Victoria Falls: A Post-Collapse American Nation Quest [Down With Victoria!]

[4WheelSword]

thread policy Discussion of politics that does not directly relate to the Quest or to Quest votes are banned from hereon out. This thread policy will be enforced by the Moderation team. Do not ignore it.

 

[Angelform]

Turn One

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31 days.
203 pages.
5057 posts.

That is how long it took to reach turn one.


I note we actually have the tech for drones. Perhaps we should look into something similar to Rwanda's Drone Delivery Service, as our transport infrastructure is in a fairly terrible state outside the main cities.

 

[Antix_Shadows]

Do we have a limited window for soothing fears?

 

[QTesseract]

Okay, plans plans plans. We have one AP for each category, we have four floating ones. We all-caps MUST procure food or people start starving immediately, we all-caps MUST increase food production in the short to medium term. We lower-case must work on our housing problem because people will freeze solid in the upcoming winter if we don't. Those are our top economic priorities.

It is reasonable to assume the assassin will succeed in killing someone else important next turn if not caught THIS turn, and we may find ourselves with constantly stacking penalties and disadvantages from their activities. Like, this turn we're having to burn an action unless we want to lose Jameson's intelligence network, and we may lose the network anyway if we roll low on the dice.

Next turn we will really want Address the Air and Mobilize Troops and Detroit and Housing Repair (the last of which realistically we won't have enough AP to finish this turn).

But this turn, we HAVE to take the Scale Up Food Purchases action or we have a famine. We HAVE to take Pick Up The Marbles or we lose a very valuable asset (we may lose it even if we do). As the previous sentence illustrates, we HAVE to run down this assassin ASAP or they are going to gut our government faster than we can build/rebuild it.

That said, we have another opportunity with an expiration date: Detroit. Fighting the enemy there so we don't have to fight them here is a time-honored tradition, and the Victorians are very probably going to start putting pressure on them in Turn 2 and definitely Turn 3 (the point at which they actually launch their campaign). Getting at least part way there this turn diplomatically gives us a chance to block the Victorian invasion before it hits our core territory.

[Note that this opportunity is probably a direct reward for Established, inasmuch as we wouldn't even have a mechanism for integrating Detroit without it, though we might might MIGHT be able to negotiate an alliance]

[] Plan Oh Crapbaskets
-[] Show The Flag
-[] Organize Elections
-[] Detroit
-[] Scale Up Food Purchases
-[] Housing Repair
-[] Pick Up The Marbles
-[] What Do You Know, Asshole? (2 AP spent)
-[] Farming Equipment




You're not wrong, but... The US generally doesn't move its major military arsenals entirely without a very very good reason. Not least because if such an important government facility left Illinois, the congressmen from that state would throw screaming fits.

Rock Island Arsenal is almost certainly still there.

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I was gonna build a plan, but I like this one a lot. One thing I do think, though, is that we should be spending 2 ap on farming equipmemt. since it takes 2 sucesses

[] Plan Nobody Dies
-[] Show The Flag
-[] Organize Elections
-[] Scale Up Food Purchases
-[] Housing Repair
-[] Pick Up The Marbles
-[] What Do You Know, Asshole? (2 AP spent)
-[] Farming Equipment (2 Ap Spent)

I think getting ourselves solvent, foodwise, is unfortunately more important than grabbing detroit a turn early. I really don't want them to flip bicky, but I want our people dyign even less, and I don't think anything else can be cut. I think I'll probably approval vote yours, but I don't agree as much with its priorities in that one occasion.

 

[Aranfan]

You have four free AP.

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Do we have 4 AP or 9? That's my first question.

 

[Rhodes]

I was gonna build a plan, but I like this one a lot. One thing I do think, though, is that we should be spending 2 ap on farming equipmemt. since it takes 2 sucesses

[] Plan Nobody Dies
-[] Show The Flag
-[] Organize Elections
-[] Scale Up Food Purchases
-[] Housing Repair
-[] Pick Up The Marbles
-[] What Do You Know, Asshole? (2 AP spent)
-[] Farming Equipment (2 Ap Spent)

I think getting ourselves solvent, foodwise, is unfortunately more important than grabbing detroit a turn early. I really don't want them to flip bicky, but I want our people dyign even less, and I don't think anything else can be cut. I think I'll probably approval vote yours, but I don't agree as much with its priorities in that one occasion.

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One thing to bear in mind is that Farming Equipment has a DC of 40, so investing 2 AP into it only has a 36% chance of success.

 

[Rhodes]

Do we have 4 AP or 9? That's my first question.

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We have 4 AP we can assign freely, and 5 more AP which have to be spent within their category for a total of 9.

 

[QTesseract]

One thing to bear in mind is that Farming Equipment has a DC of 40, so investing 2 AP into it only has a 36% chance of success.

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Yeah, but that's also true if we spread the 2 qp out over 2 turns. This way, we know if we need to do so again next turn, and are basically guaranteed to have our next turn's "Buy food" option be less brutal, cost wise.

 

[Rhodes]

Yeah, but that's also true if we spread the 2 qp out over 2 turns. This way, we know if we need to do so again next turn, and are basically guaranteed to have our next turn's "Buy food" option be less brutal, cost wise.

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I was actually suggesting going 3 points into farming, which gives us a 65% chance of success, since farming is only really worth getting if we get it on turn 1 (If we get it on turn 2, we only save 1 AP from buying food before the invasion hits after turn 3, whereas if we get it now we save 3 AP total).

Edit: I must've lost a turn somewhere, if it's Spring of 2074 right now and the Victorians are attacking in Spring of 2076, then we have 4 full turns (including this turn), meaning that farms now save us 5 points and farms next turn save us 3 points before the invasion hits (assuming that we still have to buy food on the turn we complete farms, which is unconfirmed). So Farm Equipment is still worth getting next turn, although this turn is obviously preferable.

 

[QTesseract]

I was actually suggesting going 3 points into farming, which gives us a 65% chance of success, since farming is only really worth getting if we get it on turn 1 (If we get it on turn 2, we only save 1 AP from buying food before the invasion hits after turn 3, whereas if we get it now we save 3 AP total).

Edit: I must've lost a turn somewhere, if it's Spring of 2074 right now and the Victorians are attacking in Spring of 2076, then we have 4 full turns (including this turn), meaning that farms now save us 5 points and farms next turn save us 3 points before the invasion hits (assuming that we still have to buy food on the turn we complete farms, which is unconfirmed). So Farm Equipment is still worth getting next turn, although this turn is obviously preferable.

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I assume that having 1x farming equipment will decrease the cost of buying food from 2 ap to 1 ap., and that farming equipment doesn't help until the turn after completion. @PoptartProdigy can you confirm?

If so, by spending 1 AP every turbn we've:
36% chance to spend 5 AP
15% chance to spend 7 AP
6% chance to spend 9 AP
3% chance go spend 11 AP
40% chance to rollover 1 turn later (3+above)

By spending 2 AP every turn we have:
36% chance to spend 4 AP
30% chance to spend 6 AP
18% chance to spend 8 AP
16% to rollover 1 turn later (4+above)

By spending 3 AP every turn we have
67% chance to spend 5 AP
26% chance to spend 9 AP
2% chance to spend 13 AP
6% chance to rollover 1 turn later (5+ above)

I think that it's clear that spending 2 points turn one is a clearly superior option to spending 1 pt turn 1, if getting one success reduces the cost of food. I think that three AP is better than 2, points wise, but doesn't do so nearly as efficiently as adding the second point does and this isn't the only meta point saving option.

 

[Chaos Blade]

I was gonna build a plan, but I like this one a lot. One thing I do think, though, is that we should be spending 2 ap on farming equipmemt. since it takes 2 sucesses

[] Plan Nobody Dies
-[] Show The Flag
-[] Organize Elections
-[] Scale Up Food Purchases
-[] Housing Repair
-[] Pick Up The Marbles
-[] What Do You Know, Asshole? (2 AP spent)
-[] Farming Equipment (2 Ap Spent)

I think getting ourselves solvent, foodwise, is unfortunately more important than grabbing detroit a turn early. I really don't want them to flip bicky, but I want our people dyign even less, and I don't think anything else can be cut. I think I'll probably approval vote yours, but I don't agree as much with its priorities in that one occasion.

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Wouldn't it be better to do the anti facist propaganda before elecitons? don't really want the assholes gaining traction and with Victorian sympathizers malus? makes me a bit nervous, specially since we have no need to run the elections now

 

[DocSpooky]

I think it's rather important that we take care of this assassin problem sooner rather than later, which I think also necessitates putting a lot of our free points into intelligence this round. It'd also be rather nice to be able to pick up the marbles.

Meanwhile, I don't know if this strikes an appropriate tone. I've always intended O'Claire to be a bit of a firebrand, but given his political experience and recent elevation I'm not sure he'd go on this specific rant. Rest assured, even if the following is too lowbrow in its wording for him to actually say, he would certainly find another way to express this sort of sentiment.

An excerpt from an interview with Samuel O'Claire:

"...And these people, these gobshites, they call themselves Unionists and isn't that worth a laugh? "We stand united," they tell you, "except with the black folks, or the gay folks, or the trans or Jewish or Hindu folks, they can all go jump off a bridge, we're all real Americans, we are, proper Americans." well I've got a boatload of proper Americans in my constituency, and they're all one or another of those things you say makes them give up their citizenship, and I'll tell you that we're bloody well the ones that stand united, and you know what's one of the things that unites us? None of us want your filth in our country!

They're Victorians, with Victorian ideas and Victorian values and Victorian methods. We all know what you did to Audrey Jameson, and if you didn't do it yourselves someone among you knows who did. Then they have the gall to come out here and tell us she was weak, that she wasn't well suited to her job, that it was her own fault she got murdered, with that smug grin and fake outrage you see on all of their lot. They could at least have the decency to send us proper death threats, not play coy like this. Come on out, Sperling, nobody likes a tease. Who're you sending your pet after next, friend? You want to sick him on me, you bastard? Heaven knows you don't have the guts to defend yourself properly. You've tarred your soul with this one, Sperling, and all Chicago can smell the burning."

 

[QTesseract]

Wouldn't it be better to do the anti facist propaganda before elecitons? don't really want the assholes gaining traction and with Victorian sympathizers malus? makes me a bit nervous, specially since we have no need to run the elections now

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We have a really strong majority and if we can out their leader as a Vicky spy we can crush them regardless.

It'll be annoying but I think it's not worth delaying elections for.

 

[thamuzz]

Omake: Back on the Hunt

Dylan wanted to puke. He gripped the paper in white knuckled hands, eyes racing back and forth over the offending passage. He needed details, any details, it was always a matter of details.

"Dyl, you're smiling. What's wrong?" Alexandra asked. Wordlessly Dylan passed her the paper.

A short while later she laid the paper down and let loose a string of profanity. All that her curses and invective lacked in grace and elegance they made up for with variety, wandering back and forth across three continents worth of languages before reaching a crescendo in an enumeration of Basque obscenities.

"A fucking Martin," she hissed when the tirade had finally petered out.

"The MO is distressingly similar," Dylan agreed.

-----

Securing a meeting with the president in a timely manner was not the easiest of tasks, even for a signatory delegate. It had taken a prodigious amount of sweet talking and a single lightly greased palm to get Dylan's meeting bumped up to the timeframe he preferred.

"I've seen this before, and I want to help hunt down the bastards responsible" was how he opened.

The president had asked for clarification, pointing out that most of the signatories had at least some experience with Vick infiltrators.

"Its the method. Point blank execution of a guarded target without the guards noticing a thing. I know its only a single killing, so we can't even claim there's the beginning of a pattern, but its distressingly similar to something we faced back in the railroad. From what I've been able to glean, even the weapon used matches."

He was invited to elaborate.

"Back when I was conducting we had a hell of a time getting people settled after we had gotten them out, right? There was this passenger, Bertram, who stepped up. He knew a thing or two about getting people organized from his activist days. He got some regional warlords and farmer groups to support, or at least tolerate, us setting up settlements for the passengers. Things were going well for a few years, then one day bam. Handgun to the back of the skull, guards none the wiser. Bertram was the first, but after that conductors and passengers started dying. Not just leaders mind, but always targets that were in some way guarded. Terror tactics, you know?"

"Took us months to find the killer, a conductor named Martin. When we came for him he was waiting: he was fucking grinning when he confessed. He fucking claimed that the only reason we had caught him was because of the clues he had deliberately left for us, that without his help we'd still be chasing our own asses. Not even burying the bastard alive wiped the smug off his face."

"After that things quieted down for a bit and we got on with the railroad. Then the killings started again, exactly same MO, always hitting guarded targets."

"For all that Martin thought we only caught him because he let us, we'd learned a thing or two hunting him. We found the new killer faster than she expected, but even so she had that same smug look on her face when we came fo her. She had been a passenger, a gay woman we'd gotten out with her wife. Thing is, we'd gotten her out before Martin had even signed up with us."

"She wasn't the last. Every now and again a new assassin would emerge, always with the same method. We came to call them Martins, after the first. They didn't always target railroad people: a lot of people who decided to help us on the outside ended up on the chopping block. Pretty sure I don't need to spell out the message they were sending for you. Took us about a year to piece everything together and figure out where these murderers were coming from."

"As it turned out, the office of Unity and Morality had a Russian adviser. Man was apparently a virtuoso at turning and training operatives, and he'd set his sights on us as a way to demoralize and divide Victoria's enemies, internal and external."

"Thing is, the Viks and Ruskies aren't the only ones who can use suicide tactics. I cost more people than I like to remember, and a fair number of complete innocents got caught in the backdraft, but we ultimately burned that monster down. But we sure as hell didn't get all of his proteges."

"So even if we aren't dealing with a Martin, I think we're dealing with someone who learned in the same school as them. And the thing is, Mr. President, that I have some experience tacking the graduates of that school."

-----

Dylan left the meeting with the assurance that the president would keep his skills in mind for the coming days.

@PoptartProdigy

 

[Simon_Jester]

I noticed your post right after I finished mine. I definitely like Oh Crapbaskets, and am genuinely torn between voting for it or staying the course with my own plan. That said, I do have good reasons for spending so many points on farming equipment instead of overclocking Asshole and picking up Detroit:

First off, buying food actually costs two points, not one. One point is upfront the turn we buy, while the second is deducted from our Econ points the next turn. Getting farming equipment on turn 1 means we save 3 points by the end of turn 3, which we can then spend elsewhere (the fourth point is deducted on turn 4, which will hopefully/probably be after we've repulsed the Victorian attack and have some breathing room, so I'm not counting it).

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The binomial theorem is an issue here.

Assume there is a 60% chance of success on any single roll, that we roll three dice, and that two dice are required to succeed.
The probability of three successes out of three is 21.6%, in which case we get a bonus to our success.
The probability of two successes out of three is 43.2%, in which case we get a flat success.
The probability of one success out of three is 28.8%, in which case we get a banked success and have to roll more dice next turn.
The probability of no successes whatever is 6.4%, in which case we're back to square one.

So there is a significant (~35%) chance of us NOT succeeding and needing to invest more AP into the action anyway.

There is a big advantage to taking one of our actions a turn ahead of the others, because if the first action succeeds we know we have a good chance of success by throwing in the second and third. If the first action fails, we have advance notice that we might be wiser to cut our losses and invest in things more likely to pan out. Investing AP one at a time in a stable fashion is almost certainly going to be a better than constant crash-spending on immediate desperate priorities, EXCEPT in cases where there is a very painful ongoing cost (like dead bodies and disrupted bureaucracy) associated with failure to crash-spend.

Second, I kind of doubt that 2 successes on What Do You Know, Asshole will immediately deal with the assassin problem. More likely than not, there's going to be some sort of follow up event which will also need AP.

Click to shrink...

Firstly, the action may simply fail, with 20% likelihood, if we don't spend two actions. I would rather have a 96% chance of getting leads on the assassin than an 80% chance, thank you very much.

Secondly, an extra bonus on that specific thing is likely to chain into either "make it easier to stop the assassin," "make the Victorian-sympathizing Unionist Party more vulnerable to future penetration or counter-action," or both. Those are things I want, so I am happy with having a 64% chance of getting them by rolling two successes.

The way I interpreted the 'extra effects' is that we'd get a DC bonus or something for whatever that event is if we get more than one success on this one. Then it becomes a question of whether an unknown DC bonus or the extra AP from not needing to buy food is better. I lean towards the AP because of the flexibility, since the DC bonus would have to be pretty significant to beat an extra roll from additional invested AP (on the other hand, if the next event requires more than one AP, even a relatively small DC bonus could be pretty significant, so I'm still debating whether it's worthwhile to swap points from farming to this one.)

Click to shrink...

Remember that the assassin is very likely to kill government officials, costing us AP in the immediate short term AND probably raising the DC of actions, because having talented characters (the kind the assassin kills) lowers the DC of actions.

Setting in motion a chain of events that leads to the assassin getting caught one turn earlier could save us 1 AP very easily. Probably more. Because as we're seeing, the assassin's action THIS turn cost us 1 AP up front (Picking Up The Marbles), and we're at risk of having to spend MORE AP later (if that action fails), and probably raised the DC of Intelligence rolls. If we want airborne drones later we're probably even worse off, because that is explicitly a program Jameson was working on, but that we're now experiencing setbacks on. If Jameson had survived, we might well have had aerial reconnaissance UAVs in time to fight the Victorians, if we'd been so inclined. Now it is unlikely that we can afford that. Not good.

Finally, I really, really, want to get Detroit, I'd obviously rather fight over there than in Chicago. The thing is that spending three points on Detroit next turn is the same as spending one point now and two points next turn (unless you plan to spend 3 points on Detroit next turn?), except that if we get farming first, we also get to save the points we'd ordinarily spend on buying food.

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As discussed, even if we roll three dice, there is still a significant risk of failure on Detroit. Rolling ONE die this turn gives us a chance to either bank one success and throw as many as we can at it next turn, or fail outright and cut our losses next turn having wasted only 1 AP instead of 3 AP.

A steady, persistent push is much better than a panic-attack FIRE EVERYTHING, except in situations where you are deeply, deeply screwed if you don't deal with whatever you FIRE EVERYTHING at right the hell now.

 

[Mopman43]

We were told the invasion is likely to come in spring of 2074. That's probably during or immediately after Turn 3.

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I could be wrong, but it was my impression that we get two turns a year.

 

[Wiadi]

We were told the invasion is likely to come in spring of 2074.

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Spring of 2076, and each turn is half a year, so we have 4 full turns until then.

 

[PoptartProdigy]

If we got the AP for it, the food situation is dire.

@PoptartProdigy

[][Write-In][Don't know which category] The food situation is critical to the continuity of the Commonwealth, which means drastic measure are now more palatable to the masses. Write in an emergency law give the government the right to first refusal for staple food. All food producer and transporter must offer their grain stock at market price to the government first.

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Already being done under emergency powers.

@PoptartProdigy Do Subsidize Industry help with food production once complete?

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Indirectly?

Finally, I have some questions for @PoptartProdigy:

1. How established/widespread are the Unionists right now? Are they an underground movement, fringe political elements, an up-and-coming minority party, or something else?

2. If the invasion is coming in two years, does that mean that (assuming things go according to plan) our last plan vote like this one before the invasion is turn 4?

3. Just to clarify on the results of Subsidize industry, will it give us more AP after being completed, increase the amount of AP we can dedicate to certain tasks, or something else?

4. If we don't buy food this turn, but succeed in getting farming equipment, will people still starve?

Click to shrink...

1. Fringe political elements taking their first steps towards becoming an up-and-coming minority part. That said, they have a steady focus on subverting government officers over courting mass appeal. They do both, but prefer to target government elites.
2. Burns suspects that Victoria goes in spring of 2076. It is currently spring of 2074, and turns are half-years. Thus, next turn will be autumn and winter of 2074, then spring and summer of 2075, then fall and winter of 2075, then spring and summer of 2076. Burns expects that Victoria will actually deploy its troops and set up forward operating bases prior to spring of 2076 -- it's just the main assault that you'll have four full turns to prepare for.
3. If an option gives AP, that will be explicitly stated. This increases the industrial resources you have. It'll do things like raise the AP Limit on industrialization or production options, lower DCs on industrial actions, and other things to that effect.
4. People will begin to starve, but you'll hit a big boom harvest next turn and be able to stop it before too many people die. If you get the farming equipment in one turn.

31 days.
203 pages.
5057 posts.

That is how long it took to reach turn one.

Click to shrink...

In all seriousness, thank all of you folks for helping me along this wild ride.

Do we have a limited window for soothing fears?

Click to shrink...

No.

I assume that having 1x farming equipment will decrease the cost of buying food from 2 ap to 1 ap., and that farming equipment doesn't help until the turn after completion. @PoptartProdigy can you confirm?

Click to shrink...

If you get one success on farming equipment this turn, then next turn you will only need to get one more success, that is correct. Once the action completes, you have distributed the equipment -- you are correct in noting that results take time.

Omake: Back on the Hunt

Dylan wanted to puke. He gripped the paper in white knuckled hands, eyes racing back and forth over the offending passage. He needed details, any details, it was always a matter of details.

"Dyl, you're smiling. What's wrong?" Alexandra asked. Wordlessly Dylan passed her the paper.

A short while later she laid the paper down and let loose a string of profanity. All that her curses and invective lacked in grace and elegance they made up for with variety, wandering back and forth across three continents worth of languages before reaching a crescendo in an enumeration of Basque obscenities.

"A fucking Martin," she hissed when the tirade had finally petered out.

"The MO is distressingly similar," Dylan agreed.

-----

Securing a meeting with the president in a timely manner was not the easiest of tasks, even for a signatory delegate. It had taken a prodigious amount of sweet talking and a single lightly greased palm to get Dylan's meeting bumped up to the timeframe he preferred.

"I've seen this before, and I want to help hunt down the bastards responsible" was how he opened.

The president had asked for clarification, pointing out that most of the signatories had at least some experience with Vick infiltrators.

"Its the method. Point blank execution of a guarded target without the guards noticing a thing. I know its only a single killing, so we can't even claim there's the beginning of a pattern, but its distressingly similar to something we faced back in the railroad. From what I've been able to glean, even the weapon used matches."

He was invited to elaborate.

"Back when I was conducting we had a hell of a time getting people settled after we had gotten them out, right? There was this passenger, Bertram, who stepped up. He knew a thing or two about getting people organized from his activist days. He got some regional warlords and farmer groups to support, or at least tolerate, us setting up settlements for the passengers. Things were going well for a few years, then one day bam. Handgun to the back of the skull, guards none the wiser. Bertram was the first, but after that conductors and passengers started dying. Not just leaders mind, but always targets that were in some way guarded. Terror tactics, you know?"

"Took us months to find the killer, a conductor named Martin. When we came for him he was waiting: he was fucking grinning when he confessed. He fucking claimed that the only reason we had caught him was because of the clues he had deliberately left for us, that without his help we'd still be chasing our own asses. Not even burying the bastard alive wiped the smug off his face."

"After that things quieted down for a bit and we got on with the railroad. Then the killings started again, exactly same MO, always hitting guarded targets."

"For all that Martin thought we only caught him because he let us, we'd learned a thing or two hunting him. We found the new killer faster than she expected, but even so she had that same smug look on her face when we came fo her. She had been a passenger, a gay woman we'd gotten out with her wife. Thing is, we'd gotten her out before Martin had even signed up with us."

"She wasn't the last. Every now and again a new assassin would emerge, always with the same method. We came to call them Martins, after the first. They didn't always target railroad people: a lot of people who decided to help us on the outside ended up on the chopping block. Pretty sure I don't need to spell out the message they were sending for you. Took us about a year to piece everything together and figure out where these murderers were coming from."

"As it turned out, the office of Unity and Morality had a Russian adviser. Man was apparently a virtuoso at turning and training operatives, and he'd set his sights on us as a way to demoralize and divide Victoria's enemies, internal and external."

"Thing is, the Viks and Ruskies aren't the only ones who can use suicide tactics. I cost more people than I like to remember, and a fair number of complete innocents got caught in the backdraft, but we ultimately burned that monster down. But we sure as hell didn't get all of his proteges."

"So even if we aren't dealing with a Martin, I think we're dealing with someone who learned in the same school as them. And the thing is, Mr. President, that I have some experience tacking the graduates of that school."

-----

Dylan left the meeting with the assurance that the president would keep his skills in mind for the coming days.

@PoptartProdigy

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...I like this, but a few points contradict some (unfortunately secret for now) points of lore I've established in the background. Sorry, mate! Non-canon, but it's a good one!

 

[QTesseract]

If you get one success on farming equipment this turn, then next turn you will only need to get one more success, that is correct. Once the action completes, you have distributed the equipment -- you are correct in noting that results take time.

Click to shrink...

The other part of the question was if we would get any results from one success, or if we wouldn't see any benefits from the action until we had gotten 2 successes.

 

[Rhodes]

The binomial theorem is an issue here.

Assume there is a 60% chance of success on any single roll, that we roll three dice, and that two dice are required to succeed.
The probability of three successes out of three is 21.6%, in which case we get a bonus to our success.
The probability of two successes out of three is 43.2%, in which case we get a flat success.
The probability of one success out of three is 28.8%, in which case we get a banked success and have to roll more dice next turn.
The probability of no successes whatever is 6.4%, in which case we're back to square one.

So there is a significant (~35%) chance of us NOT succeeding and needing to invest more AP into the action anyway.

There is a big advantage to taking one of our actions a turn ahead of the others, because if the first action succeeds we know we have a good chance of success by throwing in the second and third. If the first action fails, we have advance notice that we might be wiser to cut our losses and invest in things more likely to pan out. Investing AP one at a time in a stable fashion is almost certainly going to be a better than constant crash-spending on immediate desperate priorities, EXCEPT in cases where there is a very painful ongoing cost (like dead bodies and disrupted bureaucracy) associated with failure to crash-spend.

Click to shrink...

Okay, but we have to build farming equipment eventually. We could spread out the point investments, but that doesn't make it any more likely to succeed, nor does it increase the efficiency of the points we spend. Meanwhile, every turn we don't have farming equipment costs us 2 AP because we have to buy food. I would call that a pretty damn painful ongoing cost. Yes, there's a 35% chance we spend two AP to no immediate gain. There's also a 65% chance we save 2 AP next turn (1 AP immediately and 1 more from the econ point we'll have on turn 3) if we get farm equipment right now. Is it worth taking those odds down to 36% success 64% failure to get an additional point into hunting for the spy?

Firstly, the action may simply fail, with 20% likelihood, if we don't spend two actions. I would rather have a 96% chance of getting leads on the assassin than an 80% chance, thank you very much.

Secondly, an extra bonus on that specific thing is likely to chain into either "make it easier to stop the assassin," "make the Victorian-sympathizing Unionist Party more vulnerable to future penetration or counter-action," or both. Those are things I want, so I am happy with having a 64% chance of getting them by rolling two successes.

Click to shrink...

The action could fail, but adding a second point only gives us an additional 16% chance of success, whereas the second point for the farm gives a 36% chance of success, and the third an additional 29% chance. Furthermore, while the bonus is likely to chain into the things you mentioned, it's probably going to do so in terms of a slightly reduced DC or AP cost, not something which will outright take a full turn off the hunt for the assassin.

Remember that the assassin is very likely to kill government officials, costing us AP in the immediate short term AND probably raising the DC of actions, because having talented characters (the kind the assassin kills) lowers the DC of actions.

Setting in motion a chain of events that leads to the assassin getting caught one turn earlier could save us 1 AP very easily. Probably more. Because as we're seeing, the assassin's action THIS turn cost us 1 AP up front (Picking Up The Marbles), and we're at risk of having to spend MORE AP later (if that action fails), and probably raised the DC of Intelligence rolls. If we want airborne drones later we're probably even worse off, because that is explicitly a program Jameson was working on, but that we're now experiencing setbacks on. If Jameson had survived, we might well have had aerial reconnaissance UAVs in time to fight the Victorians, if we'd been so inclined. Now it is unlikely that we can afford that. Not good.

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We don't actually know how likely the assassin is to succeed in killing government officials, but I agree with you in that their success is costly enough that we can't afford to let them run amok any longer than necessary. The question then is, is a 64% chance to get an unidentified bonus that may or may not, but probably will, help somehow in catching the assassin superior to a 36% chance to get 2 AP next turn? I'm leaning towards no, because once again, whatever bonus we get would have to be better than just spending an additional AP on catching the assassin, AP which we could have if we took the farm equipment.

As discussed, even if we roll three dice, there is still a significant risk of failure on Detroit. Rolling ONE die this turn gives us a chance to either bank one success and throw as many as we can at it next turn, or fail outright and cut our losses next turn having wasted only 1 AP instead of 3 AP.

A steady, persistent push is much better than a panic-attack FIRE EVERYTHING, except in situations where you are deeply, deeply screwed if you don't deal with whatever you FIRE EVERYTHING at right the hell now.

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A steady, persistent push only gives you rewards after you have completed it, in the meantime you get nothing to show for the AP you invest. We have 4 turns (including this one) until Victoria attacks, then another 2-3 (depending on how long we spend fending off the Victorians) turns before California declares independence. We're not going to have a breather or time to sit back and develop our fledgling nation in peace any time in the forseeable future. Therefore we need to take every AP we can get as soon as we can get it so that we can hopefully manage to expand and improve despite constantly being at odds with Victoria and Russia.

 

[Redhead222]

[ ] Soothing Fears
and the way it removes one of the negative of our rules sounds like a thing we might want sooner then later.

 

[QTesseract]

[ ] Soothing Fears
and the way it removes one of the negative of our rules sounds like a thing we might want sooner then later.

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Lots of the actions do that, though?

The other part of the question was if we would get any results from one success, or if we wouldn't see any benefits from the action until we had gotten 2 successes.

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Adding onto this actually @PoptartProdigy , is there any effect of more successes than the target?

 

[Chaos Blade]

We have a really strong majority and if we can out their leader as a Vicky spy we can crush them regardless.

It'll be annoying but I think it's not worth delaying elections for.

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This assumes they won't be able to pad the ballots or use some other underhanded tactic, mind the % you can get from fraud is limited,. I've seen it as a 10-15% variance, unless things are really broken down, but given the circumstances it is hard to say what is and isn't possible in a system we haven't really used before

 

[QTesseract]

This assumes they won't be able to pad the ballots or use some other underhanded tactic, mind the % you can get from fraud is limited,. I've seen it as a 10-15% variance, unless things are really broken down, but given the circumstances it is hard to say what is and isn't possible in a system we haven't really used before

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Yeah, we don't want to never do that; antifascism is important. But I'm not spending actions on that instead of saving lives from the cold or starvation.

 

[Chaos Blade]

Yeah, we don't want to never do that; antifascism is important. But I'm not spending actions on that instead of saving lives from the cold or starvation.

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I never said we would (though I wouldn't say nobody under us might get a wise idea, people are people after all), just that the Unionist might, if they can

 

[Rat King]

I am broadly in favor of throwing our "free" AP at the food and assassin situation.