Telepathy was supposedly CoobiePhone in Canon.
Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)
- Thread starter inverted_helix
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Telepathy is never used at long range in the show, only short range. There are some instances where long range would have been usefull, but they never seem to use it.
How did I miss this Quest??!?
Yup, only short range telepathy. Short range seems to equal within the same school grounds. So somewhere between 4 and 100 acres? Probably the upper end of that range. They even at one point reference using cellphones to call Mami, but they didn't get her number. Your scenario fits canon perfectly.
As for the demon strength, I assumed it was also something related to "Hope and despair balance out to zero." I would add that the concentration of magical girls in one spot might itself be pushing up the radiant hope in Mitakihara, and thus leading to more demons regardless of the girls' personal hopeful levels.
If that's not it then I guess possible ideas include the Incubators having done something to screw us over - entirely possible. Or perhaps if demons reflect the fears and despairs of the populace, then perhaps by our thorough hunting we have harvested all the surface fears and despair, and now we are getting into the really bad stuff that people usually keep suppressed.
Either way we have got to beef up our protection against combat deaths:
[X] Pack Hunting: Magical Girls will hunt in groups vastly reducing the danger, but because they are not covering as much area their efficiency is reduced. Death is significantly less likely.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward 1.25 Grief Cubes per Meguca assigned; 10% base casualty chance
[X] 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%.
-[X] Current 4 keeping jobs $1,000, 2x $1,200, and $1800 guaranteed success
[X] Stipend: Giving your magical girls a small amount of money to spend on themselves. At their current level of lifestyle this no longer really further boosts their morale, but will help prevent its decay.
Cost: $50 per Meguca; Reward: Maintained morale. Chance of success: 100%
[X] Continue Maguca upkeep
[X] Central Dispatch, Demon Finding: Dedicating the most sensitive Veterans to snifing out demons and pointing them at others means they get much less tired and can search for longer finding more demons. Requires cellphones, only once per turn.
Cost: 2 Veteran Meguca; Reward: +25% grief cube acquisition from hunting actions, -1% hunting causality rate.
[X]Training, Solo Tactics: Sometimes solo Magical Girls are taken out by surprise from their blindspots, training may help them learn to use their demon sensing ability to avoid being taken by attacks from outside of their vision.
Cost: 2 Meguca; Reward: -3% Dispersed Hunting casualty rate, -1% Pack Hunting casualty rate
[X] Training, Pack tactics: Your Magical Girls aren't very used to working together and relying on others. They often get in each other's way and fail to support each other. Friendly fire can even occur. Working to improve their coordination will help to reduce their casualties when working together.
Cost: 2 Meguca, 1 Meguca maintenance; Reward: -4% casualty rate on Pack Hunting
[X] Investigate Demon Strength: Something has caused the demon population to grow much more dangerous, and finding out what is causing it is critical. Mami fears that they have run into the very reason magical girls are territorial by nature. She'll need to devote a good deal more veterans to scanning the territory and analyzing the demons to figure out what is wrong.
Cost: 1 Veterans; Reward: Information on cause in the increased strength of demons
[X] Ask Kyuubey about Demons: Mami realizes that if this is the reason that magical girls are naturally territorial Kyuubey will know something. Try to bribe him into revealing the issues and possible solutions.
Cost: 1 grief cubes; Reward: Limited details on demon population dynamics
EDIT: Fixed for math error and continue upkeep (thanks LightMage)
EDIT2: Adjusted to take into account half price of demon investigation.
Detailed expenditure:
2 Veterans dedicated to Dispatch
4 Greens earning money
4 Greens devoted to training (only 1 needed to maintain)
1 Green maintaining our current training.
1 Veteran Investigate Demons
5 Green, 2 Vets, and 1 Mami devoted to Hunting (Lets bulk up on vets and Mami while we training up our Greens).
-1 Grief Cubes for Kyuubey bribe (Next turn we'll have 3 more Megucas available, and a bunch of our greens will become vets, so if Kyuubey doesn't help us we can try and investigate ourselves.)
- 20 Grief Cubes for upkeep
- ~3 Grief Cubes for grief spirals
After this we will have more flexibility in using veterans for other things. We will need to spend another turn building our Grief Cube stockpile again. After we have a higher number of veterans we can start recruiting more Greens. At that point it might make sense to train them up instead of waiting for it to happen naturally.
When Mami tries to recruit is it in Mitakihara? Can we specify she looks elsewhere? If she does, does the probability of success increase?
We should probably have a census that identifies each girls magical skills so that we can more effectively use them.
Yup, only short range telepathy. Short range seems to equal within the same school grounds. So somewhere between 4 and 100 acres? Probably the upper end of that range. They even at one point reference using cellphones to call Mami, but they didn't get her number. Your scenario fits canon perfectly.
As for the demon strength, I assumed it was also something related to "Hope and despair balance out to zero." I would add that the concentration of magical girls in one spot might itself be pushing up the radiant hope in Mitakihara, and thus leading to more demons regardless of the girls' personal hopeful levels.
If that's not it then I guess possible ideas include the Incubators having done something to screw us over - entirely possible. Or perhaps if demons reflect the fears and despairs of the populace, then perhaps by our thorough hunting we have harvested all the surface fears and despair, and now we are getting into the really bad stuff that people usually keep suppressed.
Either way we have got to beef up our protection against combat deaths:
[X] Pack Hunting: Magical Girls will hunt in groups vastly reducing the danger, but because they are not covering as much area their efficiency is reduced. Death is significantly less likely.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward 1.25 Grief Cubes per Meguca assigned; 10% base casualty chance
[X] 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%.
-[X] Current 4 keeping jobs $1,000, 2x $1,200, and $1800 guaranteed success
[X] Stipend: Giving your magical girls a small amount of money to spend on themselves. At their current level of lifestyle this no longer really further boosts their morale, but will help prevent its decay.
Cost: $50 per Meguca; Reward: Maintained morale. Chance of success: 100%
[X] Continue Maguca upkeep
[X] Central Dispatch, Demon Finding: Dedicating the most sensitive Veterans to snifing out demons and pointing them at others means they get much less tired and can search for longer finding more demons. Requires cellphones, only once per turn.
Cost: 2 Veteran Meguca; Reward: +25% grief cube acquisition from hunting actions, -1% hunting causality rate.
[X]Training, Solo Tactics: Sometimes solo Magical Girls are taken out by surprise from their blindspots, training may help them learn to use their demon sensing ability to avoid being taken by attacks from outside of their vision.
Cost: 2 Meguca; Reward: -3% Dispersed Hunting casualty rate, -1% Pack Hunting casualty rate
[X] Training, Pack tactics: Your Magical Girls aren't very used to working together and relying on others. They often get in each other's way and fail to support each other. Friendly fire can even occur. Working to improve their coordination will help to reduce their casualties when working together.
Cost: 2 Meguca, 1 Meguca maintenance; Reward: -4% casualty rate on Pack Hunting
[X] Investigate Demon Strength: Something has caused the demon population to grow much more dangerous, and finding out what is causing it is critical. Mami fears that they have run into the very reason magical girls are territorial by nature. She'll need to devote a good deal more veterans to scanning the territory and analyzing the demons to figure out what is wrong.
Cost: 1 Veterans; Reward: Information on cause in the increased strength of demons
[X] Ask Kyuubey about Demons: Mami realizes that if this is the reason that magical girls are naturally territorial Kyuubey will know something. Try to bribe him into revealing the issues and possible solutions.
Cost: 1 grief cubes; Reward: Limited details on demon population dynamics
EDIT: Fixed for math error and continue upkeep (thanks LightMage)
EDIT2: Adjusted to take into account half price of demon investigation.
Detailed expenditure:
2 Veterans dedicated to Dispatch
4 Greens earning money
4 Greens devoted to training (only 1 needed to maintain)
1 Green maintaining our current training.
1 Veteran Investigate Demons
5 Green, 2 Vets, and 1 Mami devoted to Hunting (Lets bulk up on vets and Mami while we training up our Greens).
-1 Grief Cubes for Kyuubey bribe (Next turn we'll have 3 more Megucas available, and a bunch of our greens will become vets, so if Kyuubey doesn't help us we can try and investigate ourselves.)
- 20 Grief Cubes for upkeep
- ~3 Grief Cubes for grief spirals
After this we will have more flexibility in using veterans for other things. We will need to spend another turn building our Grief Cube stockpile again. After we have a higher number of veterans we can start recruiting more Greens. At that point it might make sense to train them up instead of waiting for it to happen naturally.
When Mami tries to recruit is it in Mitakihara? Can we specify she looks elsewhere? If she does, does the probability of success increase?
We should probably have a census that identifies each girls magical skills so that we can more effectively use them.
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Unusual to only have one vote all day, been typically seeing around 4. Wonder if I scared people off by having deaths all of a sudden, though really they died to mechanics that were in place from the start and the dice finally not favoring the players like crazy.
I guess the cause of the demon issue is much less obvious than I thought it to be. I'm really bad at knowing what's enough info for people to guess off of I suppose. It's more pseudo-mundane than these guesses.
Also yeah a couple of your greens will auto-promote to veterans in following turns. Right now I'm thinking 3 a turn. Your early months of Madokami blessed dice (apparently, cause I don't know what was going on with dozens of dice averaging 60) really helped you a lot in that you made it to the start of auto-promotions without too many losses.
I guess the cause of the demon issue is much less obvious than I thought it to be. I'm really bad at knowing what's enough info for people to guess off of I suppose. It's more pseudo-mundane than these guesses.
She is recruiting in the general area around your territory. Recruiting from further away is significantly harder because it means passing through multiple territories which might provoke their occupants if you don't make arrangements beforehand and they catch you.
Also yeah a couple of your greens will auto-promote to veterans in following turns. Right now I'm thinking 3 a turn. Your early months of Madokami blessed dice (apparently, cause I don't know what was going on with dozens of dice averaging 60) really helped you a lot in that you made it to the start of auto-promotions without too many losses.
I suspect there was a lot of voters who are chewing over the new developments and haven't come up with a good plan yet. I was actually thinking of posting this quest in the request players thread. I also know a few players I could approach about playing if you would like me to.
That's probably a good idea, more feedback is really appreciated. I didn't notice the player recruitment thread. I had posted this into the ideas thread before.
Also, a mundane guess as to why the demons are stronger. Evolutionary pressure: We culled all the weak demons, only the strong survived resulting in stronger demons?
[X] Pack Hunting: Magical Girls will hunt in groups vastly reducing the danger, but because they are not covering as much area their efficiency is reduced. Death is significantly less likely.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward 1.25 Grief Cubes per Meguca assigned; 10% base casualty chance
-[X] 8 Green, 1 Veteran, 1 Mami
[X] Gather money, legally: There are not a great number of jobs that will take young girls as workers: working as a bike courier, waitress, or maid are likely options. This project benefits from regularity, and discontinuous execution may have negative side effects. Chance of success 25% per Meguca, following up on a previous month's success brings the chance to 100%.
-[X] Current 4 keeping jobs $1,000, 2x $1,200, and $1800 guaranteed success
[X] Stipend: Giving your magical girls a small amount of money to spend on themselves. At their current level of lifestyle this no longer really further boosts their morale, but will help prevent its decay.
Cost: $50 per Meguca; Reward: Maintained morale. Chance of success: 100%
[X] Continue Maguca upkeep
[X] Training, Pack tactics: Your Magical Girls aren't very used to working together and relying on others. They often get in each other's way and fail to support each other. Friendly fire can even occur. Working to improve their coordination will help to reduce their casualties when working together.
Cost: 2 Meguca, 1 Meguca maintenance; Reward: -4% casualty rate on Pack Hunting
[X] Ask Kyuubey about Demons: Mami realizes that if this is the reason that magical girls are naturally territorial Kyuubey will know something. Try to bribe him into revealing the issues and possible solutions.
Cost: 2 grief cubes; Reward: Limited details on demon population dynamics
[X] Investigate Demon Strength: Something has caused the demon population to grow much more dangerous, and finding out what is causing it is critical. Mami fears that they have run into the very reason magical girls are territorial by nature. She'll need to devote a good deal more veterans to scanning the territory and analyzing the demons to figure out what is wrong.
Cost: 2 Veterans; Reward: Information on cause in the increased strength of demons
Edit:
[X] Recruitment, via Kyuubey: Ask Kyuubey to tell other Magical Girls in the area about you. He'll want something in return though, and he makes no promises of the efficacy.
Cost: 2 grief cubes; Reward: 1-3 girls; Chance of success: 50%
There's no need for solo training.
I'll put up explanation and math later.
Cost: Variable, specify number of Meguca dedicated; Reward 1.25 Grief Cubes per Meguca assigned; 10% base casualty chance
-[X] 8 Green, 1 Veteran, 1 Mami
[X] Gather money, legally: There are not a great number of jobs that will take young girls as workers: working as a bike courier, waitress, or maid are likely options. This project benefits from regularity, and discontinuous execution may have negative side effects. Chance of success 25% per Meguca, following up on a previous month's success brings the chance to 100%.
-[X] Current 4 keeping jobs $1,000, 2x $1,200, and $1800 guaranteed success
[X] Stipend: Giving your magical girls a small amount of money to spend on themselves. At their current level of lifestyle this no longer really further boosts their morale, but will help prevent its decay.
Cost: $50 per Meguca; Reward: Maintained morale. Chance of success: 100%
[X] Continue Maguca upkeep
[X] Training, Pack tactics: Your Magical Girls aren't very used to working together and relying on others. They often get in each other's way and fail to support each other. Friendly fire can even occur. Working to improve their coordination will help to reduce their casualties when working together.
Cost: 2 Meguca, 1 Meguca maintenance; Reward: -4% casualty rate on Pack Hunting
[X] Ask Kyuubey about Demons: Mami realizes that if this is the reason that magical girls are naturally territorial Kyuubey will know something. Try to bribe him into revealing the issues and possible solutions.
Cost: 2 grief cubes; Reward: Limited details on demon population dynamics
[X] Investigate Demon Strength: Something has caused the demon population to grow much more dangerous, and finding out what is causing it is critical. Mami fears that they have run into the very reason magical girls are territorial by nature. She'll need to devote a good deal more veterans to scanning the territory and analyzing the demons to figure out what is wrong.
Cost: 2 Veterans; Reward: Information on cause in the increased strength of demons
Edit:
[X] Recruitment, via Kyuubey: Ask Kyuubey to tell other Magical Girls in the area about you. He'll want something in return though, and he makes no promises of the efficacy.
Cost: 2 grief cubes; Reward: 1-3 girls; Chance of success: 50%
There's no need for solo training.
I'll put up explanation and math later.
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Solo Training gives -1% to Pack Hunting, and does not require upkeep, so once we do it we don't have to keep spending resources on it.
Well people have come sort of close, maybe rate some of the explanations as hot or cold, or in character reference them as feeling right or feeling wrong.
Strong Demons, -4% is way better. And it should help restore morale some.
PLAN STATS
-21 Grief Cubes + 4 for QB + 3~ for Grief Spirals = -28 GC's
-$1050 Cash + $3400 upkeep = $4450 cost
Gain
20~ Grief Cubes
$5200
Morale
-4% + -1% -2% -2% casuality rate = -10% to deaths
Double Action info on monsters gain.
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???
Strong Demons does not give -4%, Pack Hunting Training does. Which I picked as well. We can do both. I say we stack up the bonuses as quickly as we can.
Strong Demons does not give -4%, Pack Hunting Training does. Which I picked as well. We can do both. I say we stack up the bonuses as quickly as we can.
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That's what we are researching. Apparently our guesses so far are wrong. Although the GM hasn't responded yet to my "Evolutionary Pressure" hypothesis yet.
Fair enough. I just saw Solo Training as giving a boost that does not require upkeep, so I figured we ought to get it now when we have the resources to do so. That way we have the bonus going forward.
This is at its core correct. You can think of the effect as similar to bacteria growing antibiotic resistant. Because they have short generations and magic their adaptation rate is high and more Lamarckian than genetic. Though I have some magical theory to explain just how rapidly it's occurring.
The investigation actions are now half price.
You can.
We better start setting up a church. Madokami powered Puella! WE MUST GO FULL WARHAMMER MADOKA STYLE.
Too crazy?
Better change my vote then...
Edited my vote to take into account half prices - better spend the veteran on investigating now that it only costs 1.
Anyway, this is a bad bad causation for us. There is no way to get around it, so we are going to have to expand our territory.
Question: Is there any point to expanding to the surrounding suburbs? Or do we need a city to get sufficient demon concentration?
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The evolutionary pressure is dependent on your grief cube hunting. You'd all be dead long before the demons reached God tier. Remember in Lamarckian evolution unused features diminish.
Suburbs are fine as magical girl territories, rural areas the concentration of demons is too low to make it worthwhile at standard movement speeds.
The research actions will reveal a bit more.
We need an action to identify likely territories to take over. Knowledge we need:
1: What are the levels/amount of demons in the potential target areas. No sense fighting for a territory that does not have a lot of demons.
2: How many Magical Girls? What is the current Magical Girl/Demon ratio? We want something lower then our current ratio in our current territory so that we can have the other Magical Girls join us, not just shove them out.
3: What are the levels of the various Magical Girls in our take over target? Veterans are more valuable additions, but harder to intimidate/persuade. And wish magic that is particularly desirable to add or dangerous to us if it comes to a fight?
4: What are the material conditions of the Magical Girls in the take over targets? What is their Grief Cube supply like?
Our best target selection would be an area with few magical girls, a lot of demons, poverty among the magical girls, and primarily greens for our first take over target.
Turn 7 is spent researching target areas, and building up a grief cube stockpile. Maybe the following turn as well, so that we have ~14 Veterans in our force, and enough grief cubes stockpiled that we can send most of our forces to take over territory.
I say we approach it with aggressive diplomacy. Make them an offer they can't refuse. They can join us and benefit from the extra grief cube supply, the stable money income, and extra survival rate from pack hunting. Or they can fight - and lose.
And the girls shall begin calling us... Mami, the Godmother!
... Anyone have a spare horse head?
1: What are the levels/amount of demons in the potential target areas. No sense fighting for a territory that does not have a lot of demons.
2: How many Magical Girls? What is the current Magical Girl/Demon ratio? We want something lower then our current ratio in our current territory so that we can have the other Magical Girls join us, not just shove them out.
3: What are the levels of the various Magical Girls in our take over target? Veterans are more valuable additions, but harder to intimidate/persuade. And wish magic that is particularly desirable to add or dangerous to us if it comes to a fight?
4: What are the material conditions of the Magical Girls in the take over targets? What is their Grief Cube supply like?
Our best target selection would be an area with few magical girls, a lot of demons, poverty among the magical girls, and primarily greens for our first take over target.
Turn 7 is spent researching target areas, and building up a grief cube stockpile. Maybe the following turn as well, so that we have ~14 Veterans in our force, and enough grief cubes stockpiled that we can send most of our forces to take over territory.
I say we approach it with aggressive diplomacy. Make them an offer they can't refuse. They can join us and benefit from the extra grief cube supply, the stable money income, and extra survival rate from pack hunting. Or they can fight - and lose.
And the girls shall begin calling us... Mami, the Godmother!
... Anyone have a spare horse head?
Hoping some sort of coherent plan arises. Since so far there's only been 2 votes and they don't match.
I'll try to price out the actions for researching other areas but they aren't going to be things you can just ask me, they'll take recon actions, will need to think them over for a bit. The territory expansion options I gave this turn were basically default go out and take someplace at random.
Probably looking at around 6 veteran-turns divided up into 3 actions of 2 each to scope out the eastern peninsula, northeastern, and northwestern extensions of the city. With it taking that much resources because of doing so discreetly.
I'll try to price out the actions for researching other areas but they aren't going to be things you can just ask me, they'll take recon actions, will need to think them over for a bit. The territory expansion options I gave this turn were basically default go out and take someplace at random.
Probably looking at around 6 veteran-turns divided up into 3 actions of 2 each to scope out the eastern peninsula, northeastern, and northwestern extensions of the city. With it taking that much resources because of doing so discreetly.
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I don't remember those areas being on the Map before. Is there a meaning behind the new colors?
Are those three new colors on the map corresponding to these areas? Eastern Peninsula is pink, there is that red section to the northwest, and then green to the west. There doesn't seem to be one to correspond to the northeastern section you listed.
Northeast is probably my preference, as we can move towards Kasamino. Although looking at the map there doesn't really seem to be a northeast, we have water to the northeast. Rather we would move north, but that looks to be a rural area. (I'm assuming the green mountainous areas are being deemed "rural" even though that isn't necessarily true - I'm from Seattle and the suburbs are tuck into the trees.) Perhaps the peninsula would be best, and then hop across the bay to the other peninsula that is between us and Kasamino. Then north to get most of the suburbs, maybe that big area to the northwest of Kasamino proper, and then we make our move on Kasamino itself. (Obviously once we are in position we go court Kyouko and convince her to join us before making our move on the Kasamino girls. Make her the lieutenant in charge of Kasamino.)
I'm not sure we can stand against the increasing demon power for 3 turns to investigate all of them. Probably only two, so I'm leaning towards investigating the peninsula and the red section (that is northwest on the map).
Also, we have to focus on the demons right now, but more long term another problem is that our couriers are attracting attention by being so fast. Hopefully that is stable and isn't increasing each turn...
Yes I spent some time adjusting the map to add new prospective territories.
I ended up splitting it into 4 sections based on urban concentrations rather than 3. Also in evidence of how silly I can be sometimes what you thought was water was me shading an area adjacent to the ocean in blue like an idiot.
I'll pick a new color and repost it shortly.Also I'm thinking that I'll just use one color to represent independent holdings since I can't find enough colors that show up well enough on my map. The perils of a google earth based map.
While to a degree I'm aware of that I was just mentally deeming them rural based on general density. What I might do instead is just enlarge each of the prospective territories a bit to incorporate some of that greenery.
You'll find there are ways to stabilize the demon power issue with the demon investigation tasks this turn. I'm not throwing certain doom at you. This quest is about throwing some difficulty at the players and making them earn their happy ending.
Nice that you picked up on that. You could of course tell your couriers to ease up a little. Also if you started your own business you could likely conceal their speed a bit better.
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