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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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faflec said:
Wait what
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Velorien said:
Jiraiya was able to track down three potential sites. The first, the agent assured you after some pressure from Jiraiya, was definitely not once the site of a secret laboratory where a diabolical missing-nin once experimented on helpless civilians, and does not have huge unexplored catacombs beneath it from whence the wailing of children and the snarls of unspeakable abominations can be heard on moonless nights.
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Sounds like a great time, don't you think? Fun for all ages!
 
Briefvoice said:
Don't be over-impressed by teenagers who have "spent their lives" training for politics. Judging by historical example, the results aren't all that.
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You wouldn't expect teenagers who 'spent their lives' training for combat to have quite so good reflexes and battle instincts as a Genin would, but here we are. Whatever societal structures the Elemental Nations have in place for childrearing, they get results.

will408914 said:
Sounds like a great time, don't you think? Fun for all ages!
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But there aren't any huge unexplored catacombs, that's what the agent guy said. He didn't say anything about the other two sites so we could've found some there, but we went with Orochimaru's old place, so no catacombs for us :p
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
You wouldn't expect teenagers who 'spent their lives' training for combat to have quite so good reflexes and battle instincts as a Genin would, but here we are. Whatever societal structures the Elemental Nations have in place for childrearing, they get results.



But there aren't any huge unexplored catacombs, that's what the agent guy said. He didn't say anything about the other two sites so we could've found some there, but we went with Orochimaru's old place, so no catacombs for us :p
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Then there's no harm in voting for it, right? :p
 
Cariyaga said:
I'm pretty sure he had a big table with a bunch of adjustment numbers for it.

[X] A family-fun outing into the deeper levels of the Goketsu basement!
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Jello_Raptor said:
You did notice that the salient number I pointed to was the 1800 folks in the SED right? The technical staff needed, not the people building the factories. A little over 1% of the total. Those people with technical skill served as a proxy for the chakra capable people needed for a major sealing research project. These are the folk who would be duplicating seals, testing jutsu, or other similar tasks.

Mind, because of how you've defined sealing dynamics to work you can just replace "major sealing research project" (like Hidden Heaven, with many interconnecting parts) with a research program that is pursuing many smaller scale projects.

Also, I was using manpower numbers for a reason. The rest of the costs are negligible in the world of MFD. At least for sealing and jutsu we can write off resource costs and salary.

It's not that I missed any of that, I just wanted to get across the difference in scale.

This point is basically a non-sequitur that doesn't rebut any of the actual points I was making. All you've have here is an aptly color coded herring.



Not time, man hours. The villages have the hours, not the men.

At least not enough men well enough coordinated that every possible good idea will have already been explored. The entire point of my argument is that there's probably many seals and jutsu which are low hanging fruit left undiscovered simply because there's not enough people to find everything.

Of the 1500 ninjas Konoha has in service, are even 200 going to know sealing or TH? of those will even 100 being doing research full time? Would it be worse for any of those doing research to switch to churning out seals, or tweaking techniques for people?

The assuming that everything has been explored already is profoundly unreasonable if any of the answers to those are false, and only somewhat improbable even they're all true.

And especially with small sparsely connecting groups of researchers it's all to easy for an unlucky early test to tank a productive line of research, or a petty bureaucrat to squash a project over a personal grudge. They don't have the size, and resulting redundancy, to overcome those setbacks and re-label a line of research as good.



I don't exactly buy this, but my critiques are mostly just nitpiks.

Let's say it's true, and that your research is instead geared towards pushing people up a weight class and giving them a comparative advantage within their class.

Then your TH R&D is looking for things that augment particular people or small groups. Not only will the low hanging fruit we look for as players be completely different, since we're looking to boost completely different groups of people, but it'll be low hanging fruit that's useful for missing-nin without infrastructure behind us.

There may very well ways to make Nobby's barrel more robust and easier to hide left undiscovered, because Mist's R&D is focusing on making the Wakahiza wakaheze better. They use Wakahiza as mobile resource units within a group context. It's easier to keep them safe by giving others better defenses rather than trying to reverse engineer clan secrets.

It's similar for everything else. If they really are focusing on individual boosts there's every reason to believe that they've left the low hanging fruit for things we care about unpicked.



Fair enough, I'm not saying you've made any huge errors in the world building itself. I'm trying to say how you decide whether ideas we have are reasonable is flawed. The way you ask "If this is so awesome, why doesn't everyone have this already?" biases you towards an answer of "Because it's impossible" far more than is reasonable. It means you ignore the fact that people might not have been looking at that particular line of research for simple stupid reasons that aren't lost in the noise when your pool of researchers is so tiny.


When we have an interesting idea you'd be better served with system like the following to decide whether a particular idea is possible/feasible/easy:

Question\Modifier -2 -1 0 1 2
How many village-nin would be bumped up a weight class by this idea?
A handful
(<5)
A small number
(<10)
A small fraction of our military
(<10% of any one village)
A large fraction of our nin
(<60% of any one village)
Most of our nin
(<100% of any one village)
How many new S-Class nin would be created if they had access to this idea?   1 2-3 4-6 > 6
How many existing S-Class nin would be significantly stronger with this idea?   1 2-3 4-6 >6
Does this idea have strategic impact?   No Minor Major Defensive Boost Major Offensive Boost
Are the immediate research precursors well known? Nobody knows them <10 people knowledgeable in the concept A Niche idea Lots but not everyone Every researcher knows them
How many researchers have the skill to research this? (Chakra capacity/elemental affinity/etc..) <5 people < 10 people < 50 people < 100 people > 100 people
What is the economic impact of this idea?     None small boost large immediate boost
How visible would the tech be if the people capable of using it were already using it? invisible minor changes some changes mostly hidden from PCs major changes Could not have a world that we see if tech existed. (Immediately consider tech impossible)
How important is the problem this tech is trying to solve to parties with researchers? Not important at all. Minor benefits there is a salient issue it solves but it's not urgent Solves and urgent issue It is existentially important this tech exists.
How hard are precursor techs to work with/experiment on? Very hard hard doable easy very easy
Answer the questions in the table, sum up the modifiers and get the d100 DC with the following python code:

Code: 
import math
 
# Convert from log odds to normal probabilities
def sigmoid(x):
  return 1 / (1 + math.exp(-x))
 
# Convert from probabilities to log odds
def logit(p):
  return math.log( p / (1 - p))
 
# Pass in the modifiers from the table, get the DC check for the tech.
def getResearchDC(x):
  diceSides = 100 # Number of sides on the dice being rolled
 
  scalingFactor = 0.4 # The unitless ratio to convert between
                      # a modifier and the change in the log odds.
 
  baseRate = 0.3 # the base probability of a tech being impossible if
                  # the modifier is zero.
 
  return round(diceSides * sigmoid(logit(baseRate) + x * scalingFactor))

If your roll is less than the DC then the tech is impossible. If it's slightly greater then it's possible but difficult, or someone else probably already has it and it's being kept secret. If it's significantly greater then it's low hanging fruit that people just missed.

If you want to use something like this, it's probably worth tweaking the numbers to fit your beliefs about the MfD world.

Even if something like this isn't useful to you, it captures how whether things have been researched or not is much more probabilistic in this sort of environment. You don't have enough people that all the low hanging fruit has already been looked at, and even massively impactful techs might be ignored because of different priorities or simple luck.

In a world like our own it's much less probabilistic because people share information so good ideas get amplified, lots of people try things so single failures in a fundamentally useful path of research don't crash the process, and how the small sliver of folk who buck the common wisdom is large enough to re-test notions periodically.
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Damn thing was hidden under a spoiler so I didn't notice it. Which is hilarious because it's fuckin' bookmarked.
 
Uh, so I'm looking at the skywalkers again based on @Jello_Raptor 's table:
Question\Modifier -2 -1 0 1 2 Skywalker costs
How many village-nin would be bumped up a weight class by this idea?
A handful
(<5)
A small number
(<10)
A small fraction of our military
(<10% of any one village)
A large fraction of our nin
(<60% of any one village)
Most of our nin
(<100% of any one village) 		2
How many new S-Class nin would be created if they had access to this idea?   1 2-3 4-6 > 6 2
How many existing S-Class nin would be significantly stronger with this idea?   1 2-3 4-6 >6 2
Does this idea have strategic impact?   No Minor Major Defensive Boost Major Offensive Boost 2
Are the immediate research precursors well known? Nobody knows them <10 people knowledgeable in the concept A Niche idea Lots but not everyone Every researcher knows them 1
How many researchers have the skill to research this? (Chakra capacity/elemental affinity/etc..) <5 people < 10 people < 50 people < 100 people > 100 people 0*
What is the economic impact of this idea?     None small boost large immediate boost 1
How visible would the tech be if the people capable of using it were already using it? invisible minor changes some changes mostly hidden from PCs major changes Could not have a world that we see if tech existed. (Immediately consider tech impossible) 2
How important is the problem this tech is trying to solve to parties with researchers? Not important at all. Minor benefits there is a salient issue it solves but it's not urgent Solves and urgent issue It is existentially important this tech exists. 2
How hard are precursor techs to work with/experiment on? Very hard hard doable easy very easy 0*
*0 won't show up in the table without a stabilizing asterisk

The table's raw returns 14/20. On the one hand, skywalkers are awesome as all hell, but I think this table is going to need major readjustment. To be fair though, I haven't done the python calculations, so dunno what that returns in DC.
 
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Question\Modifier -2 -1 0 1 2 Skywalker costs
How many village-nin would be bumped up a weight class by this idea?
A handful
(<5)
A small number
(<10)
A small fraction of our military
(<10% of any one village)
A large fraction of our nin
(<60% of any one village)
Most of our nin
(<100% of any one village) 		1
How many new S-Class nin would be created if they had access to this idea?   1 2-3 4-6 > 6 -1
How many existing S-Class nin would be significantly stronger with this idea?   1 2-3 4-6 >6 2
Does this idea have strategic impact?   No Minor Major Defensive Boost Major Offensive Boost 1
Are the immediate research precursors well known? Nobody knows them <10 people knowledgeable in the concept A Niche idea Lots but not everyone Every researcher knows them -1
How many researchers have the skill to research this? (Chakra capacity/elemental affinity/etc..) <5 people < 10 people < 50 people < 100 people > 100 people 0*
What is the economic impact of this idea?     None small boost large immediate boost  
How visible would the tech be if the people capable of using it were already using it? invisible minor changes some changes mostly hidden from PCs major changes Could not have a world that we see if tech existed. (Immediately consider tech impossible) 2
How important is the problem this tech is trying to solve to parties with researchers? Not important at all. Minor benefits there is a salient issue it solves but it's not urgent Solves and urgent issue It is existentially important this tech exists. 1
How hard are precursor techs to work with/experiment on? Very hard hard doable easy very easy 0*
*0 won't show up in the table without a stabilizing asterisk
My read's closer to a five.

Not all ninja are likely to be using these due to sealmaster scarcity, so I put weight-class-bump-up at 1, I don't expect many S class ninja, if any, to be created... well, on the other hand, it might bump Kakashi or Gai up to that point, so point there. Still, gonna rate that a -1. However, its boosts are more defensive than offensive, and Jiraiya is the only one other than us (that we know of) that knew Air Dome seals, given that he created them, so. Other minor changes, too.
 
huhYeahGoodPoint said:
Uh, so I'm looking at the skywalkers again based on @Jello_Raptor 's table:
Question\Modifier -2 -1 0 1 2 Skywalker costs
How many village-nin would be bumped up a weight class by this idea?
A handful
(<5)
A small number
(<10)
A small fraction of our military
(<10% of any one village)
A large fraction of our nin
(<60% of any one village)
Most of our nin
(<100% of any one village) 		2
How many new S-Class nin would be created if they had access to this idea?   1 2-3 4-6 > 6 2
How many existing S-Class nin would be significantly stronger with this idea?   1 2-3 4-6 >6 2
Does this idea have strategic impact?   No Minor Major Defensive Boost Major Offensive Boost 2
Are the immediate research precursors well known? Nobody knows them <10 people knowledgeable in the concept A Niche idea Lots but not everyone Every researcher knows them 1
How many researchers have the skill to research this? (Chakra capacity/elemental affinity/etc..) <5 people < 10 people < 50 people < 100 people > 100 people 0*
What is the economic impact of this idea?     None small boost large immediate boost 1
How visible would the tech be if the people capable of using it were already using it? invisible minor changes some changes mostly hidden from PCs major changes Could not have a world that we see if tech existed. (Immediately consider tech impossible) 2
How important is the problem this tech is trying to solve to parties with researchers? Not important at all. Minor benefits there is a salient issue it solves but it's not urgent Solves and urgent issue It is existentially important this tech exists. 2
How hard are precursor techs to work with/experiment on? Very hard hard doable easy very easy 0*
*0 won't show up in the table without a stabilizing asterisk

The table's raw returns 14/20. On the one hand, skywalkers are awesome as all hell, but I think this table is going to need major readjustment. To be fair though, I haven't done the python calculations, so dunno what that returns in DC.
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I agree. Looking at it, it seems to mix 'how hard or unintuitive is this idea' metrics and 'how good would this be to have' metrics a lot. I can't fully put my finger on it, but part of what makes Skywalkers what they were is that they weren't actually hard to do, you just had to have the right frame of mind. There is merit to thinking that more brainpower would go into figuring out flight than other kinds of inventions, but I worry this chart is overestimating that value by spreading it across multiple equally-weighted metrics.

To put it more concretely, why are 'makes new S-rankers' and 'makes S-rankers stronger' and 'bumps ninja up a rank' and 'has strategic impact' and 'importance to guys with researchers', each the same fundamental metric of 'how much would people want this', five different rows, 50% of the difficulty, before even touching the worldbuilding variant of the anthropic principle (how visible is the tech) and the actual difficulty of figuring out the concept?

Apologies if I sounded overly exasperated there, but I do think something's very off with this, more than just the exact numbers involved.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
I agree. Looking at it, it seems to mix 'how hard or unintuitive is this idea' metrics and 'how good would this be to have' metrics a lot. I can't fully put my finger on it, but part of what makes Skywalkers what they were is that they weren't actually hard to do, you just had to have the right frame of mind. There is merit to thinking that more brainpower would go into figuring out flight than other kinds of inventions, but I worry this chart is overestimating that value by spreading it across multiple equally-weighted metrics.

To put it more concretely, why are 'makes new S-rankers' and 'makes S-rankers stronger' and 'bumps ninja up a rank' and 'has strategic impact' and 'importance to guys with researchers', each the same fundamental metric of 'how much would people want this', five different rows, 50% of the difficulty, before even touching the worldbuilding variant of the anthropic principle (how visible is the tech) and the actual difficulty of figuring out the concept?

Apologies if I sounded overly exasperated there, but I do think something's very off with this, more than just the exact numbers involved.
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Still a good start to building a similar table, though.
 
Cariyaga said:
Question\Modifier -2 -1 0 1 2 Skywalker costs
How many village-nin would be bumped up a weight class by this idea?
A handful
(<5)
A small number
(<10)
A small fraction of our military
(<10% of any one village)
A large fraction of our nin
(<60% of any one village)
Most of our nin
(<100% of any one village) 		1
How many new S-Class nin would be created if they had access to this idea?   1 2-3 4-6 > 6 -1
How many existing S-Class nin would be significantly stronger with this idea?   1 2-3 4-6 >6 2
Does this idea have strategic impact?   No Minor Major Defensive Boost Major Offensive Boost 1
Are the immediate research precursors well known? Nobody knows them <10 people knowledgeable in the concept A Niche idea Lots but not everyone Every researcher knows them -1
How many researchers have the skill to research this? (Chakra capacity/elemental affinity/etc..) <5 people < 10 people < 50 people < 100 people > 100 people 0*
What is the economic impact of this idea?     None small boost large immediate boost  
How visible would the tech be if the people capable of using it were already using it? invisible minor changes some changes mostly hidden from PCs major changes Could not have a world that we see if tech existed. (Immediately consider tech impossible) 2
How important is the problem this tech is trying to solve to parties with researchers? Not important at all. Minor benefits there is a salient issue it solves but it's not urgent Solves and urgent issue It is existentially important this tech exists. 1
How hard are precursor techs to work with/experiment on? Very hard hard doable easy very easy 0*
*0 won't show up in the table without a stabilizing asterisk
My read's closer to a five.

Not all ninja are likely to be using these due to sealmaster scarcity, so I put weight-class-bump-up at 1, I don't expect many S class ninja, if any, to be created... well, on the other hand, it might bump Kakashi or Gai up to that point, so point there. Still, gonna rate that a -1. However, its boosts are more defensive than offensive, and Jiraiya is the only one other than us (that we know of) that knew Air Dome seals, given that he created them, so. Other minor changes, too.
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This is pretty clearly important enough that basically all the sealmasters in Leaf who had the ability to infuse skywalkers were told to stop whatever they were doing and infuse skywalkers. Furthermore, barely a week after we gave Leaf the skywalkers, they had them in sufficient quantities to outfit the Sandaime, Jiraiya, and twelve other ANBU for the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny; it's implied that the ANBU took zero casualties against the Mist Jonin, which to be fair could just be the difference between ANBU and Jonin, but any Ninjutsu specialist, especially long range Ninjutsu specialist basically instantly becomes S-Class with skywalkers.

For worth to the village, see how Jiraiya took one look at it and all but said "name your price."

As for difficulty of prerequisite techs, Jiraiya said that he had the basic Air Dome for decades, and that he personally had done a bunch of research on the seal, and Hazou was briefly able to do some research on the seal before handing the whole thing to Kagome.

Oh, and one last note on skywalkers; with the advent of skywalkers plus storage seal, your entire supply train can now be a single ninja at stupidly high altitudes.
 
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huhYeahGoodPoint said:
This is pretty clearly important enough that basically all the sealmasters in Leaf who had the ability to infuse skywalkers were told to stop whatever they were doing and infuse skywalkers. Furthermore, barely a week after we gave Leaf the skywalkers, they had them in sufficient quantities to outfit the Sandaime, Jiraiya, and twelve other ANBU for the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny; it's implied that the ANBU took zero casualties against the Mist Jonin, which to be fair could just be the difference between ANBU and Jonin, but any Ninjutsu specialist, especially long range Ninjutsu specialist basically instantly becomes S-Class with skywalkers.
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I strongly suspect that Jiraiya cheated with Shadow Clones or a similar technique. If I were a world-renowned sealmaster that was 50+ years old and didn't have a technique that would let me scribe seals faster, I'd deserve what's coming to me. Also, they only needed like one set, really, two at most.
huhYeahGoodPoint said:
For worth to the village, see how Jiraiya took one look at it and all but said "name your price."
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Sure, but it's not an existential threat for them not to have it.
huhYeahGoodPoint said:
As for difficulty of prerequisite techs, Jiraiya said that he had the basic Air Dome for decades, and that he personally had done a bunch of research on the seal, and Hazou was briefly able to do some research on the seal before handing the whole thing to Kagome.
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Even if this is true, which I am not convinced of, it has been previously established in 5SB platforms (Hahah, remember when that was our crowning achievement? :p) that even other sealmasters tend to view seals in the context that they are made for. 5SB and Air Dome are inherently defensive seals, all research goes toward that end. Just like sealmasters didn't think about making platforms with the much-more-widespread 5SB, it is entirely reasonable that no one thought of flipping Air Domes over.
huhYeahGoodPoint said:
Oh, and one last note on skywalkers; with the advent of skywalkers plus storage seal, your entire supply train can now be a single ninja at stupidly high altitudes.
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I'm not sure ninja even have a supply chain. Combat's fast and deadly, and a supply chain is a needless weakness.
 
I want to find out what happens if Hazo dies in an interlude, despite the fact that he's clearly alive at the Chuunin Exams, so

[X] A family-fun outing into the deeper levels of the Goketsu basement!
 
I waffled about posting this on SV, but it is particularly relevant to this quest and this thread is a bastion of sanity here anyway, so, a couple articles that deal with some of the things both we, as the hivemind, and the QMs, deal with, including:
  • How likely is it for any non-specialist to have insight into a field of specialty?
  • How likely is it for any task that you see that could have been accomplished to be impossible (see: Substitution nukes) or undesirable?
Among other things. The next, as-yet-unwritten article is of particular interest, too: titled Moloch's Toolbox part 1.
 
Cariyaga said:
I waffled about posting this on SV, but it is particularly relevant to this quest and this thread is a bastion of sanity here anyway, so, a couple articles that deal with some of the things both we, as the hivemind, and the QMs, deal with, including:
  • How likely is it for any non-specialist to have insight into a field of specialty?
  • How likely is it for any task that you see that could have been accomplished to be impossible (see: Substitution nukes) or undesirable?
Among other things. The next, as-yet-unwritten article is of particular interest, too: titled Moloch's Toolbox part 1.
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I've only read the first article thus far and need to do other things right now instead of reading the second, but I thought I'd offer a comment: I feel that the article had an excellent and important message, but that it was remarkably low-content for its length. Here's my summary in order to save others some time and to bring it back around to MfD; others may feel free to disagree or expand, although please try to keep it quest-relevant:

  1. Default assumption: People are smart and agenty. If there are opportunities available, they will seek them out and obvious ideas will have already been taken.
  2. Even with point #1 taken into account, there are still opportunities to be had, primarily in areas that have not received a great deal of attention from civilization as a whole.
  3. "Areas that have received a great deal of attention from civilization as a whole" can be loosely summed up as "efficient markets with a lot of money washing around in them."
  4. You're not going to beat the stock market (i.e. find major opportunities that everyone else has missed with regard to pricing natural resources, companies, or monetary policy) because there's a lot of money in it and therefore a tremendous fraction of human attention is focus there.
  5. You could, however, find opportunities that others have missed in more niche fields. The example the author provides is the treatment of Seasonal Affective Disorder; lightboxes did not work but the sun did, therefore a plausible solution was more light than the lightbox provided. Spending ~$600 on ~17,000W of LED bulbs did in fact solve the problem. SAD is an example of a field that has received comparatively little human attention because there isn't a huge amount of money in it as compared to the stock market.
tl;dr: Earth has a lot of smart people and a lot of resources. We use money to mark where our resources (especially human attention) should be focused. If there is a lot of money in something then there's been a lot of attention focused on it and most or all of the opportunity will have already been exploited. You're very unlikely to make a major difference there and should instead focus on areas where less money has been spent.

(As an expansion to this, I would add that the real secret is to find an area where people have not been spending a lot of money and then find a way to connect it to an area where they have. Google made a fortune by connecting web search to advertising in a more fluid way than anyone else had.)

I'm unsure how much this applies to MfD. The Elemental Nations have a population that wouldn't fill up a one US city and the ninja population wouldn't fill up one neighborhood of one New York City borough. The tech level is primitive, communications and trade are poor, available material resources are minimal, and more effort is spent on survival than on scientific and economic research. That said, the one area where there is a lot of research is on ninja magic, especially as it relates to combat. It's unlikely that Hazō is going to find opportunities in really obvious things like "how do I tank hits better" or "how do I hit harder", but he can find opportunities in things like "what are some non-obvious uses of this random jutsu / seal?"
 
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eaglejarl said:
I'm unsure how much this applies to MfD. The Elemental Nations have a population that wouldn't fill up a couple of US cities and the ninja population wouldn't fill up one neighborhood of one New York City borough. The tech level is primitive, communications and trade are poor, available material resources are minimal, and more effort is spent on survival than on scientific and economic research. That said, the one area where there is a lot of research is on ninja magic, especially as it relates to combat. It's unlikely that Hazō is going to find opportunities in really obvious things like "how do I tank hits better" or "how do I hit harder", but he can find opportunities in things like "what are some non-obvious uses of this random jutsu / seal?"
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My thought is more in the line of asking Jiraiya "What realms of sealing (and technique hacking, when Hazou learns such) have not been researched extensively that you are aware of?"

The primary takeaway I got out of both of the articles is that we need to examine the incentive structure of the Elemental Nations and from there determine where to focus our research: Primarily at places orthogonal to where the incentive flow of the EN lies.

I also note that sealing is not what I would consider an "Area that has received a great deal of attention from civilization as a whole," given its lethality and the comparative population sizes. As you mentioned, the EN have a very small population size, smaller ninja population, and even smaller sealmaster population, so it is something worth considering when determining sealing difficulty by the standards of Jello_Raptor's table (or whatever variant on it you use).
 
eaglejarl said:
@Jello_Raptor : Quite a long time ago you posted some suggestions that dealt with the probability of an idea already having been thought of in MfD -- adding up a set of modifiers based on whether it required scientific knowledge, etc. Can you link those for us?

@faflec, pinging you as well since you are the de facto MfD Imperial Archivist.
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Umm, it's threadmarked as my research mechanics proposal.

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest | Page 1295

Edit:
Inferno Vulpix said:
I agree. Looking at it, it seems to mix 'how hard or unintuitive is this idea' metrics and 'how good would this be to have' metrics a lot. I can't fully put my finger on it, but part of what makes Skywalkers what they were is that they weren't actually hard to do, you just had to have the right frame of mind. There is merit to thinking that more brainpower would go into figuring out flight than other kinds of inventions, but I worry this chart is overestimating that value by spreading it across multiple equally-weighted metrics.

To put it more concretely, why are 'makes new S-rankers' and 'makes S-rankers stronger' and 'bumps ninja up a rank' and 'has strategic impact' and 'importance to guys with researchers', each the same fundamental metric of 'how much would people want this', five different rows, 50% of the difficulty, before even touching the worldbuilding variant of the anthropic principle (how visible is the tech) and the actual difficulty of figuring out the concept?

Apologies if I sounded overly exasperated there, but I do think something's very off with this, more than just the exact numbers involved.
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So the point is that all of those increase or decrease the probability of that technology being developed.

Some contribute to strategic importance, others to availability of prerequisites, and yet others to eat of development.

I'm general, things that make the tech more valuable or harder to research increase the score (increasing the DC) and vice versa.

The resulting score is basically the log odds, and the DC is just that after converting to standard percentages. It's worth noting that (before rounding) a score of -infinity is going to get you a DC of 0 and a score of infinity gives you a DC of 100.

Cariyaga said:
Still a good start to building a similar table, though.
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Yeah, I'd expect that the QMs should add a few more rows to the table to capture other influences to the probability, as well as fiddle with the constants in the code to fit their preferences.
 
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My first thought is to look at areas where research is not immediately useful, but which become extremely useful after investing a lot of effort into them.

For instance, twenty seals which are moderately difficult to develop, basically useless individually, and not tangetial to useful seals, which when combined will let you do something truly extraordinary.
 
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Interlude: Put to the Test
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    • "How was your day, Keiko?" Mari-sensei smiled as Kei joined the rest of the clan at the dinner table.

    It was a typical evening in the Gōketsu home. Kagome was attempting to convince Jiraiya of the merits of a new and improved security system for the compound. Jiraiya was attempting to explain the political repercussions of completely obliterating any stinker who so much as looked at the border of Gōketsu land without permission. Noburi was, or rather had been, chatting amiably with Mari-sensei. And Hazō… Hazō was too quiet, and had that gleam in his eye. Blood raining from the heavens as the very earth beneath her feet tore itself in twain would have been less ominous.

    No, poor example. That would merely be a consequence of Jiraiya accepting Kagome's proposal.​

    Rather than dwell on the fact that she lived in the same building as two potential harbingers of the apocalypse, Kei chose to attend to the basic norms of social interaction.

    "Pleasant, thank you. I spent the morning reading and the afternoon training with a friend."

    Mari-sensei gave her a knowing smile. It was concerning that Mari-sensei thought she knew something, because Kei didn't know anything.

    "You know," Mari-sensei said innocently, "Hazō has come up with the most fascinating idea."

    "Yes," Kei lamented, "I can tell."

    "I've been thinking," Hazō explained, "about your date with Nara."

    "It was not a date," Kei said for perhaps the thousandth time. "It was an instance of two individuals spending a day together in order to facilitate greater mutual knowledge and familiarity, arranged in anticipation of a potential long-term relationship. I fail to see how there is any room for confusion."

    "Um," Hazō said eloquently. "That aside, what I'm trying to say is that I think I can do a much better job planning a date for you. It would give you plenty of opportunities to bond, while simultaneously testing whether you two are really compatible and whether Nara is worthy of you."

    "That is very thoughtful of you," Kei lied, "but I fear—"

    "I have already developed a meticulous plan that covers every factor that could possibly be relevant to building a loving marriage. Unfortunately, Mari-sensei only gave me permission to prepare a single date, and there's a mountain of things to test. But don't worry, I'm pretty sure I've managed to fit them all in, even if I've had to optimise."

    For some reason, a chill went down Kei's spine at that last word.

    "I'm confident you'll be able to handle it, and if Nara is half the man he needs to be, he should be prepared for all of the trials—I mean events on my list as well. Don't worry, Mari-sensei has given me the go-ahead on every last one."

    This did nothing to assuage Kei's concerns.

    "Why am only hearing about this now, dear wife?" Jiraiya asked mildly.

    "You've been so busy, beloved husband, and I wouldn't want to waste our time together with tiny details," Mari-sensei purred.

    Hazō passed his list to Jiraiya with an expression of keen anticipation.

    Jiraiya scanned it.

    "Sage's ballsack, this is the biggest pile of indescribable bullshit I've seen in my—"

    Mari-sensei leaned over and whispered something in Jiraiya's ear with a seductive smile. Her hand, Kei couldn't help noticing, had dipped under the table.

    "Hazō, you have my complete approval," Jiraiya stated firmly. "Keiko, you are to carry out all of the items on this list for the good of the Gōketsu Clan. This is a priority order."

    "Don't be ridiculous," Kei said disbelievingly. "I do not at any point recall granting Hazō permission to interfere with what he mistakenly considers to be my love life. And besides, Nara Shikaku is the most sensible man in the village. He would never consent to his only son and heir being put through one of Hazō's ill-conceived schemes."

    -o-
    ​
    "Good morning, Gōketsu. Please accept my generic praise of your clothing and appearance."

    "Thank you, Nara," Kei said demurely. "Please consider me to also have paid lip service to the ambiguous expectations of our culture."

    "You're too kind. Shall we depart?"

    It was, Kei had to admit, a fine morning for a da—an instance of two individuals spending a day together in order to facilitate greater mutual knowledge and familiarity, arranged in anticipation of a potential long-term relationship. The clear sky and gentle breeze gave their surroundings a much-needed sense of peace as they stood side by side, studying Hazō's list as if it bore the details of their death sentence (which quite possibly it did).​

    Dear Gōketsu Keiko and Nara Shikamaru, the list of activities below is, based on exhausting research, the ultimate test of two individuals' suitability to be husband and wife. Upon completing it, you will know for certain whether your marriage is meant to be.

    1) To establish that the two of you would be able to live a stable, fulfilling life together even if something went wrong and the Nara Clan disowned both of you, you must find a suitable flat to rent. Points will be awarded in categories including lines of sight, structural integrity, escape routes and proximity of day care. While carrying out this task, you must also protect your happiness by designing and implementing a security system capable of satisfying Kagome (appalled rant time 15 mins or less). Finally, you must demonstrate your ability and determination to keep each other safe in your new home through the many vicissitudes of life, particularly 2v2 close-quarters combat.

    "Nara," Kei said lightly, "if either of us finds ourselves no longer part of the Nara Clan, I intend to divorce you with all conceivable haste and pursue solitary living arrangements. Is this acceptable to you?"

    "I have the paperwork readied in the top left drawer of my desk."

    "Truly you are the husband of my dreams. Let us move on to Item 2."

    You must enjoy a romantic meal together at the Yabai Café (see map attached), solidifying your feelings for each other while balancing a projected monthly budget as Nara Clan leader and wife (see form attached) and dealing with sycophantic petitioners seeking the clan's favour. There will also be surprise events to test your martial compatibility (see weapons identification chart attached).

    Kei and Nara exchanged world-weary looks.

    "Gōketsu," Nara said, "next time we play Strategic Dominance, would you do me the honour of being my partner so that together we may visit utter and remorseless devastation on your stepbrother and everything he loves?"

    "I'm afraid the position of my partner is already taken," Kei replied, "but I will be pleased to join you in an alliance of convenience."

    -o-
    ​
    "Welcome, sir, madam," the waiter beamed. "I am delighted to see the two of you again. I assure you that this time you will have a culinary experience to remember."

    Kei collapsed dejectedly into a seat. "This is not a coincidence because nothing is ever a coincidence. The universe exists solely to make us suffer, and its every act, both of torture and of reprieve, is all part of one grand design intended to steadily break our spirits."

    "It is a rare pleasure to meet another enlightened being," Nara said sardonically. "Two house specials. For my own peace of mind, I will not inquire as to what they are meant to be."​

    "And to drink, sir?"

    "Gōketsu, are you carrying a waterskin?"

    "I am. It was inevitable for a plan of Hazō's to create a survival situation one way or another, especially if diplomacy was involved."

    "I assumed the same. No drinks, please."

    -o-
    ​
    "Would you say this is an accurate estimate?" Kei asked, simultaneously stabbing her chopsticks into the eye of Nara's side dish as it reared up on four of its tentacles.

    "Twenty percent higher at least. Our latest round of investments in the carpentry industry will have begun paying dividends by the time I succeed my father."

    Nara glanced at the ichor dripping from the chopsticks as he filled in another box. "Chakra octopus again?"

    "Yes, though I stand by my belief that this is a mutated sky squid. Octopodes are not nearly so… lively… out of water."

    "Mmm," Nara said noncommittally. "Exploding tag on the bottom of the serving tray."

    Keiko unhesitatingly lifted the tray and threw it shuriken-style at a nearby rooftop. There was a scream of pain followed by an almost inaudible thud.

    "Please charge all damages to Gōketsu Hazō."

    "Certainly, ma'am."

    "Forgive me for troubling you during your meal," a wrinkled old lady simpered as she limped towards their table, "but I have a wonderful business proposal that will surely double the Nara Clan's funds in exchange for only a tiny investment…"

    "Noburi," Kei said coolly, "you are incapable of sounding like a genuine old woman, and always have been."

    "Who is this Noburi? I am but a—"

    "Submit your proposal in triplicate at the front desk by 9 am tomorrow morning," Nara said distractedly. He unscrewed the top of the salt cellar and upended it over what they had eventually decided was a salad, then tasted the result and shook his head mournfully. "Naturally, any applications not countersigned by representatives of the Merchant Council and the relevant trade guild will be disposed of unread."

    "Assassin by the leftmost parasol," Kei muttered, crossing out a misplaced equation.

    "Shadow Imitation Technique! Gōketsu, if you wouldn't mind?"

    Kei cast a practice kunai without looking. Nara disengaged his technique with perfect timing, and the kunai took Hazō (who else) in the chest, breaking his current disguise.

    The latest petitioner (or rather the same petitioner's latest form) would not give up so easily. "Surely you could make an exception for just one tiny proposal from a humble member of the lowly Notahyūga family, which would surely perish without the Nara to think for them and the Gōketsu to fight their battles for them?"

    "All yours," Nara said to Kei as he occupied himself with grinding a new inkstone.

    "Of course," Kei said primly. "Lady Notahyūga, I would be delighted to receive your proposal if you first join me in a traditional Mist ritual of friendship. Please, take a bite from my plate."

    Kei slid the plate in Noburi's direction, taking care to present him with the side currently gibbering most disturbingly.

    "Excuse me," Noburi choked, "I've just remembered that I need to macerate my stepfather."

    "It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Nara, lean left."

    -o-​

    5) Demonstrate your capacity for cooperating in daily household chores by killing, cleaning and eating a meal jointly hunted in the wilderness. Since every couple needs to be able to improvise a meal out of random ingredients every now and again, the target of the hunt must be a chakra beast powerful enough to kill ordinary genin. While hunting, compose romantic poems to each other of length not less than two hundred words. A special guest judge will evaluate the poems on passion, eroticism and emotional manipulation. A second special guest judge will evaluate them on metre, rhyme and idiom. You must use at least one word from each row of the Kagome-encrypted list attached.

    "'As for your beauty, 'tis… effulgent.' Gōketsu, what rhymes with 'effulgent'?" Nara called out as he triggered the third trap along Retreat Route B.

    "Try 'refulgent'! Or rearrange the sentence so you can rhyme 'beauty' with 'duty'!" Kei shouted over all the roaring while slapping an exploding tag on the back of the monstrosity she was clinging onto. She performed an elegant backflip onto a nearby tree. The exploding tag detonated, further cracking the quisling overlord's chakra-reinforced carapace.

    "'Effulgent', Nara?" she asked sceptically as the monster crushed its own minions underfoot in a tap dance of blind agony.

    "Third row, behind a Tobirama shift. It was that or 'callipygous'."

    "We call them Byakuren shifts. And I do believe that Hazō has been relying excessively on his thesaurus. Upon my return, I intend to insert it into a place from which he will struggle to retrieve it."

    This was all her fault, Kei reflected as she held up four fingers and Nara pinned down a corresponding number of quislings with his technique. Water Country quislings were opportunistic pack hunters, the most innocent-looking member leading unwary travellers into an ambush where the rest would converge and devour them. It emerged that Fire Country quislings were a slightly different species, with each pack serving an overlord that provided protection in exchange for the luring of prey. Nara had been very understanding, and as they fled for their lives, he'd done his best to reassure her that overlords were at least much easier to cook due to their highly-developed musculature and abundance of redundant organs.

    She threw her kunai at the four quislings, piercing each through the forehead, then leapt to another tree as the enraged overlord tore the one she had been standing on out of the ground. The fourth trap activated, eviscerating another quisling and cutting deeply into the overlord's second spine.

    "Nara," Kei asked as another chakra-boosted leap took her within sight of him, "would you say you are a hot-blooded stallion of a man who strips women bare to their souls with the penetrating gaze of his sapphire eyes?"

    "I would not," Nara snapped. "My eyes are brown."

    He triggered the fifth trap. Quislings, or at least their component parts, flew everywhere.

    "Gōketsu, how do you manage to come up with this nonsense so fluently?"

    Kei went steaming red. "I do not read anything of the sort, Nara, and I resent the implication!"

    "What?"

    "I mean, I have a theory about that transposition cypher in the fourth row!"

    -o-​

    8) In order to test your capacity for marital faithfulness and emergency trap disposal, you must wear—

    "Enough," Kei said flatly. "I refuse to entertain one iota more of this tomfoolery."

    Nara raised an eyebrow. "We are here under orders."

    "I am well aware, and I have had enough. Jiraiya must be made to understand that the mere fact that he is the Hokage, a legendary hero, my clan leader, my stepfather and arguably the most powerful man in the world does not give him the right to dictate what I do with my free time."

    Nara stared at her in wordless, horrified fascination.

    "This is not an act of public defiance," Kei qualified. "The circumstances of this… instance of two individuals spending a day together in order to facilitate greater mutual knowledge and familiarity, arranged in anticipation of a potential long-term relationship… are known only to your father and my clan. If Jiraiya is to lose face, it is only before Nara Shikaku, and there are far greater factors conditioning their relations."

    Nara continued to stare. The implication, that anything other than abject submission to Jiraiya's will was somehow unthinkable, slowly made a cold rage creep into Kei's blood.

    "I have willingly signed over my hand in marriage to these people," she said in a tone far below freezing. "I have granted them the right to determine where I live, whom I obey, whom I may formally love and whose children I will be compelled to bear. If they believe that I will tolerate one step further into my private life without my consent…"

    "Then what?" Nara asked as if unable to stop himself.

    "I do not know," Kei said, the anger dissipating—no, transmuting into something else. "When I fought for my village, I was mediocre. When I fought for my survival, I was competent. When I fought for my friends, I was dangerous. What will I be if I am forced to fight for something that is mine?"

    Despite the clement weather, she could see Nara shiver.

    "It is something," she added more neutrally, "that any prospective husband would do well to bear in mind."

    "Y-Yes, ma'am."

    She found herself feeling a flash of guilt. She had not intended to catch Nara in the crossfire of her feelings. They were not a thing to be inflicted on other people at the best of times, much less when the other person was a rare and valued exemplar of common sense in a village of full of fools and madmen. What if she made him feel uncomfortable and he turned his back on her? What if such behaviour created a rift between them that she could not later heal? What if, even without any long-term consequences, she caused him pain through no fault of his own?

    "With that said, Nara," she consciously relaxed her voice and posture, "the day is not yet done, and my schedule is perforce completely clear. While I do intend to set Hazō's list aflame and then creatively apply Wind ninjutsu to the ashes, that is not to say that I would be entirely averse to remaining in your company a little longer."

    "Well," Nara said slowly, "if I go home now, I'm only going to get quizzed endlessly about the events of this... this event which you have so excellently summarised in a way I don't have the energy to repeat. Whereas a later return will allow me to bypass my family and Shiori and head straight to long-awaited bed. I suppose there are more troublesome things I could do than spend the intervening time with you."

    "In that case, I recall that, courtesy of our previous planner's imbecility, you never did show me Senju Memorial Park. Though I should mention, purely as an objective forecast, that if you attempt to hold my hand your next awakening will be in Leaf General Hospital."

    "It will," Nara agreed, "as they will have to urgently check my brain for lupchanzen."

    Kei felt a stab of alarm. "How do you know about lupchanzen?"

    Nara gave her a pitying look. "Gōketsu, your uncle has now spent several weeks living in Leaf. By this point the daimyo's wife's cat knows about lupchanzen."

    "Well, then," Kei said, "lead the way while I weep over the tattered shreds of my clan's reputation."

    -o-
    ​
    "And do you know what Shiori said to me then?"

    "Dare I ask?"

    "'Don't worry, Shikamaru, it's meant to be on fire.'"

    Kei giggled despite herself. "And the hand gestures?"

    "Oh, those?" Nara looked down at his hands, as if not realising he'd been quoting with them as well. "'Let us move on so that we are not sidetracked by unimportant questions'. She often tries that one when I've caught her red-handed."

    "I see. Incidentally, do you recall if she reacted at all to the thank-you note I sent with that game?"

    "There was no game," Nara said emotionlessly. "I remember no game. Shiori remembers no game. There was no game."

    "Is—Is that so?" Kei unthinkingly backed a few steps away from him and the haunted look in his eyes.

    The walk proceeded in uneasy silence.

    Eventually, the two of them came to a bench, on which Nara sat down heavily.

    Kei sat beside him, joining him in staring vaguely at a koi pond. She had failed to distract him from his mysterious game-related trauma once before. This time, she would be an effective friend, or what was all her alleged intelligence for?

    Perhaps this was a good time to ask. It would hopefully engage Nara's inexplicably paralysed mental faculties, and the question was one she had been contemplating a great deal of late.

    "Nara, why me?"

    "Hmm?"

    "Why does your clan have any interest in me?" Kei expanded. "As a Mori, I am a barely-competent genin. You must have Nara of superior abilities by the dozen. And your clan has proven beyond any doubt that you know how to forge unbreakable alliances without intermarriage. Why expend all this effort to obtain me?"

    Nara studied her wordlessly for a while. They were alone in the park, Kei realised, beneath a slowly darkening sky. There was a peculiar sense in the air. Not of romance, however certain persons might delude themselves, but perhaps of intimacy.

    "Because we are failing," Nara said.

    "What do you mean?"

    "The Senju after whom this park is named sought to save the world with their open hearts," Nara said distantly, meditatively, gazing into the koi pond as if sufficient contemplation of its depths would reveal the secrets of the universe. "They came further than any have before or since. But it was not enough, and now they're gone.

    "The Uchiha, who first fought then supported the Senju, sought to save the world with their unyielding determination. We know, now, what happens when such determination points itself in the wrong direction even briefly.

    "The Nara, who supported both, have sought to save the world with genius and patience. It is not enough."

    "I don't understand," Kei admitted. What did any of this have to do with her?

    "Patience is not enough," Nara said. "We have been exerting control, slowly and subtly, for as long as the clan has existed, and the world is still like this.

    "Genius is not enough. A bright spark independently arrives at a vision for a peaceful utopia, and his first world-changing act is to create a weapon that heralds a new scale of destruction. This is not an anomaly, Gōketsu. Every genius ends up drunk on their own brilliance in one way or another."

    "Then what are you saying?" Kei asked quietly. "That there is no hope? That the Nara have resigned themselves to waiting for the end?"

    "No," Nara gave a wry smile. "The curse of apathy cuts both ways, you see. Those who aren't enthused by visions of victory also aren't depressed by the prospect of defeat.

    "The Nara need to change, Gōketsu," he said in a voice that sounded like it wanted to be casual but wasn't. "That's your answer. And it seems our motivation doesn't stretch far enough for us to change ourselves. We need new ways of thinking. We need enrichment through intellectual exchange in order to escape our stagnation. It's why we've thrown ourselves behind Jiraiya. He is the right man in the right place at the right time, and with our help he might be able to break down the walls that isolate the villages. It will not be enough for eternal peace—we've run the calculations—but it will give us direct access to the others of our kind. A chance to unite instead of being pulled apart by political currents. And that will be something the world has never seen.

    "To my father, your adoption is probably a microcosm of that. You're similar enough to fully integrate and different enough to offer something new. The fact that you also further various political goals doesn't hurt either."

    "Me?" Kei asked dazedly. "You think I have something to offer? Something to teach?"

    "I think nothing," Nara said. "I think it is unreasonable to place towering expectations on a random stranger—no offence—because they happen to have a convenient background. I think you are a decent person who deserves better than to be caught up in the troublesome machinations of three powerful clans.

    "With that said, if you choose to treat this injustice as an opportunity to find out how far the full extent of your abilities can take you, that is your right. And I daresay there are more tedious diversions than taking an interest in a spouse's personal projects."

    It was as close, Kei suspected, as he would come to an open pledge of support.

    "Thank you for your thoughts, Nara," she said. "If you would kindly escort me home… I believe I have much to consider."

    "Of course, milady. And if I should be struck with a sudden urge to trespass into your domicile and challenge your stepbrother to some game for the purposes of intellectual evisceration?"

    "Nara," Kei attempted a wicked smile, "be my guest."​
     
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