Esquestria: The House of the Sun - A pony cultist experience

[Talon Tiger Dino]

@OurLadyOfWires , does the whole "I See You My Enemy," thing for Worthy Opponents count as a Strange Feat, or would it fall under the combat prowess umbrella of no concerns?

 

[spiderhellian]

Yes, this is exactly why I wanted to go to Tall Tale. So cool.

Close Range/Try to keep up feels fine to me. Combat is a messy space and getting a wound, even using AotLs, is just so annoying.

I'm not sure it's optimal, really, to go full send. Eclipse is likely to be annoying. But it will be so cool.

 

[Arrkhon]

I feel that refuge in audacity where we take the point and and tell them to keep up is the best choice, learning Moth should minimize the already low chances of any veteran on front line leaking anything, and frankly, us going solo would be even more suspicious if anything

 

[Greymere]

Honestly, I really want to go Take Point + Full Lore. That's a full turn's worth of focused Lore progression, and the faster we get the Bureau fully converted the faster we can get the benefits of actually having a cult, and not needing to worry about opsec for things like this in the future (or at least, in regards to things leaking because they don't yet know to not leak something).

 

[des-pair-2]

Well, there are really two ways we can do this. Either we'll take point with only Bureau's Lores, or we'll go alone and use our Lores. Going for a mix of other options makes little sense to me.

 

[DelightedOne]

Hmm, though choice.

I will just go for full lore development or full reward/risk. That is the whole reason we are here anyway.

 

[ses]

Getting Moth teaching requires spending our chance at loot, getting Random teaching requires spending either infosec risk OR physical risk.

I really dont think that the physical risk is enough that it should stop us. The chance of us getting wounded is probably sub-10% even if we Go Solo, and practically nil if we Take Point. Respect the numbers we brought. This expedition was entirely soloable by Velvet even if we hadn't brought the Bureau this turn.

Lets take our baseline, zero-risk, zero-loot choice of "Take Point, No Lores". That already has no risks associated with it as there's basically no chance the assault fails even if we don't bring our personal Lores, and this choice has no physical risks, and no infosec risks. It gives no loot, but offers one Lore Teaching. So we trade our Velvet AP we spent for a Commissioner action later, and also accelerate our timetable for the bureau. That's a decent enough use of our Velvet AP, so lets take that as the baseline and then decide if the other options are more attractive than that.

Maximum Teaching, Take Point, Full Lores: This gives us two Lore teachings and accelerates the Bureau by a full turn. I dont think that 2 teachings is more than twice as good as one teaching, since the benefits get drip-fed as we go regardless so saying "a full turn" might be misleading by implying too much emphasis on a set completion bonus. This still has no loot, and introduces substantial infosec risk, but I think it's just plain better than the default zero risk plan. The chance of Eclipse catching a rumor of us isn't guaranteed and frankly an entire Lore Teaching is well worth it as a price. But that infosec risk IS a price, just because it's not as bad as a Lore Teaching is good doesn't mean that it's not just as much of a price as the mild physical danger and risk of having to cancel the duel. It's probably a bigger cost in expectation as the physical danger costs us in expectation of going solo.

Maximum Rewards, Go Solo, Full Lores: This preserves our ability to get loot, and has the same amount of lore teaching as the zero risk plan. The infosec risk is only mild, and straightforwardly trades "Loot for physical danger" compared to the zero risk plan. Same Lore teaching, the infosec risk difference isn't worth worrying about, so it's straightforwardly a trade of "danger for loot".

We freaking need loot guys. If there's like, a Moth 4 artifact in there to steal that's SO important! If there's a decent level 4 artifact in there that's a way bigger benefit to All In than the edge sacrament is (4 lore levels is four times as much as 1 lore level). Bits hell is real, and restrains everything we do. Bits let us send more expeditions with more Name overkill, Artifacts let us upgrade expeditions frankly almost as much as a 2nd Name does with no associate bits/ap cost.

It's not just about the raw bits value, we really have overlooked just how important artifacts are because we burned ourselves early on spending all our budget on level 3 artifacts very early game when we really couldn't afford it. But artifacts are important. They allow us to brute force expeditions with shitty minions instead of Names, they allow us to have a Name solo expeditions without sending half our team, they're just so great.

Going for the loot directly increases our chance of Name Befriendings happening on schedule. Artifacts are that important for expeditions. Level N artifacts basically translate directly to Level N of total lore levels for expeditions because it's not like our current artifact bench is full of duplicates or requires jockeying for all the empty lore slots in our Names' hands.

Velvet is currently rocking +69 personal combat, and +60 Lantern with the reroll still unused, as well as Level 4 Moth and Secret Histories with rerolls unused. And level 5 Knock reroll still usued. It is extremely unlikely from how the QM designs expeditions that Velvet will get into a combat encounter more dangerous than the guards at Crepuscule Jailbreak unless it's as punishment for failing a Moth/Knock/Lantern noncombat hurdle. And Velvet squishes that combat encounter like ants. We have our Edge realization making us immune to ambushes, our Moth realization giving us darkvision and all sorts of narrative benefits to her ability to evade danger and move unseen, as well as our Knock realization making locks ineffective against Velvet. This is not going to be a case of Velvet shouting "Leeroy Jenkins" and throwing herself facefirst into a -40 Outnumbered penalty. Give her a bit more respect than that. Our only weakness is Heart, and I really doubt we're going to need to roll Heart for an important hurdle to avoid fighting too many changelings at once. Every other lore we currently have our reroll available and level 4 or better Lore.

(Also because I screwed up our plan vote for the month we have an unspent book study that current voters really dont want to spend on the Knock 5 book because of Baldomare lifeline: getting the loot means we might steal a studyable for that slot)

 

[Greymere]

Lets take our baseline, zero-risk, zero-loot choice of "Take Point, No Lores". That already has no risks associated with it as there's basically no chance the assault fails even if we don't bring our personal Lores, and this choice has no physical risks, and no infosec risks. It gives no loot, but offers one Lore Teaching. So we trade our Velvet AP we spent for a Commissioner action later, and also accelerate our timetable for the bureau. That's a decent enough use of our Velvet AP, so lets take that as the baseline and then decide if the other options are more attractive than that.

Click to shrink...

Getting a single extra Lore this turn doesn't speed up the Bureau time table at all. The only thing it does is free up a Commissioner action sometime during then. Getting both the free Moth Lore and the free random Lore from Taking Point + Full Lores is the only option that actually changes when the Bureau gets fully initiated into all the Lores, giving us an entire turn of progress.

Like, just to show the timetables:

Turn -- Base -- Take Point -- Take Point + Full Lore

EoT22 -- 3/9 -- 4/9 -- 5/9
EoT23 -- 5/9 -- 6/9 -- 7/9
EoT24 -- 7/9 -- 8/9 -- FIN
EoT25 -- FIN -- FIN -- N/a

Sure, this might change if we run into further chances to boost the Lores outside of of Commissioner + Director actions, but we can't really plan anything around that.

 

[ses]

Getting a single extra Lore this turn doesn't speed up the Bureau time table at all. The only thing it does is free up a Commissioner action sometime during then. Getting both the free Moth Lore and the free random Lore from Taking Point + Full Lores is the only option that actually changes when the Bureau gets fully initiated into all the Lores, giving us an entire turn of progress.

Like, just to show the timetables:

Turn -- Base -- Take Point -- Take Point + Full Lore

EoT22 -- 3/9 -- 4/9 -- 5/9
EoT23 -- 5/9 -- 6/9 -- 7/9
EoT24 -- 7/9 -- 8/9 -- FIN
EoT25 -- FIN -- FIN -- N/a

Sure, this might change if we run into further chances to boost the Lores outside of of Commissioner + Director actions, but we can't really plan anything around that.

Click to shrink...

The entire point I was making is that I dont think there's a "set completion bonus" that we actually need to care about. We get the benefits of a cult drip-fed as we go. Accelerating by 1 lore is half as good as accelerating by 2 lores, and caring about whether we hit 9/9 at exactly a turn end isn't what we should care about. If the benefits of a cult are drip fed as we go then that means that 8/9 is 8/9ths as good as 9/9. Getting Lore teachings is good but I dont think we need to care specifically about getting 2 more than twice as much as getting 1.

 

[Greymere]

The entire point I was making is that I dont think there's a "set completion bonus" that we actually need to care about. We get the benefits of a cult drip-fed as we go. Accelerating by 1 lore is half as good as accelerating by 2 lores, and caring about whether we hit 9/9 at exactly a turn end isn't what we should care about. If the benefits of a cult are drip fed as we go then that means that 8/9 is 8/9ths as good as 9/9.

Click to shrink...

The difference between 8/9 and 9/9 is, at the very least, that the entire Bureau has been converted into a Lore-using organization who is loyal to us/Luna over Celestia. But perhaps more relevant to right now, we don't know when we're getting our cult bonuses. The only vague hint we have is that Bird said "ask me again" re: cadres and rituals when we hit 5/9.

And, oh wow. Would you look at that? Take Point + Full Lore gets us to 5/9 Lores.

 

[ses]

The difference between 8/9 and 9/9 is, at the very least, that the entire Bureau has been converted into a Lore-using organization who is loyal to us/Luna over Celestia. But perhaps more relevant to right now, we don't know when we're getting our cult bonuses. The only vague hint we have is that Bird said "ask me again" re: cadres and rituals when we hit 5/9.

And, oh wow. Would you look at that? Take Point + Full Lore gets us to 5/9 Lores.

Click to shrink...

I understand what you're saying, and it's a worthy consolation prize, but I really just dont think that it's worth both giving up the chance at loot AND the substantial infosec risks.