Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Shift hunting. We need the cubes, but not so desperately as to toss all the dice, just a few.
Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)
- Thread starter inverted_helix
- Start date
Shift hunting is fine by me.
Ugh; I've been trying to find time to write something more in-depth, but haven't had the time lately (probably won't until next year, frankly). Okay, quick thoughts:
[X] Aranfan
votes for; I can see he's still active around here, and he and I are usually on the same wavelength for a lot of things.
- This month went... poorly, even more poorly than we expected, but we did expect this month to be bad overall, since this is sort of a training month: we were sending Mami over to Hiko to learn how to control the interdictor artifact "manually", rather than relying on a heavy, difficult to move battery pack. We should be much more mobile next month, which means we can try the sort of running gun battles we obviously need to have to deal with packs of Class 3s.
- Really want to know how Heaven's Chosen is keeping magical power contained in crystals.
- I'm not sure if moving to the NE side of Tokyo is a good idea; probably need to ask Kyubey what the Class 3 movement patterns are like over there. If they're the same as they are in the west there's no point, but it's possible they're not wandering as carefully over there. It's rather telling that we don't see any teleporters in west Tokyo anymore; that seems to indicate that they're "hiding" on the other side of the city.
- One thing about super-low DS levels: @inverted_helix previously mentioned that when DS levels are low enough demons behave more like plants than animals. It stands to reason that at those levels there should probably be another bonus multiplier to how many cubes per unit time that can be harvested; it's not like the girls need to fight so much as gather, which ought to be much faster.
- That said, remember that vets doing solo hunting, even without an effective dispatch or demon finding training, gives 3 cubes per month per hunter, so even 700 girls would be able to drive up DS levels in a 1500-cube territory if they work at it. This can be easily modified by central dispatch and basic demon finding training for an additional ~0.4 cubes per hunter, and there's plenty of extra girls being kept in "cold storage" over in Nagoya. So we really don't need to worry much, yet, about not being able to hunt Tokyo effectively, even if Helix decides not to apply an extra hunting bonus for super-low DS levels.
[X] Aranfan
votes for; I can see he's still active around here, and he and I are usually on the same wavelength for a lot of things.
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Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
The problem here is that we can't really hunt Tokyo proper with something like 18 teleporting youma there, with just solo vets. That'd be like feeding them our girls on purpose.
Mini Turn: Dangerous Game
Mini-Turn Dangerous Game
[X] Expand the end-of-month planned hunting to include the extra days we have available. We can't make any coherent plans and practice them to be ready inside three days, and we'll need extra cubes to make up for the losses incurred taking out a few more Youma.
On the last week we spend 7 days doing a massive hunt in Hakone (Minamiashigara, Odawara, Hadano area = ~22 cubes) under the protection of the artifact (with Serena on guard to move to block any youma that attempt to enter Hakone area using non-teleportation). Serena is based on Mt. Hakone (different mountain) with teleport support to move her to block any attacking youma while dispatch team provides support.
Expected cubes from this: 18 vets (28 vets - the vets on the artifact, dispatch, or teleport teams) and 4 Elite pack hunting for 1/4 of a month produces 19.9 cubes.
+8 vets+1 elite recruit mid month
+9 vets temp
On the last week we spend 7 days doing a massive hunt in Hakone (Minamiashigara, Odawara, Hadano area = ~22 cubes) under the protection of the artifact (with Serena on guard to move to block any youma that attempt to enter Hakone area using non-teleportation). Serena is based on Mt. Hakone (different mountain) with teleport support to move her to block any attacking youma while dispatch team provides support.
Expected cubes from this: 18 vets (28 vets - the vets on the artifact, dispatch, or teleport teams) and 4 Elite pack hunting for 1/4 of a month produces 19.9 cubes.
+8 vets+1 elite recruit mid month
+9 vets temp
The first two days of the hunt proceed relatively without a hitch. Day three the youma seem to spend the whole day harassing your team and hardly anything gets done as you're constantly bouncing them back out with Serena with them never committing to an engagement, rather harassing you from beyond the interdiction's range and escaping when Serena arrives only to return when she leaves. The fourth day begins with a similar harassment but after Serena's team manages to inflict a few decent wounds they seem to have enough for a while.
The next three days pass without any Youma activity in the hunting area at all, which only serves to raise the tension slowly to a simmering pot of nerves. The lone Youma carrying out a short harassment campaign on the eighth day is almost a relief.
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Unfortunately, the ninth day proves that relief only an illusion. Kyoclone is leading a group of vets in hunting. Sheer luck really, though it doesn't seem that at the time. Suddenly it's as if the sun turned off and took all the heat and life from the world at the same time. Tingling creeps along her spine and pure despair grips her heart for a moment, like every bad feeling she's ever had is gripping her heart, and this is not a normal Youma miasma. Worse still, she can't feel her other half anymore, there's a level of terror to that which she can't even explain.
Practically on reflex she triggers her teleport charm. The magic fizzles completely, the interdiction artifact still active. She turns and sees the six vets she was leading. Hamasaki and Yamakage from the Serene core, and four more from the people that joined this month. All of them collapsed to the ground in emotional collapse. Hamasaki is shaking but manages to disable the interdiction field, but it's too late now, there's no way you can risk it. A teleport couldn't possibly succeed now. "Use your cubes, now!" she barks, their Soul Gems darkening visibly.
The buildings begin blurring into rock tunnels at a rapid rate. She gets her first view of the Beholder in person. Yamakage tries to cast a barrier, but instead of a shining coherent bubble, it's more something made of gossamer. Two more Youma appear, some sort of mud monster and a grotesque cross between a flying praying mantis and a human.
She can't possibly fight them. Even buying time would be impossible. She shivers as the twisting change in reality races past her. Burning much of the magic that made up her entire body, she summoned a rather ramshackle wall of blades, far less efficient than a real barrier girl's, and not even as strong normally, but with the girls behind her near useless, it was the best she could do.
"Run!" she shouted as she began to do the same, grabbing the two girls most out of it to carry with her. She kind of wishes she were Mami with her ribbons, she could have dragged them all. The other three girls took the hint and started running as well, the fourth actually having already started running before Kyoclone had even turned around.
Sprinting in the opposite direction she glanced back to see the Beholder reduce much of her blade barrier to dust with a few shots from one of its eyestalks. It seemed like the mud monster and beholder were slow enough not to catch them if they kept running, the mantis was much faster though. They wouldn't be able to outrun it for long. She turned forward and kept sprinting away, to anywhere but here, but the warping environment keeps ahead of her.
A blue beam caught June square in the back, her whole body frozen in a single hit, the artifact still attached to her back. Kyoclone can't stop though, there's no way she could do anything for her now. The guilt at that thought is near crippling, magnified a dozen times. Kyouko, and by extension her clone, are used to guilt though, they lived it for a long time, she can handle it to survive. She keeps running.
She takes another glance back just in time to avoid a bladed arm slicing her in half. The blade gleaming with malevolent purpose as another takes its place a tenth of a second later. She resists the urge to drop her shivering cargo of lives, though the desperation shooting through her almost makes her do so.
She turns and tries to run away backwards, desperately parrying a few hits upon the flat of their blades with her feet alone. She kicks against the blows, trying to use their energy to give her an extra couple steps, another second to live. She dodges another blue ray from downfield. She tries to keep the mantis between her and the Beholder, denying it shots at her. Her legs shake, overstrained from being used as weapons directly like this, and her red boots begin sizzling ominously. She suppresses the sensations ruthlessly.
She can't win this fight, every parry she makes just lets the Beholder draw closer. She dodges a beam attack from it even as she manages to land an ultimately meaningless kick against the mantis' torso and gain a second. Yamakage manages another flimsy barrier across the tunnel they've found themselves in buying Kyoclone another second as it's smashed apart.
She tries to sprint away again, but as she makes a random juke black beam lashes out and hits the girl in her right arm, Yuka? Yuki? Yuna? Something like that. She can practically sense the blackness that corrodes the girl's being. The soul gem shatters and Kyoclone drops the lifeless body before it has a chance to even start dissolving. It lets her summon another spear though and manage to parry the next scythe attack perilously close to her body, the spear formed poorly and dented from the blow as she's lifted into the air and pushed back by it.
The depressive field eases suddenly and when the mantis closes on her again the next second her block is sounder; her limbs quiver less. Serena has arrived, it's going to be okay. The girl left in her arm rouses from her fugue, but at the exact wrong moment. Her surprise movements throw Kyoclone off the tiniest bit, she trips through a dodge. A broader black beam comes in from the beholder. She can't dodge.
The strike devours the bit of magic she had left. Her body dissolves into a few shimmers.
As Serena's team closes in from beyond the teleport limit her aura and the Beholder's clash, the boundary of reality and tunnels grows fuzzy. The remaining girls' steps are lightened and the time Kyoclone bought is enough for them to escape to safety with Serena. A few attacks is enough to discourage the mantis from attacking them alone, and the Beholder isn't fast enough to catch them as they withdraw. It declines to pursue when they escape its interdiction field and teleport away.
Observation of it afterwards shows it lingers for an hour or so before teleporting back to its usual location in the center of Tokyo. A squad teleports in with Serena afterwards and moves to see if the artifact is recoverable. There's no sign of any bodies as usual for magical girls, but find the calligraphy plate in an alley which looks perfectly normal. It's kind of disturbing how normal it seems when lives were lost right here.
The artifact looks physically undamaged, but the magical power which it was brimming with before is completely absent. It's just an ordinary feeling calligraphy piece.
After taking it to Risa, she admits that this is a level of catastrophic damage from which it's more like building a new one entirely than simple repair, though it's still easier to manage. Luckily for you Hiko did agree to essentially a warrantee on it for the duration of your efforts to clear Tokyo, and she replaces it with a new one when you bring it to her on your regular trip to Kyoto.
Lives lost: Hamasaki, June (Healer) One of Seto's girls
2 of those from Tokyo that agreed to help but not join (Clairvoyant and a healer)
1 Kyoclone (Feedback hit on Kyouko, requires an additional GCU this month)
GCU lost:
2.4, the three remaining girls surviving emotion draining aura several times stronger than normal for multiple rounds
3 lost because you standard issue 1 GCU per girl in Class 3 threat zones and these are lost with the girls carrying them.
1 lost because Kyoclone is charged heavily in advance since she can't use grief cubes normally.
1 lost from Kyouko recovery from backlash from losing Kyoclone
Total 7.4 GCU lost
Harvest: 45.3 GCU
New Demon strength in Minamiashigara, Odawara, Hadano area ~ -15
You will need to decide how much out of this you pay to the volunteer girls from Tokyo, there are 7 left. Original plan way back when was to give them each 2 GCU, but that may not apply anymore.
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So considered a couple ways to write this. Was incredibly tempted to write in second person from Kyoclone's perspective, but decided that might have been a bit confusing to people because it would change from the top section to the middle section to the bottom section.
Was also soooo tempted to never say it was Kyoclone instead of Kyouko until after action report, just for sheer terror aspects. I decided that would be unnecessarily cruel though.
This was an enormous number of rolls. Each day had chance of interference, plus chance of Beholder appearing. You had a whole string of 90+ rolls on that. But then on the ninth day you rolled a Natural 1. Each time there was interference rolled for how many interfered, as well as how many would accompany the Beholder when it was rolled.
Response time of Serena was rolled for (keeping in mind round the clock shifts meant her response time could be longer, though you got really lucky on that roll with only a 4 round response time).
Success of evasion attempts each round was rolled, who died was rolled. Even the composition of the group in terms of whether it was your core girls or new recruits. Plus rolling on a d6 for if there was an elite. You had Kyouko, Kyoclone, Taya, and Miho assigned to this, and there were going to be 6 shifts. So this meant that there was an elite with 4 groups and no elites with 2. You got sooo lucky that it was Kyoclone.
With that the endless mini-turns are complete. Main update will be up next, probably in a day or two.
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Welp. As expected the Beholder wrecked our shit with nearly contemptuous ease. We did learn a couple things though: It's not the fastest thing around, and it can effectively one-shot meguca at range.
I should clarify that. It teleported outside the artifact radius. It's own radius is greater.
That sounds like a suicidal move that ends with everyone dead.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
We are going to have to kill it eventually. Why not now? Why not while the urge for revenge still burns hot, boosting our effective morale for the fight?
Because the urge for revenge without proper planning and risk analysis == BAD IDEA.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Oh, I'm not saying we go in with no plan, this is the SIMP, the paperwork faction. I'm saying we do it this next turn.
What? It started more than 100 meters away, tracked down our stealth specialist meguca, and fought that hard, in four rounds?
Edit: Ugh, I hate being that guy who whines about everything. Excuse me for a moment.
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Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
@inverted_helix, my impression was that Serena and the Beholder's Aura's cancelled each other out. Is that accurate or was Serena's Aura dominant?
Stealth really only works when everyone is stealthy. Kyouko could have stealthed and ran away, but that would have done jack all for the rest of her party. And as a clone, what would have been the point of her surviving and abandoning the rest?
You can't do hunting in an area permanently under stealth either. Even with a stealth specialization the Coalition specialists have times outside of stealth, and even that requires multiple stealth casters and a fixed location for the most part.
Also a hundred meters is the only difference between having an opportunity to react and being instagibbed at close range.
More like localized distortions. Closer to Serena hers was dominant, closer to the Beholder its. Though both were weaker from the conflict.
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Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Damn, I was hoping we could attack it from multiple sides while still gaining the benefits of serena 's aura.
the beholders plan worked he got free kills and got away clean based on what helix has said about them means that he will do it again and come cocky.
therefore I propose
[NF] plan going fishing
A bait hunter team lead Mami and a Kyoclone with the interdictor field off after all the beholder destroyed it
this hunter team will hunt no more then 6 hours a day and will keep in constant telepathic contact
with the strike team alpha and beta who will both teleport in the instant the beholder starts to teleport strike teem alpha will consist of sreana fully transformed
and all her girls strike teem beta will include every elite we have along with every veteran who volunteers as soon as both strike team port in our interdiction field goes up and we hit it with every thing we have they only need to be on high alert 6 hours a day I want a response rate of 2 rounds or less
this plan is still rough and need to be finished
therefore I propose
[NF] plan going fishing
A bait hunter team lead Mami and a Kyoclone with the interdictor field off after all the beholder destroyed it
this hunter team will hunt no more then 6 hours a day and will keep in constant telepathic contact
with the strike team alpha and beta who will both teleport in the instant the beholder starts to teleport strike teem alpha will consist of sreana fully transformed
and all her girls strike teem beta will include every elite we have along with every veteran who volunteers as soon as both strike team port in our interdiction field goes up and we hit it with every thing we have they only need to be on high alert 6 hours a day I want a response rate of 2 rounds or less
this plan is still rough and need to be finished
2/9 of the Tokyo girls were lost. That's not ideal, but considering the number of Demons killed and the improved DS in the area, this is still better than the status quo for Tokyo was.
[X] Stick to the plan. 2 GCU each (or 1 GCU and $2,000).
As for hunting the Beholder? I vote no for now. We're still effective at hunting the non-teleporting youma (and we even the teleporters when we're lucky), so I vote that we spend a month away from Tokyo to recharge and let the youma de-adapt and then come back and pick off some more.
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Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
No. This thing's miasma was so bad that the elite was stumbling around like a vet in a youma miasma. Any plan that attempts to kill the beholder will start with Serena in the attack.
Non-teleporters are down to the single digits. We can, at most, kill another 8 or so before we can kill no more. Odds suggest that at least one youma supporting the beholder were also teleporters, and given they didn't make use of that to maintain the chase the beholder's interdiction clearly interferes with them, too.
I would go so far as to say there's clearly a limit on the beholder's ability to teleport, since it teleported to approach, but never teleported to chase, despite how easy it would have been for it to completely wipe out the team if it did so. I'm of the opinion that it has a long cooldown between teleports, or between lifting it's interdiction field, so it uses them in the most decisive ways it can think of. Our best chance is probably to attack it shortly after it teleports to prevent it's escape.
[X] Stick to the plan. 2 GCU each (or 1 GCU and $2,000).
Hmmm. On second thought, the .25 multiplier is still relevant, as long as the hunters rotate which area they hunt every month. For example, a solo green without modifiers can gather 2 GCU in a month. If she hunts a territory of size 3, but only hunts half of it on any given month, and it starts at -20 DS, the progression would be:
Turn 0: -20 DS, -20DS
Turn 1: -10DS, -25DS
Turn 2: -15DS, -15DS
Turn 3: -5DS, -20DS
Turn 4: -10DS, -10DS
Turn 5: 0DS, -15DS
Turn 6: -5DS, -5DS
And a solo green is the worst case. If they didn't have to worry about youma, and if they had a bit of coordination and planning, the girls currently in Tokyo would be more than capable of cleaning up the place. "Not needing to worry about youma" and "coordination and planning" is where the Serene come in.
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- Location
- Head in the clouds
Hmm, what are the odds that if we were able to make a portable Serena aura charm it would be able to counter the despair aura of the Beholder? I'm just tossing out ideas here. We need it dead, but we just don't have the manpower or group culture to just throw forces into the meat grinder to kill the thing.
Can't bottle passives like Serena's aura with your current technology.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Consequences be damned, man, it has to happen and it has to happen soon. We just got shown the natural result of trying to ignore the beholder in the current status quo, and it came for us. We have to kill it, because we can't hunt Tokyo anymore without it hunting us back. Do you want to have every single Youma killed before we go after it? Because that cannot happen, the Youma will wise up to our actions long before then and start hiding with the beholder like we hide in Serena's aura. It has to die, now, before we go any further.
The meat grinder is the only way through it, because the other option, the only other option, kills us by a thousand paper-cuts, one, two girls at a time, over and over and over until we don't have the girls to bring to bear against it any longer. We lost an elite in basic pack hunting because we tried to continue bleeding them of Youma before going after the beholder. We were just lucky the elite was a magical duplicate.
Then SIMP is dead, at the very least culture wise.