I always figured it was obvious that the wish had to be the true wish of the person making it. While it's possible that an very intellectual girl might truly wish for something that she has carefully thought through first, most middle school girls are not going to be like that. Sayaka doesn't wish for Kyousuke to be fully healed because her real wish is that he will be able to play the violin again. Wishes aren't driven by logic, they are driven by emotion.
Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)
- Thread starter inverted_helix
- Start date
I always figured it was obvious that the wish had to be the true wish of the person making it. While it's possible that an very intellectual girl might truly wish for something that she has carefully thought through first, most middle school girls are not going to be like that. Sayaka doesn't wish for Kyousuke to be fully healed because her real wish is that he will be able to play the violin again. Wishes aren't driven by logic, they are driven by emotion.
@inverted_helix magical enchantment seems to enhance the purpose of an item. I'm wondering if we couldn't help out with the chemical spill issue by using magic on the filters and neutralizers in major water processing areas.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
The power comes from the emotions of the girl. If they don't desire the wish, no energy for the Incubators~
That said, I've always liked the theory that the Incubator's inability to directly influence the wish comes from someone doing a Madoka-like wish made by someone in the past.
That said, I've always liked the theory that the Incubator's inability to directly influence the wish comes from someone doing a Madoka-like wish made by someone in the past.
Close, but not quite on the mark on what it is doing. You had the option to look into doing that, but the cost is high enough to even figure out how to do it that no one thought it viable.
Muddling through the Kyouko bit to get the update done, not turning out at all as I'd like but I just want to get the turn done at this point.
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Perception of purpose according to the magical girl doing the enchanting? Does it vary if you have a girl enchant a material that she can't see?
Turn 17
Turn 17
Mami is rather hurried this month as she distributes the girls allowance and gives many of them new assignments. You make sure to let them all know that the water situation is not dangerous to magical girls due to their magic providing them protection from it, but there's a lot to be done as a result of the side effects on the city anyways. Kit is asked to quit her job as a waitress after more than a year there as the economic situation has hurt her income there and she'll be more useful elsewhere. The dispatch crew is shut down and you organize a whole different hunting system from what you've used in the past. (-$2900)
The various mundane jobs left running this month go without any unexpected issues. The courier business has been heavily impacted by the reduced population, but that was already anticipated. Luckily Hainako's translation business is online and thus independent of local issues, and the Ogawa sisters' jobs haven't been too highly impacted. The business they work in has seen a notable rise in vacation days and sick days being cashed in at once, but their pay is rather insulated from their usefulness dropping. (+$13100)
You put together a new plan to mitigate the population flight issue. You have Kyuubey arrange some official documentation certifying the water of your house as safe while you buy a water filtration system for the house. First you talk to the house's owner though about cutting a bit off your rent to make up some of the cost of the filter. You find that he's all too eager to make a deal on it as apparently occupancy is plummeting across the city and just the fact that she is continuing the rent is a good deal. You manage to persuade him to full take the cost of the system out of the rent, discounting the rent $1000 for each of the next five months in exchange for them staying.
With his approval and the discount you move on to getting it installed. It's no surprise to you that the installation companies are difficult to reach, but you keep calling until you get through to one of them. You end up having to persuade a company from Kasamino to come out to install it. The technician who comes out to install it on seeing your young residents, despite you wearing an adult guise, warns you that this won't actually make the water safe. Though you note that the salespeople over the phone had incredibly carefully danced around the issue and in no way had said so one way or another. You assure him you're taking other precautions though you thank him for admitting it. (-$5000)
Kyuubey comes through with paperwork after a few days which presents and incredible amount of authenticity for something that never had an actual government inspection associated with it. There's even a government website you access that verifies it. (-2 grief cubes)
With that in hand you go about persuading the parents that wanted to leave to let their daughters stay at your boarding house. The girls try to pressure them to let them stay, and your documents and equipment are quite persuasive. Many of them were just planning to stay outside the city in nearby cities and commute anyways, and others considered it a temporary relocation. Between you and their own daughters you manage to sway almost all the worried parents to let their daughters remain here. Unfortunately you weren't able to quite make that all, it seems 11-year-old Kaori's mother isn't quite willing to let her stay in the city in a boarding house while she leaves the city. You make sure to get their new address and quietly ensure that Kaori has a few cartons (units) of precious grief cubes. You tell her to call often and take no risks in someone else's territory; you'll figure something out as soon as you can. The amount of tears from everyone was crushing, but you reassure them all that they'll see her again; you'll make sure of it. Her mother is rather boggled given her lack of context on why it had prompted so much crying.
You press everyone into a new round of training in defensive combat in preparation for a new form of hunting this month. Defending a wounded comrade is always a risky proposition and liable to lead to more injuries. So you focus on spreading around the skills and tricks everyone has come up with and training them in how to watch for another at the same time as themselves. Hopefully they'll be a bit better at protecting each other now. (-2% pair casualties, -1% pack casualties)
After the intense training you send out the girls in pairs with a little worry given they've been used to working in larger groups. You try to make sure the rosters are organized to give them the best combinations of skills and caution them that calling for backup if they can't handle something is an option, and that without the dispatchers they should make extra sure of their limits. Your worries are quite unfounded though as they manage to collect a huge haul of grief cubes this month without any real injuries at all. (+33 grief cubes)
Going to meet with Kyouko again after so long has your nerves terribly rattled. You end up delaying it for much of the month with all the other things you needed to get done. You hadn't exactly parted on the best of terms. When her family died she'd had a bit of a breakdown. You'd provided all the care and grief cubes she'd needed, but she had been broken badly somewhere inside where you could quite reach. She had argued with you over everything, and eventually it came to a head with her claiming that you couldn't save anyone besides yourself, let alone everyone.
You go out with gifts of food prepared and dragging along little Yuma for an extra edge and head straight into the territory you once held together with her. It's rather nostalgic seeing these places, but the whole area feels palpably depressed, like a wet blanket laid across the entire area. You keep Yuma close and have to resist the urge to enter the miasmas you pass by. Kyouko has not been properly keeping her territory clear, the miasma would never have gotten this thick when you were here.
You find Kyouko at an arcade, one of your top guesses for where she'd be actually; it seems her habits haven't changed too much. She looks like she's seen a ghost when she sees you waiting outside. You manage to persuade her to at least talk to you with the promise of food: she never could turn that down. It's obvious that she's very conflicted on it though.
You tell her what you've spent the last year and a half doing while she eats: building a safe life for everyone, not just the strongest. She's not really sold on it though. She tells you once again that looking out for anyone beyond yourself is going to get you hurt. There's little heat to it though, unlike the last time you had this conversation. You kind of dance around the issues you know might upset her or make her defensive. You do better than you expected just getting her to carry on a calm conversation with you, but getting her to throw in her lot with a group just isn't happening this month it seems. She's unconvinced that working together is anything but holding yourself down, especially given the nature of limited resources.
You head back after assuring her she can come by or call you any time, knowing better than to push the issue too quickly with her. She surprises you by saying she might take you up on that offer.
The scouting of area 5 brings back mediocre reports. A single green seems to be run ragged sweeping through the area trying to scrape out enough to get by from a territory worth a single grief cube. Recruiting her for a more stable life should be relatively simple (+30% diplomacy chance Area 5.) Area 8 is a large territory that can probably support 10 grief cubes easily, but it's quite populated with various girls, scouting that whole area might have been a bit overambitious. It seems like there are around 7 greens and 3 vets in the area though they aren't really organized into a group mostly working in pairs or singles, the demon strength in the area is edging into quite a dangerous level, but Kyouko has been keeping them out of her own territory quite violently at times. (+25% diplomacy chance)
Luckily there are no grief spirals this month, it seems you've gotten lucky. Population of Mitakihara continues to decline this month.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Resources
- 5 Green Meguca, 23 Veteran Meguca, 1 Elite Meguca (Mami +10% persuasive)
- Upkeep: 7 Veteran, 5 Green
- 1.5 vet demon finding training (+20% grief cubes)
- 1.5 vet on pack tactics (-4% pack hunting, -2% pair hunting)
- 2 greens working jobs (+$2000)
- 1 veteran (Hainako) Translation service (+$3000, immune to economic effect)
- 3 veteran + 3 green working courier business (Minimum 3 vets)
- Upkeep: 7 Veteran, 5 Green
- Grief Cubes 26
- Money: $14,560
- $580 upkeep on cellphones (-2% solo hunting, -1% pair hunting)
- $400 upkeep on cable (increased due to new housing)
- $3000 upkeep on apartments
- $4000 upkeep on house ($3000 for next 4 months)
- $2900 upkeep on stipend
- Morale: [4 of 10] Worries about family members were still pretty severe, but morale has begun to recover a little from the initial shock. Grief cube stores are still worryingly low, especially with declining capacity.
- Assets
- Tiny household shrine: Somewhat reduces losses to morale from deaths. (Bonus Increased by omake)
- Shields: -3% Casualties
- Basic General Combat Training: -1% Casualties (Decaying due to turnover).
- Basic Solo Combat Training: -1% Pack Hunting, -2% pair hunting, -3% Solo Hunting (May decay with losses or recruitment).
- Defending Others Training: -2% Pair Hunting, -1% Pack Hunting (May decay with losses or recruitment).
- Housing (29/53)
- Apartments (25 capacity)
- House (25 capacity)
- Mami's Apartment (HQ of sorts) (Can be traded for $1200 per turn)
- Small Courier Business (+$7600 per turn, affected by economic event, reduced income)
- Territory
- Urban
- Demon Status: Average +1
- Sustainable Harvest: 30 (-2 population flight)
- Rural
- Demon Status: Below Average -5
- Sustainable Harvest: 2
- Urban
[] 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.
-[] Rural: Base modified to 1.5, dispatch bonus does not apply.
[] Hunting Pairs: Magical Girls will hunt in pairs reducing the danger, but because they are not covering as much area their efficiency is reduced. Death is less likely.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward 1.6 Grief Cubes per Meguca assigned; 16% base casualty chance
-[] Rural: Base modified to 1.2, dispatch bonus does not apply.
[] 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
-[] Rural: Base modified to .9, dispatch bonus does not apply.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward: 2 grief cubes per Meguca assigned. 20% base casualty (significant injury or death) chance.
-[] Rural: Base modified to 1.5, dispatch bonus does not apply.
[] Hunting Pairs: Magical Girls will hunt in pairs reducing the danger, but because they are not covering as much area their efficiency is reduced. Death is less likely.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward 1.6 Grief Cubes per Meguca assigned; 16% base casualty chance
-[] Rural: Base modified to 1.2, dispatch bonus does not apply.
[] 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
-[] Rural: Base modified to .9, dispatch bonus does not apply.
[] Optional addon, Rotating Tactics: You could have your meguca rotate their ability use week by week in order to reduce the level of adaptation the demons develop. While it would result in an immediate increase in casualty rate due to loss of effectiveness compared to the current approach, it would reduce the ability of the demons to adapt.
Cost: +5% casualty rate; Reward: Reduction in rate of demon strength increase from overhunting, exact value unknown
[] Improved Dispatch: By exchanging physical cyclists patrolling your territory looking for demons for clairvoyants scanning the area from a afar you've managed to greatly improve the area each member can cover.
Cost: 1 clairvoyant per 20 territory (the original was 1 per 10 territory); Reward: -1% casualty rate, 30% increase grief cube gather(additive with demon finding same as before)
[] Demon Forecasting: It occurred to you that while the patterns seem random enough that you couldn't predict where demons would appear, that doesn't mean there aren't underlying patterns like the weather. Maybe someone with some more resources could make sense of them. Kyuubey admits that it is possible, but with only your girls' rather imprecise data results will be equally imprecise. Especially given just how many variables effect demon spawn rates due to their connection to human migratory patterns. He'd also charge you for use of the processing time.
Cost: 1 grief cube per turn; Reward: Additional 1.1x multiplier on grief cube gather rate. (Multiplicative rather than additive with others.)
[] Evac Team: A telepath will stay in rotating contact with all girls hunting, with them waiting to engage until a telepath line is freed up if necessary. The hunters will also call in their positions before engaging so that coordinates are available. If they are injured the telepath will relay the endangered girl's view of the scene to a teleporter that waits with her at readiness to pull the injured girl out of the situation.
Cost: 2 Veterans (Telepath and Teleporter); Reward: Lethality modifier on solo hunting reduced from 50% to 30%.
Cost: +5% casualty rate; Reward: Reduction in rate of demon strength increase from overhunting, exact value unknown
[] Improved Dispatch: By exchanging physical cyclists patrolling your territory looking for demons for clairvoyants scanning the area from a afar you've managed to greatly improve the area each member can cover.
Cost: 1 clairvoyant per 20 territory (the original was 1 per 10 territory); Reward: -1% casualty rate, 30% increase grief cube gather(additive with demon finding same as before)
[] Demon Forecasting: It occurred to you that while the patterns seem random enough that you couldn't predict where demons would appear, that doesn't mean there aren't underlying patterns like the weather. Maybe someone with some more resources could make sense of them. Kyuubey admits that it is possible, but with only your girls' rather imprecise data results will be equally imprecise. Especially given just how many variables effect demon spawn rates due to their connection to human migratory patterns. He'd also charge you for use of the processing time.
Cost: 1 grief cube per turn; Reward: Additional 1.1x multiplier on grief cube gather rate. (Multiplicative rather than additive with others.)
[] Evac Team: A telepath will stay in rotating contact with all girls hunting, with them waiting to engage until a telepath line is freed up if necessary. The hunters will also call in their positions before engaging so that coordinates are available. If they are injured the telepath will relay the endangered girl's view of the scene to a teleporter that waits with her at readiness to pull the injured girl out of the situation.
Cost: 2 Veterans (Telepath and Teleporter); Reward: Lethality modifier on solo hunting reduced from 50% to 30%.
[] 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 25% per Meguca, 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.
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 25% per Meguca, 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.
[] Improve Housing: More Apartments: Currently the girls are packed in around 5 to an apartment. You could get some more apartments and reduce the crowding.
Cost: $6,000 and 1 Veteran Meguca; Reward More housing capacity (Limit increased by 15), ongoing cost +3000$ per month or you get kicked out. Payable at the beginning of the month. (not repeatable)
[] Improve Housing: 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: $10,000 and 3 Veteran Meguca; Reward House (for up to 25 Meguca extra capacity), ongoing cost 4000$ per month or you get kicked out. Payable at the beginning of the month.
[] Increased Stipend: Giving the girls more money will further improve their morale a little bit.
Cost: $200 per Meguca; Reward: Improved Morale. Chance of success: 100%
[] Purchase Bicycles: While getting bicycles for everyone is quite expensive given you have so many people and so little income; it would make your girls somewhat more mobile. You could of course have them share bicycles as well, since it's likely that you won't need them all at the same time much.
Cost: $150 per bicycle, specify amount (17/28); Reward: More mobility
[] Makeshift skateboards: It also occurs to you that you could probably get by with just whipping up some basic skateboards by hand. It would save a lot of money but cost a little labor, it's also not something anyone has experience with doing, so success is chancy.
Cost: $1000, 2 Meguca; Chance of success 50% (only part of monetary cost lost on failure); Reward: Makeshift skateboards for everyone, more mobility
[] Start your own business, restaurant: Starting a restaurant is a fairly complex proposition. You can get a family rate loan to get the startup capital but it will still be tough going breaking into the market, most restaurants do fail afterall. You at least have the advantage that you count labor costs as a profit to your group though. Smoothing out the paperwork will also be a bit more costly with Kyuubey. You'll have to deal with a tougher market and one you don't have experience in, but the potential market size is much larger if you manage to do well.
Cost: $500k debt, 4 grief cubes, 2 Veteran +4 Meguca; Reward: Income scaling up over initial 3 month startup period to 10k a month after loan payment; potential to increase size of operation. Chance of Success: 60%
[] Start your own business, healing: Now might be a great chance to start this business, with a lot of people interested in extra ways to protect themselves. Specify your pricing (this will affect how many people take our offer).
Cost: Minimum 1 veteran meguca, .5-1 grief cubes per customer, attention; Reward: ??? Highly variable. Likely to increase over time.
Cost: $6,000 and 1 Veteran Meguca; Reward More housing capacity (Limit increased by 15), ongoing cost +3000$ per month or you get kicked out. Payable at the beginning of the month. (not repeatable)
[] Improve Housing: 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: $10,000 and 3 Veteran Meguca; Reward House (for up to 25 Meguca extra capacity), ongoing cost 4000$ per month or you get kicked out. Payable at the beginning of the month.
[] Increased Stipend: Giving the girls more money will further improve their morale a little bit.
Cost: $200 per Meguca; Reward: Improved Morale. Chance of success: 100%
[] Purchase Bicycles: While getting bicycles for everyone is quite expensive given you have so many people and so little income; it would make your girls somewhat more mobile. You could of course have them share bicycles as well, since it's likely that you won't need them all at the same time much.
Cost: $150 per bicycle, specify amount (17/28); Reward: More mobility
[] Makeshift skateboards: It also occurs to you that you could probably get by with just whipping up some basic skateboards by hand. It would save a lot of money but cost a little labor, it's also not something anyone has experience with doing, so success is chancy.
Cost: $1000, 2 Meguca; Chance of success 50% (only part of monetary cost lost on failure); Reward: Makeshift skateboards for everyone, more mobility
[] Start your own business, restaurant: Starting a restaurant is a fairly complex proposition. You can get a family rate loan to get the startup capital but it will still be tough going breaking into the market, most restaurants do fail afterall. You at least have the advantage that you count labor costs as a profit to your group though. Smoothing out the paperwork will also be a bit more costly with Kyuubey. You'll have to deal with a tougher market and one you don't have experience in, but the potential market size is much larger if you manage to do well.
Cost: $500k debt, 4 grief cubes, 2 Veteran +4 Meguca; Reward: Income scaling up over initial 3 month startup period to 10k a month after loan payment; potential to increase size of operation. Chance of Success: 60%
[] Start your own business, healing: Now might be a great chance to start this business, with a lot of people interested in extra ways to protect themselves. Specify your pricing (this will affect how many people take our offer).
Cost: Minimum 1 veteran meguca, .5-1 grief cubes per customer, attention; Reward: ??? Highly variable. Likely to increase over time.
[] Enchanting, Secondary Properties: Further investigate just what determines what property gets boosted. Katsuko begs you not to let Keiko try hypnotism.
Cost:3 months of: 2 Veteran Meguca, 3 Grief Cube, $1000; Reward: Information on deeper effects of enchanting. Chance of success: 60%
[] Enchanting, Duration: Your budding researchers picked up a sort of effect similar to layered insulation holding in heat longer. They would like more resources to investigate this. They might be able to make enchantments last longer after a magical girl lets go of them this way, though they don't have much immediate idea as to the usefulness of that.
Cost:2 months of: 2 Veteran Meguca, 2 Grief Cube, $1000; Reward: Step towards long term enchantments.
[] Research, Purification: Generally speaking real magical girls aren't like Sailor Moon with direct purifying magic. You could look into purifying the city's water supply, but you'll want to do it fast if you want to have any impact at all, and you're really not sure what you could do about it.
Cost: 4 Veteran Meguca, 4 grief cubes; Reward: Ability to cleanse water; Chance of Success: 25%
Cost:3 months of: 2 Veteran Meguca, 3 Grief Cube, $1000; Reward: Information on deeper effects of enchanting. Chance of success: 60%
[] Enchanting, Duration: Your budding researchers picked up a sort of effect similar to layered insulation holding in heat longer. They would like more resources to investigate this. They might be able to make enchantments last longer after a magical girl lets go of them this way, though they don't have much immediate idea as to the usefulness of that.
Cost:2 months of: 2 Veteran Meguca, 2 Grief Cube, $1000; Reward: Step towards long term enchantments.
[] Research, Purification: Generally speaking real magical girls aren't like Sailor Moon with direct purifying magic. You could look into purifying the city's water supply, but you'll want to do it fast if you want to have any impact at all, and you're really not sure what you could do about it.
Cost: 4 Veteran Meguca, 4 grief cubes; Reward: Ability to cleanse water; Chance of Success: 25%
[]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.
[] Repeat Basic General Combat Training: We have a lot of new members. Give them the same training our older members had (and maybe give a refresher course for our older members)
Cost: 1.5 Veterans; Reward: -2% casualty rate on all Hunting actions (From -1%)
[] Telepathic Coordination: Communication during combat could be better. Telepathy is rarely used in favor of yelling, since it's difficult to maintain telepathy in combat. Perhaps some practice with it will help though. As most girls struggle to communicate with telepathy to more than one at a time even outside of combat this will be most useful between two girls.
Cost: 3 veterans, 1 veteran upkeep; Reward: -2% paired casualties, -1% pack hunting casualties
[] Rising Stars: In the time SIMP has been in existence you've noticed that you have a couple girls that stand out from the rest. With some personal training to hone their skills and push them to their limits and beyond they might be able to make it to Elite status. This can be run for up to two candidates at a time.
Cost: 1 Elite, 1-2 Veterans, 1 grief cube per candidate; Reward: Elite promotion; Time: 3 months maximum; Chance of success: 30% per month on each girl, if they succeed they are immediately freed from the program for use, if they fail all 3 months they lose elite candidacy as they proved not strong enough.
Current Elite Candidates: Kaoru, Taya
Cost: 3 Meguca, 1 Veteran Meguca; Reward: Raises one Green Meguca to veteran status.
[] Repeat Basic General Combat Training: We have a lot of new members. Give them the same training our older members had (and maybe give a refresher course for our older members)
Cost: 1.5 Veterans; Reward: -2% casualty rate on all Hunting actions (From -1%)
[] Telepathic Coordination: Communication during combat could be better. Telepathy is rarely used in favor of yelling, since it's difficult to maintain telepathy in combat. Perhaps some practice with it will help though. As most girls struggle to communicate with telepathy to more than one at a time even outside of combat this will be most useful between two girls.
Cost: 3 veterans, 1 veteran upkeep; Reward: -2% paired casualties, -1% pack hunting casualties
[] Rising Stars: In the time SIMP has been in existence you've noticed that you have a couple girls that stand out from the rest. With some personal training to hone their skills and push them to their limits and beyond they might be able to make it to Elite status. This can be run for up to two candidates at a time.
Cost: 1 Elite, 1-2 Veterans, 1 grief cube per candidate; Reward: Elite promotion; Time: 3 months maximum; Chance of success: 30% per month on each girl, if they succeed they are immediately freed from the program for use, if they fail all 3 months they lose elite candidacy as they proved not strong enough.
Current Elite Candidates: Kaoru, Taya
[] Group sports day: You'll take the time to organize a full group outing to have some fun in a park and play some games, it will have to be fully mundane though as going out to somewhere secluded likely would take too much time.
Cost: 1 Veteran Meguca (representative of one day for everyone essentially, since you are now mostly vets); Reward: Increase to morale (group cohesion)
[] Fun with magic: It's kind of a sad statement about magical girl life that you don't really get to play with your magic, it's too costly to use it much beyond what you need to use to get grief cubes. You might be able to afford to ease up on such restrictions and let people have fun with magic for once.
Cost: +0.1 grief cube to upkeep cost per girl; Reward: Increase to morale, you actually get to play with magic a little rather than just use it to fight, possible other effects
[] Scout Area X: You can deploy a veteran to scout out one of the territories around you stealthily. They should be able to gauge the demon strength there and the magical girls status there without tipping them off, hopefully.
Cost: 1 Veteran; Chance of success: 70%; Reward: information on demon strength, support capacity of the territory, and status of current magical girls in the territory, bonus to diplomatic efforts.
[] Talk to Kyouko, she'll come around eventually surely.
Cost: Mami; Reward: Variable; Chance of Success: ???
Cost: 1 Veteran Meguca (representative of one day for everyone essentially, since you are now mostly vets); Reward: Increase to morale (group cohesion)
[] Fun with magic: It's kind of a sad statement about magical girl life that you don't really get to play with your magic, it's too costly to use it much beyond what you need to use to get grief cubes. You might be able to afford to ease up on such restrictions and let people have fun with magic for once.
Cost: +0.1 grief cube to upkeep cost per girl; Reward: Increase to morale, you actually get to play with magic a little rather than just use it to fight, possible other effects
[] Scout Area X: You can deploy a veteran to scout out one of the territories around you stealthily. They should be able to gauge the demon strength there and the magical girls status there without tipping them off, hopefully.
Cost: 1 Veteran; Chance of success: 70%; Reward: information on demon strength, support capacity of the territory, and status of current magical girls in the territory, bonus to diplomatic efforts.
[] Talk to Kyouko, she'll come around eventually surely.
Cost: Mami; Reward: Variable; Chance of Success: ???
[] Expand territory X, by force: The demons in Mitakihara have grown strong, but you could try to take over adjacent territories where they aren't as strong. The magical girls in those areas probably won't take kindly to this.
Cost: PvP combat; Reward: New territory with weaker demons
[] Expand territory X, by diplomacy: If you can convince them to join your group you may be able to safely incorporate others' territories.
Cost: 1 Green, 1 Veteran; Reward: Meguca from territory recruited, new territory; Chance of Success: 30% (Mami bonus applicable)
-[] Addon, Bribery: Giving the girls some money might help them realize just how good for them cooperation could be.
Cost: $150 per girl in the territory; Reward: +1d10% success chance
-[] Addon, Intimidate: Bring additional Veterans to intimidate the other girls into accepting if they know what is good for them
Cost: 1 extra Veteran, -morale of new girls if successfully recruited; Reward: +5% chance of success. Can be chosen repeatedly.
[] Outpost(s): Let the girls whose parents want to leave go, but have quite a few vets follow along to try to set up a new enclave at their new locations. Resource pools will remain somewhat linked so long as distance is not too high.
Cost: 1 random meguca +5 Veterans +Mami, -morale from being apart, $2000 startup for a single apartment (5/5) in the new area +$1000 upkeep on new apartment, Ire of magical girls currently in that area. Reward: Access to new territories, more widespread SIMP.
Cost: PvP combat; Reward: New territory with weaker demons
[] Expand territory X, by diplomacy: If you can convince them to join your group you may be able to safely incorporate others' territories.
Cost: 1 Green, 1 Veteran; Reward: Meguca from territory recruited, new territory; Chance of Success: 30% (Mami bonus applicable)
-[] Addon, Bribery: Giving the girls some money might help them realize just how good for them cooperation could be.
Cost: $150 per girl in the territory; Reward: +1d10% success chance
-[] Addon, Intimidate: Bring additional Veterans to intimidate the other girls into accepting if they know what is good for them
Cost: 1 extra Veteran, -morale of new girls if successfully recruited; Reward: +5% chance of success. Can be chosen repeatedly.
[] Outpost(s): Let the girls whose parents want to leave go, but have quite a few vets follow along to try to set up a new enclave at their new locations. Resource pools will remain somewhat linked so long as distance is not too high.
Cost: 1 random meguca +5 Veterans +Mami, -morale from being apart, $2000 startup for a single apartment (5/5) in the new area +$1000 upkeep on new apartment, Ire of magical girls currently in that area. Reward: Access to new territories, more widespread SIMP.
Terrible compared to what I wanted, but already held off for half a day more than I intended. Kyouko's action had a starting % chance of zero. I assessed a +15% for the two omakes applied to this. You then rolled a 74, nearly succeeding despite me. It was meant to take a lot longer to get her to this point.
You can pretty much consider the Old Friends scene how it went down.
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Diomedea
A piece of the continent
- Location
- The interblag
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Huh...10 potential recruits, but it's a ten cube area. Kyouko pushing everyone out of her territory must be raising the MG to cube ratio for the rest of Kasamino. On the other hand, if/when we get Kyouko on board, her area should support 8-11ish cubes and has only 1 MG in it. We might be forced to expand into that southern city instead. The rural areas, judging by the one seen, looks like a net-loss. We might want to work some other sort of arrangement for the rural MGs.
Hmmm... a lot more difficult to recruit Kyouko then I thought. I'm glad we made such a good start. The question is if we should continue our campaign next month, or back off for a month to give Kyouko some space.
I'm actually a little worried about Kyouko. Letting the demon population get out of control isn't like her. I wonder if the heavy demon levels are giving her depression or something. Could we offer to harvest some of her excess demon population and pay a tax or something? Sort of like sharecropping, we give Kyouko 1 out of every 3 Grief cubes we harvest? She gets grief cubes without having to take any risk.
@inverted_helix Question on Kaori. Is she in a nearby city? Or did she end up far away? Is her family thinking the move is a temporary one? Or have they made a decision to leave Mitakihara permanently?
We definitely need to recruit the 10 girls with 10 grief cube harvest levels. Yes it doesn't help us in the sense that we will still be over our safe grief cube harvest level next month, but it will greatly reduce the percentage we are over. Which means that demon strength will go up slower. Plus we will have a massive new influx of girls we can assign other duties to. Such as perhaps investigating how to purify the water, scouting additional areas, or other actions.
On the rural area, we can probably have Mami hunt those areas solo when she isn't doing something different. Expected harvest from Mami Solo hunting is 3.84 so roughly double our current. And with the Elite bonus plus our other bonuses Mami is safe.
On the hunting front... we could add Dispatch back, and for the cost of 1 girl (since we can reduce the # hunting by 2 and get the same amount) get 0% casualties with Pair Hunting again. That's the cheapest of all the options to reach 0% casualties. That leaves Mami and 4 vets left for action.
I want to send a group to check in on the situation with Kaori, and Mami's elite bonus would be great there. On the other hand we also really need Mami's diplomacy bonus to get those 10 girls in area 8. 30% + 25% + 10% = only 65% chance. Bribery will be expensive, but we should do it.
If we did that I guess we could send the other 3 girls to where Kaori is (actual since we are still counting Kaori as a member, that would be 2 Vets to see how Karoi is doing, and perhaps try to establish an outpost... Maybe just scout around and see what the lay of the land is like. Also to deliver grief cubes to Karoi.
We might also reduce the number of hunters by 1 to stay on the safe side of harvesting. That will cut into our grief cube harvest, but we probably need to do that anyway. Send that veteran to scout area 2?
Hmm... maybe we could approach Kyouko about expanding our courier business to her territory in Kasimono - doesn't require grief cube harvesting...
I'm actually a little worried about Kyouko. Letting the demon population get out of control isn't like her. I wonder if the heavy demon levels are giving her depression or something. Could we offer to harvest some of her excess demon population and pay a tax or something? Sort of like sharecropping, we give Kyouko 1 out of every 3 Grief cubes we harvest? She gets grief cubes without having to take any risk.
@inverted_helix Question on Kaori. Is she in a nearby city? Or did she end up far away? Is her family thinking the move is a temporary one? Or have they made a decision to leave Mitakihara permanently?
We definitely need to recruit the 10 girls with 10 grief cube harvest levels. Yes it doesn't help us in the sense that we will still be over our safe grief cube harvest level next month, but it will greatly reduce the percentage we are over. Which means that demon strength will go up slower. Plus we will have a massive new influx of girls we can assign other duties to. Such as perhaps investigating how to purify the water, scouting additional areas, or other actions.
On the rural area, we can probably have Mami hunt those areas solo when she isn't doing something different. Expected harvest from Mami Solo hunting is 3.84 so roughly double our current. And with the Elite bonus plus our other bonuses Mami is safe.
On the hunting front... we could add Dispatch back, and for the cost of 1 girl (since we can reduce the # hunting by 2 and get the same amount) get 0% casualties with Pair Hunting again. That's the cheapest of all the options to reach 0% casualties. That leaves Mami and 4 vets left for action.
I want to send a group to check in on the situation with Kaori, and Mami's elite bonus would be great there. On the other hand we also really need Mami's diplomacy bonus to get those 10 girls in area 8. 30% + 25% + 10% = only 65% chance. Bribery will be expensive, but we should do it.
If we did that I guess we could send the other 3 girls to where Kaori is (actual since we are still counting Kaori as a member, that would be 2 Vets to see how Karoi is doing, and perhaps try to establish an outpost... Maybe just scout around and see what the lay of the land is like. Also to deliver grief cubes to Karoi.
We might also reduce the number of hunters by 1 to stay on the safe side of harvesting. That will cut into our grief cube harvest, but we probably need to do that anyway. Send that veteran to scout area 2?
Hmm... maybe we could approach Kyouko about expanding our courier business to her territory in Kasimono - doesn't require grief cube harvesting...
If we wait one more month before approaching the ten-cube area, that'll cut the greens in half. Definitely put that on the docket for the coming month, consider spreading out our housing to other cities as we expand so that problems like this don't hit so hard in the future.
-Rolls piles and piles of dice.-
They are planning to permanently relocate about 50 kilometers southeast to Iwata, just a bit off the lower left corner of your current map. At this point I suppose I should point out that I snatched my current map from Google Earth and made the real world Shizuoka City into Mitakihara, I looked quite a bit along the coast of Japan to pick out a city that matched the very limited information we have on Mitakihara and decided that one fit it pretty well as well as fitting other criterion that would be useful to my quest. I'm aware that it doesn't fit perfectly, but after a while of searching I decided it was close enough.
I should point out at this point that there is actually a lot of oscillation in number of girls in territories, but it's more often below the number of grief cubes because if it's above the support limit for very long they start dying off until they're below the support limit again. Though this doesn't stop the Incubators from contracting more as needed.
(It always being under the support limit in your experience is 1 part that the time spent under the support limit is larger than that spent above it, and 2 your dice being rigged.)
I was tempted to have it be above the support limit in this case since Kyouko is causing an artificially bad scenario here, but dice decided it's in a downswing point on the oscillation.
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Don't forget that when we add in a new area its strength is averaged with ours. Joining the 10-girl group will probably push our demon strength up by several points.
I'd much prefer to keep Mami dedicated to getting Kyouko on our side. (though truthfully her territory is what we need)
The issue is we're starting to take noticeable morale penalties due to our low grief cube count. I really don't want to dip any lower (or if we do it'd be to do a rotating tactics overhunt the very next turn)
Agreed on that, though getting the harvest is by far the important thing for us in terms of sustainability.
I'm actually considering doing a pack hunt+rotating tactics with everyone this turn. It'll dig us out of the grief cube hole, and hopefully the rotating tactics won't raise strengths too much. I'll wait to see what new options open up first though. (The clairvoyant dispatch and QB hunting analysis might radically change the math)
My current thoughts are:
Improved Dispatch: By exchanging physical cyclists patrolling your territory looking for demons for clairvoyants scanning the area from a afar you've managed to greatly improve the area each member can cover.
Cost: 1 clairvoyant per 20 territory (the original was 1 per 10 territory); Reward: -1% casualty rate, 30% increase grief cube gather(additive with demon finding same as before)
Demon Forecasting: It occurred to you that while the patterns seem random enough that you couldn't predict where demons would appear, that doesn't mean there aren't underlying patterns like the weather. Maybe someone with some more resources could make sense of them. Kyuubey admits that it is possible, but with only your girls' rather imprecise data results will be equally imprecise. Especially given just how many variables effect demon spawn rates due to their connection to human migratory patterns. He'd also charge you for use of the processing time.
Cost: 1 grief cube per turn; Reward: Additional 1.1x multiplier on grief cube gather rate. (Multiplicative rather than additive with others.)
With all these collection modifiers you're stacking up it's like some sort of agriculture industrialization process in terms of how much more efficient it's becoming.
Were there any other new options people wanted?
Also what to do about Kaori will be another thing up to you. There are actually a fair number of options I can come up with off the top of my head.
Also it's pretty likely when you rolled the diplomacy dice on area 8 that you'll see more of a partial success. On reconsideration it's probably too big to really recruit at once considering the next biggest you've had at once before was only 3 girls. I scaled up sizes a bit too much I think.
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Not sure, are you suggesting we wait another turn so that the greens die off? Or are you suggesting that we ought to get them this turn before the greens die off. My instincts are to get them now, even if it means we have to spare some extra grief cubes for a couple cycle this will increase our workforce by 25%! That's a huge gain in opportunities. We have the space for them too. And combined with Kyouko's territory we'd have a large enough chunk of Kasimono to begin expanding the courier service there.
I thought you did a great job picking a place for this. Does some Google Map viewing...
Okay, so I'm assuming Iwata is your own made up name? Since the city to the south on Google is Yaizu, and the one south of that is either Yoshida or Oigawa. No probalme with, just want to make sure I've centered in on the right spot...
Okay... that's not too far. 50 kilometers, that's maybe 1 to 2 hours of travel time right? So plenty close enough for us to keep in contact and share grief cubes. Would you say it's even close enough for Kaori to commute to go hunting with us? Hmm... probably not... except maybe on the weekends.
Definitely viable as an Outpost location.
Ahh... okay, rereading that again, the area has demons above average in strength, they've been over hunting....
Good point about the Demon strength being higher. I missed that on my first run through. Although I think it's still a possible choice as we could gain a large number of girls. My thought is that we scout Kaori's area this month, while getting the 10 girls to join us. Then with the extra girl power next month we can establish an outpost around Kaori. We should be able to support two bases now with the numbers we would have. That would also allow us to send some of our homeless girls to Iwata and relieve a lot of the pressure on our main Mitakihara base.
The extra girl power would also let us get so of the other bonuses.
I too definitely want to get both Kyouko and her territory. However, the QM comments make me think this is a more long term effort. I'm thinking it might be better to back off a bit on the strong push to get Kyouko to join. Instead I think this month we propose her letting us expand the courier business into her territory. Since we aren't intruding on her territory for hunting I think it has a strong possibility of passing and shouldn't need Mami's full attention. That helps build a little bit of trust.
The following month I think we propose hunting her excess demons and offer her a percentage. Oh, are you willing to let us hunt 6 grief cubes worth? We'll pay you 2 grief cubes for the privilege, (ie. 33%). Then after a month or two of that, and expanding to the rest of Kasimono, we can pitch joining to her again.
Sometimes you just have to let a person think about things and work around the edges. Kyouko's always been that type of person in my mind, so I think going softly for the next month or two is the best plan.
True, we could do pack hunting, I think overhunting is more something we do next month though. Good point that we can use the rotating tactics.
Improved Dispatch is a no brainer. Instead of deciding between 2 girls hunting or 3 girls getting the dispatch so we get the safety bonus no it's between 2 girls hunting with no safety bonus, and 2 girls on dispatch with safety bonus.
Demon Forecasting is a much less an obvious choice. It's only an obvious choice if adding it is cheaper then adding an extra girl.
Pack Hunting (urban) = 2.8 per a girl
Pair Hunting (urban) = 3.6 per a girl
Solo Hunting (urban) = 4.5 per a girl
That means we have to have a target of over 28 grief cubes before adding Demon Forecasting beats adding an extra girl - and we still have to pay Kuybey!
Times when it might still be useful:
If we have other things we need to spend girls time on (so there is a premium we are willing to pay to send less girls hunting)
If hunting is overly dangerous and we want to minimize risk by minimizing the number of girls hunting.
I haven't run the numbers yet, but my instincts say to run another Pair Hunt with Improved Dispatch. (we do have two clairvoyants free right?)
We have 3 magical girls that are capable of healing. Sayaka, Yuma, and Hinako. I think we could come up with some kind of excuse. "Hey Mom! Sayaka is really good at giving back rubs. So I thought maybe her giving you one would make you feel better, and I asked her to come with me."
Do you have a suggestion on how a more stealthy effort would work? Try to visit while the patient is asleep?
Grief cube cost is really dependent on how likely it is that people get sick. From what I can tell it's not that high, since we didn't get any events of family members getting sick.
We could research the purify the water supply - it just costs 4 Vets and has a 25% chance of success. Although with our rolls maybe we ought to have tried it...
Keiko! Torture more kittens!
In America, faith healing ceremonies are pretty commonplace, yes. The probability of detection would mostly depend on a) the probability of success of modern medicine alone, and b) how dramatic the recovery was. If we're talking something like "only 10% of people hospitalized ever regain full mobility" and/or "average recovery time of two weeks was shortened to a day for these two patients", then someone's definitely going to take notice, even in the US. If most people recover fully, and do so relatively quickly, it's not going to be an issue ...but it's also not going to be a huge morale boost.
But none of that matters, because we're not in America.
... ordinary detective work?
I'll grant you the water contamination bit, though; that slipped my mind.
a) America is, by and large, not a nation of financially secure people. More generally, the inverse correlations between religiosity and urbanity*, religiosity and per-capita GDP, and religiosity and income stability are all well-known and well-established; so too is the US's position as a notable outlier amongst the nations of the world in the second category.
* In the sense of "urban", rather than "urbane".
b) I was not able to find any inconclusive statistics. All the ones I saw were quite clear on what they measured. I am curious what you mean by that.
on that last bit. I have been able to find no evidence of faith healing being a widely accepted and practiced Shinto tradition at any time after the Meiji Restoration. (I am not a resident or citizen of Japan, just a geek who researches obscure things for fun; but on that basis alone I would still expect to have come into contact with Japanese faith-healing practices if they were widespread. The closest thing I can think of is Shinto-style exorcisms, and I am not aware of anyone taking those seriously outside of blatantly fantastic fiction.)
I'll be addressing what you claim as provided citations below.
... a question to the females in the audience, if we have one. Can I reasonably apply the term "mansplaining" to this paragraph?
I'm at a loss as to how you could possibly think, given the post to which you were replying, that there was anything in here that I wasn't aware of. I can understand setting it out for the sake of clarity, but your patronizing tone is not at all appreciated.
Largely, no... but they're also not very common and, especially in the case of "Folk Shinto", their membership is strongly skewed rurally. Indeed, "Folk Shinto" isn't even a religion in the usual sense; it would reasonably be better translated "folk Shinto", as it refers to uninstitutionalized practices and superstitions typically found only in very rural Japan.
Okay, there are a couple of things wrong here.
1)I have no idea where you're getting 2.5 million fromThat 2.5 million figure in Britannica is from 1980, and as such is very out of date. Wikipedia cites the 2002 statistics for a figure of 1.75 million (page 83/PDF p.97, row #1, last data column), and the official 2012 statistics give 1.2 million (page 87/PDF p.101, row #1, last data column). This is quite a precipitous fall! I suspect practitioners of Tenrikyo are disproportionately elderly, but I cannot provide statistics and am not entirely sure where to look for them.
For comparison, it's far more common to claim Buddhism as one's religion than Tenrikyo: the Jōdo Shinshū sect alone comes in at 6.9 million (the Heisei 24 report again, page 73/PDF p. 87, row #5, last column). Some of that may simply be due to a custom of registering at Buddhist temples (dating from Edo-era enforcement of such) rather than deep or commonly-practiced faith. (Here is an explanation of the situation from a Buddhist perspective.)
(The Wikipedia page for Jōdo Shinshū gives a figure of 20% of Japan as identifying with it, but this is likely incorrect; I calculate the 2012 percentage as 5.4%. Note that, according to the Monbusho report, as of 2012 this is the single most commonly self-ascribed religious sect in Japan.)
2) Tenrikyo isn't actually a branch of Shinto, either theologically or organizationally speaking. Historically it was categorized as part of "Sect Shinto" (probably due to pre-WWII restrictions on religious practice), and often it's still mistaken for a branch of Shinto, but it hasn't actually been considered part of Shinto in a long time. See here; the Monbusho Yearly Reports on Religion linked above, which classify Tenrikyo under "other religions" (and have since at least 1995 = Heisei 7); here, where a self-identified practitioner of Tenrikyo personally denies it; and here, where Tenrikyo is described as having renounced the connection.
Interestingly, this thesis by Kazuya Hara (apparently a Shinto apologetic piece, although I've only skimmed it) references Tenrikyo alongside two other sects when describing Sect Shinto:
Hara presents Sect Shinto as admittedly a catch-all term, but specifically describes these three sects as faith-healing sects. Exceptio probat regulam. (In particular, searching the rest of the PDF for the word "heal" may also be enlightening.)
3) The Britannica article notes that "[t]he modern sect emphasizes modern medical care" anyway. The fact that it refers to Tenrikyo as being Shinto without further explanation does call Britannica's accuracy here into question, but nonetheless, there it is.
... then you'd be making a poor analogy, from which to draw poor conclusions.
Wow, no. Not at all, not in any way except possibly per-capita numbers. Shrine Shinto is best compared, if anything, to "Christmas and Easter" worshippers: the practice of showing up on major traditional holidays and not bothering with the rest of it. (Relatedly, I have just learned the wonderful term "Poinsettia and Lily Catholic".) However, it makes up the vast majority of residents of Japan (90+ million), and as such there is no particular stigmatism attached to it.
Sect Shinto, on the other hand, is a catch-all term (as Hara notes); as currently defined by the Monbusho, it has approximately 3.6 million adherents. (The only notably-sized sect appears to be Izumo Oyashiro-kyo, at about 1.2 million; Konkokyo has about 400K, and nothing else breaks 300K.) Considering it as a single monolithic entity is in this context is a poor thing to do; it would be better to analogize to offbeat* Christianity in general. (Although I suspect the groups that are more like mainstream Shinto may well have opinions more like, say, mainstream Judaism.)
Folk Shinto is basically this. Calling it a sect feels mildly ridiculous, and certainly doesn't seem helpful in this context. (The Monbusho report scarcely mentions it at all: just a passing note in an introductory paragraph.)
Granting for the sake of argument that Tenrikyo specifically commonly practices faith healing, it might still seem appropriate to compare them to Mormons based on that and numbers... but that's overlooking the fact that, in the US, faith healing is far more accepted, and not a clear differentiator between Mormonism and more mainstream Christian sects. A more accurate analogy to a Tenrikyo faith-healing ceremony might be door-to-door missionary work. (On the other hand, if faith healing is no longer particularly common or promoted amongst followers of Tenrikyo, polygamy would be a closer match.)
* Don't read too much into this word; I just couldn't think of a better antonym for "mainstream".
Well, this one I'll grant you.
I'm not sure how you could draw that bolded conclusion from anything you've cited. I think I've addressed the latter part well enough, though.
Look to the beam in your own eye.
I'll grant that, early on, what hostility we would encounter would be due to people being officious as much as suspicious; but, Akihabara notwithstanding, "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down" is still a common proverb in Japan.
What's important, though, is that we would be remembered, and any doctor aware of the miraculous recoveries of any two of our targets would think to start looking a little deeper. (Three, and it definitely wouldn't stop at "think".)
... this tangent reminds me that we should probably poke at the in-game religion "tech-tree" sometime.
This section is what delayed my response until I had time to calm down. I apologize for coming across as patronizing. That was not my intent. I wanted to explicitly recognize that you may have different views, which in my experience is a way of showing respect and keeping a debate cordial and friendly.
I really do not understand where you get off accusing me of mansplaining though. As this is the internet, I had no way of knowing that you were a woman before you made this accusation. I would have given the same response to a man. I find your decision to accuse me of sexism because of a disagreement to be extremely offensive and rude, and completely uncalled for. Even if you thought I was being patronizing, I cannot understand how you thought that is anything but excessive.
I would like to point out, that your diagnosis of Americans not being financially stable uses the logical fallacy of equivocation. Truly, Americans are not currently financially stable compared to Americans 20 years ago. However, that is a time series measurement of being financially secure, when the context of the question is clearly calling for a cross sectional measurement, comparing America with other nations, particularly Japan. Compared to the rest of the world, Americans are on the high end of being financially stable and secure. The comparison is particularly clear cut with Japan, as the stagnating economy Americans have been dealing with for the last 7 years has been a problem in Japan for the last 20 years, commonly referred to as The Lost Decades. Thus if the current level of financially stability in America is sufficient to generate a belief in faith healing, it must also be so in Japan.
This does not mean that I am right, or that you are wrong about Japan's level of openness to faith healings. Rather, that if there is less openness then we have in America, it cannot be due to Japan being relatively financially secure.
At this point, I think we should wait until LordPanther reports back, as he can give us some on the ground reporting of what Japan's attitudes are towards religion and faith healing.
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www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iwata,_Shizuoka I didn't change that name. The issue is that those cities tend to blur together with no clear borders at all, there's actually like half a dozen cities in a sort of blob together there.
Really it's meant as a tradeoff between whether you want an extra free meguca for doing other things that month or you want an extra grief cube. Sometimes you want the extra meguca-power.
People are careful about using bottled water when water supplies are contaminated, the odds are not too bad. Though you did take a minor continuing morale loss but you have a lot of morale modifiers that help stabilize it. (Many things give you a morale bonus per turn but only when you're below a limit.)
SV really needs a rolling laughing emote. Honestly I would not have been surprised if you guys had succeeded on it.
I'm going to edit my second omake of the Expansionist Subplot here.
For what it's worth, who's up for trying to stack 7 Omakes together so we can add Kyoko Sakura to the team on the second trip?
(Chronology: Prior to the disaster)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[Toshiko is established reacting to the disaster. Masako as character Toshiko is talking to. She starts arguing against her own idea simply because she's too embarassed to say anything.]
[Scene later with self-hatred and that in her mind they are all cowards. She starts writing- in private this time- out of frustration, then very carefully hides it]
[NOTING I HAVE WRITER'S BLOCK FOR THE TIME BEING]
For what it's worth, who's up for trying to stack 7 Omakes together so we can add Kyoko Sakura to the team on the second trip?
(Chronology: Prior to the disaster)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[Toshiko is established reacting to the disaster. Masako as character Toshiko is talking to. She starts arguing against her own idea simply because she's too embarassed to say anything.]
[Scene later with self-hatred and that in her mind they are all cowards. She starts writing- in private this time- out of frustration, then very carefully hides it]
[NOTING I HAVE WRITER'S BLOCK FOR THE TIME BEING]
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It also costs 4 cubes, or ~3% demon strength.
It seems like a pretty obvious choice to me. Think of it as an girl that we can use only for hunting actions and who we can add on/off at any time. If we ever have > 10 hunters, she's worth more than 1 girl hunting and thus worth paying for. (unless our #1 priority is lowering demon strength, to the point where we'd kill off our girls if it didn't have a morale penalty)
Speaking of which, do we have any idea about the penalty for going <0 strength now that our rural area has experienced it? Is it just the 0.25 multiplier or is there something else?
Maybe it's just me but I read the update as "didn't work, try again next time". The more we push the more likely it is that Kyouko will eventually concede and join the empire.
No. Usually QM prevent this Omake abuse by reducing the benefit of additional Omakes. As I'm pretty sure inverted_helix did since the first Omake was +10% and the second Omake was +%5. Additional Omakes are likely to be additionally reduced, and eventually add nothing at all.
That's what I said. Demon Forecasting is not obvious unless we are hunting above the break even point.
@notgreat What are your thoughts on the idea of establishing an outpost at Itawa? I'm thinking we scout this turn, and then establish the outpost next turn.
I'm actually thinking we should send as many extra scouts as possible so that we have a clear idea of most of the surrounding territories too.
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Kyouko's territory is at something like -10 to -15. Though you didn't really see that much of the effects since you weren't really properly surveying.
You aren't really noticing the effects in your rural territory unless you investigate mostly because you have no particular reason to go there. You passed through on the way to Kasamino and so did your scout of area 8, but that was it. The effects will be much more noticeable if it happens in areas you occupy, or when you do something in that territory again.
Just so we're clear here, killing SIMP members to save grief cubes is not an option.
Little of this little of that. You could brute force it by trying again and again, or you could go a more oblique way like Haman wants to.
I probably wouldn't drop it below 5% to be honest, since omakes are just such a giddy feeling to have, but I figure 5% was a decent trade off to make it small enough not to terribly unbalance things.
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Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but it's pretty obviously not worth it below that point, and will remain so unless recruiting people becomes the limiting factor (right now territory/cubes are the limiting factor) The casualty rate decrease given by the reduced people is more than counteracted by the increased demon strength.
The improved dispatch's math is actually much more complex. Right now it's clearly worth it, but as we continue to stack multipliers it will eventually become not worthwhile since its cost is applied per territory.
I'd consider it, but it goes right through semi-hostile territory (area 1 is a complete unknown). I'll have to see how the numbers work out before making my decision. Since none of the newly-scouted territories seem worth expanding to we have people available that I wasn't expecting. We definitely want to retrain general combat, 1.5 people for a +1% for ~12 turns is easily worth it. Maybe expanding to area 8 would be worthwhile, though it would push our casualty rate way up probably.
I could definitely go for scouting around there this turn with the intent of setting up an outpost if conditions are favorable.
Why not?
Though obviously we wouldn't waste actions on it, it'd just be through things like giving no cubes to grief spirals. That's killing members to save cubes, just not directly. Obviously the morale penalties are prohibitive, not to mention losing some of our crucial members now that they aren't nameless numbers. (IE if we lose our magic translator, we're DOOMED)
If we did do it directly, I'd be amazed if we didn't get a rebellion.
Also, I think you have some typos in the description for Demon Forecasting.
Diomedea
A piece of the continent
- Location
- The interblag
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Wow, look at you guys go. I'm a bit envious. Between work, my class, life, and my own writing, I have no time to be doing math analysis (still have time for good old political analysis anytime though ). I'll be happy to chime in with my opinions on morale, political, and general disposition (earlier, with our home city secured, there was no incentive to try to expand quickly. This disaster lights a nice little fire under our collective butts. Let's get more hunting grounds!!), but generally it seems like I'll be letting notgreat and Elder Haman do the heavy lifting. A little sad for me, but I'd just like to take the time to thank them for taking all this time (as well as our QM!).
). I'll be happy to chime in with my opinions on morale, political, and general disposition (earlier, with our home city secured, there was no incentive to try to expand quickly. This disaster lights a nice little fire under our collective butts. Let's get more hunting grounds!!), but generally it seems like I'll be letting notgreat and Elder Haman do the heavy lifting. A little sad for me, but I'd just like to take the time to thank them for taking all this time (as well as our QM!).Hmm now I'm no longer following. Based off my math it should effectively be an extra meguca worth of manpower (and equivalent cost) that you can toggle on and off as needed. Which should be a convenient utility option.
The way that "decay" actually works is I'm tracking your turnover. If you have a whole bunch of new people that weren't around when it was originally trained, then that triggers decay. Your last 12 turns were very low population change. If you started recruiting tons of people it won't last nearly as long.
I obviously meant directly killing them.
I'll fix these but I find it rather strange you brought these up; my turn options have been so horribly riddled with typos that it's embarrassing, but no one commented until now.
Sorry. The math load has just sort of gradually snuck up on me too.Wow, look at you guys go. I'm a bit envious. Between work, my class, life, and my own writing, I have no time to be doing math analysis (still have time for good old political analysis anytime though
It's a 10% boost, so if we have exactly 10 hunters then yes, it's worth exactly one meguca. If we go below 10 hunters it becomes less useful, and if we go above 10 hunters it becomes more useful. The cost to use it is one meguca's cube-cost. If we're at 9 or less hunters it's pretty much not worthwhile. (Though technically each hunter does also get the stipend and thus costs slightly more than 1 grief cube, so it may still be worth it at 9)
Right now we're at ~10 hunters so it's right at the balance point, but if we expand much at all then it's much better. (and if we switch to solo hunting, it becomes not worth it until we get back up to 10 hunters)
Ah, that's nice to know. If we were to grab the 10 girls, would that cause us to lose all the benefits and need to do a full retraining?
Most of the mistakes that I've seen before are small things that I can naturally skip over them. For some reason these just stuck out to me, IDK why.
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If it's 9 hunters then spending it gives you an effective bonus of .9 hunters without spending it.
Even at my lowball estimates of 6 hunters it still gives you the equivalent of an extra .6 hunters. It's extra hunting without spending the meguca cost of another hunter. Over two turns that's 1.2 hunters worth for 2 cubes at the worst case estimates. It's not quite a perfect conversion but it gives you quite a bit more flexibility considering the times you've needed more meguca-power.
No it would be another case of partial decay (unless you mean from the current situation of already partially decayed, then yes). Grabbing them will decay all your other ones that are subject to decay though.
Thing is though, it's actually relatively easy for us to get more meguca-power. What's difficult is getting the territory to support said meguca. Sure, it's trading 1 cube for 2-3, but all of those cubes are coming out of our territory budget. It's like how I'd be willing to trade ~1.5k/cube despite each meguca being able to hunt for 3-4 cubes but only gets an income of 1-2k- the cubes not coming from our territory is huge.
Also I somehow lost half of a sentence in my last post. Fix'd.