..It is always very frustrating to be someone who wants to do more psykana but can't justify that because it's all narrative.
I hope you realizing I am promoting more Psykana actions by saying we should invest in Holy Sigils and Psytech, which I think will make it more appealing to take Songs. I was expanding my thoughts on why theres low incentive to take Songs/Psykana, not saying we shouldn't take them.
one that is keeping psykers hidden from detections in a 50km radius, one that denies Chaos souls
We got a size for the stealth song but I don't think QM said your quote. I asked QM for feedback on how Turn Their Eyes Away was doing and they said, 'well, you haven't been found.' But we were told Templars would solve the problem, so its not apparent the Song is responsible for that. It sounds cool as fuck, but I have to guess at the story unless I missed something. Is Dirge used at all? I thought it was Star Child faith protecting us, Dirge's example was that it could lay a planet of souls to rest keeping it from Chaos but I don't think its been used in story.
First, I'd argue that research is fundamental to our society. We've gotten a ton more powerful because of our research in ways our enemies haven't.
Does it seem like I am saying we shouldn't do research? I definitely am not.
For example, we have this assumption that "oh we have strong mechanized forces," which is spurred on by the research and the development etc, including the directional ion shields. That folds into our view of our society in ways that make the game fun.
We have had a couple story moments where steely eyed well armed and armoured soldier pop heads with lasers, along with QM saying out of story our troops have hotshot lasgun and carapace armour. We have cool story moments of spider mechs. I pushed for the Templars partially because they have power armour and a full plasma weapon set up. Similarly Novel/Advanced Infantry research will give us beam weapons and railguns. Servo-skull research was described as Tau drones with Gothic Chic. These sound dope.
Thats all imagery that serves as payoff. But if theres no story moment, no description, no useful mechanism or no number to watch go up after we take an action, theres little payoff and there is low incentive to repeat it. This is a problem with Songs or sometimes research which is partially why I think its rarely voted for compared to ship actions. If the outcome of an action is written about in the threadmark and makes people go 'hell yeah', that action is more likely to be taken again. If the outcome happens in the background, it is less likely.
That is the thesis of what I've been saying the last 3 posts, not that we should not be taking psykana or research.
First, we've had a lot of turns. Coming up on #90 I think. So an action that takes 30 turns to pay off...
Banking something per research action is much different than banking something per turn. We do get a lot of turns and so a lot of actions though.
I just quickly tried to check our research actions (and probably made errors) since Turn 620 (Jun 3rd IRL), two centures ago in game, start of Voxx infiltration and when we got Academic Initiatives for 2 actions, another 2 spent on Genius/Institute later. Since then we have taken 11 Research actions with 4 Bonus actions. Heretek gave us 2.2 of those. Still need 9 research for the initial Academic Initiative to be profitable. Is that going to take another 20 Turns? Hopefully not. I'm not saying it was bad to take, just trying to demonstrate it takes a long time for this stuff to pay off.
I agree that the higher bonus action makes it more likely for us to use it, thats powerful and a good point. Doesn't change how many things we are trying to do with a very limited action economy, or that we need to balance immediate needs with future payoff though.
I think you are arguing against an argument I am not making. Except maybe that I do not think two actions to upgrade Spark of Genius +.05 would be a good choice
at this time, not that we know what the upgrade is worth.
