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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Thanks Faflec. Yeah, it can do modest damage to bedrock too, so burial remains risky. Any other ideas to secure a rune? Unsure how being inside lots of rock would interact with its functioning.
 
Or we could just not, as I have said is the best option, as Kei has said is the best option, as Hazou has agreed is the best option...
 
Eh, we have other options to turn to. If none of those turn out to be viable, then we can explore Runic EM-Style Nukes. For now, they can be set to the side --or we can have a SC continue to research them, but then deliberately not complete the research until we've felt out other options.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
WMDs in the "research WMDs" mission with the fate of the world on the line
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Our mission is to kill Akatsuki, not kill Akatsuki with only WMDs. A 10 mile effect is a waste of destructive power that could be better spent on other aspects of the weapon. Runes are starting to give us access to time control which is one of the most broken powers in fiction and yet we are fixated on nukes only?

Elemental Mastery nuke alone is not truly a panacea for killing Akatsuki anyway, not without proper targeting and delivery. How can the rune be put into position where it's needed? How do we know they are all in range? How can the rune be triggered without alerting them? How do we confirm success? The answers to these general kinds of questions are half the battle for other viable weapons as well.
 
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Inferno Vulpix said:
Urgh, this is not what I had felt I was voting for. I took "If she's adamantly against it, don't proceed." to mean "void the line about immediately researching them", not "permanently commit to never researching them".

Does Kei understand what she's asking of us? To complete this absurd, nigh-suicidal mission to decisively destroy the most powerful ninjas in the world, without inventing anything strong enough to potentially kill a city? That's a pretty narrow needle to thread, especially when we don't know what research ideas of ours will actually work out. Like, just look at this:

I can't take Hazou's "It's not as if I don't have plenty of other ideas." as consolation when Kei just admitted that she's willing to repeat this entire conversation for whatever we come up with next.

I get it, there's a lot of baggage that comes with weapons this strong. While Kei's thoughts were more detailed than my previous thoughts on the matter they weren't fundamentally new insights to me, this isn't something I haven't considered before. But we are being asked to kill the entire Akatsuki and I think it really really really needs to be said that this is not an easy task that we can afford to hamstring ourselves on. Maybe we can get by without inventing anything strong enough to kill a city. Maybe. Are we to bet everything on that? We're already fully committed now. There's no returning to Leaf unless the Akatsuki is dead. And, of course, we're on an unknown time limit too. If we don't have our solution ready in time, maybe we're forced to deploy it prematurely and fail and die. Maybe we are forced to go missing for real, dealing incredible damage to the Goketsu. It is a bold, bold, bold optimism that says we can afford massive handicaps in this situation, which makes it feel very strange to hear from Kei.

We have ideas, sure. Ideas. How many of our ideas actually work out in practice? How many of our current lines of research will actually deliver the target functionality within the necessary timeframe? I'm skeptical of everything that's not a bird in the hand, and you should be too. We have exactly one research path that's guaranteed to yield results, and that's Elemental Mastery.

And that's why I wouldn't have supported that line of the plan if I had known it would be interpreted like this. Hazou really laid it on thick here, to the point that if he went and researched it anyways it would be a massive betrayal. What do we do if the deadline nears and the mission isn't possible without it? What if we do come up with other WMDs but Kei vetos them all for the same reasons? Do we just make them anyways, and tell Kei to pound sand? And mind you, we don't actually know when the deadline will come. If we mean to avoid the scenario of "Naruto calls, we're out of time, the WMDs need to be ready now" then we need our WMDs ready at some unspecified date before Naruto calls, at which point we will have no concrete evidence that our time is at its end. We will, thus, be forced to make our WMDs in a scenario that appears to be well before the deadline, thus sharpening the betrayal.

Sage, what a mess. I'm honestly extremely tempted to just go research it anyways, because screw banning all WMDs in the "research WMDs" mission with the fate of the world on the line, but now that Hazou's gone and made this stupid commitment it does remain true that whether or not the other research paths work out it's better for us to wait before resorting to researching Elemetnal Mastery. If our other ideas work out, great, as long as we don't let Kei veto those too. If they don't, then Hazou's got a more reasonable motive than if he were to do it now.

But either way, I am not letting Kei stop us from completing this mission.
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Are we that committed? I assumed that worst case scenario if Naruto called and said "Akatsuki is ready to bring Pain back, do you have a solution", and we don't, then we'll just....return to Leaf under the cover of completing the mission and recalibrate from there(Ex. Develop an army of S-rankers and then assassinate Pain in force). Multiple S-rankers aren't a problem you can just brute force after all.
I guessed the real "no turning back point" would be researching the rift, because it would break Itachi's taboo, but we have no particular reason to do so with Orochimaru fully dedicated to that (and our precious research time already taken by researching anti-Akatsuki weapons).
 
Lucky Labors
Rune

When activated, this rune provides those in its area with unlimited FP for the purposes of rerolls.

(In most circumstances, this can be treated as rolling +12 on the fate dice.)
 
Cariyaga said:
Or we could just not, as I have said is the best option, as Kei has said is the best option, as Hazou has agreed is the best option...
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I think this is an unnecessarily defeatist way to investigate this class of stuff.

We potentially have the option to, for example, instantly unseal a sphere of liquid air around a combat zone from a rune triggered remotely by a seal a la ARS, in a way that we, specifically, are protected against and that nobody else is, a la personal EM field, and that's completely contained in place, perhaps even frozen in place, a la air domes, in a way that's ultimately nothing like the WMD but is yet a straightforward extrapolation of the tools we have now.

Ignoring those things to work on significantly more speculative ideas seems inefficient in a way that could just be deadly. I buy the other stuff is a good idea but the opposition is too strong to be wasteful.
 
Veedrac said:
I think this is an unnecessarily defeatist way to investigate this class of stuff.

We potentially have the option to, for example, instantly unseal a sphere of liquid air around a combat zone from a rune triggered remotely by a seal a la ARS, in a way that we, specifically, are protected against and that nobody else is, a la personal EM field, and that's completely contained in place, perhaps even frozen in place, a la air domes, in a way that's ultimately nothing like the WMD but is yet a straightforward extrapolation of the tools we have now.

Ignoring those things to work on significantly more speculative ideas seems inefficient in a way that could just be deadly. I buy the other stuff is a good idea but the opposition is too strong to be wasteful.
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I think you're overestimating the opposition.

The way you beat a ninja is by black swanning them. The same is true of essies. We have an infinite bag of black swans. Why do we care if we can't do city-destroying ones?
 
RandomOTP said:
Eh, we have other options to turn to. If none of those turn out to be viable, then we can explore Runic EM-Style Nukes. For now, they can be set to the side --or we can have a SC continue to research them, but then deliberately not complete the research until we've felt out other options.
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I want to stress, we could complete this in a single roll by accident. This is probably not that unlikely assuming we'll have fully raised PS by the time we're considering this. If we have 5 days to research this, we likely have 10. I don't want to start this before we're committed to researching it.
Suleverf said:
Our mission is to kill Akatsuki, not kill Akatsuki with only WMDs. A 10 mile effect is a waste of destructive power that could be better spent on other aspects of the weapon. Runes are starting to give us access to time control which is one of the most broken powers in fiction and yet we are fixated on nukes only?
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This isn't true. Most of the destructive power of EM Nukes comes from physics, not the rune itself, the rune only cools some air. All of the rest of the destructive power of the nuke effect comes from physics. This is completely unlike other runic weapon suggestions like grasers, which would be powered by the rune itself.

EM Nukes are likely the easiest way of creating a destructive effect that will take out Akatsuki.
 
faflec said:
...my mind went to the idea of swarming Akatsuki with a army of literal black swans. I do not know what is wrong with me.
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That would be a black swan for them, yes.

...Actually, hm. Maybe a rune with IFF (does not target anyone within the immediate area around it) that targets all chakra-having things in the (large) radius?
 
Lord Marshal said:
Are we that committed? I assumed that worst case scenario if Naruto called and said "Akatsuki is ready to bring Pain back, do you have a solution", and we don't, then we'll just....return to Leaf under the cover of completing the mission and recalibrate from there(Ex. Develop an army of S-rankers and then assassinate Pain in force). Multiple S-rankers aren't a problem you can just brute force after all.
I guessed the real "no turning back point" would be researching the rift, because it would break Itachi's taboo, but we have no particular reason to do so with Orochimaru fully dedicated to that (and our precious research time already taken by researching anti-Akatsuki weapons).
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I think it's pretty likely we die if we do this. We still can't beat Itachi's Deceit, so the Akatsuki would have to either not interrogate Hazou about what his secret seal research mission was, or fail to ask a question in the interrogation that would reveal that we intended to kill them. Remember that Itachi told us fairly broadly not to interfere in the Akatsuki's plans again, and we were definitely planning to do that. It's no guarantee but, well, I don't think the odds are great. The whole reason we're doing this almost-no-contact scheme is because we can't afford the Akatsuki showing up and learning what we're up to, and that remains true if we've canceled the mission and the Akatsuki are just asking what we were up to.

(Not to mention the risk that they loot pinata Hazou in the process. If they ask the wrong question Hazou would essentially be forced to reveal runes or else die for noncompliance, and neither of those are acceptable outcomes)

We could throw the dice on that, if we wanted. But it doesn't look like Hazou or Naruto is inclined to do that, if at all possible. I'd more likely expect, if push comes to shove, for Naruto to tell us to go missing so we can avoid the executioner's axe until a better solution of some kind can be found.

So, to me, in my estimation, yeah we are that committed.
Suleverf said:
Our mission is to kill Akatsuki, not kill Akatsuki with only WMDs. A 10 mile effect is a waste of destructive power that could be better spent on other aspects of the weapon. Runes are starting to give us access to time control which is one of the most broken powers in fiction and yet we are fixated on nukes only?

Elemental Mastery nuke alone is not truly a panacea for killing Akatsuki anyway, not without proper targeting and delivery. How can the rune be put into position where it's needed? How do we know they are all in range? How can the rune be triggered without alerting them? How do we confirm success? The answers to these general kinds of questions are half the battle for other viable weapons as well.
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We need targeting and delivery, yes, but we also need a sufficiently OP payload. The bulk of my frustration here is that we currently do not have one. I see the past-blue light research and I say that we do not actually know that we will be able to turn that into a gamma ray OHKO weapon. We just saw, in fact, that Hazou's highest past-blue HOWS didn't do any visible damage to plants, which makes me worry that getting all the way up to gamma rays might be really difficult. Maybe it works out, and that's fine. Maybe it doesn't, and what then? We need to hit them with something. If, EM aside, gamma rays are our best frontrunner option, then I can see a plausible future where EM really is the only viable payload we can deliver there, and what then? This is not the stage of research where we can afford to foreclose options, not if we actually care about winning.
RandomOTP said:
Eh, we have other options to turn to. If none of those turn out to be viable, then we can explore Runic EM-Style Nukes. For now, they can be set to the side --or we can have a SC continue to research them, but then deliberately not complete the research until we've felt out other options.
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And see, this, I would be fine with this. "I'll do my best to avoid EM but it might wind up our only hope" is a perfectly reasonable angle to take here. But that's not what Hazou did. Hazou hard-committed to never research them. As a result of that, if we do reach the point you describe where Runic EM is our only hope, we would still be breaking a major promise to Kei. A promise that clearly means a lot to her, that we emphasized by saying that her opinion is the one that matters most here and all the other things that Hazou said in the update. All those heartwarming words will become ash when Kei realized they were only a fairweather promise, void the moment Hazou decided he disagreed with her. She would have every reason to be utterly furious with us.

So I see this update and I see the tragedy approaching on the horizon. We didn't just agree that EM should be avoided if possible, we essentially staked our relationship with Kei on a promise that we might have to break to avoid Game Over. If that tragedy on the horizon reaches us I know what sacrifice I'll make, but it's just so frustrating knowing that it was entirely avoidable. Nobody forced us to make a promise this strong, this binding, this debilitating. We could have just voiced your viewpoint instead, and this would have been so much better.
 
DanZapman said:
I'm not sure what distinction you draw here, exactly. The rune makes energy into light and physics handles the rest, in the same sense as you expect the rune to make energy into coolth and let physics handle the rest.
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In the graser rune, weapon energy created by the rune is applied directly to the target. In an EM Nuke rune, the energy of the rune is transmitted to the air, which condenses and the resulting destructive hypertornado is powered by Earth's gravity, not the rune.
 
Cariyaga said:
I think you're overestimating the opposition.

The way you beat a ninja is by black swanning them. The same is true of essies. We have an infinite bag of black swans. Why do we care if we can't do city-destroying ones?
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I think you're mostly missing the point of what I've been saying: the interesting thing about EM is the exploit, not the fact it's a WMD, and we both have a ton of easy ways to turn that into directed weapons that can do stuff nothing else we have can do (eg. extremely long range weapons) as well as a way more direct and tractable research agenda for getting there.

I also think you're significantly underestimating the opposition. All of them are hardy as fuck. That said I don't know what a grasser is so can't really say how it compares.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
And see, this, I would be fine with this. "I'll do my best to avoid EM but it might wind up our only hope" is a perfectly reasonable angle to take here. But that's not what Hazou did. Hazou hard-committed to never research them. As a result of that, if we do reach the point you describe where Runic EM is our only hope, we would still be breaking a major promise to Kei. A promise that clearly means a lot to her, that we emphasized by saying that her opinion is the one that matters most here and all the other things that Hazou said in the update. All those heartwarming words will become ash when Kei realized they were only a fairweather promise, void the moment Hazou decided he disagreed with her. She would have every reason to be utterly furious with us.

So I see this update and I see the tragedy approaching on the horizon. We didn't just agree that EM should be avoided if possible, we essentially staked our relationship with Kei on a promise that we might have to break to avoid Game Over. If that tragedy on the horizon reaches us I know what sacrifice I'll make, but it's just so frustrating knowing that it was entirely avoidable. Nobody forced us to make a promise this strong, this binding, this debilitating. We could have just voiced your viewpoint instead, and this would have been so much better.
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Query: In this scenario (we do research for a few months without getting effect Akatsuki-killers, Hazou is convinced EM Nuke Runes may be the only way to kill them), why can't we just...talk to Kei again? Tell her that we aren't getting anywhere, and that EM Nuke Runes are increasingly becoming the only semi-viable option.
 
faflec said:
Query: In this scenario (we do research for a few months without getting effect Akatsuki-killers, Hazou is convinced EM Nuke Runes may be the only way to kill them), why can't we just...talk to Kei again? Tell her that we aren't getting anywhere, and that EM Nuke Runes are increasingly becoming the only semi-viable option.
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We didn't leave room for that in our current wording, which is what is frustrating. It's one thing to recognize all the points Kei made and rule it a bad idea, it's another to make a context-agnostic agreement to not research it. We didn't give ourself an exit-clause.
 
Sir Stompy said:
In the graser rune, weapon energy created by the rune is applied directly to the target. In an EM Nuke rune, the energy of the rune is transmitted to the air, which condenses and the resulting destructive hypertornado is powered by Earth's gravity, not the rune.
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That makes sense, thank you. Unfortunately, teleportation seems to be Hiraishin-tier hax, or we could send people into the Sun or hard vacuum or something.
 
_The_Bomb said:
We didn't leave room for that in our current wording, which is what is frustrating. It's one thing to recognize all the points Kei made and rule it a bad idea, it's another to make a context-agnostic agreement to not research it. We didn't give ourself an exit-clause.
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Velorien said:
"So what you're saying," Hazō said eventually, "is that you don't think I should pursue this direction of research."

"I believe it would be unwise."

"Then I won't," Hazō said simply. "It's not as if I don't have plenty of other ideas."

Kei looked taken aback.

"You mean it? You would exercise common sense in a matter of weapons research on my word alone?"
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Even having read what Hazou said, I still don't see why he can't just talk to Kei about it and say that, hey, I know I said I wasn't gonna do this, but I'm increasingly concerned that doing this is the only way for us to win, and go from there.
 
_The_Bomb said:
We didn't leave room for that in our current wording, which is what is frustrating. It's one thing to recognize all the points Kei made and rule it a bad idea, it's another to make a context-agnostic agreement to not research it. We didn't give ourself an exit-clause.
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We don't need to explicitly specify an exit clause? Hazou isn't a robot and doesn't robotically follow promises. If we need to revisit this because none of our other ideas pan out, that's fine.
 
DanZapman said:
That makes sense, thank you. Unfortunately, teleportation seems to be Hiraishin-tier hax, or we could send people into the Sun or hard vacuum or something.
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Chakra generally has semantic, description-level reasonableness restrictions which is the main thing EM bypassed, moreso than anything else. High level EM was powerful primarily because the magic semantic balancer went OOD and stopped returning sane results. You can't just assume you'll get that from a laser, it's missing the trick, though a hard radiation laser, sure, if you don't do a suicide first.

Teleportation is one of the things that seems harder to abuse for this reason. A pretty good hack more in the spirit of the auto balancer might be having a long running rune tile space with substitution targets only we can use, though even that is surely a challenge.
 
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