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Usagi Quest (CK3/Princess Maker) (Sailor Moon)

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Well, that will be some of a concern.
But from what we've seen so far, magical power is produced by mages. Awakened humans eat food and some of it gets turned into magic somehow. There's also the planetary ley-lines, which we know exist but don't know much about.

Still, there seems to be a general suggestion that at some point you hit a critical threshold, where there are enough mages in the world that general magic levels rise high enough that it starts awakening children passively. At which point the number of mages increases rapidly causing overall magic levels to similarly increase.

Though we also can always note that Usagi is apparently single-handedly raising global background magic levels by herself, so I'm not sure supply is a problem so much as potentially the refining process to compact it into those fancy crystals.
 
Razzocnor said:
Well, that will be some of a concern.
But from what we've seen so far, magical power is produced by mages. Awakened humans eat food and some of it gets turned into magic somehow. There's also the planetary ley-lines, which we know exist but don't know much about.
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Humans also generate chemical and kinetic power, which with a bit of equipment can be converted into electric power. But you can't run modern civilization off of that, and much of our technological development has been about substituting other things for human effort. Similar things may well apply to magical energy.
 
jwolfe_beta said:
Particularly in the US where they seem to be rigorously avoiding the dreaded 'M' word when it comes to describing anything and everything.
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I've said it before and I'll say it again.

The actual meanings of the words even fit.

The United States avoiding the M word doesn't mean they're not at the forefront of the Masquerade repeal alongside Japan, which also isn't using the M word. Crystal Millennium is the only first party openly calling what they do magic.

I say "first party" because there's no way in hell that the news, entertainment media, and general population are following the government's lead here.
Skelm said:
Is that really much different from electric cars, in practice?
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Yes.
1. In practice, this is only a couple years before GM produced and immediately ratfucked its own electric car to technically comply with a California emissions law. Not to get all disruption-brain here, but this is an environment that stands to benefit from someone making a renewable energy car in good faith.
2. Ambient magic is a thing and becoming more of a thing by the day, so a car might be able to recharge without specialized infrastructure.
3. If it can't recharge without specialized infrastructure, that's a problem, because electricity delivery infrastructure is much more common than magic delivery infrastructure. Hiring a yokai to work the gas station might be workable?
4. Magic is actually zero emissions, instead of reduced emissions from moving the power generation to a plant.
 
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Torgamous said:
The United States avoiding the M word doesn't mean they're not at the forefront of the Masquerade repeal alongside Japan, which also isn't using the M word. C
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Think there's a mixup. I wasn't suggesting that the US was for or against the Masquerade repeal; but more how they were going to approach this new field of study.
Skelm said:
Humans also generate chemical and kinetic power, which with a bit of equipment can be converted into electric power. But you can't run modern civilization off of that, and much of our technological development has been about substituting other things for human effort. Similar things may well apply to magical energy.
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If we consider the effects that the Ministry mages can produce with the limited 'background' magic and a system that is far less effective than High Lunar; magic can produce a lot more bang for your buck as compared to 'normal human power.
 
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Torgamous said:
Yes.
1. In practice, this is only a couple years before GM produced and immediately ratfucked its own electric car to technically comply with a California emissions law. Not to get all disruption-brain here, but this is an environment that stands to benefit from someone making a renewable energy car in good faith.
2. Ambient magic is a thing and becoming more of a thing by the day, so a car might be able to recharge without specialized infrastructure.
3. If it can't recharge without specialized infrastructure, that's a problem, because electricity delivery infrastructure is much more common than magic delivery infrastructure. Hiring a yokai to work the gas station might be workable?
4. Magic is actually zero emissions, instead of reduced emissions from moving the power generation to a plant.
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On top of that, the biggest limitation of electricity as a power source doesn't apply to magic, that being storage. Magic power can be stored for centuries if not millennia without loss – making an utter joke of modern conventional batteries – in crystals that have insane power densities. The natural monopoly that fossil fuels have on being reliable, storable energy melts in the face of magic.
 
Torgamous said:
We've already had a war where nations expected their soldiers to die by the hundreds to a handful of people for the sake of map painting, and it ended with more than a few coups and a new war paradigm of not doing that specific thing again.
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I mean, the big thing is also there's a lot more granularity then in Dynasty Warriors. To use One Piece as an example, during the battle to free Wano, we saw how the big enemy army, even if they weren't the equal to the protagonists and easily dealt with individually, they drained their stamina. Meanwhile, the protagonists did the same to the enemy big guns, wearing down Kaido through otherwise weaker fighters.

And that's not even taking into account the usage of teamwork, clever tactics or abilities. The Red Scabbards vs Kaido, Kid and Law vs Big Mom, the old hag ensuring Odens defeat, Tama's devil fruit...
 
Having had a moment to think, aren't what we're trying to describe with the Dynasty Warriors comparisons really just the High-Low mix? That concept where the bulk of a force is made up of cheaper more mass producible units and is supplemented by a limited number of high performance machines where, figuratively speaking, no expense is spared?

Because if so, the concept's not really that much of a divergence from conventional military thinking. Least of all in the 90s.
 
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The trick is that there's a big difference between the conventional military reality (in which high-low mixes can exist, but anything "high" is almost axiomatically expensive and the richer side will usually have more and better of them) and warfare in an age of heroes (in which the "highs" come about largely by chance and you can't really buy your way into having more).

On the other hand, the US seems to be a 'top tier' magical nation at the moment with no obvious advantages going for it besides just having a large population and territory with plenty of economic resources, with the implication that its "magical side," even under the Masquerade, is correspondingly populous and has the resources to do things not everyone else can do. Maybe some big players (if not the same big players necessarily) WILL find ways to "buy heroism," as it were. After all, the lesson of the Pretty Cures is fairly clear, in that there are far more people with the potential for heroism and excellence than many of us imagine.
 
jwolfe_beta said:
And or completely freak out if the introduction of magic-based technology destroys their profit margins.

I'm reminded of Fate's car that we see in Strikers. Ten to one it's not powered by oil etc but by a 'mana battery' that can be charged via ambient energies or the driver. Imagine how much of a freak out certain industrial giants would have if said tech emerged on Earth and/or the TSAB offered/traded it. Because from a quick check IRL over half the oil extracted world-wide goes into fueling vehicles of all types.
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The basic healing spell that Ami and Doctor Mizuno are already rolling out is going to have colossal impact on the pharmaceutical industry.
If something like diabetes goes from 'daily injections for the rest of your life' to 'ten minute appointment, once' then that is a billion dollar industry gone overnight. And that is just one medical condition that healing magic could make a thing of the past.
 
Angelform said:
The basic healing spell that Ami and Doctor Mizuno are already rolling out is going to have colossal impact on the pharmaceutical industry.
If something like diabetes goes from 'daily injections for the rest of your life' to 'ten minute appointment, once' then that is a billion dollar industry gone overnight. And that is just one medical condition that healing magic could make a thing of the past.
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True, but the mend spell has the limitation of people needing to know the details of what needs to be fixed. I don't recall any mention of it being able to fix anything beyond injuries and such. Well aside from when Usagi is pumping insane amounts of mana into the spell.
 
Gore17 said:
I mean, the big thing is also there's a lot more granularity then in Dynasty Warriors. To use One Piece as an example, during the battle to free Wano, we saw how the big enemy army, even if they weren't the equal to the protagonists and easily dealt with individually, they drained their stamina. Meanwhile, the protagonists did the same to the enemy big guns, wearing down Kaido through otherwise weaker fighters.

And that's not even taking into account the usage of teamwork, clever tactics or abilities. The Red Scabbards vs Kaido, Kid and Law vs Big Mom, the old hag ensuring Odens defeat, Tama's devil fruit...
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Fiction in general and shounen anime in particular have a tendency to treat armies as more willing to die in droves for no visible effect than they actually are in practice. No amount of One Piece will convince me that the "an alarming amount of you will die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make" side isn't just begging for their army to say "okay but what if I shoot you instead?"

It's a bit more justified when the answer is "the bullet bounces off me and then I destroy every planet you've ever lived on," but that still comes with an inherently limited state capacity to respond to regular desertion. We're already seeing the beginnings of that here with the youma.
jwolfe_beta said:
Well aside from when Usagi is pumping insane amounts of mana into the spell.
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Usagi is casting a different spell that does different things. Lunar Healing Burst is not Mend, it's Lunar Healing Burst.
 
In practice theres a shitton of low level threats and crime you need a lot of low level dudes to keep down. And mid level threats you need large armed groups or singular elites to stop...and then theres the human atomic bombs....
 
On the front of Fossil Fuel Vs. Magic power/infrastructure, I remind the thread that the Whaling Industry didn't (poaching notwithstanding) largely dissapear because of dwindling whale populations threatening extinction. Fossil Fuels were discovered and took off largely as a more abundant and easier to extract alternative. With magic being that much more abundant and easier to tap into (especially for Awakened individuals), I can easily see something similar happening. Oil will probably still see use in plastics until an alternative is found*, but as a fuel source, magic is just that much safer** and more abundant.

* (Bio-plastics aren't really up to meeting global demand and won't be unless/until there are entire agri-worlds colonized and dedicated to growing noting but oil crops)

**
Torgamous said:
1. In practice, this is only a couple years before GM produced and immediately ratfucked its own electric car to technically comply with a California emissions law. Not to get all disruption-brain here, but this is an environment that stands to benefit from someone making a renewable energy car in good faith.
2. Ambient magic is a thing and becoming more of a thing by the day, so a car might be able to recharge without specialized infrastructure.
3. If it can't recharge without specialized infrastructure, that's a problem, because electricity delivery infrastructure is much more common than magic delivery infrastructure. Hiring a yokai to work the gas station might be workable?
4. Magic is actually zero emissions, instead of reduced emissions from moving the power generation to a plant.
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Precia and Alicia Testarosa's condition is due to what amounts to radiation poisoning from the equivalent of a magical nuclear reactor melting down, so there is some degree of artificial magical power generation/transmission that can be achieved, and there are dangers possible from its misuse.
 
The American approach feela more like "odds are, there will always be more unawakened than awakened" so lets make stuff that works for unawakened but also enhanced awakened performance all the more. Joe smoe private needs to be able to use this barebones power armor just as much as magical boy timmy over there, cept Timmy's gets the fancy doodads and custom paint job.

Its gonna be the Gundam design phylosophy all over again, the prototype is the kitted out mustang, and the production model is the toyota.

I would not be surprised if one of the big guys starts unironically fielding shipgirls. (The fact the germans and russians see ships as male still fucks with me)
 
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Simon_Jester said:
The trick is that there's a big difference between the conventional military reality (in which high-low mixes can exist, but anything "high" is almost axiomatically expensive and the richer side will usually have more and better of them) and warfare in an age of heroes (in which the "highs" come about largely by chance and you can't really buy your way into having more).

On the other hand, the US seems to be a 'top tier' magical nation at the moment with no obvious advantages going for it besides just having a large population and territory with plenty of economic resources, with the implication that its "magical side," even under the Masquerade, is correspondingly populous and has the resources to do things not everyone else can do. Maybe some big players (if not the same big players necessarily) WILL find ways to "buy heroism," as it were. After all, the lesson of the Pretty Cures is fairly clear, in that there are far more people with the potential for heroism and excellence than many of us imagine.
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Been mulling over this, and I think there still is something to be said for developed powers still having an advantage, even with the "lottery" on when and where "hero type" individuals can crop up. I seem to recall that in the Nanoha series, after she fully joins the Bureau, one of her instructors during her official training makes a routine point of beating her with regularity in their spars, and this is in spite of him only having a "C-Rank" core and using a bog-standard storage device, compared to her A-rank core and Raising Heart.

At the very least, more developed powers have the advantage in the old age and treachery department, having developed tactics and techniques that let at least some of their less naturally powerful fighters punch above their apparent weight class.

Edit: I also think I recall that in one of the later series, the series villain organization used no magic at all, while making liberal use of anti-magic fields to hamstring the Bureau forces sent to deal with them, as a point that while magic is powerful, it isn't the end-all-be-all, and there are other avenues of technology that can level the playing field even against said natural "hero units".
 
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Torgamous said:
Fiction in general and shounen anime in particular have a tendency to treat armies as more willing to die in droves for no visible effect than they actually are in practice. No amount of One Piece will convince me that the "an alarming amount of you will die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make" side isn't just begging for their army to say "okay but what if I shoot you instead?"
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I mean, that actually happened during that battle. When one of the higher ups started treating the lower ranks the lower ranks as disposable, they turned sides, which turned the situation around from "the heroes are slowly losing" to "they're slowly winning".
 
IM here wondering what the magical version of a rednecks gonna look like...kinda want a texan magical girl/boy show. Might turn out less WTF than Magical girl Spec ops. Now thats a fucked up world, like holy shit.
 
Almech_Alfarion said:
* (Bio-plastics aren't really up to meeting global demand and won't be unless/until there are entire agri-worlds colonized and dedicated to growing noting but oil crops)
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With magic making a mockery of many thermodynamic concerns, it may well be possible to dramatically improve production of bioplastics or other equivalent things. One thing that a magitech economy has going over a mundane industrial economy is that some of the fundamental concepts of "basic limiting commodity" go out the window or are replaced by other, less restrictive limiting commodities.

In some sense this reflects the transition from the pre-industrial to the industrial commodity.

Before the Industrial Revolution, the real limiting commodity of human civilization was the food calorie. Because all forms of productive activity were closely connected to human labor. And the limit on that capacity for labor was how many people you could feed heartily enough to render them capable of performing the labor. There were ways to eke this out (horses and oxen could perform labor, and they got their food calories from grass and whatnot), but the basic connection was still in place.

The Industrial Revolution broke that connection; you could literally dig rocks and goop out of the ground and shove them in an engine and set them on fire and the fire would do the work, regardless of how many calories of food you had around, and this was considerably less limiting than the previous system.

A notional Magitech Revolution may very well mean that things which previously were not possible without significant inputs of energy or specific regulated conditions, now become possible under other conditions. There will presumably still be limits, but the limit may well be something we today would find far more flexible and allowing much higher standards of living than what we are now familiar with. Constraints like "where do you get each kilowatt-hour of energy from" may become less relevant in many cases.

Psyraptor said:
I would not be surprised if one of the big guys starts unironically fielding shipgirls. (The fact the germans and russians see ships as male still fucks with me)
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The question is not, to me, so much whether you can summon the spirit of a warship, as what happens if you do. Because you may get a spirit that doesn't actually have 8" guns stuck to her arms...
 
Simon_Jester said:
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My refering to bioplastics was merely to point out that yes, I am aware of such things, and to give an example of something that "could" replace fossil fuel plastics, but which currently lacks the proper economy of scale to fully meet the demand for it. I am fully aware that with magic we may simply be able to conjure some sort of pliable, easy to cut and process wonder material hereto unknown to modern man. Hell, for all we know, that material might have the same chemical structure as Diamond while retaining all of those properties. For now, though, such a wonder material conjured from the Aether is still unobtanium, hence my stating that we are stuck with fossil fuel plastics until such a time that such an alternative can be discovered, even if we are successful in converting our energy economy fully to using Magic.
 
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The fact that there's still so much oil left after the first rise of civilization tells me that using oil in the first place is unusual and probably a result of the Masquerade hiding the really easy stuff.
 
Now that you mention it, yes. If civilization arose on Earth naturally, as I gather from the accounts of our oldest sources in-quest it did, then you'd think they would have gone after the easiest, most accessible sources of oil. Granted that some of the changes since those times have been... surprisingly catastrophic (we have it on good authority that Atlantis and other landmasses now lost existed), but still, you wouldn't expect low-hanging resource fruit to have gone completely untapped.

Either something completely regenerated those resources, or they simply were not needed, or a mix of the two (e.g. oil may have been entirely left alone, but weird rock-elemental processes may have been involved in regenerating the surface-level iron ore deposits used by pre-modern industrial societies, since we can be pretty sure the pre-Fall ancients on Earth at least used metal)
 
Well, we could watch the other planets as Senshi-based terraforming starts happening. Will the Moon suddenly develop a bunch of mineral deposits as it becomes habitable?

Or maybe we'll find out there's a fairy realm dedicated to refilling metal deposits. That'd be an unusual one.
 
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