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Pinging also @eaglejarl @Velorien

Any objections to us voting in interludes until you guys get the chance to catch up with this?
No, that's fine.

Also skysliders aren't faster than ninja running, both ~20mph
You can travel for longer though, which means more distance per day (fewer skywalkers too)
The lower skywalker usage is a big deal. Skywalkers last for ~15 minutes IIRC, which means a 10 hour day of traveling requires 40 seals for each of the 7 people on the team, which mean 280 seals. At 5 minutes scribing each that is 1400 minutes or ~24 hours of scribing, meaning one full day of scribing for every day the team wants to travel, and that 'one full day' needs to be broken up over the course of a couple days because scribers need to eat and sleep and rest from cramps. Except it's even more time scribing than that, because each person needs two sets of seals per foot for safety.

EDIT: I didn't think about the fact that each set of skywalkers is 2 elements, meaning 10 minutes of scribing time. That's 10 minutes scribe time per skywalker. My bad. I also forgot that CA-activated seals are an all-or-nothing thing -- you can only activate all the CA-activated seals on your feet at the same time. That means that you're wearing two sets for safety, each of them with an unknown and variable time limit. One of them will be longer than the other but the time limit is running down on both of them as you move, so when one set is expended you need to discard both sets. I had been thinking of running it like a queue, only using the front set until it's expended, catch yourself with the back set, slide the back set to the front, add a new one at the back. Assuming I'm remembering right, that doesn't work, which doubles the amount of scribing.

5 minutes scribing per seal element
2 seal elements per skywalker
2 skywalkers per set (1 per foot)
2 sets per person (so that you don't plummet to your death when the first set expires)
4 sets per hour of movement per person
7 people
= 1120 minutes = ~19 hours of scribe time for the team to travel 1 hour by skywalker
10 hours per day of travel
= 190 hours of scribe time for the team to travel 1 day by skywalker

@Paperclipped is telling me it's 93 hours scribing time per 1 day of travel; he's better at math so he's probably right and I missed something somewhere. Regardless, skysliders are a MASSIVE logistical advantage.


Like, as someone who does just enjoy adventure in and of itself, when I'm trying to persuade other voters to support it... why bother doing it if there's no reward or boon to our current objective?
That was a very well-reasoned post; thank you for writing it, because I think communication helps.

All of the rest is ponwog:

I agree with everything in your post except the '...to our current objective' part. Yes, if someone with reason to know (e.g. Orochimaru) tells you that a place is interesting then it's reasonable to assume there is something cool and/or useful there, but if you weren't told what the thing is or that it's relevant to your current task then it's not reasonable to assume that it's relevant to your current task. If we're going to have constant rounds of salt about how yeah, sure, this thing is an awesome powerup but it isn't laser-focused on the specific problem that we want solved today...well, I don't feel a lot of sympathy for that salt.
 
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If we're going to have constant rounds of salt about how yeah, sure, this thing is an awesome powerup but it isn't laser-focused on the specific problem that we want solved today...well, I don't feel a lot of sympathy for that salt.
I think the majority of the complaints were that the chakra efficiency buff was not great in a vacuum or did not reflect the narrative that it allowed the Sannin to wage a prolonged war with its effect. I get Paper's points that it's an impressive amount of XP, but looking at the actually chakra numbers it doesn't allow you to do much more than fight 1-2 additional rounds.

In summary, chakra is hard to come by unless you have Orochimaru or Sarutobi hax of some sort.
 
If we're going to have constant rounds of salt about how yeah, sure, this thing is an awesome powerup but it isn't laser-focused on the specific problem that we want solved today...well, I don't feel a lot of sympathy for that salt.
I think this is fair as a general rule. There will be useful things we find that will not be as useful for us specifically - should be fine unless we are deliberately led to believe it's going to be very useful.

(EDIT: what I was also getting at with the current objective thing as well is, if we're like, hunting down a target or something, and our 'only' reward of a mission is intel or another lever on that objective, I consider that well worth it as well, not necessarily just power ups that are related)

For this specific boon, for me personally, I disagree with the people saying "It's really good, just not for our specific objective". I think it's about as good for our specific objective as it would be generally, which, FMPOV, is decent but not incredible. I think that's just a values difference.

Relatedly, I think it was very, VERY useful to see the reasoning the QMs used for how strong they think this boon should be, and should there be further disputes and they don't mind sharing that meta info, I think bringing it up immediately could be really useful.

As a player, my approach to 'strength of boon x' in this case was to more or less weigh "what does this enable us to do that we couldn't before? Who can we defeat that we couldn't before?" and at least for us specifically, I don't think it really changes that. But I also think it's true that having a more chakra demanding build could potentially change that calculus somewhat, maybe not to legendary tier boon but still noticeable increase in what matchups you can win.
 
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As a player, my approach to 'strength of boon x' in this case was to more or less weigh "what does this enable us to do that we couldn't before?
I want to second this point specifically. The pool might be great in terms of effective XP (and it is) but we can't replicate it without significant detours in terms of XP and it isn't portable. So we'll lose the buff again soon enough.

Furthermore, it doesn't really enable us to do anything we couldn't do before, we cannot win conficts even a half-rank up from where we were with it, and a slight bonus to FOOM for a few weeks was not what we had in mind when we sunk a month of time into this IC.

As a player, if a new thing in the game doesn't allow us new capabilities or only minor upgrades it's not worth much. It might be cool, but how does it help us accomplish our goals?
 
As a player, my approach to 'strength of boon x' in this case was to more or less weigh "what does this enable us to do that we couldn't before? Who can we defeat that we couldn't before?" and at least for us specifically, I don't think it really changes that.

What really hurts is that chakra pool doesn't provide a discount to summoning. It's one of the few effects that becomes more powerful with more chakra. And it's something that would have benefited the Sannin more than other random future Essies.
 
As a player, my approach to 'strength of boon x' in this case was to more or less weigh "what does this enable us to do that we couldn't before? Who can we defeat that we couldn't before?" and at least for us specifically, I don't think it really changes that. But I also think it's true that having a more chakra demanding build could potentially change that calculus somewhat, maybe not to legendary tier boon but still noticeable increase in what matchups you can win.
This metric seems mostly correct, except that you're using Hazo as the benchmark instead of a more relevant yardstick, like the younger versions of Jiraya, Tsunade, and Orochimaru. With Hiruzen as their teacher, they very plausibly had a combat suite that allowed them to over-cast by spending extra chakra. So maybe they actually just cast their capstone attacks at +25% chakra for +100% effect. (Or some equivalent mechanical advantage)
 
I got the impression that since the Sannin were fighting a war out of there, being able to fight the same kind of battles more often was a big boost to their overall effectiveness.

We, on the other hand, take on roughly one serious combat per 1000 XP earned, and are only really chakra-constrained on research & training, which it mostly does not apply to.

I for one was disappointed that it didn't solve the limited-chakra-availablility problems we presently have, but not annoyed or aggrieved; it made sense to me in simulationist terms. Some things turn out surprisingly well suited to one's circumstances, and others, the reverse.
 
I got the impression that since the Sannin were fighting a war out of there, being able to fight the same kind of battles more often was a big boost to their overall effectiveness.
A 20 (or 25) percent discount does not allow you to fight more often. Most of the chakra cost in battles is in round 1 when you put up your buffs, debuffs, etc. I suppose if you are exclusively using chakra boost and nothing else you could fight for 20/25 percent more rounds, but in a real scenario you could *maybe* cast your main attack jutsu one additional time.

Put another way, you need to have enough chakra to do battle three times in a row before the boost allows you to do an extra fight (it was four battles in a row before the buff).
 
This metric seems mostly correct, except that you're using Hazo as the benchmark instead of a more relevant yardstick, like the younger versions of Jiraya, Tsunade, and Orochimaru. With Hiruzen as their teacher, they very plausibly had a combat suite that allowed them to over-cast by spending extra chakra. So maybe they actually just cast their capstone attacks at +25% chakra for +100% effect. (Or some equivalent mechanical advantage)
Nope, as a player playing Hazou, when I am evaluating how good something is for Hazou, I use how good it is for Hazou to evaluate how good it is for Hazou🗿
 
If we're going to have constant rounds of salt about how yeah, sure, this thing is an awesome powerup but it isn't laser-focused on the specific problem that we want solved today...well, I don't feel a lot of sympathy for that salt.
The big thing about this adventure is that we had Oro intel about what the prize at the end was, and IIRC it's fairly rare to have any kind of intel about these strange locations at all! It was a pretty simple proposition: we need more chakra, this can give us more chakra, just form a cost-benefit analysis based on how long we expect it to take and how much chakra we expect to save thanks to it.

Of course, we did the Planning Fallacy and wildly underestimated how long it would take, and then the buff had an unexpected caveat, and then we also failed to replicate it quickly, so in the end our CBA was way off. That's what I think the main source of the salt is coming from, summed up from any and all specific objections: in the end, it does not look like the mission was worth it.

Are we frustrated at ourselves, for misjuding the time cost of the journey? At the simulation, for throwing unexpected caveats at us that puncture our assumptions about the buff? At ourselves again, for not adjusting our expectations for the likelihood of unspecified caveats like that and thus being overly optimisic in our CBA? It's probably all of the above, to different degrees, but it's certainly not frustration at you, at the QMs.

I don't think we're liable to get salty about other spooky dungeons we delve, like we did here. This situation is almost uniquely suited towards this scenario, in how we had the intel necessary to build up optimistic expectations ahead of time, enough outward pressure to make us seriously care about the outcome, and enough rope to hang ourselves with things like the time cost of the adventure. If this were calmer times, with no Akatuski deadline breathing down our neck, I think we'd be a lot more chill about getting whatever kind of reward we find. And if we didn't have remarkably legible intel suggesting it could solve an important problem, we... probably would've shelved it until we weren't in a breakneck race against the Akatsuki, and then delved it in calmer times.

I'm sorry, for my part, for venting my regrets about this mission in communal channels. While it's true that I didn't want to keep them bottled up, I should know better by now that negativity, even if reasonable and non-harmful on its own, can become a torrent of negativity in aggregate. Whatever my regrets about our choice to come out here, you do not deserve that kind of response.

As for the future? I've made it no real secret that I don't see any other adventures with high CBA at this point, which is why I mainly want to go off the map and research a bunch. It's not spite, or doomerism, or anything like that, there's just no immediate problem solved by hunting a scroll or killing crabs for chakra metal specks, and our time is valuable right now. It's a bit lame, but the heart of this mission has always been to try and get as much research done as quickly as possible, until we have what we need to take the world by storm.
 
Nope, as a player playing Hazou, when I am evaluating how good something is for Hazou, I use how good it is for Hazou to evaluate how good it is for Hazou🗿
If we're going to have constant rounds of salt about how yeah, sure, this thing is an awesome powerup but it isn't laser-focused on the specific problem build that we want solved today... Hazo to develop… well, I don't feel a lot of sympathy for that salt.

Nah. Getting the exact sequence of non-XP shinies that the Sanin got from adventuring still wouldn't advance Hazo to S-tier. They had a very different starting point so the discoveries that were memorable enough for Oro to mention are not at all guaranteed to be build defining for Hazo.
 
This metric seems mostly correct, except that you're using Hazo as the benchmark instead of a more relevant yardstick, like the younger versions of Jiraya, Tsunade, and Orochimaru. With Hiruzen as their teacher, they very plausibly had a combat suite that allowed them to over-cast by spending extra chakra. So maybe they actually just cast their capstone attacks at +25% chakra for +100% effect. (Or some equivalent mechanical advantage)
There is no reason to think they could do this and plenty of reasons to think they couldn't.

If you can overcast by 25% to get 100% of a better result you just do that and instead of fighting for 3 Rounds you fight for 2. Ninja combat is very dangerous and prolonging it is stupid.

So if they could overcast they would have been doing it all along, and the difference between pool/no pool would still be 1-2 rounds.
 
If we're going to have constant rounds of salt about how yeah, sure, this thing is an awesome powerup but it isn't laser-focused on the specific problem build that we want solved today... Hazo to develop… well, I don't feel a lot of sympathy for that salt.

Nah. Getting the exact sequence of non-XP shinies that the Sanin got from adventuring still wouldn't advance Hazo to S-tier. They had a very different starting point so the discoveries that were memorable enough for Oro to mention are not at all guaranteed to be build defining for Hazo.
I'm literally just saying why we felt it wasn't that useful to us... what everyone else is doing with their builds has nothing to do with how useful something seems to us. If we find the frost shard that gives Ice Release users +5AB to ninjutsu casts then it's a great and powerful thing that is not useful to us and it is what it is.

Hence why I caveated the original thing you quoted with "but I can see it being better for someone with a more chakra intensive build."
 
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Put another way, you need to have enough chakra to do battle three times in a row before the boost allows you to do an extra fight (it was four battles in a row before the buff).

If you can't win 3 battles in a row against normal ninja, you're probably not S-rank, IMO.
But also, if your procedure was to spend, say, half of your chakra on a single battle, then wait ~12 hours to recover to full, then repeat, you can instead spend 37% of your chakra on a battle and recover in 9 hours, right?
 
If you can't win 3 battles in a row against normal ninja, you're probably not S-rank, IMO.
But also, if your procedure was to spend, say, half of your chakra on a single battle, then wait ~12 hours to recover to full, then repeat, you can instead spend 37% of your chakra on a battle and recover in 9 hours, right?
S-Rankers specifically cannot do this, or they couldn't do it 5 times anyway. It's why they can't wipe out the Hidden Villages individually. They run out of chakra and die. Running out of chakra and FP is basically a death sentence against enemies that are even a full rank lower than you.

Chunin Taijutsu: 50 + 12 (2x Invoke) + 6 (Fighting style) + 6 (boost) + 6 (4FD) = 80 vs Jounin Ath: 69 - 3 (4FD) = 66, hit for 6 stress. That's a Mild at the least,

No FP for rerolls, no boost and no Sub means the chunin wins this, inflicts Consequences and then probably death spirals the jounin.

Next Round

50 + 6 (Invoke Mild) + 6 (Fighting Style) + 3 (4FD) + 6 (boost) = 71 vs

69 - 4 (Mild) + 0 (4FD) = 65, that's a Moderate.

Yeah this jounin is toast. If there were 2 chunin they'd be incredibly dead instead of dead.

So even 1 lower step enemy is a significant threat to a chakra-exhaustrd enemy and 2 is overkill.
 
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I think having cool rewards tied to the pool is nice. As a one-off it might not be that relevant to the current goal, but if the team accumulates these kinds of adventures and resources, I think it makes them feel more worldly. Having the ability to come back and use the pool to solve a different problem, should it arise... it feels like the kind of growth & adventure vibe that's fun for everyone.

I know there's the whole time-limit and pressure, but eh, I'm just here to have fun and this feels like in a step in the right direction so I salute it proudly.

Thanks for writing as always!
 
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