So, looking again between all three time-limited missions and its benefits, it does seem like New Dawn have the most fruitful ones. Not only does Wolong have an ability that's not helpful with planning and strategizing as well as a force multiplier, but also will also help us synergize with abilities, thus giving us the potential of making stronger future heroes. Honestly, it's so good that I honestly feel like there might be big stipulations that may come from doing this. To elaborate more on what I mean, compare this mission to, say, Global Justice's, whose drawback is immediately obvious, the US government behind the hero group seeking to exploit its assets for profit, and who we might need to appease as much as we don't want to in order for a "greater evil" to not take over. Meanwhile
the most immediate drawback I'm seeing from New Dawn is the amount of AP we're required to spend in order to continue their questline, and the risk that comes from their mission, which we're still getting their cooperation for those anyways, so it mitigates said risk. This honestly makes me think that there're probably lots of stuff that's not immediately obvious and has made me a believer of the theory that Wolong might react negatively towards Project Prometheus, especially once he finds out how we got Novalight's DNA. This also has led me to conclude that in order to get Wolong's cooperation, we really need to help him out with his shit first and butter him up before we're allowed to even consider introducing him to the Project. Hence, I've concluded that New Dawn's benefits all really long term and you really have to work hard to get the really good ones.
I'll note that this is just Wolong; we haven't heard anything about what's going on with Arc yet, who Bitterman seemed to have implied earlier that something's going on with. Additionally, New Dawn's plotline is intertwined with Wonderland, which is very important in containing metahuman criminals; beyond that however, if my suspicions are correct, is the Valkyrie plotline, one of the four Voices, who I've speculated earlier to be one of keys to getting to the Leviathan mystery, the biggest benefit of them all. To sum up how I feel about this, it's so so so very good that it's making me believe that there are severe drawbacks we're not seeing yet.
As I've brought up Global Justice earlier, I'll continue their subject here. Global Justice's immediate obvious is Stockpile, a young Algernon-type who has yet to reach his potential, along with the immediate income. He is reported to severely loyal to a fault, thus his questline requires cajoling him to joining us while keeping the balance of keeping AGL around while not giving them too much. Hearing all that admittedly made me hesitate from all the loops I have to go through in order to get to this kid, yet it is still worth it. As an Algernon who has yet to choose a specialization as well as a possessor of remnants of EXCEED, he has a lot of potential that, placed in the right hands and handled right, which is another balancing act btw, could help us immensely. Should we have him enter into our ranks, not only do we get usual benefits of a hero: additional AP and increase to overall global stats, we also essentially rescue him from an organization that is gonna abuse him anyways. He is a long term invested almost in the same par as New Dawn whose skills may be essential into unlocking many mysteries of Horizon, including Leviathan, just from his potential as an Algernon. Moreover, by taking this mission, we put a temporary stopgap to a powergrab from Dominion and Osanyin. Gaining access to Foot of the Ladder may allow us an unobstructed entrance to our currently unnamed base and probably a good income from a rich people district (this is speculative).
Now finally for Four Seasons, who compared to New Dawn's and Global Justice's, their benefits are more short term. Should we succeed in finishing this quest, we gain immediate benefit of a hero from Hiver, intel on both Powers and Scarlet Maturity, and a portion of OID. Out of all these, intel on Scarlet Maturity is seemingly the most fruitful. To me, that is essentially a potential shortcut to the mysteries of Dominion since from all the info we know atm, Scarlet Maturity is easily the biggest wall towards that plotline. It's still not gonna be easy since SM has been around the block for a while and isn't a top "hero" (emphasis) for nothing, but that intel has the potential of dropping his difficulty down a few pegs. Moreover, we deny them control of OID, which I'll remind people is where Dr. Ibis' lab is and by gaining complete control over that territory, we gain both income and a base that'll give us more potential Ambosia benefits and firepower from his experiments, including Valiant Kabuto. We also give Chaucer a small moment of reprieve with Hiver, which sounds pretty good to me.
Now I'll admit even with all that, that still seems pale in comparison to both New Dawn and Global Justice's benefits. As much as Hiver is a nice dude, he's overall just a beatstick (at least from what we've heard) compared to Wolong's power multiplier and Ambrosia amplifier, and Stockpile's endless potential and EXCEED. Moreover, while Scarlet Maturity is a threat, he's only a really big threat in a micro-level as far as we know and is only mainly involved in the Dominion/Powers plotline as far as we know. Needed to repeat that for emphasis. So, allow me to walk you through my thought process of why I voted for the plan Scarlet Fraud.
So if you've been following me so far, you know that I've been calling New Dawn "really really good in the long term", while Four Seasons is "simply good in short term". 'So EternalObserver, if you know New Dawn is that good, why not vote for it?' Well frankly part of that is cause AP hell sucks, and Scarlet Fraud is the best counteract against that: it gives us 7 AP, hence more room to breathe potentially, discounting the consequences of New Dawn's demise. It allows us easier success against all the missions so far, including potential fixes that may come from Wonderland: for example, with 7 AP, we could take Rakeem's mission (2), Demonz Flame (1), Mahou Shoujo (1), Wonderland (1-3), and if there's room left, either Meet the Rookies (1) or Stockpile follow-up, along Global Action of recruitment (we'd have 2 by this time because Apiary). Then the turn after that, we could grab Hero Worship along with all the follow-up questline that precedes the previous turn as well as follow-up recruitment to Stockpile, in addition to welcoming more candidates to the team. From there, I blank out due to lack of info, and that's probably for the best since something will inevitably go wrong with my planning frankly due to unforeseen variables that Bitterman has yet to introduce, as well as me only accounting for what we have now. And yet I think we could still overcome this due to easy breathing room. It's also why I voted for Plan Heroism: even if it only gives us 1 AP now, it'll at least give us another next turn even if we come up short. Moreover, I have a feeling leaving SM and Four Seasons (sans Hiver) alone with OID gives repercussions similar to how I called out how Wonderland questlines may be affected from New Dawn's demise. I really want to get Ibis's base frankly, and the Demon Flamez questline looks enticing from just imagining how Dr. Rhodes may potentially interact with future recruits there (Sparksurfer and Jorōgumo), so the idea that a-hole Scarlet Maturity might affect and limit our ability to interfere with OID tbh really rubs me the wrong way. This is all speculative so I'm just spouting hot air at this point, but I don't wanna "fuck around and find out" what could and could not happen to those questlines. Finally, I think we could handle Ambrosia fine even without Wolong, and personally I find the guessing game of Ambrosia pretty fun. Wolong's ability to help with synergy comes from his limited precog, and while yes, it helps with planning, when it comes to this part of the gameplay, I feel like I enjoy playing blind for this part in particular.
So to sum it all up, yes Four Season's pretty short term, but I personally think it's a pretty good short term. Long term benefits are really good, but to get there, we have to go through a bunch of hoops first, and sometimes those one-time use weapons could help a lot.
Anyways, that's all from me. PS this took me 4 hours to type. I suck at articulating words. Ran out of gas by the end. Bleaerrefgh
. Between corporations, government, whatever they may be. There is no good vs evil here, only evil vs "lesser evil" in big quotation marks. Reminder that I'm describing what the missions are like at first glance.
