Somebody Else [Pokémon]

I dont like the Pallet Set Restriction. Compare its power to non-repeating types. Types forbids... nothing really, in the long run we might get any pokemon to pact with us. It poses a bit of a challenge because we have to think about what we might want to pact in the future, but there are no restrictions set in stone. Pallet Set outright forbids us from taking on (Johto+Kanto+Evolutions going out = 151+100+21-3-3-3-3-1-3-2-2 = 252) 252 Pkmn 11 of which would be legendary and probably wont matter (although it would hurt even more if it was offered and we couldnt accept). And all we'd get for that super restrictive thing is a single boost to EX.

It's crazy restrictive and doesn't really give enough for it to be justifiable. And we have a very predictable future, I mean, 11 different fully evolved Pkmn possible with that restriction and the 7 Eeveelutions are very similar to boot.

And a tally to see the options that have been voted for at all up until now

Discussing the different restrictions is... well, I've been trying, anyway, since the QM wanted us to talk about it some more. But the thing I do note is that we're all trying to shift other people, none of us except Ivy have any intention of actually changing our votes, do we? I certainly won't be unless *counts* approximately 15 people shifted their votes first.
 
Oh well. If there's still no consensus by Sunday I'll lock it.

Let me just remind you that this isn't a Pokemon Pokemon world and a lot of those 252 are unavailable. And Legendaries are definitely not Pactable lol.
 
If I were trying to seek consensus, I'd try to get folks on board with non repeating types + only 4 or 5 pacts at a time. With the idea that we can hire on a rotating band of mercenaries to fill out our team, but we'd have a core set of 4/5.

Any seconds?
 
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If I were trying to seek consensus, I'd try to get folks on board with non repeating types + only 4 or 5 pacts at a time. With the idea that we can hire on a rotating band of mercenaries to fill out our team, but we'd have a core set of 4/5.

Any seconds?
My problem with that is that we'd miss out on the EX skill boosts, which I view as extremely valuable. Extra HP, even better efficiency, longer range, gain health from electric attacks, and even easier elemental masteries? Yes please.
 
Also, nothing prevents you from hiring literally 20 mercenaries once you get rich enough to do so.
 
My problem with that is that we'd miss out on the EX skill boosts, which I view as extremely valuable. Extra HP, even better efficiency, longer range, gain health from electric attacks, and even easier elemental masteries? Yes please.

I do see that, but right now you aren't going to get the EX boost anyway? Since it's currently 14-10.

What I'm trying to say/ask, I guess, is what would be people's runner-up choice? Just in case we have more consensus there.
 
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I dont like the Pallet Set Restriction. Compare its power to non-repeating types. Types forbids... nothing really, in the long run we might get any pokemon to pact with us. It poses a bit of a challenge because we have to think about what we might want to pact in the future, but there are no restrictions set in stone. Pallet Set outright forbids us from taking on (Johto+Kanto+Evolutions going out = 151+100+21-3-3-3-3-1-3-2-2 = 252) 252 Pkmn 11 of which would be legendary and probably wont matter (although it would hurt even more if it was offered and we couldnt accept). And all we'd get for that super restrictive thing is a single boost to EX.

It's crazy restrictive and doesn't really give enough for it to be justitifiable. And we have a very predictable future, I mean, 11 different fully evolved Pkmn possible with that restriction and the 7 Eeveelutions are very similar to boot.

And a tally to see the options that have been voted for at all up until now

You're comparing it to the less restrictive Pallet vote. The more restrictive pallet vote (the one people are actually voting for) basically only differs by limiting us to one eevee (and thus 5 long-term total) and also has +2 to high stat. Also, the EX skills are really pretty important. Damage soak is a game-changer in the short-term, and useful all the way through. Eevee flexibility is huge in the long-term. Fire mana discount and burn-on-crit sounds pretty nice. Built-in reach on free melee attacks has got to be handy. Lightning Rod... could be cool, I guess? Depends on how exploitable that electric buff thing is. Alternately, we pick up a different pikachu in whichever other town has them. The +1STAB, by comparison? I mean, it's not bad. I'm glad to have it. Still, as you say, repeating types really isn't that restrictive... and it shows.

...but really what's going on is not a difference in opinion. It's a difference in priorities. Both of the options are well-chosen for what they are. Given that we'll never have more than 6 slots ever, non-repeating types is really good at getting us a little something of a buff without meaningful restriction. Realistically, with only six, we wouldn't want to overlap elements *anyway*. If you really don't like the idea of any restrictions at all, but you feel like you have to take *something*, then that one's a restriction that's so light it's barely even there. On the flip side, the Pallet Set goes for the opposite side of the scale. It tries to go as hard into the restriction side as it can without crippling us. The Pallet 5 are all going to be strong pokemon, they cover basically everything we'll need (especially with that eevee flexibility), and none of them are a bad choice. The sixth slot really doesn't matter all that much, and won't matter at all for a large part of our career. Between the thematic continuity and the restrictions, it cranks the advantages while still leaving us with something we can live with. If you're looking to gain power while not crippling long-term capability, this will give you that. It does so by selling away almost all of our option space, but the specific options it leaves are pretty good.

So what we're down to now is a group of people who are willing to sell off almost all of our long-term ability to choose for power, and a group of people who are willing to sell only the bare minimum of that flexibility. Both options are good at what they do. They just achieve different objectives. We're not going to convince people that one is better than the other directly. At best, convincing is going to be a matter of compelling arguments on the underlying issues.

For me? The QM tells me that this is a deathworld that's liable to get me and mine killed, and I choose to believe him. The Pallet set is solid. It's solid enough that I don't think that our overall survivability and ability to endure and thrive in this world are likely to be that much better with any other particular set... especially not one chosen by an arguing hivemind. If you could point to something critical that they're missing, or some combo of two or three pokemon that we could totally get that would be significantly better at keeping us all alive, I could be convinced by that, but I don't really think there is. I think that the bonuses from selling that choice off now will be far more useful long-term than any synergies we might (or might not) manage to eke out of a broader pool.

Now, if the themes were different? I might have different ideas. If QM was saying things like "The world of pokemon is a world of excitement and adventure! Meet new friends and discover new things! Go out and explore!" as the theme lines, then I'd be a lot less interested in cutting off interesting interaction potential for raw power... but when the QM informs me in character that I live in a deathworld, I choose to believe him. Our the protag just got done thinking "My romantic interest is cutting off her training early to follow me out into the wild. She's not trained! That'll mean she'll be even more vulnerable... but with two of us working together, we might live! Okay. Yes. We can beat this thing. (maybe.)" That's... a good reason to double down on this stuff. I want to live. I want a Gary who wants to live.
 
At what cost, though?

Part of the thing that makes the Pokemon experience so exciting is the journey. The journey to Indigo Plateau, to the next evolution, to the next new encounter. Not just the destination.

Yes we can get mercenaries to fill out spots, but our team is too important to decide on out of fear, instead of for the best reason:

Because it's a favorite of yours.

Karen was never wrong!
 
At what cost, though?

Part of the thing that makes the Pokemon experience so exciting is the journey. The journey to Indigo Plateau, to the next evolution, to the next new encounter. Not just the destination.

Yes we can get mercenaries to fill out spots, but our team is too important to decide on out of fear, instead of for the best reason:

Because it's a favorite of yours.

Karen was never wrong!
So... that has a few issues with it.

We're not just one person. We're the SV hivemind. As one person, you can go with your favorites, and then you have this nice warm fuzzy feeling as you take a team made up entirely of your favorites through the game and thrill to their successes and feel nifty that, hey, this is *your* team. Personally, I'm fond of crobat, for example. I love the dirt-common coming from darkness to have a notably powerful friendship evolve thing. For SV, though, the "pick your favorites" answer means constant ugly popularity contests as people try to sell the idea that *their* favorite is the one that we should pick up next (for whatever reason) and the ones who have favorites that aren't available when slots open up are trying to come up with justifications why we should leave the slot empty and... yeah. The result isn't going to be the favorites of anyone. It's just going to be the result of that argumentation, iterated over and over again - and the more invested people are, the uglier the arguments are going to be.

That's actually one of the reasons to seriously consider the pallet 5. They're the most universally popular, which means that this set is actually pretty solid as a probabalistic compromise team. For me, I like the Squirtle and Bulbasaur lines, and I think that Eevee's pretty cool. I'm less thrilled by Charmander and Pikachu, but I figure there are other people who like those, and that's great. In terms of overall "how well does it match up with your favorites", I'm thinking that the pallet five work out pretty well for everyone... and don't require a lot of fighting to get there.

...and, as I said, if I thought this was more of an "exciting journey" pokemon and less of a "horrible deathworld" pokemon, I'd be making different choices.
 
Compromise:

We get 2 out of 5, and Crobat bc we need a flier :V

*dangles the blatant bribe*
Nope. Not interested.

First, because "try and get Crobat, even if it will get us killed" is the exact opposite of the sort of thing I'm trying to do here. That's the real point.

The second us pretty redundant, but it's also illustrative. You can't meaningfully make that offer. There's no way you have enough influence over the voting public of this quest to ensure that any one pokemon is picked (or not picked). That's one of the reasons I'm a fan of hard-locking in a group plan that we can all look at and agree is a set of solid, reasonable pokemon.. especially when we can get a meaningful powerup by doing so.

Also also, Zubat is horribly fragile and has very little going for it as far as combat until you powerlevel it and juice it up with HMs and the like. I wouldn't grab Zubat for a quest like this even if I had that option. Probably worth it for leaf, though, given her restriction. She's going to want a Nidorina-line for the tanking, she'll want a zubat-line so she can have a flier (even if it does take a lot of work to get it trained up to combat-capable), she'll want a tentacool/cruel for the water transport, and maybe a ghastly for the ghost type. After that she's down to bug types (some of which aren't bad), pure poison, and repeat pairs for her sixth. Alternately, she might find it worthwhile to restrict down to 5 or even 4. That's up to her, of course.
 
Gary:

Good idea. I'll tell her.
Heck, she could even throw on something sidebar like "no repeat typesets" (the idea being that she can only have one full poison, and one of each poison/X pairing). It would be somewhat more restrictive, but not in a way that would cripple her - effectively letting her draw a few more buffs out of more or less the same strategy. It wouldn't give her much of a boost, but a bit of a boost is still a bit of a boost.

Nidoqueen: poison/ground
Crobat: poison/flying
Bulbasaur: poison/grass
Tentacrual: poison/water
Gengar: poison/ghost
Muk, Weezing, or Arbok for the pure poison
Beedrill or Venemoth for the Poison/Bug

There are actually a decent number of grass/poison options, but Bulbasaur doesn't need the help.
 
I can't think of anything new to say on the main argument, since I'm new to SV and have no idea how Pokemon shipping wars go.

A question did occur to me, though: how soon could each of us afford to hire a mercenary for the party? A few extra Pokemon sooner could be useful, especially with an eye to having an established relationship when a new pact opens. Do we need to reserve cash for health care costs?
 
*very very lost in discussion*

@Sirrocco What would you say be your ideal pokemon team for Gary to complement Leaf's?

also another question for QM @wdango

Are the EX skills unique to each Pokemons or are there other Pokemons that share that particular EX skin, or something similar to that effect? (like say Squirrel has Hard Shell, but another pokemon has something similar if not the same)
 
You're comparing it to the less restrictive Pallet vote. The more restrictive pallet vote (the one people are actually voting for) basically only differs by limiting us to one eevee (and thus 5 long-term total) and also has +2 to high stat. Also, the EX skills are really pretty important. Damage soak is a game-changer in the short-term, and useful all the way through. Eevee flexibility is huge in the long-term. Fire mana discount and burn-on-crit sounds pretty nice. Built-in reach on free melee attacks has got to be handy. Lightning Rod... could be cool, I guess? Depends on how exploitable that electric buff thing is. Alternately, we pick up a different pikachu in whichever other town has them. The +1STAB, by comparison? I mean, it's not bad. I'm glad to have it. Still, as you say, repeating types really isn't that restrictive... and it shows.

Im comparing it to the part of benefits are actuallz the pallet-vote and not anything else. if you take non repeating and only one of each (capped at 5 pacts) or the same but also pallet you just get an additional boost to EX-skills.

Additionally, why bother trying to survive if you can't do it the way you want? If it's not good enough, we go out with a blaze of glory, make it a cool story and pray QM starts another quest at some point. We don't need to "win" the quest.
 
QM's Notes: Finances, Supplies, Salary, and Mercenaries
Heck, she could even throw on something sidebar like "no repeat typesets" (the idea being that she can only have one full poison, and one of each poison/X pairing). It would be somewhat more restrictive, but not in a way that would cripple her - effectively letting her draw a few more buffs out of more or less the same strategy. It wouldn't give her much of a boost, but a bit of a boost is still a bit of a boost.

Nidoqueen: poison/ground
Crobat: poison/flying
Bulbasaur: poison/grass
Tentacrual: poison/water
Gengar: poison/ghost
Muk, Weezing, or Arbok for the pure poison
Beedrill or Venemoth for the Poison/Bug

There are actually a decent number of grass/poison options, but Bulbasaur doesn't need the help.
Good idea.

Consider it included in the next update.

how soon could each of us afford to hire a mercenary for the party? A few extra Pokemon sooner could be useful, especially with an eye to having an established relationship when a new pact opens. Do we need to reserve cash for health care costs?
Healthcare in settlements is free. Yay. You can also stay at any League barracks that's usually annexed to every Guild Hall, if you don't want to pay for accommodation. You also get rations, but no one really enjoys eating them.

You can increase your Trainer Rank to get more free supplies.

Additional expenditure (medicines, tools, TMs (which function as one-time-use Magic Scrolls usable by both you and any Pokemon), food, entertainment, etc.)

At your current pay grade, you earn P 5,000 per week, and your Pacted Pokemon each earn P 2,500 per week, in addition to mission rewards and whatever you sell from your spoils. You don't need to pay tax on your salary and mission rewards, but you do pay tax on your spoils. Salary for you AND your Pokemon will go up as you raise your Trainer Rank. You *are* expected to Tithe to the Church every once in a while, but the frequency and nominals are for you to decide.

Mission rewards are paid to you, but you may distribute them to your party at your discretion. Low Rank Missions typically have negligible rewards, but as they say, even a mosquito is still meat, right?

And it really depends what sort of mercenary you're looking for. For some missions, the League may even assign you free soldiers under your command. Your Pokemon may hire mercenaries of their own, but it's rare, although not unheard of.

If it's per-mission then it depends on the mission. Long-term contracts (shortened to LTC from here onwards) are more negotiable per Pokemon.
P 2,000 per week can be found but that's cheap and they're usually not very skilled.
P 3,000 per week is standard for a decently skilled mercenary.
There's no real upper range, but there have been mercenaries who were paid P 10,000 per week in addition to a cut from all your additional earnings.

*very very lost in discussion*

@Sirrocco What would you say be your ideal pokemon team for Gary to complement Leaf's?

also another question for QM @wdango

Are the EX skills unique to each Pokemons or are there other Pokemons that share that particular EX skin, or something similar to that effect? (like say Squirrel has Hard Shell, but another pokemon has something similar if not the same)
there are Pokemon that share same or similar EX Skills.



and pray QM starts another quest at some point.
Be careful what you wish for, lest the wvirus strikes again.
 
Good idea.

Consider it included in the next update.


Healthcare in settlements is free. Yay. You can also stay at any League barracks that's usually annexed to every Guild Hall, if you don't want to pay for accommodation. You also get rations, but no one really enjoys eating them.

You can increase your Trainer Rank to get more free supplies.

Additional expenditure (medicines, tools, TMs (which function as one-time-use Magic Scrolls usable by both you and any Pokemon), food, entertainment, etc.)

At your current pay grade, you earn P 5,000 per week, and your Pacted Pokemon each earn P 2,500 per week, in addition to mission rewards and whatever you sell from your spoils. You don't need to pay tax on your salary and mission rewards, but you do pay tax on your spoils. Salary for you AND your Pokemon will go up as you raise your Trainer Rank. You *are* expected to Tithe to the Church every once in a while, but the frequency and nominals are for you to decide.

Mission rewards are paid to you, but you may distribute them to your party at your discretion. Low Rank Missions typically have negligible rewards, but as they say, even a mosquito is still meat, right?

And it really depends what sort of mercenary you're looking for. For some missions, the League may even assign you free soldiers under your command. Your Pokemon may hire mercenaries of their own, but it's rare, although not unheard of.

If it's per-mission then it depends on the mission. Long-term contracts (shortened to LTC from here onwards) are more negotiable per Pokemon.
P 2,000 per week can be found but that's cheap and they're usually not very skilled.
P 3,000 per week is standard for a decently skilled mercenary.
There's no real upper range, but there have been mercenaries who were paid P 10,000 per week in addition to a cut from all your additional earnings.

Ditto on the good idea, that poison team looked epic.

So, we can't hire/interview mercenaries in Pallet, is that right? Is it rude to ask a non-advertising pokemon if they'd be interested in a mercenary contract? Can we check supply prices here, or get a supply price list?

If I'm following the lore, the problem with mercenaries is that they have a shorter timeframe before wild madness sets in? Or that they don't get the pact boosts? Or both?

Other rudeness questions: can we spend our pacted pokemon's cash freely, or should we expect only a portion of it available for, let's call it military officer purposes? Can we set up an automatic tithe percentage so we don't have to remember to tithe later, and if so, what's normal?


On the restrictions, I almost wish we could get a secondary vote from the QM on pacted team size. I would love to restrict down to 4 or 5, but don't see any way to vote for that right now without ending up with the Pallet team. Which, no.
 
On the restrictions, I almost wish we could get a secondary vote from the QM on pacted team size. I would love to restrict down to 4 or 5, but don't see any way to vote for that right now without ending up with the Pallet team. Which, no.
Why not go Pallet team if you're fine with restricting our numbers? We know that there are plain some Pokémon that are plain unavailable, so we can't count on being able to pick up whatever Pokémon we might like, and here we have five strong lines that we could choose from.
 
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