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The Streetwalker's Guide to the Hierarchy

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ApotheosisJuice said:
[X] Plan Courageous Charge
[X] Improve Masks
[X] Great Legends x4
[X] Practitioners

A faceless squad of irrelevance seems all too likely to fall to creepy cliches and horror-induced idiot balls, whereas trained heroes and practitioners can tackle the djinn head on. This is a high-level quest by providence standards, and "small team of experts" is a trope for a reason.

Plus, it gives us good contacts later, and (a very small shadow of a chance of) people who could stand up to Jukah for us.
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I'd recommend at least one instance of Trained Braves, or at least Seasoned Heroes, to protect your logistics and supply lines; a single hero can take a township on their own, but can hardly be expected to watch over numerous patrol lines or keep that township on their own! One body can only be in one place at a time...

Also, Great Legends are somewhat specialized, even if broadly competent.
 
[X] Improve Masks

[X] Practitioners
[X] Enhanciles
[X] Great Legends
[X] Trained Braves

My main worry is Jukah, so these votes are chosen with the reasoning that Practitioners might have someone who can do something weird and the few Enhanciles who way-exceed Dorian might be able to do something if problems arise.
Though on the whole, if Jukah is as he says but not going to be fair, whatever we do remains probably futile.

(And Improve Masks seems the most likely to have some low-hanging fruit that will give immediate benefits in the time we have.)
 
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@Birdsie, did Dorian get the Spanner in the Works Barakah aspect, or perform the Coils Barakah augmentation, yet? Also, Mask's Potential used to be 5k Fates, now it's 3k? Does that mean the total is 8k?

[X] Plan Balance

[X] The Warwolf

Execrator sounds kind of like a toilet; Crimson Court is too long.

[X] Improve Masks

Improving Crimson King naturally improves our Viscerality.

[X] Trained Braves x2
[X] Great Legends x2
[X] Practitioners

We can't take Enhanciles with us, yet they sabatoge our training. Nothing Dorian can muster, including the direct and total action of the Caliph, would stop a determined Jukah from doing anything. Let's just create a balanced combined-arms force with which to conquer Surirah. Trained Braves for raw manpower, Great Legends for raw Barakah (15 x 30,000 = 450,000 Barakah per Great Legends pick compared to 300 x 50 = 15,000 per Braves pick), and Practitioners to help with logistical and esoteric support.
 
Rihaku said:
@Birdsie, did Dorian get the Spanner in the Works Barakah aspect, or perform the Coils Barakah augmentation, yet? Also, Mask's Potential used to be 5k Fates, now it's 3k? Does that mean the total is 8k?
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Given his incredible success in investigating Jafar, Dorian decided it'd be smarter to hold off - especially since Jukah's now an aspect of the game he'll need to account for. Gamaliel Coils might be more useful if applied towards preparing countermeasures in case of potential betrayal, or simple reprisal if refused.

That said - it'll be one of the options during the next vote, which'll take place in Surirah.

Yeah, it was a count of the total gained between those updates.
 
Birdsie said:
Just about the only matter truly suspicious at all was Kalila, the man's dead wife, whose grave he visited frequently - every other evening, sitting on a bench and quietly retelling the most recent events in the Caliphate. But Dorian had scanned the location thoroughly and there were no listening devices...
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He knows ghosts are a thing! Why does it only say 'devices', that's not even on-theme for this planet yet!
Rihaku said:
[X] The Warwolf

Execrator sounds kind of like a toilet; Crimson Court is too long.
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This expedition is a lot more violent and a lot less relief effort than I was expecting. In any case, the ship name seems pretty important given the magic system, and also, given that it's something we probably can't bring to the next world, I don't want to tie our Court to it, or it to war, too much.

[X] The Wonderbolt
Fits Andrei's themes very well, isn't off-theme to make once and leave behind, and is also an excellent pun.

I've wanted a mask-improving vote for a while. Ideally we'd have other masks than King Crimson though; it's not an ideal lifemask for Dorian I think, and we're probably fixating already.
[X] Improve Masks
-[X] Particularly long-term crafting boosts such as Artificer and Practice access

Since Practitioners still exist on Providence I'm pretty sure that's a hereditary power, and that means it's something we can get via either Viscerality or Kingship, depending on whether it's more a biological or social heredity (I'm guessing the latter, since there was mention of Acknowledgements as a power connected to them).

As for the army vote, I think it's also pretty important to figure out what we want the story of our army to look like. Do we want mighty heroes? Well-trained men? Posthuman cyborgs? A bunch of weird specialists?
I think we maybe want Seasoned Heroes, actually, since their listed drawback is "they have consciences that might conflict with their orders, and in fact probably will given the archetypes in play".
Which might be avoidable, if we just make them everyone but the esoteric specialists.

[X] Hearts of Gold
-[X] The Wonderbolt
-[X] Improve Masks
--[X] Particularly long-term crafting boosts such as Artificer and Practice access
-[X] Seasoned Heroes IV
-[X] Practitioners I
 
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ApotheosisJuice said:
A faceless squad of irrelevance seems all too likely to fall to creepy cliches and horror-induced idiot balls, whereas trained heroes and practitioners can tackle the djinn head on. This is a high-level quest by providence standards, and "small team of experts" is a trope for a reason.

Plus, it gives us good contacts later, and (a very small shadow of a chance of) people who could stand up to Jukah for us.
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Rule 0 of any war is that you need boots on the ground. Having big guys that can punch stuff is all well and good, but they won't be the ones patrolling shitty neighbors in the dead of the night.

[X] Plan Tide of Vengeance
-[X] The Wonderbolt
-[X] Trained Braves
-[X] Great Legends
-[X] Enhanciles x2

The "downside" of Enhanciles is that they weaken our training action. The obvious workaround is to forgo our training entirely and instead focus on accomplishing task at hand instead, putting all of our effort into enhancing our army. Double Enchanciles supporting six thousand Braves should maximize our overall warpower by a long shot. In turn this should let us conquer Suriah faster, and thus earn Barakah faster and gain various treasures and capture Djinns etc. and with enough speed we may find ourselves in a position where we have enough time to wage war against vampires and an army to do just that, or maybe we might even do a excursion in the Labyrinth itself.

A ultimate aggressive option. Red as they get. It may prove to be a complete overkill and thus lose us a Vescirality training proc, however I think that's fine and there is also value of just ensuring we have a huge margin of error. But if we manage to make it work, if we managed to be decisive and aggressive enough, our bounty might very well be more than just Suriah. And I'd say that is well worth a Visc proc.

E: After some consideration decided to change one batch of Braves to Legends. This should help smooth our powerlevel curve by assigning Legends to Enchanciles combat squad(10~20 per Legend) so they can't get ganked by high tiers, which should dramatically increase efficiency of Enchanciles and their growth. Less Braves means less ground coverage, but honestly with 500 Enchanciles and forgoing training to improve soldier actions we should have enough dudes anyway

e2: I mean we could just give radios to Braves. A hundred Braves with radios backed by a couple of Enchanciles in rapid deployment could hold a city as well as thousand Braves. Superior stats of Enchanciles means that we should treat them more like fighter jets, and in this case it should work
 
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HoratioVonBecker said:
This expedition is a lot more violent and a lot less relief effort than I was expecting. In any case, the ship name seems pretty important given the magic system, and also, given that it's something we probably can't bring to the next world, I don't want to tie our Court to it, or it to war, too much.
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On reflection and in light of this, @Rihaku, I'd be willing to approval vote Plan Balance if it changed the ship name to Wonderbolt.
 
[X] Plan Tide of Vengeance

Something to remember: Dorian's Kingship scales by making changes to the world. Conquering (liberating?) the djinn is a major swing and will have equally valuable rewards. I would normally argue hard for mask making with exotic materials, but what we've seen of Wishcraft puts the Djinn at the peak of value-extraction on this planet. Many masks-worth of adamantium and Silmarils can be wished up once we've demonstrated the value of Freedom to our new subjects.
 
For me the more interesting bit is the whole Jukah thing. Our companions are quite clear on the course they believe correct; interestingly enough no one brought up possibility of this being a fake, so I guess that theory of mine is out of window. Of course the immediate concern with Jukah is that he is so powerful that he could immediately resolve main plot point of Draith Emperor by just traveling there and nuking him, which implies that we will have secondary Jukah issue arise as new main antagonist - either Jukah himself or someone on that tier. Both are quite concerning, and while trust our team has in us is quite commendable, it may also be somewhat optimistic.

But it may be worth it still. While releasing Jukah goes against my instinct and better judgement, I too am ready to trust in our team if they trust in us. Really, what's the worst that can happen? We got superhelled or our value system gets rewritten? I'm sure it will be fine.
 
Wolfy said:
For me the more interesting bit is the whole Jukah thing. Our companions are quite clear on the course they believe correct; interestingly enough no one brought up possibility of this being a fake, so I guess that theory of mine is out of window. Of course the immediate concern with Jukah is that he is so powerful that he could immediately resolve main plot point of Draith Emperor by just traveling there and nuking him, which implies that we will have secondary Jukah issue arise as new main antagonist - either Jukah himself or someone on that tier. Both are quite concerning, and while trust our team has in us is quite commendable, it may also be somewhat optimistic.

But it may be worth it still. While releasing Jukah goes against my instinct and better judgement, I too am ready to trust in our team if they trust in us. Really, what's the worst that can happen? We got superhelled or our value system gets rewritten? I'm sure it will be fine.
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I think he's trapped not just on this world but inside it, and freeing him might involve a major dungeon delve? But you're right that getting something that can just squish Imperial Drethir seems unlikely, and while I'm sure the Somber Man is not a trivial fight for him, I bet we end up in conflict with the Litanists or something before we even make it back to Drethir, if he joins us.
And I'm not sure of exactly why he wants to leave. Boredom? Spite? Sheer wanderlust? Those imply different valid solutions. And I'm not sure why he's both a Cleric of the World-Enders and Providence still exists. Could be that he lacks the power, could be a matter of conscience, could be he tried it and it still didn't free him, so he undid it with timetravel. @Birdsie, did Dorian ask?
My best guess, if we free him, is that we're going to free him and he's going to leave, but leave us with treasure.
I would prefer not to unleash a wicked god of terror and calamity, so what I want to do is change him into something else before releasing him on the universe. Something like distorting him from Archvampire Cleric of the End into Mysterious Wandering Immortal.
 
One thing I've noticed is that the nameless mask seems to not so much have super high Competency, as having an extremely good "intuition"

It said this outright when precisely determining the status of Musorov and Carrasco while they were in another world and using only minor context clues.
And it also seemed to correctly assess the vizier situation.

So when the mask says that Jukah may or may not be lying, and that "we can take him" if he is lying, I think it points to a big part of the potential lie being Jukah's capabilities. Because no way in hell are we actually taking him if he really has 30 million fates, high supernal viscerality, dozens of other supernal Practiced skills, many powerful magics, etc. Exaggerating them would make it seem that he has little incentive to deceive us - our powers aside from interdimensional travel would just be irrelevant to him. (which also would explain how OOC this doesn't break the scaling curve - he could only give us "minor scraps" and leave the court the moment the curse is effectively lifted)

Rihaku said:
Execrator sounds kind of like a toilet
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It actually kind of does, lol (friendly reminder that if using the toilet is excruciating, you may want to see a doctor)

My only gripe with Balance is taking 2x braves technically overloads the ship's crew capacity but it's overall quite solid. Tide of vengeance also seems potentially strong.

[X] The Wonderbolt
[X] Plan Balance
[X] Plan Tide of Vengeance


(wonderbolt <- only the name)
 
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A interesting tactics would be using "gain Pawns" training action in conjunction with Legends/Practitioners to get bunch of powerful Pawns. The only real issue would potentially be reducing screen time of our current Pawns, which could be relevant.
ApotheosisJuice said:
I see the need for boots on the ground, I suppose. Still, enhanciles are an inefficient pick by my metrics, so Balance it is.
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By what metrics though? Enchanciles are clearly the best army pick, which is why they come with a downside. By accepting and doubling down on the downside you can get even more value out of it with basically the same downside, and thus the best army we can possibly make. The training is just a default value action we can have, so sacrificing it to we can chance at higher value actions down the road is a good trade. (also 2xEnch/Legend/Braves is just an insane army comp from tactical standpoint)

To explain this in simple terms, imagine training takes two days, then weaker army takes ten days to conquer. Tide instead spends two days to improve the army so it can conquer in eight days, and now suddenly you have two extra days with big army and lots of loot to do even better training. This is of course very reductive version of what Tide is trying to do, but it should get the point across. We have limited time here and there is a lot of value to be extracted, so wasting our time on default training actions instead of making the most from what Providence has to offer is not something I find to be efficient.

The actual issue is Jukah, since he is a wildcard. It might be that we roll up with amped up army and he makes conquest trivial. Or access to these soldiers might be worthwhile still. Whose to say with that guy around? But since he is a wildcard I'm just ignoring him and focusing on the best strategy ignoring him.
 
Wolfy said:
A interesting tactics would be using "gain Pawns" training action in conjunction with Legends/Practitioners to get bunch of powerful Pawns. The only real issue would potentially be reducing screen time of our current Pawns, which could be relevant.

By what metrics though? Enchanciles are clearly the best army pick, which is why they come with a downside. By accepting and doubling down on the downside you can get even more value out of it with basically the same downside, and thus the best army we can possibly make. The training is just a default value action we can have, so sacrificing it to we can chance at higher value actions down the road is a good trade. (also 2xEnch/Legend/Braves is just an insane army comp from tactical standpoint)

To explain this in simple terms, imagine training takes two days, then weaker army takes ten days to conquer. Tide instead spends two days to improve the army so it can conquer in eight days, and now suddenly you have two extra days with big army and lots of loot to do even better training. This is of course very reductive version of what Tide is trying to do, but it should get the point across. We have limited time here and there is a lot of value to be extracted, so wasting our time on default training actions instead of making the most from what Providence has to offer is not something I find to be efficient.

The actual issue is Jukah, since he is a wildcard. It might be that we roll up with amped up army and he makes conquest trivial. Or access to these soldiers might be worthwhile still. Whose to say with that guy around? But since he is a wildcard I'm just ignoring him and focusing on the best strategy ignoring him.
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I agree, and will approval vote your plan if you change the ship name to Wonderbolt. Hateful Toilet is - well, literally naming it the Hateful Toilet would be a kinda funny bad idea, but I'd really prefer Wonderbolt.
 
[X] The Wonderbolt
[X] Improve Masks
-[X] Particularly long-term crafting boosts such as Artificer and Practice access
[X] Hearts of Gold
[X] Plan Tide of Vengeance
 
Prospalz said:
Mask seems to be, consistently, a little bit slow to progress... The payment for its omnicapable nature, perhaps.
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Possibly, but I just had the thought that it might be because people don't know the story here, whereas on Drethir they think it fictional. Perhaps a book of legends from across the Hierarchy is something we should Andrei's book fabricators for.

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@JOEbob, @ApotheosisJuice, neither of you have made ship name votes. Can I convince you to vote for Wonderbolt? I feel like it's both less misanthropic and better aligned with Andrei than the pregen options, and it's pretty clearly his ship given how much his presence improves it.
 
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Prospalz said:
Mask seems to be, consistently, a little bit slow to progress... The payment for its omnicapable nature, perhaps.
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We are running into an issue where base Potency of Masks is not enough for them to be relevant at our current level. Right now we can expect to fight ~200 Potency enemies, so even 50 Potency Masks are just too weak to have much of an impact regardless of what ability we give them. This is an issue, because we lose the utility of Masks pretty much. Now, it seems that getting super materials we can obtain at our current powerlevel is one way to boost them, but I am unsure how powerful would that actually be.

The question is, what then? We could just leave Masks be, have the system slowly fade back in relevance and just use them to create a Mask for a guy here or there, or find a way to fundamentally improve out Mask making so we can still benefit of arbitrary utility even at our level. However we are at point where just more raw power might be more useful than utility. Something to consider.

Another thing is that CK's improvement from 100 to 150 Potency was rather underwhelming in terms of power. It wasn't nowhere near as much of a jump as I've expected, although it did give us a bunch of rare stats and even better cross stage effect. The question, for me, is if improving Masks here improves them only in terms of Potency , or does it improve quality of Mask powers in more fundamental way? Because former might not have much of an impact, as boosting weaker Masks is kinda whatever and getting Potency on CK was underwhelming the last time around? Although there is a third option of working towards next evolution of CK, which should hopefully be suitably impressive.

Maybe we could add "mask making" to our Barakah domain? That sounds useful.
 
Wolfy said:
Another thing is that CK's improvement from 100 to 150 Potency was rather underwhelming in terms of power. It wasn't nowhere near as much of a jump as I've expected, although it did give us a bunch of rare stats and even better cross stage effect. The question, for me, is if improving Masks here improves them only in terms of Potency , or does it improve quality of Mask powers in more fundamental way? Because former might not have much of an impact, as boosting weaker Masks is kinda whatever and getting Potency on CK was underwhelming the last time around? Although there is a third option of working towards next evolution of CK, which should hopefully be suitably impressive
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Yeah, though the sleeper boon of the potential increase may be that the visceral training speed bonus went from 50% to 150%. (or it could even be read as a 200% bonus, if "twice as much and half again as ardently" means "2x time and 1.5x intensity")

Though it still seems like the first time that a large increase in Potency didn't lead to exponential gains in overall power

We haven't really seriously pursued maskcrafting lately beside some practice back in the village. There's several options we haven't done, like fixation and testing using (regular) gamaliel on them. Andrei's bishop had an opportunity to get a mask-related power, and we've had at least one opportunity to reach supernal maskcrafting. We could probably brute force it by gamaliel coiling the artificer mask, especially if we reach Master skill before doing that.
 
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We know of some ways to boost it. Getting Japhris to high enough level so she can boost low level Masks, doing the thing Birdsie mentioned so we can carry all Masks with some measure of Fixation, getting advanced materials(I don't think this is Providence specific, future worlds should be around our level which implies certain level of power that should avail us to such materials), changing our Barakah so it can be leveraged during Mask crafting etc.

The question is - do we care about having weaker Masks, or do we just focus on boosting CK. I think that majority right now would focus on enhancing Crimson King. A focused enough action could get the mask to 200 or 250 before Fixation buffs, and good Fixation action might get us to 1.4x, so we are talking upwards of 300 Potency on that Mask if put some effort there. Compared to that ensuring that Masks we craft are at 60 is kinda whatever, with exception of Streetwalker.

Also on topic of Coil, it is troubling that we are not really using it since it is pretty much the most powerful thing we've got right now. Part of it is that we are just not getting it as an option in our votes, part of it is that just having it around as get out of the jail free card is powerful, but I think that we are losing on a lot of potential value by having Coil procs on standby.
 
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