The problem is three-fold:
- Vita is a woman of stone who has a proven track record of being really bad at commanding battles, and Cia has just recently disobeyed an order to withdraw from a situation she was not prepared for. There are no dice bonuses for military action here - military success for Vita means stacking the deck ahead of time.
- We currently don't have any tech what-so-ever for protecting humans outside our ship from corruption. No faith studies, no cog filters, no personality checks, no personal shields. Any that we develop this turn would be thrust into a live fire environment without us first seeing how much protection they offer. Cia is well equipped for conventional threats, but not yet for this.
- The targets are unscouted and are going to be desparate when we attack.
- Their scuffles with the ship nomads are those of two groups trying to limit their losses as they tussle over resources - not something worth making big sacrifices to the four for a temporary advantage, because not much is actually at stake.
- Against Vita however, they're now a trapped animal fighting for their life, and will pull out all the stops. If they are remotely capable of summoning a demon, or doing a ritual, then it'll happen, and we don't know what it'll be yet.
Vita does not succeed in the heat of battle. She succeeds by winning before the fight even begins. If she hasn't had the opportunity to do that, don't send in anything you're not prepared to lose.
Instead, I propose getting those shields and cog filters, and just sending in bots this turn - we can then decide if Cia can take the field next turn, when she's better equipped and we know more about her opposition and the objectives we want her to achieve.
Cia will accept it if we explain that we just haven't prepared for this type of fight yet, right @Neablis ?
Most likely, yes. You've laid out some good arguments here, and Cia's had some life experiences recently, which is part of why she's still patient. She likely wouldn't be as accepting of the argument about going off-ship without a shield if you didn't promise to solve that issue.
And she
would have a point - if you only make her fight under optimal conditions, she'll never fight unless it gets desperate, and be less-prepared for it when it does happen. You can't gain combat experience without some risk, that's how the game works.
But if you did research to prep her and then sent her aboard in the same turn as part of an explore/order action then that would be one solution that would potentially make everybody happy.
@Neablis Did you see my omake?
I did, and the idea is interesting. I've been trying to decide what to do with it. I think for now I'm just going to leave it - the problem with declaring it canon or not is that it has some large implications across a lot of areas. Lets just say I'm considering how Vita would think about using Waaagh-like group psychic energy for something - though it would be
far down the research tree.
I would love to do a couple concentrated research turns, tick some low cost research of the lost and do any research which improves efficiency such as ship design, efficient weapons and manufactory increases. And stealth/shield increases with the thought to eventually getting back to Denva and building ourselves a giant and improved ship.
Have you not been doing concentrated research turns? I have fun doing the research, but we've had a
string of 3x research turns. It can be a bit challenging to write an interesting turn with only 1 non-research turn, and I'd prefer not to write many (or any) 4x research turns. If one wins I'll write it, but I might bop you with Wayfarer or an in-character resolution to be more active in return. Depending on circumstances and the techs involved.
This sort of thing seems so weird to me. If you didn't want this sort of result to be possible... Than why do you have rules that allow for it to happen? You can have rules that mitigate the randomness and remove certain problems associated with randomness. After all, many players don't like being punished by the dice even when they do the right thing.
My statement wasn't "This is terrible" it was "I was completely surprised."
I actually really enjoy writing high rolls and low rolls. Often in my experience in writing it's hard to make something outlandish convincing. What's the chances I can pull the melodrama of a Drukhari raiding party attacking the
very instant you are engaged in sensitive face-to-face negotiations with the Sororitas? Or that your pet demon manages you trick you into lowering the defenses right before you jump to the warp? Well, maybe about one in a hundred.
With the dice I can figure out something crazy and dramatic and fun and when asked why something so ridiculous happens I can point to the dice and go "Cause dice said so."
And very notably, this is also true for nat 100's.
You were able to subvert the mechanicus to be an optimistic tech-cult focused on technological progress. That's ridiculous, and it happened because of a nat 100. You got a tech that mostly (or entirely, depending on the roll) blocks scrying. That's fun and awesome, and it came from a nat 100.
So - you embrace it. If you go with the average result each time that's boring, and by using a d100 system instead of a 5d20 system of whatever I get to play in the low-and-high probability realms more often.
Which of course brings up our 300 RP holy grail...Machine Spirit Hallucinations. The tech that makes more RP per action.
Though, it says "not by a huge amount". I'd probably stake my hopes at 50, but that's just guessing of course.
Depends on the roll to a large extent. If you roll poorly there'll be a follow-up tech to fix it.
Don't roll a 1?
@Neablis how would it go if we attack some stations as part of the diplomacy action? Would that be viable or should I make that its own action?
It would be better as its own action, but doable as part of a diplomacy action if you mean a single engagement that's related. If you rolled well it would contribute to the diplomacy in a meaningful way, if you didn't it would be a distraction.
Neablis himself will be able to provide a more specific answer, but speaking in general AP works on a "get what you pay for" system:
A diplomacy action would be focused on making friends/something like that, and you might attack a few stations as part of that, but it would scale directly with the effort required. If you're willing to blow away every station that your allies point you at you could probably do that, but you wouldn't be doing anything other than blowing them up with a very minimal bit of investigation beforehand.
10x travel range, explore 5-10 systems with a single exploration action!
That's not
explore 5-10 systems as part of a single action. That's
move 5-10 systems and explore any one of them.
And the improved void abacus is going to start at 2-3, and maybe be upgradeable to 3-4 with future researches all depending on rolls. As a rule of thumb navigators > abaci, to balance the fact that abaci can come off a production line and navigators
can't. And also have health issues.
You keep forgetting, it's a person. It's not a device we can just turn on and go to warp. No it's an embryo, that turns into a child, that turns into an adult. Unless you have intended to servitorize the Navigator immediately after decanting the clone then it's a biiiiiiig thing to grow, care for, teach, and then, if we're lucky, they'll agree to serve on the ship. They might even have a personality that's suitable for the rest of the crew.
The thing is, if you're generally do a good job raising a person they end up aligned with your interests. Then you promise them eternal youth, infinite exploration, free medical care and good companionship and... they typically don't want to leave. Don't get me wrong, it's a possibility, there will be rolls, but them wanting to leave and never return would be very much a nat 1 followed by a recovery roll below a 10 or something.
I'm trying not to weight the scale too hard here, but I want to emphasize that Vita will come at this from the perspective of "I'm raising a person and want them to live a full and complete life," and if you spend actions commensurate with that then more likely than not its going to turn out alright. Yes you want something from them - but most parents want something from their kids, even if it's to take care of them in old age. Not too long ago the thing they wanted was "help working the farm."
Why are you people trying to change something normal into something weird.
Rising children is not hard, just feed them and impart your knowledge/culture and you have another member of society simple as that.
Yeah, this.
@Neablis, since explore actions are write-ins and we are still getting the hang of what they can cover I wanted to run this by you. Is the above action a reasonable scope and, rolls depending, could we expect it to answer/address the following?
This is fine - I would in fact allow you to list a stretch goal of making initial contact with a friendly faction (if you find one) so you'll be better positioned to negotiate with them next year.
However...
It seems like following the ship around is going to involve an awful lot of "Watching these primitives slaughter each other" when we have the power to stop it by just taking control of the thing's route and telling it to avoid stations that are still inhabited. Furthermore, taking that control should be fairly doable just via hacking, it's an automated civilian industrial collection ship not any kind of military vessel that would need great defenses. I'm all for doing more exploration and analysis of everything and everyone in the system but it feels like this should be a very easy initial thing to do which will save a lot of lives.
This is also a good point.
However, it's just as likely that many of the stations are on the cusp of death and they only attack the ship since it's the only escape from their decaying station.
Chipping in on the navigator v. abaci discussion, something to remember is that every ship in a fleet needs a navigator. Right now that's no problem but considering the plan is to return to Denva and build up a fleet that means only the Voice of the Ancients can travel quickly, so either we need to research warp comms to keep in contact with the rest of the fleet traveling behind us, or clone more navigators which will require tech + crewing every ship in the fleet.
It might be more true for Imperial ships but I'd probably let you take a fleet of your own ships through the warp in formation, led by a single navigator aboard a flagship. Granted, navigator skill & rolls might lead to losing a ship every now and then, but it would be a low chance and salvageable if the ships
also had an abaci.
They can fix the stations on their own if given the parts. Vita wouldn't even know which ones they need! These are not the Cavemen in Spaaaaaace you are describing. If they're familiar enough with the station systems to pop them open and replace what's broken, then they're familiar enough with them to make them explode. The bar for being dangerous when you care about nothing else is really not that high.
They're kinda caveman in space. The 250 BP of goods would basically be a standalone self-sufficient reactor/hydroponic/life support system you could drop in the middle of a hallowed out-asteroid to make it support a few thousand people, though not comfortably.
Not chiming in on the danger side of things here - you have no idea.
People keep mentioning the ship as if it's a singular force, but the ship is a box with a bunch of disparate neobarbs rattling around in it. Note that the ship is described as a battleground. from this description, I'm not sure if the ship is raiding the populated station or the other way around. Or both at once, for that matter.
Both. Also there are likely multiple factions on the ship. You're not sure if that's just the "ship" pushing back the beachhead of whoever it docked with last or if there are genuine long-lasting conflicts aboard.
If anything, I'm miffed that the critfail wasn't more catastrophic, given how rare it is. It's like a good D&D, if the QM makes it effectively impossible to 'lose' in some capacity and your rolls, then there are no stakes whatsoever and it makes you question why you aren't just purely role-playing (which would be a pure narrative quest here) instead of using skill checks at all.
So I put a fair amount of thought into that result and wanted to lay out my thoughts behind it a bit.
To start with, something I
hate in Quests is when a bad roll invalidates prior planning and preparation. There's a vibe that a critical fail
requires consequences, and those consequences should be impossible to protect against. Which means it's almost pointless to take preparatory countermeasures because a bad roll is going to invalidate them anyway.
So, let's look at what happened here. You rolled a 1. Bongo tricked you into weakening the shields quite significantly when you thought you'd strengthened them. Then it did a good job in breaking out and wreaking havoc through the ship. However,
because the Oubliette was overbuilt to a monstrous extent it didn't actually
break it, it just snuck a fairly powerful attack out of the shielding and hit you with it (though far less powerful than what it would have been with a weaker Oubliette). Your hull shielding wouldn't have protected you, because this attack was coming from inside the ship. But
because you had a secondary shield around Vita's core you tanked the damage.
Overall the attack dealt 410 psychic HP damage. That's 2050 BP worth of damage. You have 350 build capacity right now, so that would take 6 full actions of effort to repair. But
because you have a repair bay it's going to happen for free in a bit over two turns, and really the only consequence is that you're a bit less protected than you were for a turn, but as we've seen you were already quite overprotected.
So. If
any one of those things hadn't been true, there would have been serious consequences. Granted, having to spend a few actions on repairs isn't as bad as having to roll on the corruption table, but you get the idea. This was an outcome that
would have had consequences, except that all of the right preparations were made - so much so that it became almost a nonissue. That's not a lack of consequences, that's preparing for the worst so that when it happens it's not actually that bad. Beyond the lost action and the fact that the research option quadrupled in cost and gained a prereq, I suppose.
The previous nat 1 led to them
firing on you with every weapon they had, killing tech-priests, a shuttle, an avatar and scoring some nonzero damage on your ship. But you're running around in a medium-armor grand-cruiser so it wasn't a big deal. Related to the conversation above - a nat 100 also doesn't mean you instantly win. You rolled a nat 100 on the mechanicus and you
still had to fight a small war. It just meant that you subverted more than half of them before that war. 1s & 100s aren't off the edge of the probability distribution, they're on the far end of it. When I want to provide the chance for something ridiculous we'll do something like what I did to decide psyker power levels - exploding d6's where you need like 4 6's in a row to get an alpha-level psyker.
...The big danger, to me, isn't that we're going to fumble a die roll and ruin everything. It's that there's 5 whole factions of potential trouble moving and, in at least some cases, expanding across the sector. They're all a lot bigger than us and Denva - and Vita's not exactly tuned to counter that with exponential growth. At the moment we have no way to see or measure the threat, but we know it's out there.
This is a good point, and one I want to emphasize. There's a timer ticking. Not until you die, but until there are large factions Doing Things throughout the sector. You can make friends with them, sneak around them or go to war with them. But the game will not forever be swanning around in uncontested space.
Honestly the weirdest part of these nat 1s is that they just keep justifying the repair bay. We haven't gone a darn turn without it paying for itself.
I know, right? I first saw the size of the repair bay and was a bit surprised, but damn if it hasn't paid for itself a few times over.
