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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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My chief concern with the reverse-engineered storage is that we will simply fail the action to build a new Waystone. Two separate things identified as "very difficult", on literally our first try, is a hell of a lift. I agree it will be very impressive if we succeed, but that's because there's a significant risk of failure. I would prefer, if we're making a dual-purpose Waystone (which is very difficult) to keep the rest of the design as simple as possible: don't shy away from doing hard things, but maybe do one hard thing at a time?

EDIT: This concern was addressed further down the page and I withdraw my objection on this count. I still prefer a build that isn't bottlenecked by Archmage availability, but I am now less concerned about outright failure on the action and needing to try again.
 
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Alratan said:
Within the last year she signed her name on the same treaty as the Prince of Yryvesse, the representative of the Phoenix King.
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Sadly for our ambitions to put Mathilde's name on Literally Everything™, I don't believe we actually signed it, just the Rulers of the various polities. And none of the plans to embed her name into the first letters of each article went through either. I don't think Eltharion did either, I think they literally ferried it around to all the different rulers.
 
picklepikkl said:
My chief concern with the reverse-engineered storage is that we will simply fail the action to build a new Waystone. Two separate things identified as "very difficult", on literally our first try, is a hell of a lift. I agree it will be very impressive if we succeed, but that's because there's a significant risk of failure. I would prefer, if we're making a dual-purpose Waystone (which is very difficult) to keep the rest of the design as simple as possible: don't shy away from doing hard things, but maybe do one hard thing at a time?
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The issue is that this won't actually help us make other way stones later. Or, that is to say that a design which doesn't accomplish all our desires won't assist in the codification of a design that does.

The only thing that would be a benefit to that is the potential bonus from carrying over our work in the last action.

The only way to get what we want is to actually try and get it.


As an aside, dwarves who can make expensive runes aren't much more common than the grand masters of the other traditions, and the runes themselves would be painfully more expensive and time consuming with no hope of a change in efficiency later on.

The reverse engineered method is better in quality and physical cost.
 
Mathilde did get some clout from having Eltharions show up and taking the shortest and probably loudest route to getting to talk to her, and from him shortly after negotiating a treaty on behalf of the Pheonix king, as shown in the Black Waters social action. Don't think that translates into the elves otherwise being willing to hear her out when she goes to get books from them though.

If anything I figure that the chamberlain of the seal is even more eager to get her signed up as a diplomat at large. She pretty much has connection to all nearby states besides Brettonia and Marienburg.
 
I'm not cheesed to do this, but, here's a cost and difficulty comparison between the two leading plans. Left is difficulty, right is cost

[] Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)
-[] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower Simple, negligeable cost
-[] [RUNE] Dwarven Simple, low cost
-[] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered Very difficult, low cost
-[] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord Moderately difficult, low cost
-[] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade Riverine) Very difficult, moderate cost

Total Difficulty: 2 Simple, 1 Moderate, 2 Very.
Total Cost: 1 Negligeable, 3 Low, 1 Moderate

[] Plan Building A Better Future
-[] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower Simple, negligeable cost
-[] [RUNE] Dwarven Simple, low cost
-[] [STORAGE] [Expensive] Runed Simple, high cost
-[] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord Moderately difficult, low cost
-[] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade Riverine) Very difficult, moderate cost

Total Difficulty: 3 Simple, 1 Moderate, 1 Very.
Total Cost: 1 Negligeable, 2 Low, 1 Moderate, 1 High.

Comparing the two, plan future+reverse trades a Simple difficulty component for a second Very difficult component. It is a stark spike in the difficulty to manufacture it going forward. What it gains is that it switches out a High cost for a Low cost, meaning wizard-hours aside, it's cheaper to make. And by Word of Boney, the reverse-engineered storage should have the highest capacity of all the options. Personally, I don't think the tradeoff is worth it, as the difficulty of production would be that much harder.

To try to be a bit fair, here's the 3rd and 4th place plans:

[] Plan Simple and Functional
-[] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower Simple, negligeable cost
-[] [RUNE] Dwarven Simple, low cost
-[] [STORAGE] [Expensive] Runed Simple, high cost
-[] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord Moderately difficult, low cost
-[] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline Simple, trivial cost

Total Difficulty: 4 Simple, 1 Moderate
Total Cost: 1 Trivial, 1 Negligeable, 2 Low, 1 High

[] Plan: Repairing The Network First
-[] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower Simple, negligeable cost
-[] [RUNE] Dwarven Simple, low cost
-[] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered Very difficult, low cost
-[] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord Moderately difficult, low cost
-[] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline Simple, trivial cost

Total Difficulty: 3 Simple, 1 Moderate, 1 Very.
Total Cost: 1 Trivial, 1 Negligeable, 3 Low.

Edit: Lots of editing has happened here. >_<
 
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chocolote12 said:
The issue is that this won't actually help us make other way stones later. Or, that is to say that a design which doesn't accomplish all our desires won't assist in the codification of a design that does.

The only thing that would be a benefit to that is the potential bonus from carrying over our work in the last action.

The only way to get what we want is to actually try and get it.
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Making a design with mixed leyline and river transmission will, in fact, help us make a new design that includes mixed transmission. And it would allow us to focus on one main problem, instead of doing two potentially very difficult things while at the same time still having to figure out how to fit everything together.

But, TBH, regardless of which one of the two leading options wins, we should probably design a more affordable model next turn. Both of these are, IMO, decent as a proof of concept but unfit for mass production.
 
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picklepikkl said:
My chief concern with the reverse-engineered storage is that we will simply fail the action to build a new Waystone. Two separate things identified as "very difficult", on literally our first try, is a hell of a lift. I agree it will be very impressive if we succeed, but that's because there's a significant risk of failure. I would prefer, if we're making a dual-purpose Waystone (which is very difficult) to keep the rest of the design as simple as possible: don't shy away from doing hard things, but maybe do one hard thing at a time?
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I don't think succeeding on a less-hard Waystone improves the odds of success on a more complicated Waystone? So if we want the more complicated design, we might as well just go for it, rather than a stop-gap.
 
picklepikkl said:
My chief concern with the reverse-engineered storage is that we will simply fail the action to build a new Waystone. Two separate things identified as "very difficult", on literally our first try, is a hell of a lift. I agree it will be very impressive if we succeed, but that's because there's a significant risk of failure. I would prefer, if we're making a dual-purpose Waystone (which is very difficult) to keep the rest of the design as simple as possible: don't shy away from doing hard things, but maybe do one hard thing at a time?
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Derpmind said:
Comparing the two, plan future+reverse trades a Simple difficulty component for a second Very difficult component. It is a stark spike in difficulty, both to create this Waystone and to manufacture it going forward.
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That's not a problem. Boney has confirmed that difficulty represents the difficulty of (mass) production, not the difficulty of making this prototype.
 
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Parabola said:
Hell, Kislev currently has very little they can contribute to entirely on their own. It'd be a hard sell but maybe we could try revisiting the Capstone or Foundation actions just with them, see what contributions we might have missed from them.
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I asked about that and I think we can't have people redo actions. We can redo them with different people attached, but we can't actually redo them. We had Zlata on Leylines and the Foundation actions (which corresponds to the Foundation and Storage components). We could have her investigate alternatives to the Waystone Rune. We also could write-in redoing the Capstone.

That's part of why I don't really think we are going to get a Damsel on the Project. Most of the research work is already done.

Deathbybunnies said:
I don't think succeeding on a less-hard Waystone improves the odds of success on a more complicated Waystone? So if we want the more complicated design, we might as well just go for it, rather than a stop-gap.
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To be fair, before the vote I advocated for getting good at combining components. But we would have Ulthuan helping us with this. I am confident we can do it.
 
henkalv said:
Mathilde did get some clout from having Eltharions show up and taking the shortest and probably loudest route to getting to talk to her, and from him shortly after negotiating a treaty on behalf of the Pheonix king, as shown in the Black Waters social action. Don't think that translates into the elves otherwise being willing to hear her out when she goes to get books from them though.
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I think it would. I feel that important elves are likely to more more receptive to a human they've heard of and had done something very impressive even by elven standards than some random no/name.
 
Alratan said:
That's not a problem. Boney has confirmed that difficulty represents the difficulty of (mass) production, not the difficulty of making this prototype.
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Could you quote the source of that, please? Edit: NVM, found it:
Boney said:
Alratan said:
Actually, a question for @Boney, I may have missed it in the update, but when the options talk about difficulty, do they mean the difficulty to integrate the existing component into the first prototype this turn as well as the difficulty of mass production?
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Just the difficulty of production.
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Derpmind said:
Could you quote the source of that, please?
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Here:
Boney said:
Alratan said:
Actually, a question for @Boney, I may have missed it in the update, but when the options talk about difficulty, do they mean the difficulty to integrate the existing component into the first prototype this turn as well as the difficulty of mass production?
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Just the difficulty of production.
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I asked early on.
 
I talked about it before, but another longer term advantage of the reverse engineered storage is that in combination with Mathilde revealing how to make Orbs of Sorcery it could make battle altars cheaper/better for the Empire.

If the storage enchantment reaches the point where Collegiate enchanters can make them it would hopefully make large capacity magic batteries much cheaper for them to make, and they're probably an important part of the cost of large scale enchantments. Pair that with a greater supply of Orbs and it could be feasible to produce more battle altars and towers than the Colleges can currently afford.

Derpmind said:
It's been 37 pages since the update. It's not easy to remember everything important to the vote.
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No, of course not, I was mentioning that to acknowledge it was a while back and early in the discussion so could easily have more easily been lost than something more recent.
 
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picklepikkl said:
EDIT: This concern was addressed further down the page and I withdraw my objection on this count. I still prefer a build that isn't bottlenecked by Archmage availability, but I am now less concerned about outright failure on the action and needing to try again.
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One thing we're assuming here, which is fair as it isn't called out as an issue, is that there are no similar constraints on production of expensive runic storage by the number of runesmiths who currently know or can be quickly taught those runes and are willing to craft them on a novel hybrid device that combines elven and human magic and dwarven runes.

Presumably Thorek has it handled.
 
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