to help combat the likely amount of deaths that were going to happen. (And did happen.) But we didn't research the Kolobok, and I do think that was a mistake. IMO unless something comes up that's more useful we should research it next turn.

But, like, I'm partially confused by your argument anyways? What "sustainability" are you talking about? The base? The city? Going by what you're saying, we didn't have to lift a finger to protect the city, it'd happen anyways though with more deaths. And as for keeping the base going, if we just ignored helping MGs we wouldn't have a base in the first place. Pragmatically, we need a customer base, and we needed better-equipped MGs to bring us more resources. If we had spent the entire quest focusing on upgrading the base over everything else, we still wouldn't be able to support 35+ MGs and we'd have missed out on a lot of others things besides.

 

[Spectral Waltz]

You're confusing the pre-crisis events and the current situation. Before the crisis, keeping all local MGs alive was a reachable goal by keeping them all stocked up on at least one item each, and using those resources and influence to help upgrade our infrastructure.

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You're the one that's confused here friend... Assuming the pre crisis events and the current situation are that different is flawed. Keeping all local MGs alive has never been a reachable goal at any point in this quest.

We spent all we had helping others, when we had almost nothing to begin with.

 

[Themarineguy]

Koloblock should be done next chance we get, if only because we could unlock the next tier trinket....

 

[Derpmind]

You're the one that's confused here friend... Assuming the pre crisis events and the current situation are that different is flawed. Keeping all local MGs alive has never been a reachable goal at any point in this quest.

We spent all we had helping others, when we had almost nothing to begin with.

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And what, exactly, would you have done different? What even is your overall goal besides doom and gloom? Keeping at least some MGs alive is the entire point of the quest. The more MGs stay alive for longer, the more capable they are at both helping us and fighting local monsters. Doing things other than keep MGs alive ultimately leads back to helping keep MGs alive anyways; there hasn't yet been an option to sacrifice MGs on the demonic altar of optimal-in-retrospect.

There's a distinction between "we need to craft less items" and "we were mistaken all along, everything is woe." One is a sensible way to move forward, while the other is just pointless complaining.

 

[Spectral Waltz]

And what, exactly, would you have done different? What even is your overall goal besides doom and gloom? Keeping at least some MGs alive is the entire point of the quest. The more MGs stay alive for longer, the more capable they are at both helping us and fighting local monsters. Doing things other than keep MGs alive ultimately leads back to helping keep MGs alive anyways; there hasn't yet been an option to sacrifice MGs on the demonic altar of optimal-in-retrospect.

There's a distinction between "we need to craft less items" and "we were mistaken all along, everything is woe." One is a sensible way to move forward, while the other is just pointless complaining.

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Reversed the priorities, our early mindset was 'equip MGs, spend the remainder on ourselves' it should have been, 'focus on ourselves, spend whatever extras we can scrounge on MGs'.

Honestly, I think at this point we are in a death spiral, we made the wrong choices again and again and now we're paying for it.

I'm not trying to be doom and gloom, I'm trying to construct votes that will get us out of this, but I see no reason not to be realistic about how badly we've fucked up and how unlikely it is that well succeed at this point. We need to play a perfect game from here on out, and half of us still can't seem to grasp why our earlier plays were flawed.

 

[KreenWarrior]

Honestly, I think at this point we are in a death spiral, we made the wrong choices again and again and now we're paying for it.

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Why do you think we're in a death spiral?

 

[Spectral Waltz]

Why do you think we're in a death spiral?

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Just a feeling mostly, the fact that even after the QM has started offering hints everyone is still blaming everyone else and there's no cohesion doesn't help.

I might be wrong, but I don't think so