Tacit Ronin: The Power of Three

[KnightDisciple]

...Guys, Fyrstorm already said that if we roll well enough for upgrades to existing weapons, we get a Free Action to upgrade them, meaning we pay Resources but not Time.

I'm not sure we should count on being able to make everything a Free Action. There's a certain point we need to accept we have to actually do the thing and that doing the thing takes real time.

I'm concerned about getting too many niche Free Actions, because theyre just going to sit around unused a lot of the time.
Considering we can often roll Repair and Rearm actions together? I'm not overly concerned about this. Especially since I don't forsee us making enough Weapon Upgrades in 1 Turn to significantly detract from our ridiculous number of Actions.

 

[Highwind]

Considering we can often roll Repair and Rearm actions together? I'm not overly concerned about this. Especially since I don't forsee us making enough Weapon Upgrades in 1 Turn to significantly detract from our ridiculous number of Actions.

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And as far as I know there isn't a limit to how many pieces of equipment we can change using a Repair action. Even if we somehow overhaul our Jaegers' entire kit and build them all before using a Repair action, we can still install then all at once with just one action.

 

[KnightDisciple]

And as far as I know there isn't a limit to how many pieces of equipment we can change using a Repair action. Even if we somehow overhaul our Jaegers' entire kit and build them all before using a Repair action, we can still install then all at once with just one action.

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Right. And rereading @Nixeu 's post he's more talking about separate Build and Install actions, but....again, I don't see it as that crippling of an issue? Building a thing is pretty separate from Installing a thing. And we're never that short of Actions.

 

[Fyrstorm]

Quick update: you cannot fit a Hlin inside a Meganeura. The way they're made, any Jaeger or Superheavy is hung underneath them (on a pallet if it's the latter), rather than held in the cargo bay. Megas are big, but not that big. That's why they work in squadrons.

So if you wanted a flying Barrier, you'd just be flying around a Hlin constantly.

 

[Highwind]

Quick update: you cannot fit a Hlin inside a Meganeura. The way they're made, any Jaeger or Superheavy is hung underneath them (on a pallet if it's the latter), rather than held in the cargo bay. Megas are big, but not that big. That's why they work in squadrons.

So if you wanted a flying Barrier, you'd just be flying around a Hlin constantly.

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Understood. I guess the Hlin's crew will have to get used to hanging by a few dozen literal threads whenever we need a mobile Barrier that repositions quickly.

 

[Fyrstorm]

Now, a Behemoth could probably hold a Hlin on its own. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be very useful, since it'd have to keep moving to stay aloft.

 

[Nixeu]

...Guys, Fyrstorm already said that if we roll well enough for upgrades to existing weapons, we get a Free Action to upgrade them, meaning we pay Resources but not Time.

I'm not sure we should count on being able to make everything a Free Action. There's a certain point we need to accept we have to actually do the thing and that doing the thing takes real time.

I'm concerned about getting too many niche Free Actions, because theyre just going to sit around unused a lot of the time.
Considering we can often roll Repair and Rearm actions together? I'm not overly concerned about this. Especially since I don't forsee us making enough Weapon Upgrades in 1 Turn to significantly detract from our ridiculous number of Actions.

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As the guy putting together our vote? Yes, yes it does. 1/5th of our regular actions, with us merely building two things we need to install, are eaten up with equipping the items. The total is 40% of our regular actions used on building and installation. At two pieces of installed equipment. Two. And I'm not going to count on us rolling well, either.

We currently have an absolute upper-limit of five items made and installed. Let's say we're making only a single upgrade per turn, for 5 turns. That's still 20% of our regular, full research-bonus actions dedicated to installing and building gear. Over the course of five turns, we lose an entire turns worth of regular actions, at that rate.

Honestly, without a free action, it just isn't sustainable to build gear for our Jaegers. I suspect this is part of why we don't upgrade their gear very often.

And as far as I know there isn't a limit to how many pieces of equipment we can change using a Repair action. Even if we somehow overhaul our Jaegers' entire kit and build them all before using a Repair action, we can still install then all at once with just one action.

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Yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about here. But, if you're saying we can squeeze every installation of new gear on a single Jaeger into a single action already? Cool beans, so long as we keep gear to a single Jaeger.

Right. And rereading @Nixeu 's post he's more talking about separate Build and Install actions, but....again, I don't see it as that crippling of an issue? Building a thing is pretty separate from Installing a thing. And we're never that short of Actions.

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At the rate of one installation and build per turn? We'd lose a full turn of actions every five turns. Note this is applying purely to Neo-Seattle. While Everett will improve this, it's still a significant amount of actions, especially if we want to constantly upgrade and update our Jaeger's equipment, which is something I'd totally be up for.

Edit: At two J-Tech actions per turn, we regularly come up with gear we need to install. Like, say, SFT Cutoffs. Which we've somehow never gotten around to, and still won't have, under my current plan for next turn.

 

[Fyrstorm]

Guys, you can install multiple things in one action, as long as they're not a reactor (or mod, maybe? I forgot), and are all going towards one Jaeger. Thus, you can pretty much equip all three jaegers for only three actions.

Also, equipping can be done alongside normal repairs for the most part.

 

[Highwind]

Yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about here. But, if you're saying we can squeeze every installation of new gear on a single Jaeger into a single action already? Cool beans, so long as we keep gear to a single Jaeger.

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I'm saying that we can equip as many pieces of equipment we want, for one Jaeger, with only one Repair action.

We build one piece of equipment for one Jaeger? It costs one action to equip it. We build five pieces of equipment? That's also one action. The sole exception is Mods, which require a dedicated action, but as far as I know there isn't a limit on how many Mods we can install with that action, only that it can be used to Install Mods Only.

 

[hYGP]

Honestly I kinda want to Research an Upgraded Shatterdome, which is supposed to give us a Free Repair/Install Action, even if it comes at an increased cost and limited Installs per Free Action.

e: I also reiterate my current tactical question @Fyrstorm: where are the Meganeuras?

 

[KnightDisciple]

As the guy putting together our vote? Yes, yes it does. 1/5th of our regular actions, with us merely building two things we need to install, are eaten up with equipping the items. The total is 40% of our regular actions used on building and installation. At two pieces of installed equipment. Two. And I'm not going to count on us rolling well, either.

We currently have an absolute upper-limit of five items made and installed. Let's say we're making only a single upgrade per turn, for 5 turns. That's still 20% of our regular, full research-bonus actions dedicated to installing and building gear. Over the course of five turns, we lose an entire turns worth of regular actions, at that rate.

Honestly, without a free action, it just isn't sustainable to build gear for our Jaegers. I suspect this is part of why we don't upgrade their gear very often.

Yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about here. But, if you're saying we can squeeze every installation of new gear on a single Jaeger into a single action already? Cool beans, so long as we keep gear to a single Jaeger.

At the rate of one installation and build per turn? We'd lose a full turn of actions every five turns. Note this is applying purely to Neo-Seattle. While Everett will improve this, it's still a significant amount of actions, especially if we want to constantly upgrade and update our Jaeger's equipment, which is something I'd totally be up for.

Edit: At two J-Tech actions per turn, we regularly come up with gear we need to install. Like, say, SFT Cutoffs. Which we've somehow never gotten around to, and still won't have, under my current plan for next turn.

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So again, you want to combine Building and Installing, or make one or the other Free Actions?

I mean....I'm not sure that's going to be easy? "We can research anything", but depending on how Fyr evaluates that level of action-shuffling, we may sink a lot of actions into trying to use fewer actions.

I'm okay with having to spend a non-zero fraction of our action budget on upgrading our Jaegers.

 

[Fyrstorm]

Honestly I kinda want to Research an Upgraded Shatterdome, which is supposed to give us a Free Repair/Install Action, even if it comes at an increased cost and limited Installs per Free Action.

e: I also reiterate my current tactical question @Fyrstorm: where are the Meganeuras?

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You have 3 squads with you, and they're at the edge of the city. Roughly 60 or so units west of your jaegers.

 

[hYGP]

Joy.

[X] Plan Yakety Sax

 

[HolyDragoon]

[X] Plan Yakety Sax

I get the feeling that if this guy runs away, he's going to get bigger friends. And this is one of the last things I'd like to see knocking on our home's doors.

 

[Fyrstorm]

You know, there's no actual mechanical difference between the two for your stuff (since talking is effectively a free action), so I'm gonna go with the plan. Both plans.

 

[Nixeu]

Guys, you can install multiple things in one action, as long as they're not a reactor (or mod, maybe? I forgot), and are all going towards one Jaeger. Thus, you can pretty much equip all three jaegers for only three actions.

Also, equipping can be done alongside normal repairs for the most part.

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I mean...that's better, butiI still think that if we want to be doing very regular upgrades, updates, etc, rather than bursts, which has been discussed, getting a free action to do it would probably be best. And I do think doing regular upgrades is better than waiting until it all piles up.

So again, you want to combine Building and Installing, or make one or the other Free Actions?

I mean....I'm not sure that's going to be easy? "We can research anything", but depending on how Fyr evaluates that level of action-shuffling, we may sink a lot of actions into trying to use fewer actions.

I'm okay with having to spend a non-zero fraction of our action budget on upgrading our Jaegers.

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If we're doing the task on a regular basis, getting a Free Action to do it has generally been our approach. I think that's due to just how easy it is for things to end being pushed out of our Regular Actions, since we have a lot of things that use those slots. And that won't be getting any better in the near future, and may actually be getting significantly worse, because we're about to be getting a ton of high-level projects opening up, many of which we'll likely want our full Research bonus on.

It's incredibly easy for things to just end up getting put off, and, given that we've been doing exactly that with installing new tech, I'd like to make the process easier, so we're more likely to do it. While I'm also okay hypothetically with spending those actions, the issue is not being okay with it, but how much of a priority we make it. Building and installing the cutoff for th SFTs and figuring out the Jagdgewher are both excellent examples of things we say we should be doing, and yet never seem to get done.

 

[Highwind]

I mean...that's better, butiI still think that if we want to be doing very regular upgrades, updates, etc, rather than bursts, which has been discussed, getting a free action to do it would probably be best. And I do think doing regular upgrades is better than waiting until it all piles up.

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Well, regularly upgrading stuff only works up to a point because our Research stat is what ultimately says how good the final result can be. We can upgrade something every week, but unless we increase our Research stat every week as well the tech will eventually plateau and any successful improvements will be small, if they improve at all.

This happened with the Stellarator Research we did a while back, to iron out the worst issues and reduce the cost as well as the time we researched reduced costs for the Jaeger Frames. The cost reductions per succesfull action eventually became minimal even with decent rolls.

 

[Nixeu]

Well, regularly upgrading stuff only works up to a point because our Research stat is what ultimately says how good the final result can be. We can upgrade something every week, but unless we increase our Research stat every week as well the tech will eventually plateau and any successful improvements will be small, if they improve at all.

This happened with the Stellarator Research we did a while back, to iron out the worst issues and reduce the cost as well as the time we researched reduced costs for the Jaeger Frames. The cost reductions per succesfull action eventually became minimal even with decent rolls.

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I was more referring to the fact that we'll be pretty regularly researching things we want to equip our Jaegers with. I don't see that stopping anytime soon. Given how much trouble we seem to have doing regular housekeeping in that regard, I don't see a reason not to make that easier, you know?

 

[EvaUnit01]

[x]Highwind

 

[Smithsguild]

Reading through the preceding thread and got to the UV laser eyed Kaiju "Laidon" ?sp?. And although the die roll for scanner was a 1 Fyr fluffed it as it took out sensor relays at range one by one until our lucky air patrol tripped over it.

Our sensor arrays are an ongoing vulnerability we can ill afford to neglect, I am purposing some fluff to justify research in the attempt to gain a die bonus (Roll 2 die, take the better roll).

Upgrade our sensor arrays by the following means:

• Break the different sensor packages into discrete, camouflaged, & isolated systems that send signals back to Seattle -independently-.
• Incorporate visual/radar/motion sensor packages into tethered, lighter than air, weather balloon style platforms floating close enough they don't suffer from the upper atmospheric emp/radioactive particulate interference or if not feasible let them relay info down fiber optic strands to the ground bound relay
• Upgrade / supplement the Brontes sensors sonar net with water displacement buoys pioneered for use by Tsunami warning system anything that causes a large displacement of water at speed will cause surface waves these can measure.
• Incorporate seismic sensors that will not only sense the impact tremors/tunneling of Kaiju and by triangulation can point us to their location
• Incorporate directional microphones similar to what police listen for gunshots with and then use triangulation to pinpoint the noises of the collateral destruction Kaiju produce. (Trampled trees snapping, rubble collapsing, the growls, snorts and snuffles a skyscraper sized monster tends to make.)

I hope my fellow members of "The Council" see the wisdom of building less failure prone sensor equipment.

 

[Highwind]

Break the different sensor packages into discrete, camouflaged, & isolated systems that send signals back to Seattle -independently-.

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Probably how they work already.

Incorporate visual/radar/motion sensor packages into tethered, lighter than air, weather balloon style platforms floating close enough they don't suffer from the upper atmospheric emp/radioactive particulate interference or if not feasible let them relay info down fiber optic strands to the ground bound relay

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Still vulnerable to Kaiju with Ranged attacks.

Upgrade / supplement the Brontes sonar net with water displacement buoys pioneered for use by Tsunami warning system anything that causes a large displacement of water at speed will cause surface waves these can measure.

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The Brontes is a local system for Conventionals, not connected with the Scanner grid, with an effective Radius of 5 units and they're also vulnerable to being destroyed.

Incorporate seismic sensors that will not only sense the impact tremors of Kaiju walking but by triangulation can point us to their location

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Probably already in use, probably disrupted by the destruction of the relay stations.

Incorporate directional microphones similar to what police listen for gunshots with and then use triangulation to pinpoint the noises of the collateral destruction Kaiju produce. (Trampled trees snapping, rubble collapsing, the growls, snorts and snuffles a skyscraper sized monster tends to make.)

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Sounds like that would lead to a whole lot of false positives without additional means of scanning the area

The whole problem with our Scanners is that we often roll poorly and we don't have many Augments for them. We could look into an Augment to give us a re-roll, or one that gives us some more details on the Kaiju regardless of the roll, but as it stands everything you listed was probably already incorporated in the current network, which is supposed to be comprehensive enough to measure displacement, toxicity, Radioactivity, temperature signatures, and everything else that might help.

The best way to address the problem of Kaiju destroying the grid to take us by surprise is to increase our detection range (we already have that augment) and create a back-up sensor network so we can have more eyes in the area and something that works in case the Kaiju attack one of the primary network's relays (A re-roll? Best of two to the Scanner? Worth looking into).

 

[Smithsguild]

Probably how they work already.

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Not if the Kaiju was able to take out the entire package with one shot so quickly none of the sensors blipped. What I meant is the indepent sensors each had their own dedicated relay so when one might be destroyed the others would have a chance to report the loss.

A good failsafe is to then include a computerized ping to the sensor to see if still online every minute. If they fail to report back; yellow alert

Still vulnerable to Kaiju with Ranged attacks.

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But unless assaulted by a force who simultaneously took out -all- the small hidden sensors not without generating something any surviving sensor could note.

The Brontes is a local system for Conventionals, not connected with the Scanner grid, with an effective Radius of 5 units and they're also vulnerable to being destroyed.

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My bad, I meant the sensor sonar net. Upgrading the Sonar net with displacement buoys. More input from stand alone sensors that have their own redundant isolated comms to Seattle. My whole point is ALL the sensors should not share the same relay as that makes the whole system vulnerable and blind by elimination of 1 relay. That is just poor design.

Probably already in use, probably disrupted by the destruction of the relay stations.

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Probably, but not specifically. If sonar had a differing relay than seismic, the overlapping data would prevent strikes that blind a whole sector of the sensor net.

Sounds like that would lead to a whole lot of false positives without additional means of scanning the area

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Independent broadcast from multiple systems would actually allow you to double check a false positive more easily. If a seismic sensor trips with a false positive you then check the other overlapping systems thermal, motion sensor, blah, blah...

The whole problem with our Scanners is that we often roll poorly and we don't have many Augments for them. We could look into an Augment to give us a re-roll, or one that gives us some more details on the Kaiju regardless of the roll, but as it stands everything you listed was probably already incorporated in the current network, which is supposed to be comprehensive enough to measure displacement, toxicity, Radioactivity, temperature signatures, and everything else that might help.

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And this my friend is the fluff I'm providing to help research said upgraded sensor augment. Either the ability to take a re-roll, roll 2 dice take the higher roll, or whatever Fyr finds appropriate based on our research roll...

The best way to address the problem of Kaiju destroying the grid to take us by surprise is to increase our detection range (we already have that augment) and create a back-up sensor network so we can have more eyes in the area and something that works in case the Kaiju attack one of the primary network's relays (A re-roll? Best of two to the Scanner? Worth looking into).

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My proposal is to make our existing system more robust by diversification , dispersal to smaller independent units and therefore less susceptible to targeted attacks. I appreciate your consideration.

 

[Fyrstorm]

Won't have any mechanical effects beyond reduction of penalties from environmental effects. Also, it'd take a really long time and a lot of resources to just switch out the whole sensor net for minor gain.

The Laidon problem was it shooting down every sensor tower in its path on top of the system failure.

 

[Nixeu]

The whole problem with our Scanners is that we often roll poorly and we don't have many Augments for them. We could look into an Augment to give us a re-roll, or one that gives us some more details on the Kaiju regardless of the roll, but as it stands everything you listed was probably already incorporated in the current network, which is supposed to be comprehensive enough to measure displacement, toxicity, Radioactivity, temperature signatures, and everything else that might help.

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Displacement meaning volume, not weight, as with naval displacement. That was a point of confusion during...the Laidon fight, I think. With me being the confused one.

The best way to address the problem of Kaiju destroying the grid to take us by surprise is to increase our detection range (we already have that augment) and create a back-up sensor network so we can have more eyes in the area and something that works in case the Kaiju attack one of the primary network's relays (A re-roll? Best of two to the Scanner? Worth looking into).

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If we ever get the tech to a level where it's reasonable, Barriers around the major sensor nodes may also be helpful, assuming they don't interfere with the sensors. Would at least help with getting struck by lightning or hit by ranged attacks.

Personally, I think we need more robust circuits, and to put all the bleeding edge tech on separate lines, so they can't f*ck up the entire network. I suspect our sensor techs have either been employing really advanced gear that they haven't worked all the bugs out of (which can cascade and blow out the regular sensors), or the network is a kludge-fest that's held together with spit, bubblegum, duct tape, and prayers. Or both. Seriously, the tendency for the lines to get overloaded and short-circuit is ridiculous.

 

[Smithsguild]

Won't have any mechanical effects beyond reduction of penalties from environmental effects. Also, it'd take a really long time and a lot of resources to just switch out the whole sensor net for minor gain.

The Laidon problem was it shooting down every sensor tower in its path on top of the system failure.

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I'm confused @Fyrstorm Maybe you could clarify further, how would eliminating a weak point (zapping a relay and thereby bringing ALL the sensors in an area down) to making them smaller, less visible, with isolated comms thereby eliminating the possibility of one shot-ing all the sensors with a single ranged attack not be beneficial? I never meant to remove/replace the whole net merely remove the reliance on a combined signal relay weak point with something more diverse and robust?

I understand there was a failure (our poor roll) which made things worse. I also understand our history of rolling poorly for sensors. The idea to research something (hell at this point anything) to mitigate that was what all my fluff was intended as, justifications for an sensor aug mitigating poor sensor rolls.