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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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eaglejarl said:
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I was confused that I could not find the details. Then remembered that spoilers do not show at all with JavaScript disabled. And now I have actual non-joking doubts on the roads.

How rough is the surface? All inclines are going to be a source of carriage pileups. At the very least, on-ramps. Take a corner too fast on a rainy day, off you go. The surface has good traction? Either have an army of dung cleaners, or lose it. Do not expect sheep herders to clean up after themselves. Forbid animals on the road? Now you gotta police it, with increased personell costs.

You're basically making a giant slab of rock without gaps. Thermal dilation is going to be an issue, cracking, and ice will slowly eat away at the surface, creating ever-growing pockmarks on the surface (which will become perenially filled with stagnant water and animal excretions) and allowing cracks to grow on tensioned parts of the structure.

Make it in gaps, and unless you're touching bedrock, each section will slowly sink on the terrain, tipping every which way, at a median rate of 1cm per year on clay soil. Soil humidity is a factor too: if it rains, even "settled" sections will rise cms in days. Unevenly, of course.

Aside from material and construction costs, this is why elevated roads are so expensive: maintenance. And when maintenance is dependant on your magical low-birthrate subspecies, you're just making another future crisis.

On tolling: it pushes the poor people even further down. As normal intervillage roads fall in disrepair because the fancy new ones are so much better for commerce, the ability for poor people to relocate falls further. The tolls also increase the needed startup costs for commerce ventures, increasing monopolization of the market.

I would propose two alternatives: normal, ground level road development that is civilian-maintainable, or a high capacity standardized vehicle that uses the costly elevated infrastructure at maximum capacity, run by the same entity that taxes the commerce, with an x% capacity reserved for passenger use, where the passenger only pays for luggage, if carrying any.

I was joking earlier with the monorail, but a railway system is the most bang for your buck in transport infrastructure, after ports.
 
Gev said:
I was confused that I could not find the details. Then remembered that spoilers do not show at all with JavaScript disabled. And now I have actual non-joking doubts on the roads.

How rough is the surface? All inclines are going to be a source of carriage pileups. At the very least, on-ramps. Take a corner too fast on a rainy day, off you go. The surface has good traction? Either have an army of dung cleaners, or lose it. Do not expect sheep herders to clean up after themselves. Forbid animals on the road? Now you gotta police it, with increased personell costs.

You're basically making a giant slab of rock without gaps. Thermal dilation is going to be an issue, cracking, and ice will slowly eat away at the surface, creating ever-growing pockmarks on the surface (which will become perenially filled with stagnant water and animal excretions) and allowing cracks to grow on tensioned parts of the structure.

Make it in gaps, and unless you're touching bedrock, each section will slowly sink on the terrain, tipping every which way, at a median rate of 1cm per year on clay soil. Soil humidity is a factor too: if it rains, even "settled" sections will rise cms in days. Unevenly, of course.

Aside from material and construction costs, this is why elevated roads are so expensive: maintenance. And when maintenance is dependant on your magical low-birthrate subspecies, you're just making another future crisis.

On tolling: it pushes the poor people even further down. As normal intervillage roads fall in disrepair because the fancy new ones are so much better for commerce, the ability for poor people to relocate falls further. The tolls also increase the needed startup costs for commerce ventures, increasing monopolization of the market.

I would propose two alternatives: normal, ground level road development that is civilian-maintainable, or a high capacity standardized vehicle that uses the costly elevated infrastructure at maximum capacity, run by the same entity that taxes the commerce, with an x% capacity reserved for passenger use, where the passenger only pays for luggage, if carrying any.

I was joking earlier with the monorail, but a railway system is the most bang for your buck in transport infrastructure, after ports.
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forums.sufficientvelocity.com

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Naruto reimagined as a deathworld without most of the canon plot holes.
forums.sufficientvelocity.com forums.sufficientvelocity.com

If you want to become aware of your own ignorance and lack of forethought, run a role-playing game. *Amused*

First off, all your points are valid.

Having said that, they are the kind of thing that engineers historically learned about through experience and it's not plausible that either Aito or Hazō-pilot would have thought of them. It's also the case that while surface roads might be better in some ways, as you point out, building them is incredibly labor intensive because it involves a lot of digging, transporting stone, packing, grading etc. The MaRI highways can be built quickly by one or two people and because they are elevated they will provide a measure of safety from chakra beasts. Even if they have long-term problems they are going to be vastly better than what exists or could be built with equivalent speed on the ground. Once the economic advantages of free civilian movement have been demonstrated it will become easier to sell the idea of building, maintaining, and constantly patrolling lots of ground level roads.
 
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Adhoc vote count started by RandomOTP on Apr 5, 2022 at 9:46 AM, finished with 111 posts and 23 votes.
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Voting Status!
 
This all assumes the roads will survive, and won't need significant maintenance every time a herd of Chakra bison knocks them down or whatever. Walls around a village are an effort and a deterrent to animals that they will likely ignore, but wall-roads cutting through the landscape are much more likely to seriously inconvenience animals with the ability to just break through.
 
eaglejarl said:
forums.sufficientvelocity.com

Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

Naruto reimagined as a deathworld without most of the canon plot holes.
forums.sufficientvelocity.com forums.sufficientvelocity.com

If you want to become aware of your own ignorance and lack of forethought, run a role-playing game. *Amused*

First off, all your points are valid.

Having said that, they are the kind of thing that engineers historically learned about through experience and it's not plausible that either Aito or Hazō-pilot would have thought of them. It's also the case that while surface roads might be better in some ways, as you point out, building them is incredibly labor intensive because it involves a lot of digging, transporting stone, packing, grading etc. The MaRI highways can be built quickly by one or two people and because they are elevated they will provide a measure of safety from chakra beasts. Even if they have long-term problems they are going to be vastly better than what exists or could be built with equivalent speed on the ground. Once the economic advantages of free civilian movement have been demonstrated it will become easier to sell the idea of building, maintaining, and constantly patrolling lots of ground level roads.
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What do you mean, you are not an expert in all fields, and you have not consulted these changes with a civil engineering firm? Shame on you, what do we pay you for? Oh wait we don't.

In the end, it is your story, and I have confidence on your ability to keep it enjoyable. I just enjoy poking at it from time to time in the crumbly bits where, it meets physics, and i don't expect to be taken into account unless it enhances the story.

So I'll be over here, estimating the volume of granite created ex-nihil needed to noticeably alter the Moon's orbit, if anyone needs me.
 
I have very few spoons at the moment, so i'll just copy what i said on discord:

No ARS offscreen? We're doing a one day plan?
Also, i think Noburi won't take "I'll never be as good as you in medicine" well
With FOOM both Hazou and Noburi don't know if it's true
Something like "Hazou doesn't really have a deep interest in medicine, so he interested in that only as far as it helps with Sealing" would help with IMO
Because it tells Noburi he doesnt need to compare with us, because we don't want to surpass him
I don't know, the whole "super genius person with FOOM comes to you and tells he'll never be as good as half of you, a barely chunin medic..."
Doesn't strike me as a delicate way to introduce the discussion
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
Walls around a village are an effort and a deterrent to animals that they will likely ignore, but wall-roads cutting through the landscape are much more likely to seriously inconvenience animals with the ability to just break through
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Tsunade thought walls for villages would be very useful. She did not talk about roads. I dunno if roads are worth the effort

I think we should at least hire a few casters to do it since that's cheap and it could be useful. But dunno whether worth doing it fast and expensive
 
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ProperAttorney said:
"We know how important medicine and medical jutsu is to you. It's how we feel about sealing. We want to improve our art, just like you want to improve yours."
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Just realized that you included a direct quote from me, from Discord. I am both honored and terrified that my summaries are being included in the plan...

[Prepares to scream in Kagome]
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
This all assumes the roads will survive, and won't need significant maintenance every time a herd of Chakra bison knocks them down or whatever. Walls around a village are an effort and a deterrent to animals that they will likely ignore, but wall-roads cutting through the landscape are much more likely to seriously inconvenience animals with the ability to just break through.
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These are three meter walls of granite integer meters thick, anchored five meters deep and hundreds of meters across. I do not expect them to be immune to damage, but they are not just going to be knocked over.
 
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Leaf is dangerously, dangerously weak right now. Clanless/KEI ninja hoard their explosive seals jealously and may he reluctant to use them (this may also apply to Clanned ninja, to a lesser extent).

What if the Goketsu set up an Explosives Bank, wherein every Clanless/KEI Ninja gets an allotment of 10 to 20 standard explosive seals per mission? With Leaf's ninja population nearly exterminated, I imagine that Hazou clones could probably churn them out easily enough (especially with the help of Kagome's Students, whom Kagome trusts to keep the Goketsu Bowl filled... Which is stocked with hundreds of explosive seals, that Team Uplift uses to keep stocked, and regularly give out dozens to each guest that visits).

It would boost the survivability of Clanless ninja yet further.

At bare minimum, I'd like to sell explosive seals to Clanless/KEI ninja for cheap. At cost (by Goketsu Clan standards), even.

Edit: wasn't one of Kei's now-dead partners names Tachibana? Name it the "Tachibana Trust" or something.
 
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RandomOTP said:
Leaf is dangerously, dangerously weak right now. Clanless/KEI ninja hoard their explosive seals jealously and may he reluctant to use them (this may also apply to Clanned ninja, to a lesser extent).

What if the Goketsu set up an Explosives Bank, wherein every Clanless/KEI Ninja gets an allotment of 10 to 20 standard explosive seals per mission? With Leaf's ninja population nearly exterminated, I imagine that Hazou clones could probably churn them out easily enough (especially with the help of Kagome's Students, whom Kagome trusts to keep the Goketsu Bowl filled... Which is stocked with hundreds of explosive seals, that Team Uplift uses to keep stocked, and regularly give out dozens to each guest that visits).

It would boost the survivability of Clanless ninja yet further.

At bare minimum, I'd like to sell explosive seals to Clanless/KEI ninja for cheap. At cost (by Goketsu Clan standards), even.

Edit: wasn't one of Kei's now-dead partners names Tachibana? Name it the "Tachibana Trust" or something.
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Or the Kagome's Explosives Initiative.
 
In regards to the sealing notes which now serve as XP lootboxes I'd first like to note two things:

First of all the sealing notes PSA post has not been threadmarked, it problably should be.

Second of all it would appear Hazou's stat sheet hasn't been updated with the sealing levels he gained from retroactively leveling his sealing stat with the sealing notes from Jiraiya.


Also I would with this system being put in place, like to propose something for the sake of simulationism.

That being that people who are being actively tutored in a skill by someone who is way better in that skill, like Hazou how is teaching Haramitsu sealing right now or how Gai for instance used to teach Lee Taijutsu. Should probably get bonus XP from having a teacher actively tutor them.

This would make sense as under the current system if say Jiraiya back when he was alive had wanted to teach Hazou sealing he would have been better off handing Hazou his scattered sealing notes then sitting Hazou down and actively teaching him sealing.

This doesn't make much sense from a realism and thus simulationism perspective, hence the tutor XP idea.

I don't know how much bonus XP would be reasonable, but I would argue that the bonus should be higher depending on just how much more skilled a teacher is then their student. Afterall it stands to reason that someone like Jiraiya has a lot more to teach someone about sealing then someone like Hazou.

Or for a non sealing related example, someone like Miyamoto Musashi would probably be able to teach someone a lot more about Kenjutsu then a random amateur kendo enthusiast.

Mechanically the difference in teacher efficacy would probably best be decided by how many skill "weight classes" the teacher is better in the skill then their student.

By weight classes here I mean the arrangements of Academy students being 1-19, Genin being 20-39, Chunin being 40-59, jonin being 60-79 and Kage/S-rankers being 80-99.

Alternatively I suppose you could the have XP bonus increase for every 10 levels instead, I'm not sure what would be best there myself in that regard.
 
cog-nito said:
First of all the sealing notes PSA post has not been threadmarked, it problably should be.
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@eaglejarl the post in question is here.
eaglejarl said:
PSA: Your Sealing-related notes are an XP bonus​
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cog-nito said:
That being that people who are being actively tutored in a skill by someone who is way better in that skill, like Hazou how is teaching Haramitsu sealing right now or how Gai for instance used to teach Lee Taijutsu. Should probably get bonus XP from having a teacher actively tutor them.
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Point the first, being better at something doesn't make you a good teacher of that thing. A Nobel-prize winning physicist is doubtless great at math and a poor choice to teach a fourth-grade math class.

Point the second, the effects of training are currently mechanically reflected by a) if Hazo has access to someone's character sheet, due to pyramid management and other spreadsheet things, their growth rate effectively increases even if their base XP rate doesn't increase and b) folks who are effective instructors like Ebisu (RIP) give flat bonuses to XP but it's at the cost of being able to direct your own training so we never investigated it.

I think that if instructor effects were to be applied, it would be in the form of applying a penalty for trying to learn something strictly independently.

I admit I'm a bit (personally) iffy on the concept of notes-as-XP-banks, but I'm not really going to look a gift horse in the mouth - the QMs wanted to represent this as something rare and valuable and I'm okay with that.
 
Gev said:
I was confused that I could not find the details. Then remembered that spoilers do not show at all with JavaScript disabled. And now I have actual non-joking doubts on the roads.
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These are interesting engeneering questions to grapple with, but I think you are not fully grasping the world MfD civilians live in, nor fully appreciating that this is a giant slab of granite stuck two thirds of the way into the ground, not a modern cost-optimized building.

Currently, civilians travel on poorly maintained dirt roads through a forest filled with chakra beasts out to kill them. A flat, straight road elevated out of harm's way is transformative. Most people will likely walk, and for those lucky enough to have carts full of goods, having to watch the road for turns every few hundred meters is still vastly preferable to getting eaten.

I do not expect there are many herders in MfD, as living outside a village is dangerous. Being able to transport live animals safely would be a new, transformative source of trade. Surface quality and traffic expectations should be compared to the dirt roads they had before. Granite has decent traction even when wet, water is mostly going to run off the sides, and muck on the roads is something that humans have a long history of just tolerating—in this case the traffic is low enough and cleaning is easy enough I expect they will deal with the problem themselves, should it get bad enough to warrant intervention.

Granite does weather, but only very slowly, slow enough I don't expect it to matter. Freeze cycles happen over seasons, small impacts accumulating over time. Sinking should not be an issue here; we are not building Pisa, the foundation is 5 meters deep and there is more weight below the ground than above it. Further, each slab is extremely long. Even if we do sit it on very deep soft soils, it is unlikely to be able to tilt, and slow settlement is no issue.

Thermal expansion could be a problem, as these are very long walls, but there is the large mitigating factor that unlike small metal railway beams where the issue is prominent, these roads have an immense, and immensely well insulated, largely-underground thermal mass. They should mostly be immune to the seasons. Cracking is plausible, but the foundation should prevent that from causing more than very local, mostly cosmetic damage. If a part does eventually break, it's a single genin-day's work to fix. Ideally you would occasionally build staggers into the road to relieve stress, but that's something we can learn to do a decade from now.
 
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A prototype road that is planned by Hazo and Mari and then optimized by Shikamaru and Kei will be a huge source of learning for the next roads and let us uncover all of the problems that the QMs decide are relevant. This is a low-investment idea that EJ is excited about. I'm excited for what it does for the setting especially now that we have the idea of international cooperation out in the wild and I'm pleased that a QM is going to get to write about an idea they find fun.
 
Veedrac said:
These are interesting engeneering questions to grapple with, but I think you are not fully grasping the world MfD civilians live in, nor fully appreciating that this is a giant slab of granite stuck two thirds of the way into the ground, not a modern cost-optimized building.

Currently, civilians travel on poorly maintained dirt roads through a forest filled with chakra beasts out to kill them. A flat, straight road elevated out of harm's way is transformative. Most people will likely walk, and for those lucky enough to have carts full of goods, having to watch the road for turns every few hundred meters is still vastly preferable to getting eaten.

I do not expect there are many herders in MfD, as living outside a village is dangerous. Being able to transport live animals safely would be a new, transformative source of trade. Surface quality and traffic expectations should be compared to the dirt roads they had before. Granite has decent traction even when wet, water is mostly going to run off the sides, and muck on the roads is something that humans have a long history of just tolerating—in this case the traffic is low enough and cleaning is easy enough I expect they will deal with the problem themselves, should it get bad enough to warrant intervention.

Granite does weather, but only very slowly, slow enough I don't expect it to matter. Freeze cycles happen over seasons, small impacts accumulating over time. Sinking should not be an issue here; we are not building Pisa, the foundation is 5 meters deep and there is more weight below the ground than above it. Further, each slab is extremely long. Even if we do sit it on very deep soft soils, it is unlikely to be able to tilt, and slow settlement is no issue.

Thermal expansion could be a problem, as these are very long walls, but there is the large mitigating factor that unlike small metal railway beams where the issue is prominent, these roads have an immense, and immensely well insulated, largely-underground thermal mass. They should mostly be immune to the seasons. Cracking is plausible, but the foundation should prevent that from causing more than very local, mostly cosmetic damage. If a part does eventually break, it's a single genin-day's work to fix. Ideally you would occasionally build staggers into the road to relieve stress, but that's something we can learn to do a decade from now.
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How dare you sir, put my scholastic expositions to doubt will you? I challenge you to a computerized modelling of granitic dilatation stress crack concentration duel! To the death, I say!

I'm joking and did no numbers on any of the issues, but now I kinda want to. Might do them, might not. Care to show yours? Otherwise we're just narrating intuitions at each other.
 
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