My personal approach was to convert greens to veterans at the maximum possible, rate, or we're going to be losing more girls to Grief attrition and hunting casualties than we can afford. With an all-veteran group, we can then go to solo hunting after taking the training boost.
Every turn we don't increase our veterancy is a turn we're not making any progress against entropy.
Assuming they don't die, eventually your current Greens will go up to Veteran. Slower than they'd qualify "in the wild" since they'll be relatively sheltered though. So I'm thinking probably at 6 months out or so any Greens left from now will begin ranking up a few at a time. I may rolls some dice on that. I want it to take long enough that forcing it through training is a worthwhile proposition.
I haven't determined how Veterans will rank up to Elite yet but it probably won't just be automatic experience progression. Mami is an elite with 2 years of experience while your Veterans are magical girls that have survived ~6 months.
I'm going to try not to oversuggest, since this isn't a clone of tts, etc. and it's definitely possible to overcomplicate things However, I'd like to make some vague idea comments:
1) At higher levels of organization, I think it should be possible to (with significant investment) make an attempt at some of self-run business venture, legal or otherwise. Make a bakery, run a tutoring school - maybe spend some grief cubes and cheat and have Nagisa magic the cakes or someone else magic the knowledge into the students' heads. Expensive, risky, but potentially very lucrative (and probably boosts morale).
2) One aspect I feel goes unaddressed is the specifics of grief cube distribution. I can imagine individual megucas wanting to hold onto their own grief cubes selfishly, despite how it might be better to spend it one someone in a grief spiral. Maybe implement an additional cost on spending grief cubes to try and cancel grief spirals (financial bribery, morale punishment?) , with methods to reduce the cost (greater morale could reduce the cost, for instance).
3) You mention that some of these girls haven't been in school in years. It might be interesting to be able to put some girls into school on a normal basis (no obligation to randomly leave class to hunt demons, etc.), with the reward being an increase in morale/money-making ability in the future.
Just some things that struck me. #2 is a pain, and might not be appropriate for a budget quest, but it's realistic...
EDIT: Meant to say I like this quest; it seems interesting to me. I might vote occasionally, but will probably be too busy most of the time.
I'm going to try not to oversuggest, since this isn't a clone of tts, etc. and it's definitely possible to overcomplicate things However, I'd like to make some vague idea comments:
1) At higher levels of organization, I think it should be possible to (with significant investment) make an attempt at some of self-run business venture, legal or otherwise. Make a bakery, run a tutoring school - maybe spend some grief cubes and cheat and have Nagisa magic the cakes or someone else magic the knowledge into the students' heads. Expensive, risky, but potentially very lucrative (and probably boosts morale).
This is definitely something I've thought about. I didn't think it appropriate as a starting option though. It will likely appear later with quite high initial cost for setting up the business but high return as well.
2) One aspect I feel goes unaddressed is the specifics of grief cube distribution. I can imagine individual megucas wanting to hold onto their own grief cubes selfishly, despite how it might be better to spend it one someone in a grief spiral. Maybe implement an additional cost on spending grief cubes to try and cancel grief spirals (financial bribery, morale punishment?) , with methods to reduce the cost (greater morale could reduce the cost, for instance).
As you noted doing this in a budget quest would be really convoluted. I've noted that Mami suspects some of the girls are holding on to a couple grief cubes as a fallback in case this falls through, but doing that for all the cubes would be difficult to track and counter to the overall goal of working together. It would make assigning some to things besides hunting really troublesome, like the ones working normal jobs or even working dispatch. So I'm just working off the idea that Mami is collecting all the resources and redistributing as needed, partly because that's what would be necessary to such a group forming and partly because it's a necessary simplification for a budget quest.
I also can't really see stopping grief spirals as anything but a bonus to morale. I mean the alternative is the girl dying.
3) You mention that some of these girls haven't been in school in years. It might be interesting to be able to put some girls into school on a normal basis (no obligation to randomly leave class to hunt demons, etc.), with the reward being an increase in morale/money-making ability in the future.
Currently I am just abstracting school away because I couldn't find a way to properly balance the large amount of time it would take with rewards to make it a reasonable option. I was basically operating off the idea that many of them effectively slept through school because they were spending their nights hunting.
EDIT: Meant to say I like this quest; it seems interesting to me. I might vote occasionally, but will probably be too busy most of the time.
Incidentally I've written most of the first update but was hoping to get more people to chime in on how many grief cubes they were willing to spend stopping each spiral. I really should have remembered to ask for it in the opening post.
Today was a monumental day. The start of something that would change lives by the dozen - for better, or worse. Perhaps I am tackling an issue too large to handle. I don't care if that is the case. Even if this venture is doomed to failure, I will be content, knowing that I tried.
I can't stand by while so many die. Not anymore.
They stood before me, twenty girls in all the colors of the rainbow, with swords, guns, a spatula, and tentative optimism. These were girls willing to risk what little they had left, on my wild imagination, of fanciful things like a roof, and friends.
I will not let them down. I cannot fail them.
Twenty Magical Girls in Mitakihara. I never knew so many could be found in one place, and yet, here they are, and they've all put their faith in me, to bring them a better life. "Perhaps," I had said, "Even a life longer than a few months."
I told them about all I had seen. The countless girls, taken by the Law of Cycles not a week after Contracting. The broken and mangled bodies of girls who'd pushed their luck hunting alone.
The fact that I have been a Magical Girl for two years.They called me old! I'm still young and beautiful...Aren't I? Two years...It's been so long.
It was necessary. I needed their trust, needed them to understand...But these truths, so ugly, are too much. Yuma-chan is only eight, Kaori-chan turns ten in a month...She will see that birthday!
Gathered in Central Park, a quick query gave rise to several key issues.
One. Many of them are homeless for a litany of heartbreaking reasons, ranging from fires they didn't think to Wish away, to a Demon attack taking their family.
Two. Some girls don't even remember school. The Magic in their life consumed all trace of normality, and left them to a fate of endless combat and solitude.
Three. Our overall stockpile of Grief Cubes stands just above our current population. Perhaps the greatest recruitment lure was the full dozen Cubes I put forward, for the group's use. Many girls had grown desperate, living hand to mouth in all aspects.I made them do this. There was no choice, only cooperation or starvation.
Four. I didn't make enough welcome cake.
This is pretty interesting. I had my own idea for a PMMM Magical Girl Organization and will get to it whenever I can.
Only, that one will be a fanfic, set in an AU where Homura beats Walpurgisnacht and... well, saying more about that would be spoilers for the fic.
Of course, in it, things are gonna reaaaally upset the status quo.
Mami's first moves are to boost the organization and level of communication between girls. She wastes no time in buying a batch of decent cell phones and service for them with a bulk discount giving the girls the ability to communicate easily over long distances, and a treasured bit of normality in their lives. She hands out a bit of money to each of the girls along with the cell phones, letting them spend it as they like, though many of them use it just to buy food. (-$4050)
The first few days of the month are dedicated training the girls' sensitivity to demon miasma. This lets them detect demons from greater range and thereby improve the speed at which they are located. (+20% hunting effectiveness)
Building on this she establishes a central dispatch system with the veteran Meguca, it's sad that such a term applies to those with only a few months of experience. The dispatchers act as a scouting group, wandering the territory and scanning for demons. When they locate them they use the cell phones to coordinate with the hunting packs to take them out. By doing this the hunting groups spend less time aimlessly searching and the best girls at finding demons are not tied down with fighting them. As the girls get used to their roles the system improves in effectiveness over the month. (+15% hunting effectiveness this month, full in future months if you keep taking the action.)
The pack hunting is amazingly effective. With Mami and another veteran leading patrols of the newer magical girls around the city and directed by the dispatchers there are no casualties, not even an injury. They swoop down like avenging angels upon the demons. The prospect of a month of hunting without even being hurt buoys the spirits of the girls significantly. +21 Grief Cubes
While the bulk of the girls are hunting Mami has assigned a few of the girls to try to get jobs wherever they can. Contrary to your expectations all of them managed to get jobs, which perhaps is as much a condemnation of the employers as anything given how transparent the claims of some of them being 15 are. Nonetheless one manages to get employed as a waitress at a maid café leveraging her inherent cuteness to levels bordering on illegal. The other three collectively manage to make extra at a small bike messenger business, leveraging their slightly superhuman characteristics even untransformed to make high speed deliveries. (High rolls, +$4600)
A few resources are also dedicated to investigating some of the magic that any magical girl has access to but is rarely taken advantage of. At some point many magical girls notice that objects they pick up to use as improvised weapons tend to hold up far better than they should. A couple of the veterans with an extra allotment of grief cubes run a series of tests on this process. These tests reveal that objects wielded by a transformed magical girl rapidly increase in strength over a few seconds to approximately double their natural strength though it varied somewhat dependent on the object and the magical strength of the girl applying the effect. They seem to lose that strength just as rapidly when let go though. Many trees, chairs, knives, soda cans, and cinderblocks died for this knowledge.
There also seem to be some secondary effects that varied strangely, the soda cans became lighter, while the knives became sharper despite being dull knives salvaged from various places. Wood seemed particularly unpredictable. Although each individual article would give the same result, the results varied between different pieces sometimes beginning to grow again other times being able to channel other magic or boosting general strength. One of the girls complained about the lack of proper devices for more testing, particularly wishing they could test other physical properties.
Unfortunately despite the gains made this month pallor was cast over it by three girls beginning to grief spiral. Apparently Chihoko's little brother just died of the illness that she'd used her wish to cure her sister of, she blamed herself. She died at the hospital away from everyone else and there wasn't even a chance to try to save her. Two more girls that had grown close to her began to despair when they heard about her death. You were able to console them and drain away their grief with grief cubes well enough to prevent their deaths though; it was touch and go for a bit with Katsuko who required two precious grief cubes to save though. They needed to live on; her death didn't mean they shouldn't go on. (-3 grief cubes)
14 Green Meguca, 5 Veteran Meguca, 1 Elite Meguca (Mami)
1 Meguca upkeep on demon finding training (can be canceled if desired, assumed not)
Grief Cubes 24
Money: $8550
$400 upkeep on cellphones
Morale: [Low] They still have the jitters and aren't all that close, but there are some signs that they are feeling a little better.
Turn 2 Options
[] Dispersed Hunting: Magical Girl will individually hunt demons throughout your territory and gather the grief cubes for the central supply. This can be dangerous.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward: 2 grief cubes per Meguca assigned. 20% base casualty (significant injury or death) chance.
[] Pack Hunting: Magical Girls will hunt in groups vastly reducing the danger, but because they are not covering as much area their efficiency is reduced. Death is significantly less likely.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward 1.25 Grief Cubes per Meguca assigned; 10% base casualty chance
[] Gather money, illegally: Magical Girls assigned to this role will commit crime to gather mundane currency which can be used to improve living conditions, using powers to commit simple burglaries or cheat in games of chance. Your Magical Girls have joined in search of a better life they are unlikely to much enjoy this and wish to avoid harsher crimes. You also lack connections with the criminal underworld, so the take is not all that good. There might also be complications with other criminals or the law.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward: ~$3,000 per month per Meguca assigned, but it is highly variable
[] Gather money, legally: There are not a great number of jobs that will take young girls as workers: working as a bike courier, waitress, or maid are likely options. This project benefits from regularity, and discontinuous execution may have negative side effects. Chance of success 50% per Meguca, because it is summer vacation, following up on a previous month's success brings the chance to 100%.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward: $1,000 per month per Meguca assigned. (For current 4 keeping jobs $1,000 and 3x $1,200 and guaranteed success.)
[] Improve Housing: Cramped Apartment: A great deal of your Magical Girls are orphans and their basic living conditions are squalor. You may be able to afford a couple apartments to improve their conditions somewhat, though it would have to be cramped at the level of hot-bunking. Though renting an apartment as a middle-schooler will take some illusions and telepathy.
Cost: $6,000 and 2 Veteran Meguca; Reward: Cramped Apartments instead of homeless as minimum housing level (for up to 25 Meguca), ongoing cost 3000$ per month or you get kicked out. Payable at the begining of the month. (not repeatable)
[] Improve Housing: Small house: Instead of a dinky apartment you could pool your resources for a small house, giving everyone a bit more room. Will still be quite a few people per bedroom, but gives more of a feeling of home.
Cost: $10,000 and 3 Veteran Meguca; Reward Small House instead of homeless as minimum housing level (for up to 25 Meguca), ongoing cost 5000$ per month or you get kicked out. Payable at the begining of the month. (not repeatable)
[] Stipend: Giving your magical girls a small amount of money to spend on themselves will improve their morale.
Cost: $50 per Meguca; Reward: Increased morale. Chance of success: 100%
[] Purchase steel shields: for those that can afford to carry them they will provide an extra bit of protection with the inherent strengthening that the transformation provides.
Cost: $1500; Reward: -2% Hunting Casualty rate
[] Central Dispatch, Demon Finding: Dedicating the most sensitive Veterans to snifing out demons and pointing them at others means they get much less tired and can search for longer finding more demons. Requires cellphones, only once per turn.
Cost: 2 Veteran Meguca; Reward: +25% grief cube acquisition from hunting actions, -1% hunting causality rate. (Forgot to mention that this is a recurring action, not permanent, though it should make sense logically that it keeps taking the Meguca to do it.)
[] Training, Pack tactics: Your Magical Girls aren't very used to working together and relying on others. They often get in each other's way and fail to support each other. Friendly fire can even occur. Working to improve their coordination will help to reduce their casualties when working together.
Cost: 2 Meguca, 1 Meguca maintenance; Reward: -4% casualty rate on Pack Hunting
[] Training, General Combat: While the Magical Girls recruited all have a certain natural combat skill instilled as part of being a magical girl, there is still a lot they have to learn. Practice can help prevent mistakes that would be lethal in the field.
Cost: 2 Meguca; Reward: -2% casualty rate on all Hunting actions
[]Training, Solo Tactics: Sometimes solo Magical Girls are taken out by surprise from their blindspots, training may help them learn to use their demon sensing ability to avoid being taken by attacks from outside of their vision.
Cost: 2 Meguca; Reward: -3% Dispersed Hunting casualty rate, -1% Pack Hunting casualty rate
[]Training, Raise Veteran: Raise one of the Green Girls to be a veteran
Cost: 3 Meguca, 1 Veteran Meguca; Reward: Raises one Green Meguca to veteran status.
[] Enchanting, Secondary Properties: Further investigate the secondary properties that individual materials exhibit. Including buying some simple tools to test more properties.
Cost:2 months of: 2 Veteran Meguca, 1 Grief Cube, $1000; Reward: Information on deeper effects of enchanting.
[] Enchanting, Duration/Charge: It was noticed that the effects of enchanting rapidly faded when the object was set down. Also the stronger magical girls could produce somewhat greater effects. Perhaps you could investigate ways to extend the charge period, or allow Mami to charge effects that other girls could maintain so that others might benefit from the stronger characteristics she could imbue.
Cost:2 months of: 2 Veteran Meguca, 3 Grief Cube, $500; Reward: Allow Mami's grade of enchanting to be carried by all girls, step towards long term enchantments.
[] Recruitment: Go out and find other Magical Girls to try to rope in to this crazy pyramid scheme you're setting up. Success of this action is very much dependent on the status of your current girls.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward: 1 Meguca per recruiter; Chance of Success: ??% (+10% if using Veteran Meguca)
________________________________________________________________________________________
Rolls were all quite good right up until the grief spiral roll. Also couldn't resist the reference to TTS on making money considering you rolled 57, 89, 92, 94.
Grief Spiral roll you rolled quite badly, then on the individual chance to save them rolls the first one was a 3 so I figured that justified saving you the grief seeds as just being too deep a spiral to even try to save her.
As I said before feel free to suggest additional options keeping in mind their reasonableness.
Also I feel like I should point out something that people don't seem to have picked up on. The casualty chance on hunting is noted as base chance and you're going to stack up lots of modifiers to reduce it from training and equipment. Modifiers that increase it also exist, though currently I'm not showing you those values (none are currently in effect but will likely start appearing in another turn or two, and I expect people will catch on fairly quickly what's causing them).
Hat tip and possible bonus to those that guess what's the explanation behind the enchanting secondary properties.
Also I might just make the central dispatch a maintained action like training if people want just to save effort/space, but thought for now I wouldn't since it ties up 2 veterans.
[X] Pack Hunting: Magical Girls will hunt in groups vastly reducing the danger, but because they are not covering as much area their efficiency is reduced. Death is significantly less likely.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward 1.25 Grief Cubes per Meguca assigned; 10% base casualty chance
-[X] 8 Green Meguca, 1 Veteran Meguca
[X] Gather money, legally: There are not a great number of jobs that will take young girls as workers: working as a bike courier, waitress, or maid are likely options. This project benefits from regularity, and discontinuous execution may have negative side effects. Chance of success 50% per Meguca, because it is summer vacation, following up on a previous month's success brings the chance to 100%.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward: $1,000 per month per Meguca assigned. (For current 4 keeping jobs $1,000 and 3x $1,200 and guaranteed success.)
-[X] Keep current 4
[X] Improve Housing: Cramped Appartment: A great deal of your Magical Girls are orphans and their basic living conditions are squalor. You may be able to afford a large apartment to improve their conditions somewhat, though it would have to be cramped. Though renting an apartment as a middle-schooler will take some illusions and telepathy.
Cost: $6,000 and 2 Veteran Meguca: Cramped Apartments instead of homeless as minimum housing level, ongoing cost 3000$ per month or you get kicked out. Payable at the beginning of the month. (not repeatable)
[X] Stipend: Giving your magical girls a small amount of money to spend on themselves will improve their morale.
Cost: $50 per Meguca; Reward: Increased morale. Chance of success: 100%
-[X] All Meguca, cost 1000$
[X] Central Dispatch, Demon Finding: Dedicating the most sensitive Veterans to sniffing out demons and pointing them at others means they get much less tired and can search for longer finding more demons. Requires cellphones, only once per turn.
Cost: 2 Veteran Meguca; Reward: +25% grief cube acquisition from hunting actions, -1% hunting causality rate. (Forgot to mention that this is a recurring action, not permanent, though it should make sense logically that it keeps taking the Meguca to do it.)
[X] Recruitment: Go out and find other Magical Girls to try to rope in to this crazy pyramid scheme you're setting up. Success of this action is very much dependent on the status of your current girls.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward: 1 Meguca per recruiter; Chance of Success: ??% (+10% if using Veteran Meguca)
-[X] 2 Green Meguca, Mami
All Meguca Assigned
Costs
-7000$ + -400$ upkeep this turn
-20 Grief Cubes
Projected Gains
+4800$
+15~ Grief Cubes
+0-3 Meguca
+Morale!
+Continued -% causality rate, and +Grief Cube % Up
+Apartment
Plan Goal: Increase Morale yet again to reduce Grief Spiraling with the Apartment and Cash, the Apartment also can function as a base, ectera. We continue the increased Grief Cube Gaining projects, and reduce chance to lose any Puella via combat. Also we'll have in the future a -3400$ income, that's thankfully off set by our $4600 income, for a net total gain of +1200$ a month. Goal is to also gain 3 more Meguca to put on hunting, and then next turn get even more Meguca to start hunting + training Meguca up.
I'm hoping we hit Medium Morale next turn, and get three more Puella, that way I can put a veteran and another Puella on hunting, and the two new Puella on Training General Combat. Get a -2% on all Hunting Actions... and as it's general combat one would assume against other Puella as well.
An Apartment now, and probably get a House when we hit the 40-50 Meguca range. The income's and initial cost is just too high vs needing Grief Cubes.
The next few turns (2-4) are basically Get More Megucas + Stabilize Budget + A little bit of training. The turns after that will probably involve Research (5-6), and then Turn (7-8)~ we'll probably be getting a house.
I'm hoping we hit Medium Morale next turn, and get three more Puella, that way I can put a veteran and another Puella on hunting, and the two new Puella on Training General Combat. Get a -2% on all Hunting Actions... and as it's general combat one would assume against other Puella as well.
Morale is actually quite hard to move in this game (I mean think about the circumstances and how hard it is to be happy in such a condition: fighting for your livelihood most of your life with you and your friends having significant chance of dying all the time). You're unlikely to hit medium for a while. Well unless I redefined the ranges to make more of them.
Keep in mind that when you increase your number of Meguca that much you'll need to spend more to increase housing levels. At 40-50 it's going to cost double what it currently does. It's only connected in a fairly stepwise fashion though. I figured that would make sense, but I guess I should add explicit numerical values to it.
Morale is actually quite hard to move in this game (I mean think about the circumstances and how hard it is to be happy in such a condition: fighting for your livelihood most of your life with you and your friends having significant chance of dying all the time). You're unlikely to hit medium for a while. Well unless I redefined the ranges to make more of them.
Keep in mind that when you increase your number of Meguca that much you'll need to spend more to increase housing levels. At 40-50 it's going to cost double what it currently does. It's only connected in a fairly stepwise fashion though. I figured that would make sense, but I guess I should add explicit numerical values to it.
It's a number between 0 and 100. I was originally just going to do Low-Medium-High as visible to the players, though I suppose I could break it down into smaller ranges. At 0 it's basically they give up on the idea. The fact that grief spirals of people close to you can make you also grief spiral is one of the reasons that groups are uncommon, you get attached and that's a risk.
Hmm I suppose I could add Mami's Apartment to your list of assets, but it certainly isn't that big. I could give the option to trade it out for a small monthly income since she seems to have some sort of trust payment. Probably make it able to hold 5 or be traded for $1200 a month at a morale penalty, since it's effectively your HQ right now in a sense.
Despair spiral calculation population*(100-morale -1d100)/5% = number of spirals. Then each spiral gets a roll to see how many grief cubes it would take to save them.
So you can only totally lock out grief spirals if you raise morale to maximum. Very much not an easy task.
Alright getting Morale up into the 50 range is now a long term goal.
Basic math tells me that if we had 100 Meguca, we'd lose 20 at the default rate each tern without using grief cubes, with 20 grief cube costs we'd save half of them, and then another 10 to save 5 more. So 100+30 cubes to only lose 5~ Meguca a term.
So we'd need 70 Meguca hunting (at our current 1.25+50%~ rate so 1.75 right?) to have a good stable supply at that rate XD. Probably need 15 Meguca doing cash work and probably 5-10~ on hold doing training/researching at a time with 5 Meguca to recruit.
:K Resource Scarce this quest is very much so, unless we increase morale and Grief Cube harvesting rate to 200% GC rate and 50% Morale.
That'd mean we'd only need 50~ Meguca to properly provide enough GC's for the 100 Meguca team at 2.5 GC per meguca. Freeing up 20! Meguca for other work.
Disclaim all math and calculations and projections here are done while sleepy. Probably.
Basic math tells me that if we had 100 Meguca, we'd lose 20 at the default rate each tern without using grief cubes, with 20 grief cube costs we'd save half of them, and then another 10 to save 5 more. So 100+30 cubes to only lose 5~ Meguca a term.
Your math here is flawed. The default is before the morale modifier 10% on average with spiral (varying 0-20% based on the roll). So it's not that quite bad. At higher morale it is less bad.
Mami should obviously have a special money-spending action for raising morale: baking cakes. Though I imagine it would quickly loose effect if repeated too rapidly or regularly
Would it be possible to create some shrine, monument, or tradition for our group dedicated to lost magical girls? Something that acknowledges them and helps the still living think "they'll be remembered". Not to mention that if its a shrine or monument it becomes easier to head off grief spirals caused by dead magical girls
are we forbidden from recruiting mundanes for the sake of the game?
Your math here is flawed. The default is before the morale modifier 10% on average with spiral (varying 0-20% based on the roll). So it's not that quite bad. At higher morale it is less bad.
Alright then, that's now the worst case scenario. With the much less worse case scenario being needing only 15 grief cubes to lose 5 PM at 100 PM's, and the more likely scenario being ~5% (when we hit 100 PM) so increasing the cubes to compensate for less chance, we might only lose 2 PMs a turn at 20 Grief Cubes (4 for each PM)
Mami should obviously have a special money-spending action for raising morale: baking cakes. Though I imagine it would quickly loose effect if repeated too rapidly or regularly
Would it be possible to create some shrine, monument, or tradition for our group dedicated to lost magical girls? Something that acknowledges them and helps the still living think "they'll be remembered". Not to mention that if its a shrine or monument it becomes easier to head off grief spirals caused by dead magical girls
are we forbidden from recruiting mundanes for the sake of the game?
I suppose I could put together actions for each of these. I have my doubts that players would want to put Mami on baking cakes given how valuable an Elite can be elsewhere though. A shrine is a good idea though for mitigating death losses I suppose.
Mundanes are tricky. The Incubators are full force enforcing the Masquerade right now.
Alright then, that's now the worst case scenario. With the much less worse case scenario being needing only 15 grief cubes to lose 5 PM at 100 PM's, and the more likely scenario being ~5% (when we hit 100 PM) so increasing the cubes to compensate for less chance, we might only lose 2 PMs a turn at 20 Grief Cubes (4 for each PM)
100 Meguca, average 10% loss: 10 spirals, 10 grief cubes saves half, 5 remaining, 5 grief cubes additional spent saves 2.5. So you'd average 2.5 dying to despair with 15 cubes spent. At spending up to 4 per Meguca instead of 2 it goes to 1.25 average deaths with 20 cubes spent.
