Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[DragonParadox]

The reverse-engineered enchantment has one advantage: It's dirt cheap.

Only low cost.

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I'm worried about it being a little too cheap honestly, due to the lack of reasonable scaling in the timeframe of the quest.

 

[Mopman43]

Fair enough, to be more clear then I think there are vastly more actual and potential runesmiths than there are elves with the potential to be archmages (which is what you need for reverse engineering) particularly in the short to mid term. To be even more blunt I think the thread will get tired of the Waystone project as a whole before the reverse engineered storage will become meaningfully more easy and I would kind of like to see meaingful roll-out while Mathilde is at the helm

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Boney previously said that Laurelorn could supply maybe 20 Archmages.

I do expect there are substantially more Runesmiths than that.

 

[Prime 2.0]

No, we really should not be doing that, that's a model that is in the process of failing. What we should plan for is preserving the knowledge of how to make more stones for millennia and plan on them being replaced, that is much more sane when you are counting on humans to do a significant part of the work anyway.

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That's a false dichotomy, even setting aside that nobody has actually figured out how to reliably preserve knowledge that long, in-universe nor out here in real life. Our most realistic shot at it is KAU and international diplomacy, which we're doing quite fine on anyways.

Defense in depth. We should not rely on any one pillar of continued waystone service to hold up the entire enterprise for all time. Build the stones to last, keep their documentation in secure archives, and build institutions to care for and oversee them. We should do all three.

 

[MrHobbit]

The big difference I see is that the Empire generally controls the rivers so can relatively easily set up riverine leylines. It generally does not control the hinterlands, so can't set up lines of normal Waystones in straight lines along the leylines because it would need to reconquer the land from the greenskins and beastmen, fell the forests/drain the swamps and recolonise them to stop their enemies coming back.

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How many times am I going to have to repeat myself? I am still not convinced that new waystones can be connected to leylines that aren't connected to the vortex proper.

How many of the cutoff chains feed into rivers? How many of those rivers even end up somewhere useful or can be directed into a functioning waystone? This is not what the update presented the benefit as. This is something you are proposing. I don't see a reason to think it is a benefit of them at all. The bonus to doing both is that the riverine leylines can act as a backup.

And again, the vast majority of areas where mass segments of the waystone network have fallen are areas where there aren't really many rivers.

 

[DragonParadox]

Boney previously said that Laurelorn could supply maybe 20 Archmages.

I do expect there are substantially more Runesmiths than that.

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The Colleges probably do not have 160 enchanters, I think they barely have that many magisters and above total.

That's a false dichotomy, even setting aside that nobody has actually figured out how to reliably preserve knowledge that long, in-universe nor out here in real life. Our most realistic shot at it is KAU and international diplomacy, which we're doing quite fine on anyways.

Defense in depth. We should not rely on any one pillar of continued waystone service to hold up the entire enterprise for all time. Build the stones to last, keep their documentation in secure archives, and build institutions to care for and oversee them. We should do all three.

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We need more stones soon. Like yes in the ideal circumstances we would fill all the holes with the most long lasting stones we can make, but we have limitations of manpower and economics to deal with.

 

[Alratan]

The reverse-engineered enchantment has one advantage: It's dirt cheap.

Only low cost.

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I wonder how that works, given that the cost to hire an Archmage for the time to make them must itself be quite expensive. Presumably when the other options say something is expensive it really means expensive, if the Archmage's time is a negligible cost in comparison.

Boney previously said that Laurelorn could supply maybe 20 Archmages.

I do expect there are substantially more Runesmiths than that.

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I'd expect so as well, but it's hard to say with certainty what proportion of them are available, willing and able to work on a runic storage component for a Waystone. They presumably have many other demands on their time. So do the better elven mages of course.

There are also other unknowable and hard to predict potential bottlenecks that might manifest.

For example, when it says that making a large capacity runic storage component has high cost, does that also mean that the runes require ingredients to make that are in limited supply? Could we have a scenario where there are plenty of runesmiths but the rune needs some expensive ingredient of which only a handful are found every year, which is why it's expensive?

Then you get into questions about whether there's an opportunity cost for using an expensive ingredient that's in limited supply, and whether it could instead be used for something else that we'd prefer to have.

Of course, it could be that all the ingredients are fungible and it's a purely monetary.

 

[fictionfan]

[x]Plan cheap high maintenance
-[x] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[x] [STORAGE] [Cheap] Material
-[x] [RUNE] Wizard
-[x][FOUNDATION] Clockwork
-[x][TRANSMISSION] Riverine (Hedgewise)

 

[ReImagined]

The Colleges probably do not have 160 enchanters, I think they barely have that many magisters and above total.

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There are around 60 (~50 Magisters, 5 Elite Battle Wizards, 4 Wizard Lords, 1 Graduated Battle Wizard, 1 Patriarch) wizards at or above Magister level in each college, so multplied by 8 we can ballpark 480 Magister+ level casters. It's hard to say what fraction of those are enchanters, and of those how many would be available.

 

[Tomcost]

[x] Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)
- [x] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
- [x] [RUNE] Dwarven
- [x] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
- [x] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
- [x] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade Riverine)
[x] Plan: Repairing The Network First
- [x] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
- [x] [RUNE] Dwarven
- [x] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
- [x] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
- [x] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline

 

[Prime 2.0]

We need more stones soon. Like yes in the ideal circumstances we would fill all the holes with the most long lasting stones we can make, but we have limitations of manpower and economics to deal with.

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We do? This tackles a slow moving problem. When we told the emperor about it he shrugged and added it to the list. We weren't sure we'd produce any usable stones at all in the outset.

They're great and provide significant benefits, sure, but at the end of the day we don't actually have a deadline we're working towards. We can in fact take a moment to do it right.

But if we do it sloppy to get something done faster, the people paying for it probably won't pay to upgrade to the newest model.

 

[Alratan]

How many times am I going to have to repeat myself? I am still not convinced that new waystones can be connected to leylines that aren't connected to the vortex proper.

How many of the cutoff chains feed into rivers? How many of those rivers even end up somewhere useful or can be directed into a functioning waystone? This is not what the update presented the benefit as. This is something you are proposing. I don't see a reason to think it is a benefit of them at all. The bonus to doing both is that the riverine leylines can act as a backup.

And again, the vast majority of areas where mass segments of the waystone network have fallen are areas where there aren't really many rivers.

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Although a slightly different scenario, the dwarven network has apparently been disconnected from the Vortex but still responds to and follows the command codes. We saw that when we saved Karak Vlag. Clearly there's something that's listening even in that scenario.

Even if there's a busted Waystone blocking the flow of magic along it, it may be that the underlying leyline network is still present and communications can pass along it. Who knows?

There are around 60 (~50 Magisters, 5 Elite Battle Wizards, 4 Wizard Lords, 1 Graduated Battle Wizard, 1 Patriarch) wizards at or above Magister level in each college, so multplied by 8 we can ballpark 480 Magister+ level casters. It's hard to say what fraction of those are enchanters, and of those how many would be available.

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Seems like something that may vary radically between Colleges.

 

[DragonParadox]

We do? This tackles a slow moving problem. When we told the emperor about it he shrugged and added it to the list. We weren't sure we'd produce any usable stones at all in the outset.

They're great and provide significant benefits, sure, but at the end of the day we don't actually have a deadline we're working towards. We can in fact take a moment to do it right.

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Yes, we do, there are entire areas of the map marked 'here me monsters', the Wastes have been expanding constantly for more than two thousand years, an entire new form of Dhar using threat to all life has arisen since the system has last seen meaningful maintenance. The Empire Old World is one broken Nexus away from being Chaos Wastes. Things are pretty damn dire.

 

[SeptimusMagisto]

[X] Plan Simple and Functional
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[X] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[X] [STORAGE] [Expensive] Runed
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline

[x] Plan: Repairing The Network First
- [x] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
- [x] [RUNE] Dwarven
- [x] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
- [x] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
- [x] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline

Either of those is fine, I just really don't want Riverine transmission.

 

[Prime 2.0]

Yes, we do, there are entire areas of the map marked 'here me monsters', the Wastes have been expanding constantly for more than two thousand years, an entire new form of Dhar using threat to all life has arisen since the system has last seen meaningful maintenance. Things are pretty damn dire.

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So what you're saying is, we're not at a tipping point and it's a problem that moves on the scale of thousands of years.

This is not something to panic over. Do it right and solve the issue instead of doing it wrong and punting the issue down for future generations.

The short term gribblies in the meantime are better addressed faster by other means, like the audio servioscope. Waystones won't fix those in the short term at all.

 

[Mopman43]

The Colleges probably do not have 160 enchanters, I think they barely have that many magisters and above total.

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I didn't say anything about the Colleges? I was exclusively comparing Archmage numbers to Runesmiths.

 

[ReImagined]

Seems like something that may vary radically between Colleges.

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Yep. I believe Greys are more top heavy, while Lights have more apprentices, and so on. But it should work as an estimate for the Colleges as a whole since the numbers average out.

 

[Humunkulus#256]

[X] Plan: Mass leyline
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Collegiate Fascis
-[X] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[X] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline

[X] Plan Near-Original+
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[X] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[X] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Both (specify which Riverine)
--[X] [TRANSMISSION] Riverine (Spirit)

[x] Plan: Repairing The Network First
- [x] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
- [x] [RUNE] Dwarven
- [x] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
- [x] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
- [x] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline

 

[DragonParadox]

So what you're saying is, we're not at a tipping point and it's a problem that moves on the scale of thousands of years.

This is not something to panic over. Do it right and solve the issue instead of doing it wrong and punting the issue down for future generations.

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This is infrastructure, if we were at the tipping point it would already be too late since you cannot built infrastructure in real time. Do we have enough of a grace period before the tipping point to where the world does not drown in chaos? Well canonically 13th is the last Everchosen, even excluding the abomination that was End Times, Storm of Chaos made it very clear that Archeon could win. The general state of the world, the density of Dhar and monsters was bad enough to produce that so maybe we should not be too perfectionist on what kind of dams we put in front of the flood.

 

[Alratan]

Yep. I believe Greys are more top heavy, while Lights have more apprentices, and so on. But it should work as an estimate for the Colleges as a whole since the numbers average out.

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I was more thinking that what proportion of wizards in a College learn to enchant may vary significantly between Colleges based on their internal cultures, accumulated knowledge base, accidents of history, and the influence of their particular Wind.

For example, the Grey College currently doesn't even have a Turner so can't give its Magisters their graduation staff. I doubt that's an issue for the Bright College with the example of Von Tarnus in their history.

 

[chocolote12]

Waystones that last thousands of years are pretty great. You can tell by the way everyone sort of forgot what they were, devolved into the stone age, clawed our way back up into civilization, and then wanted to build more waystones before we ran out of the old batch.

But waystones that don't need wizards to help out with would be a paradigm shift. At that point it wouldn't be a set of magical wonders, it would just be the way architecture is done. Civilization wide Feng Shui. Mandatory, eventually.

 

[Prime 2.0]

This is infrastructure, if we were at the tipping point it would already be too late since you cannot built infrastructure in real time. Do we have enough of a grace period before the tipping point to where the world does not drown in chaos? Well canonically 13th is the last Everchosen, even excluding the abomination that was End Times, Storm of Chaos made it very clear that Archeon could win. The general state of the world, the density of Dhar and monsters was bad enough to produce that so maybe we should not be too perfectionist on what kind of damns we put in front of the flood.

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We're not at a tipping point from the perspective of infrastructure building, either. Waystones are not in fact a tool for fighting an invading army.

If that's what we were using the waystone project to gear up for, we'd have been better served by telling Ulthuan to screw Marienburg. That would have immediately provided an economic boost that could be funneled into such war preparations that wildly outstrip the any effect that any waystone deployment plan could possibly have in the time left.

I voted Marienburg for that exact reason, as it happens. The waystones themselves were always mostly for what comes after.

 

[Alratan]

This is infrastructure, if we were at the tipping point it would already be too late since you cannot built infrastructure in real time. Do we have enough of a grace period before the tipping point to where the world does not drown in chaos? Well canonically 13th is the last Everchosen, even excluding the abomination that was End Times, Storm of Chaos made it very clear that Archeon could win. The general state of the world, the density of Dhar and monsters was bad enough to produce that so maybe we should not be too perfectionist on what kind of dams we put in front of the flood.

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Considering this, it's worth asking what our constraints are. When a component is marked, as, for example, high cost, does that mean that it's expensive on the scale of the Empire, and that such a cost would be a meaningful constraint on how many Waystones the nations of the Old World can afford to build literally because they can't afford* to do many on top of everything else they have to invest in?

In which case, that would move things more in favour of cheaper if lower bandwidth options like the Reverse Engineered storage, so the Old World nations can invest that money in other useful things they also need to survive the coming Everchosen.

There could be several different rate limiting factors that come into play here changing what the constraint is on production for different options.

* or, putting it another way, the opportunity cost of spending that much money on Waystones would be so great.

 

[DragonParadox]

We're not at a tipping point from the perspective of infrastructure building, either. Waystones are not in fact a tool for fighting an invading army.

If that's what we were using the waystone project to gear up for, we'd have been better served by telling Ulthuan to screw Marienburg. That would have immediately provided an economic boost that could be funneled into such war preparations that wildly outstrip the any effect that any waystone deployment plan could possibly have in the time left.

I voted Marienburg for that exact reason, as it happens. The waystones themselves are for what comes after.

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I don't think so. Jokes aside Mathienburg is not more of a drain on the economy of the old world than Sylvanya Mussilion, the Drakenwalk or the Blackwater taken individually, much less all of them together then adding the pervasive losses from Waystones lost in even developed civilized provinces.

Considering this, it's worth asking what our constraints are. When a component is marked, as, for example, high cost, does that mean that it's expensive on the scale of the Empire, and that such a cost would be a meaningful constraint on how many Waystones the nations of the Old World can afford to build literally because they can't afford* to do many on top of everything else they have to invest in.

In which case, that would move things more in favour of cheaper if lower bandwidth options like the Reverse Engineered storage, so the Old World nations can invest that money in other useful things they also need to survive the coming Everchosen.

There could be several different rate limiting factors that come into play here changing what the constraint is on production for different options.

* or, putting it another way, the opportunity cost of spending that much money on Waystones would be so great.

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I think we are fine, with all the canal building we are doing general economic output is on the rise, though population of trained wizards much less elven Archmages and Von Tarnus... er plural is unlikely to go up anywhere near as fast. Not to mention that the more of them we raise the more wealth there will be to raise more of them.

 

[tygerbright]

[X] Plan Building A Better Future
[X] Plan Simple and Functional

 

[LightLan]

I think we are fine, with all the canal building we are doing general economic output is on the rise, though population of trained wizards much less elven Archmages and Von Tarnus... er plural is unlikely to go up anywhere near as fast. Not to mention that the more of them we raise the more wealth there will be to raise more of them.

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Some of our customers most in need are the notoriously poor Stirland and Kislev.