I assume we gave the .66 out in trade to Nagoya and earlier groups, but that we have been giving the .6 to new groups that we meet. Unless helix is going to require that we update our pamphlets?
That's probably not how it'll work; I mean, for all our joking about it, our pamphlet almost certainly won't have pages and pages of math, and so it won't enough fine-grained detail to show how we're squeezing another .06 out of a more simple and easy to understand system of rotating tactics.
More to the point, we really don't want it to come back to Nagoya that we're giving out something better to other groups for free; that's a sure way to piss them off.
Why are people suggesting these complex systems... is everyone here into model UN or something?
Practical politics are in play not idealized systems. We need to find a framework that works for our situation, but should be focused on constructing a system based on needs. We can make comparisons to other systems but those are analogies to explain why the system proposed could work.
Here is what I am thinking of:
Step 0: We met with Serena to welcome her and begin the plan to save Tokyo.
Step 1: Serena clears a section of Tokyo. She (and her associates) hand out propaganda for the Serenes including directions on sustainable farming tech, and our contact information. She also distributes some of the grief cubes dropped by the class 3 demons to the surviving local girls. Serena then moves on to the next section of Tokyo.
Step 2: Our team of girls (20+ vets, Mami and Taya/Seto) sweep into the cleared section. The girls there had this rush of hope, and are now feeling a little let down. We start meeting with them all and talking to them about the plan the Serenes have to make sure nothing like this happens in Tokyo again. We assess the demon strength in the area, and start developing hunting plans.
The Tokyo girls can be divided into four categories:
A: Solo/Duo girls (Vets and Greens): Most of these are probably greens contracted by the Incubators in their attempts to replace the losses.
B: Girls in small groups (4 to 8 girls): These are probably going to be mostly vets, with a few greens attached. Might have a few small grudges against other girls, but probably nothing major.
C: Large organizations: Probably are only a handful of these, and probably focused around a core of Elites, but possibly a vet dominated organization might exist. Probably very dispersed in organization, operating in small cells in an attempt to avoid being killed.
D: Elites: Each of these girls will probably have their own situation, they might be part of a small group (probably the leader), or possibly solo.
The first two groups of girls we can approach the same way:
We get all the girls in an area (say a 50 cube area), gather them into a meeting to meet with Mami. She presents essentially an updated pitch of the one she made Turn 1, about the dangers of class 3 demons from over hunting, and the benefits of organization.
Before anyone can argue, Mami then breaks out the charts, with our initial DS assessment of the area, and explains exactly how many cubes can be extracted while hunting down to DS 0. If the count of the girls in the area means there won't be enough to cover the girls, we will put up some cubes to help out for the first month (that should suddenly get everyone's attention and silence any dissent temporarily).
Then we explain that the safest hunting is in packs, "until we can afford armor" (now we are identifying with them, and dangling the idea of armor in front of them). We address the small group girls and express the good news that they already have experience with this, assure them that they will still be working together in their groups, and ask them if they will share some of their experience with the girls who don't know how to hunt in packs Then we address the solo girls and point out that they are going to need to start hunting in packs, so they should make sure to get to know the people around them.
Then we tell them how many girls will be needed to hunt in this specific area while going down to DS 0, and the expected long term hunting team size after that. At this point we explain the benefit of a dispatch team, and suggest that they need a three person dispatch team to reduce the hunting team size to such and such number of girls.
Then we explain the benefit of a dispatch team requires owning cellphones. Tell the girls that we are willing to take on the cost of a cellphone plan for the first month to help them get started (assuming roughly 30 to 40 girls in a 50 girl area, this should be on average $350 per a 50 size group area, (and a total of around $12,000 for all of Tokyo). Then we explain that Chiyo (insert name of whatever vet we give this job too) here is going to be passing around a signup sheet, if they will just put their name down, whether or not they need a cell phone or not, and what color they would like the case to be, and then Chiyo will arrange to go get the cellphones and distribute them in a couple days. (Basically this is now getting a bit of buy in, they are signing up for something, and the cellphone serves as a nice enticement).
At this point point out that girls with clairvoyant wish magic tend to be the best at dispatch duty. Ask if any girls here are clairvoyant, and if they would be willing to step up and join the dispatch team? (This is another chance to get some buy in).
Now as we said, we are going to pay for the first month of your cellphone service, but we're making this offer for all of Tokyo, and we can't afford to keep on paying the cellphone bill forever, which means you are all going to need a source of money. Explain that in the Serenes what we do is assign certain girls jobs to earn money, and they then share that money with all of the other girls, while the girls hunting agree to provide them with grief cubes. T
he Serenes have a courier business, as it's one of the easiest ways for a magical girl to make money. Our offer is to expand this courier business to Tokyo, and we will hire # of girls from your area, and money they make you can then use to pay for the cellphones, and eventually rent apartments, or even a house. Purchases of armor is also something we will want to do. (If we don't have the money for the expansion we might have to instead just assign # of girls to hunt for jobs.)
In the Serenes our rule is for the greenest of girls to be the ones assigned mundane jobs while the veterans hunt. But this is a commitment that you have to make. Are you willing to agree to provide cubes to the girls that work, and the girls that work are you willing to give your money that you earn to everyone else to pay for things the group needs? Ask for vote to see if they agree. (This is basically when we get the big buy in, even if they vote no then they have already accepted the premise that they decide things as a group).
If they say yes, okay great. How many girls have signed up only a month ago? Continue until you find the # of girls assigned to jobs. Tell them to please talk to Chiyo after meeting, and she will begin the arrangements to have them get jobs, take their names down, set up bank accounts, etc.
If they say no, oh well too bad. We'll still pay for the first month of cell phones, express the hope that after experiencing how useful a dispatch team is for a month that they will reconsider. (Assuming we are trying to expand the courier service, have Chiyo approach the greenest greens after the meeting, if we have enough room to subsidize them with cubes, maybe hire them anyway? Except in this case their money would go to the main Serene group).
Okay, so that has worked out money, then what are they going to do with the rest of their available time? Point out that the Serenes have an extensive training program to increase hunting safety, and that we have not had a hunting death in over a year and a half (is it two years now?). Give a list of all the training that we will offer. Then point to another of our vets, Azusa, she will be staying here with Chiyo, and she will help you with all this training for the next month. We will be starting with Pack Hunting tactics. Ask the small groups if they be sure to help with the teaching, so that everyone will become skilled in this and reduce the danger of hunting.
Close up with thanks for meeting with us, and helping us establish a system for hunting so that the class 3 demon threat never happens again. Ask them to please contact Chiyo or Azusa if they have any questions, or they can even contact you directly if they need help. You will be mingling with every one after the meeting if anyone wants to talk with you.
The whole presentation should be under 30 minutes, another hour of Mami wandering around mingling, and then onto the next stop. We ought to be able to do say 12 of these in two weeks (or about 600 territory, so a little less than half of Tokyo), and that includes followup visits to soothe ruffled feathers, and talk intransigent girls into cooperation.
Basically we Bavarian Fire Drill them into working together BECAUSE CLASS 3 DEMONS and then as they work together the advantages are so huge that people just naturally flow into continuing to do it. Next month we help them plan that month's actions, help them get apartments/house, and then at the end of the second month we pop the question of why don't they just join the Serenes formally? Get access to our cool headquarters for special training, get allowances, get to have us continue supporting them instead of having to figure it all out themselves. We'll propose a plan to roll out shields and then bikes to every girl, etc.
Large Organizations we will have to approach individually as diplomacy actions. Focus first on trying to settle boundaries, establish safe hunting practices, and get an agreement not to overhunt anymore. See if they need any help with grief cubes, that sort of thing.
Maybe we propose some sort of affiliation arrangement that is more attractive than the vassal arrangement Nagoya has? Possibly if any of the 50 area groups we organize reject formal assimilation, we offer them the affiliation instead?
Elites I think we similarly will approach individually perhaps as a single diplomacy action? Basically, we need to find out what each Elite wants, and can we offer it to them as a way to entice them to join us.
Other than specifying the affiliation model I don't think we need to plan anything elaborate to artificially construct a political order in Tokyo. It will develop naturally, and will probably be messy, but I think we can handle it.
You're suggesting a Bavarian fire drill where the target demographic is composed exclusively of the most difficult people to catch in it; teenagers and children, in a situation where we, at best, appear to be weird nerds or rescuers rather than actual officials. I get that it's not quite a BFD, but it still requires absolutely no dissent while you're pulling it off, and your end result is less to boggle them into going along with you right then, and more to get them to follow a long term plan that probably goes directly counter to the way they handled things before. You can't fast talk a bunch of war-weary teenagers into something like that and expect it to last longer than the first critical thought.
Step 1: Serena clears a section of Tokyo. She (and her associates) hand out propaganda for the Serenes including directions on sustainable farming tech, and our contact information. She also distributes some of the grief cubes dropped by the class 3 demons to the surviving local girls. Serena then moves on to the next section of Tokyo.
Step 2: Our team of girls (20+ vets, Mami and Taya/Seto) sweep into the cleared section. The girls there had this rush of hope, and are now feeling a little let down. We start meeting with them all and talking to them about the plan the Serenes have to make sure nothing like this happens in Tokyo again. We assess the demon strength in the area, and start developing hunting plans.
It might be better if Serena were to team up with the local girls and direct them to the meeting place to make it sufficiently clear that we are responsible for clearing out the Class 3 demons and give them the impression that we have overwhelming firepower.
You're suggesting a Bavarian fire drill where the target demographic is composed exclusively of the most difficult people to catch in it; teenagers and children, in a situation where we, at best, appear to be weird nerds or rescuers rather than actual officials. I get that it's not quite a BFD, but it still requires absolutely no dissent while you're pulling it off, and your end result is less to boggle them into going along with you right then, and more to get them to follow a long term plan that probably goes directly counter to the way they handled things before. You can't fast talk a bunch of war-weary teenagers into something like that and expect it to last longer than the first critical thought.
I think you are too focused on the traditional Bavarian Fire Drill of pretending to be an official.
I'm using the more general meaning, which is to show up during a crisis, and act like you know what you are doing and people start obeying you. This is a common human reaction, we aren't expecting anything silly.
This is about there being a problem, and we are going to stand up and start directing people to solutions. And it will hold up to critical thought, because once you have a critical thought you realize that it all makes sense and makes life better.
Also, teenagers are the most susceptible to this, (and are the most susceptible to more traditional fire drills too).
This happens all the time.
In fact it used to happen to me all the time when I was a teenager. I was pretty much a social outcast, but anytime there was a crisis, suddenly I had to come up with a plan and with only one exception can I ever remember people not following my plan. That exception was when someone else suddenly spoke up that he had a better plan, and then proposed my plan but slightly adjusted so that he had to work less, and because he was more popular he got his plan established - mainly because no one wanted to fight about it.
Unless there is charismatic girl who is already well known by all the other girls, then it's almost certain that all the small groups and solo girls will go along with what we present. Even the idea of girls working is probably likely to pass. It's common sense, and they just had a bad experience with not managing things, so why wouldn't they go along with it?
If there is a charismatic girl, (say a girl who is known for saving other girls during the crisis - ie probably an elite candidate) well then all we need to do is to subvert the charismatic girl. In fact that should be part of our prep work, when doing the initial contacts to setup the big meeting. If we find there is some well known charismatic girl, we should approach her early before the meeting and get her to throw in her support from the beginning. Just like we would with an elite.
This is about there being a problem, and we are going to stand up and start directing people to solutions. And it will hold up to critical thought, because once you have a critical thought you realize that it all makes sense and makes life better.
Also, teenagers are the most susceptible to this, (and are the most susceptible to more traditional fire drills too).
The other thing we need to do is get a firm commitment from Kyubey to limit contracting in the area to 62.5% of the sustainable area in the short term. That's the amount of grief cubes a Morale 0 group will go through just in consumption plus grief spirals per month: 1 per meguca in consumption, then 0.2 for 1-cube spirals, then another 0.2 for 2-cube spirals, and a third 0.2 for 4-cube spirals, for an average consumption of 1.6 cubes per meguca, and 2.5% of the population dying of grief every month regardless (). After all, Tokyo will certainly be Morale 0 for at least a few months, even if they don't embrace an XCom/criminality lifestyle and commit to it on a long-term basis, and will need the extra cubes.
So, we need to keep the meguca population down to 62.5% sustainable, so the girls in the area have time to adjust and begin to recover. Right now they should be running near that level, but surprisingly not much below, because the Incubators seem to suck at math (emphasis mine):
53 Class 3 demons originated in Tokyo during the initial upward swing in their spawning, at that time there were 107 Grade 3 Contracted countering them and 1693 total Contracted in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. Early losses were substantial. Coordination and force concentration improved survival rate after initial losses. Currently there is an estimated 37 Class 3 demons in the region and 45 Grade 3 Contracted with 1200 total Contracted despite unusually aggressive recruitment. Remaining Contracted have switched to mostly guerrilla activity with few fixed concentrations.
Unfortunately Nagoya's ongoing efforts have not been enough to turn the general course of events in Tokyo. One of the few remaining fortified positions was overrun, numerous elites were killed in the course of a single battle and the situation is increasingly desperate. Some are suggesting it may only be months before the only ones left are new recruits.
Between these two statements, we know that Tokyo currently has less than 1,200 total megucas. The thing is, the population of the greater Tokyo area is "only" 37,832,892, which means that sustainable hunting area for the greater Tokyo area is actually ~1,890, and the number of meguca that the region can support to full grief spiral mitigation levels is thus ~1,182. So, even now, when they should be keeping recruitment down both to prevent further inter-group conflict and to prevent the further creation of Class 3s, the Incubators are over-recruiting in Tokyo. We really, really need to convince them not to do this anymore.
It makes me wonder who is really at fault for the Beijing situation:
3) Added a note to Kyuubey about the max sustainable contract rate. Given the 98% Tokyo contract rate, and the fact that Kesi keeps having to go back to Beijing, they don't seem to understand that they don't need that many contracted in order to use up the cube potential of an area.
If the recruitment level is too high, then frankly it's no wonder that groups here are continuing to fight one another: once the Incubators recruit over the 62.5% population ceiling that I describe above, groups are basically put in the position of overhunting somewhere, or else watch their girls die. They don't want to do it in their own territories, so they start poaching on other people's. No wonder they're having problems.
Note that the only reason the Serene can go over this 62.5% limit (we can probably get up to 100%, but only if we gave up on research entirely) is our high Morale, plus our sophisticated rotation farming scheme. I fully expect that Nagoya is hovering around this 62.5% sustainable level, and they're probably doing it by killing off all the "spare" meguca that Kyubey is no doubt over-recruiting in their area; they'll theoretically be able to ratchet up in the coming months as the rotation farming scheme we gave them ramps up, but they probably will opt to keep population down and use the surplus for other activities (like more Tokyo excursions, or maybe using rotation farming to let DS fall into negative territory so hunting is easier).
Bit of a question @inverted_helix: Does the Rotating Tactics info we give out use the 0.66 (edit: fixed) multiplier, or the 0.60 multiplier? I'm not sure whether the lower modifier is only valid due to the extensive analysis we did on our territory.
The other thing we need to do is get a firm commitment from Kyubey to limit contracting in the area to 62.5% of the sustainable area in the short term. That's the amount of grief cubes a Morale 0 group will go through just in consumption plus grief spirals per month: 1 per meguca in consumption, then 0.2 for 1-cube spirals, then another 0.2 for 2-cube spirals, and a third 0.2 for 4-cube spirals, for an average consumption of 1.6 cubes per meguca, and 2.5% of the population dying of grief every month regardless
And assuming that girls are just going to not collect those cubes anyway, thereby setting off Class 3 apocalypses like we've already seen, eventually costing the Incubators hundreds to thousands of cubes per month per city, is rather more absurd.
And assuming that girls are just going to not collect those cubes anyway, thereby setting off Class 3 apocalypses like we've already seen, eventually costing the Incubators hundreds to thousands of cubes per month per city, is rather more absurd.
The apocalypse aren't triggered by overhunting, they are triggered by intergroup warfare. Individual class 3's from overhunting are much more manageable, since if nothing else Nagoya and us are going to have to fight them.
Besides, if we did request this he would probably counter that we could just drop spiral mitigation instead.
And assuming that girls are just going to not collect those cubes anyway, thereby setting off Class 3 apocalypses like we've already seen, eventually costing the Incubators hundreds to thousands of cubes per month per city, is rather more absurd.
To the Incubators humans trying to save individuals when it's going to result in the destruction of the group is absurd. Obviously any individual should be sacrificed for the good of the group.
If humans overhunt in order to preserve a handful and thereby trigger devastation of the entire group, that is entirely on the irrationality of the humans, not the Incubators. It is an argument for more direct management, but in the long term evolution should curtail such irrational behavior.
The other thing we need to do is get a firm commitment from Kyubey to limit contracting in the area to 62.5% of the sustainable area in the short term. That's the amount of grief cubes a Morale 0 group will go through just in consumption plus grief spirals per month: 1 per meguca in consumption, then 0.2 for 1-cube spirals, then another 0.2 for 2-cube spirals, and a third 0.2 for 4-cube spirals, for an average consumption of 1.6 cubes per meguca, and 2.5% of the population dying of grief every month regardless (). After all, Tokyo will certainly be Morale 0 for at least a few months, even if they don't embrace an XCom/criminality lifestyle and commit to it on a long-term basis, and will need the extra cubes.
So, we need to keep the meguca population down to 62.5% sustainable, so the girls in the area have time to adjust and begin to recover. Right now they should be running near that level, but surprisingly not much below, because the Incubators seem to suck at math (emphasis mine):
Between these two statements, we know that Tokyo currently has less than 1,200 total megucas. The thing is, the population of the greater Tokyo area is "only" 37,832,892, which means that sustainable hunting area for the greater Tokyo area is actually ~1,890, and the number of meguca that the region can support to full grief spiral mitigation levels is thus ~1,182. So, even now, when they should be keeping recruitment down both to prevent further inter-group conflict and to prevent the further creation of Class 3s, the Incubators are over-recruiting in Tokyo. We really, really need to convince them not to do this anymore.
It makes me wonder who is really at fault for the Beijing situation:
You are assuming that Incubators care about mitigating grief spirals. They don't.
Furthermore it used to be that girls would die as the demon strength grew, thus providing a strong negative incentive to over hunting to get that extra grief spiral mitigation. Basically it was better to take your chances with 2 cube grief spiral limit than to risk higher demon strength. Or if you did, girls would start dying off before class 3 demons became common.
What has changed (and only in the last three years) is that large organizations have allowed girls to start hunting to much higher rates of demon strength.
Your expectation that the Incubators will respond to a shift in behavior in less than three years is absurd. First of all the Incubators need to wait and watch the new system play out so that they can understand it before adjusting their own policies.
And they don't care that this will result in the death of millions of humans. So grief cube production drops for a few decades. That's just the cost of doing business with irrational humans that keep changing their behavior.
If the recruitment level is too high, then frankly it's no wonder that groups here are continuing to fight one another: once the Incubators recruit over the 62.5% population ceiling that I describe above, groups are basically put in the position of overhunting somewhere, or else watch their girls die. They don't want to do it in their own territories, so they start poaching on other people's. No wonder they're having problems.
Note that the only reason the Serene can go over this 62.5% limit (we can probably get up to 100%, but only if we gave up on research entirely) is our high Morale, plus our sophisticated rotation farming scheme. I fully expect that Nagoya is hovering around this 62.5% sustainable level, and they're probably doing it by killing off all the "spare" meguca that Kyubey is no doubt over-recruiting in their area; they'll theoretically be able to ratchet up in the coming months as the rotation farming scheme we gave them ramps up, but they probably will opt to keep population down and use the surplus for other activities (like more Tokyo excursions, or maybe using rotation farming to let DS fall into negative territory so hunting is easier).
I'm not sure what your assumptions are here, but I don't see how 100% size would force us to give up on research.
Furthermore, I highly doubt that Nagoya is 0 morale. I think you are making assumptions that fit your preconception of how the world ought to work. Unfortunately the world does not care about how it ought to work and keeps right giving us bad situations.
And assuming that girls are just going to not collect those cubes anyway, thereby setting off Class 3 apocalypses like we've already seen, eventually costing the Incubators hundreds to thousands of cubes per month per city, is rather more absurd.
What has changed (and only in the last three years) is that large organizations have allowed girls to start hunting to much higher rates of demon strength.
To the Incubators humans trying to save individuals when it's going to result in the destruction of the group is absurd. Obviously any individual should be sacrificed for the good of the group.
If humans overhunt in order to preserve a handful and thereby trigger devastation of the entire group, that is entirely on the irrationality of the humans, not the Incubators. It is an argument for more direct management, but in the long term evolution should curtail such irrational behavior.
Megucas cannot have children, so long term evolution doesn't apply. Even if it did, the incubators probably don't want to encourage evolutionary pressures that creates emotionless (or even less emotional!) human beings, as emotionless human beings cannot experience grief. It seems exceedingly foolish to create selective pressures in your prey animals that make them no longer nutritionally useful to you.
While leverage would be nice, we're not actually issuing a threat here so it doesn't really apply. What I'm doing is attempting to explain to the Incubators why millions of humans are being culled, causing the loss of tens of thousands of filled cubes per year, and how to prevent it happening in the future. This is basically an inevitable result of planet Earth becoming more densely populated, as it has in recent decades, which normally is a good thing because it results in exponentially more GCUs being generated per land area per unit time, but has the drawback that Class 3 apocalypses are possible unless care is taken not to over-contract in dense urban areas.
And they don't care that this will result in the death of millions of humans. So grief cube production drops for a few decades. That's just the cost of doing business with irrational humans that keep changing their behavior.
Of course they care; a million humans dead means the loss of 50 GCUs worth of cubes per month; 30,000 cubes over their estimated remaining lifetime! If they didn't care about grief cubes they wouldn't be here in the first place. They'd be stealing human embryos, growing them in-vitro, harvesting the young girls' eggs for further creation of new generations, Contracting the girls, then killing them immediately after cashing in on the Contract bonus. They wouldn't need to bother with all this hassling over masquerades, picking up grief cubes, pretending to be friends with Contracted, etc. Given that they've had tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of years by now to set up the system, they'd be in a Dyson sphere, using the full power of the Sun to harvest quadrillions of Contract bonuses per day.
100% size means that we have 82 girls to go with our 82 territory. Using full IRT on the 74 urban part of that territory means we overhunt by 100% one month, then underhunt by 50% the next month; on average we make 100.5 GCU per month, minus 3-4 for forecasting and teleportation so 97. That gives us 19 cubes per month net before spirals (since we're also using grief management); assuming morale 4 with 82 girls we'll still go through about 17 cubes if we mitigate all 1, 2, and 4 cube spirals, so in order to stay at 82 girls we'll have a total of ~2 GCU left over at the end of the month for research and all other purposes. So, okay yeah we probably won't have to completely give up on research; we can do one project every two months.
Furthermore, I highly doubt that Nagoya is 0 morale. I think you are making assumptions that fit your preconception of how the world ought to work. Unfortunately the world does not care about how it ought to work and keeps right giving us bad situations.
I'm assuming that Nagoya is running XCom rules and using criminality to gather money. Both of those are going to have severe long-term negative morale maluses. Yes, you're right that they probably don't have zero morale, but given that we were around two for extended periods even without the XCom lifestyle and running a criminal empire I think it would be exceedingly generous to assign them an average Morale of higher than 1.
Well, according to rumor anyway. What seems more likely is the exact same situation that we found ourselves in back in Turns 1-10:
The Incubators decided not to say anything about how overhunting creates Class 3 demons.
Girls overhunted their territories because, like the Serene, they didn't want to die of grief spirals.
A bunch of Class 3 demons appeared and started killing everyone.
Incubators went around and contracted more girls, bringing the meguca population up to territory level.
The girls proceeded to immediately start hunting demons and collecting cubes to survive, keeping the DS high.
More Class 3 demons appear, killing off the girls in the area.
Given how tight-lipped the Incubators have proven to be, and their previously-demonstrated disastrously high contracting rates, you don't even need enemy action to get Class 3 spawns; you just need a too-dense meguca population, and for megucas to act in their own self-interest.
@TheEyes: We do not need to set a 62.5% contracting rate to account for grief spirals. That's well below the necessary rate for stability. We might, however, request that they not contract above 75% (just slightly more than are currently contracted, up to 1300 girls) for the short term while we work on stabilizing the situation so that it doesn't spiral out of control again.
That would be the equivalent of 32 girls per 40-territory ward, which gives enough to handle grief spirals, and a bit extra to get the economy moving. Once politics are stable and RT is in place, contracting rate can go up a bit.
Yes, you're right that they probably don't have zero morale, but given that we were around two for extended periods even without the XCom lifestyle and running a criminal empire I think it would be exceedingly generous to assign them an average Morale of higher than 1.
We were at 3 morale for a good while, but it's been forever since we were at 2, if ever. At best, back when the org first started, before actual morale numbers were available.
If humans overhunt in order to preserve a handful and thereby trigger devastation of the entire group, that is entirely on the irrationality of the humans, not the Incubators. It is an argument for more direct management, but in the long term evolution should curtail such irrational behavior.
We need to give the Incubators a book on chaos theory. Yeesh. In a natural environment, the above might be true, but it's not a natural environment when one faction (the Incubators) controls the generation rate of one side of the system. In that case, if the control faction repeatedly introduces sufficient numbers to catastrophically destabilize the system, they are the irrational ones.
Megucas cannot have children, so long term evolution doesn't apply. Even if it did, the incubators probably don't want to encourage evolutionary pressures that creates emotionless (or even less emotional!) human beings, as emotionless human beings cannot experience grief. It seems exceedingly foolish to create selective pressures in your prey animals that make them no longer nutritionally useful to you.
More willing to make sacrifices doesn't necessarily mean less emotional. The Heroic Sacrifice is a big emotional moment in many series. You can think of it as encouraging the Heroic Sacrifice over trying to Save Everyone.
Also evolutionary pressure still applies. Just like you can have evolutionary pressure on hive species like ants even when acting against non-reproductive members of the colony. in this case if the meguca are too bad about killing themselves off it negatively impacts the human population that the meguca came from. Whereas populations that better encourage self-sacrifice will have meguca populations that have these problems less and thus that population will have competitive advantage.
While leverage would be nice, we're not actually issuing a threat here so it doesn't really apply. What I'm doing is attempting to explain to the Incubators why millions of humans are being culled, causing the loss of tens of thousands of filled cubes per year, and how to prevent it happening in the future. This is basically an inevitable result of planet Earth becoming more densely populated, as it has in recent decades, which normally is a good thing because it results in exponentially more GCUs being generated per land area per unit time, but has the drawback that Class 3 apocalypses are possible unless care is taken not to over-contract in dense urban areas.
Those Class 3 apocalypses are a dramatic example of strong evolutionary pressure on the population. In the short term of years to decades that's a loss, but in the long term it provides evolutionary pressure that could improve returns later.
Of course they care; a million humans dead means the loss of 500 GCUs worth of cubes per month; 300,000 cubes over their estimated remaining lifetime! If they didn't care about grief cubes they wouldn't be here in the first place. They'd be stealing human embryos, growing them in-vitro, harvesting the young girls' eggs for further creation of new generations, Contracting the girls, then killing them immediately after cashing in on the Contract bonus. They wouldn't need to bother with all this hassling over masquerades, picking up grief cubes, pretending to be friends with Contracted, etc. Given that they've had tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of years by now to set up the system, they'd be in a Dyson sphere, using the full power of the Sun to harvest quadrillions of Contract bonuses per day.
Except that not every living thing has the potential to Contract. Not even every human, not even every female human, not even every adolescent human female. They need to have a certain degree of emotions and a certain degree of karmic weight (mentioned in canon but not really explained). Mass produced cloned humans simply don't have any Contract potential.
I'm assuming that Nagoya is running XCom rules and using criminality to gather money. Both of those are going to have severe long-term negative morale maluses. Yes, you're right that they probably don't have zero morale, but given that we were around two for extended periods even without the XCom lifestyle and running a criminal empire I think it would be exceedingly generous to assign them an average Morale of higher than 1.
Well, according to rumor anyway. What seems more likely is the exact same situation that we found ourselves in back in Turns 1-10:
The Incubators decided not to say anything about how overhunting creates Class 3 demons.
Girls overhunted their territories because, like the Serene, they didn't want to die of grief spirals.
A bunch of Class 3 demons appeared and started killing everyone.
Incubators went around and contracted more girls, bringing the meguca population up to territory level.
The girls proceeded to immediately start hunting demons and collecting cubes to survive, keeping the DS high.
More Class 3 demons appear, killing off the girls in the area.
Given how tight-lipped the Incubators have proven to be, and their previously-demonstrated disastrously high contracting rates, you don't even need enemy action to get Class 3 spawns; you just need a too-dense meguca population, and for megucas to act in their own self-interest.
What you haven't seemed to realize is that as Haman said, before groups were common when you overhunted you died. You didn't have nearly the amount of casualty reduction when you were alone as you do in large groups. 2: Contracting rates have dropped, in case you haven't noticed, Kyuubey hasn't just randomly dropped anyone on you in ages. 3: As I explained before, occasional dieoffs of people that try to save everyone are perfectly okay from the long term perspective of the Incubators.
Also evolutionary pressure still applies. Just like you can have evolutionary pressure on hive species like ants even when acting against non-reproductive members of the colony. in this case if the meguca are too bad about killing themselves off it negatively impacts the human population that the meguca came from. Whereas populations that better encourage self-sacrifice will have meguca populations that have these problems less and thus that population will have competitive advantage.
There are theoretical limits to the strength of group selection and they're really low. If contracting had been around long enough to exert any evolutionary effect, they'd have a species with an irrational fear of small white creatures offering wishes.
There are theoretical limits to the strength of group selection and they're really low. If contracting had been around long enough to exert any evolutionary effect, they'd have a species with an irrational fear of small white creatures offering wishes.
The Incubators are planning against the heat death of the universe. An event that's billions of years away. When they're planning something long term, they mean really really long term.
Also the small white creature is a newer model. It's adjusted over time. (This is actually implied in canon a little.)
The Incubators are planning against the heat death of the universe. An event that's billions of years away. When they're planning something long term, they mean really really long term.
Also the small white creature is a newer model. It's adjusted over time. (This is actually implied in canon a little.)
That would be fine if contracting had no cost to the magical girl, but for things to work out for the way their hoping it needs to exceed the individual pressure to not die before having children. It doesn't. It's not even close. It is always a superior strategy to live a normal life and have children then to sacrifice your ability to have children to fight demons, so if they leave things running for long enough that's what they'll get.
That would be fine if contracting had no cost to the magical girl, but for things to work out for the way their hoping it needs to exceed the individual pressure to not die before having children. It doesn't. It's not even close. It is always a superior strategy to live a normal life and have children then to sacrifice your ability to have children to fight demons, so if they leave things running for long enough that's what they'll get.
Except then the entire human race suffers from the effects of uncontrolled demon populations. Which is a massive negative impact upon the human population. It would push the human population to the brink, and the humans wouldn't evolve past it for the same reason they don't evolve past diseases, the disease evolves faster.
Also I spend like 2/3rds of the time I spend on this quest defending my setting. Half of these issues are issues that people should have had with PMMM canon as well. I mean any issue with why the Incubators don't have a dyson sphere of quadrillions of cloned human girls should still apply to canon.
I don't really understand why I have to defend the setting so much. I mean why is it whenever I try to start a genetics discussion about why half-dragons or half-djinn or stuff like that makes no sense at all people just start eyerolling, but here people attack my setting constantly. I mean people don't spend half the posts of warhammer 40k quests arguing about unrealistic points of that setting. Even in Worm where basically every story thread of it that lasts more than 10 pages has a debate about the unrealistic parts of the setting, quest masters don't have to defend their use of the setting.
The other thing we need to do is get a firm commitment from Kyubey to limit contracting in the area to 62.5% of the sustainable area in the short term. That's the amount of grief cubes a Morale 0 group will go through just in consumption plus grief spirals per month: 1 per meguca in consumption, then 0.2 for 1-cube spirals, then another 0.2 for 2-cube spirals, and a third 0.2 for 4-cube spirals, for an average consumption of 1.6 cubes per meguca, and 2.5% of the population dying of grief every month regardless (). After all, Tokyo will certainly be Morale 0 for at least a few months, even if they don't embrace an XCom/criminality lifestyle and commit to it on a long-term basis, and will need the extra cubes.
Running numbers on the spreadsheet, a territory with 2 morale using 2 cubes on grief spirals would need 9.5 cubes per 100 girls. That gives a 19% death rate per year. Morale 1 would need 12 cubes for a 24% death rate per year. Morale 0 would be 15 cubes for a 30% death rate per year.
So even at morale 0, they'd be using 1.15 cubes each per month, not 1.6.
Can bump to 4 cube usage and increase cubes to 20 at morale 0 to drop the death rate to 15% per year. An increase in average cube usage from 1.15 to 1.2 drops death rate by half.
A 75% contract rate would allow a 20% buffer accumulation, which means 1x buffer in about half a year. They could then raise the contract rate to 87.5% (35 girls per 40 territory, 1500 per entire Tokyo territory) and drop the buffer rate to 0%, with the difference made up in rotating tactics.
Note that those numbers are based off of a 0 morale and a 2% green/0% vet hunting death rate.
Also I spend like 2/3rds of the time I spend on this quest defending my setting. Half of these issues are issues that people should have had with PMMM canon as well. I mean any issue with why the Incubators don't have a dyson sphere of quadrillions of cloned human girls should still apply to canon.
I don't really understand why I have to defend the setting so much. I mean why is it whenever I try to start a genetics discussion about why half-dragons or half-djinn or stuff like that makes no sense at all people just start eyerolling, but here people attack my setting constantly. I mean people don't spend half the posts of warhammer 40k quests arguing about unrealistic points of that setting. Even in Worm where basically every story thread of it that lasts more than 10 pages has a debate about the unrealistic parts of the setting, quest QMs don't have to defend their use of the setting.
Except then the entire human race suffers from the effects of uncontrolled demon populations. Which is a massive negative impact upon the human population. It would push the human population to the brink, and the humans wouldn't evolve past it for the same reason they don't evolve past diseases, the disease evolves faster.
So what? Evolution doesn't really care if a species drives themselves extinct because they persist on creating magical demons around them all the time. It's still not going to have individuals sacrifice themselves for a large number of strangers.
Also I spend like 2/3rds of the time I spend on this quest defending my setting. Half of these issues are issues that people should have had with PMMM canon as well. I mean any issue with why the Incubators don't have a dyson sphere of quadrillions of cloned human girls should still apply to canon.
I don't really understand why I have to defend the setting so much. I mean why is it whenever I try to start a genetics discussion about why half-dragons or half-djinn or stuff like that makes no sense at all people just start eyerolling, but here people attack my setting constantly. I mean people don't spend half the posts of warhammer 40k quests arguing about unrealistic points of that setting. Even in Worm where basically every story thread of it that lasts more than 10 pages has a debate about the unrealistic parts of the setting, quest QMs don't have to defend their use of the setting.
I'm really just objecting to the idea that the Incubators would rely on evolution of all things to shape the human population. Even just deciding to keep going for 50 years and reevaluate their strategies afterwards would be infinitely more plausible.
Month 11 was the last hunting death, so 20 months now, at least 21 by the time this could be done. Year and a half, almost two years.
Overall, really like your Bavarian Fire Drill plan. Does the segmentation in an organic fashion, while giving us strong inroads into their fledgling states.
Oh you can make quite a lot of money being a criminal, sure. Even low-mid level drug pushers can make six figures a year, fairly easily, as can a hard-working pickpocket. Prostitutes can make a lot more, especially ones that can stay eternally young and fit, though obviously we're not going there.
It's also soul-crushingly awful, living as a criminal, even when you get away with it. I assumed that's what you were getting at when you made the "Gather money, illegally" option pay so well: more money, more quickly, but serious morale consequences, ones that get worse as you do it longer. Plus attention, though you can mitigate that with magic and by paying off Kyubey.
Had more arguments about evolutionary pressures, but I'll concede the argument because it's not particularly productive.
I think it's the nature of the quest mechanics, and the sorts of people it attracts. Shepard Quest has a resource-management mechanic too, and I think something like 3/4th of the posts on that thread are everyone picking nits about the setting; one particularly memorable omake is of Yog writing a Mass Effect Physics Paper, and another is where he describes how to use eezo to destabilize the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, destroying all life in the galaxy in a massive burst of lethal radiation.
I really am not following your thought process here, and I think you ought to spell out your assumptions, because my conclusion is the opposite.
We have to incorporate Tokyo into the Serenes. Why would would we set up Tokyo as a separate power? That's just a huge waste of our resources for little return. It doesn't benefit us, it doesn't benefit the Tokyo girls, it doesn't benefit humanity.
I don't get why you are so afraid of the Serenes becoming powerful.
(). After all, Tokyo will certainly be Morale 0 for at least a few months, even if they don't embrace an XCom/criminality lifestyle and commit to it on a long-term basis, and will need the extra cubes.
