Make a Contract With Me! [Lag Backup Thread]

[Orm Embar]

Fuck lag.

... Nope, that's all I wanted to say.

 

[Rihaku]

Looks like lag has begun again...in the morning...great.

 

[Alectai]

Looks like lag has begun again...in the morning...great.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, this is getting way out of hand.

Good news, at least it probably isn't us that's causing it, given how we've started a new thread already, and we're still spending most of the day with SB being unusable.

Though it can still be used for now, but it's probably on the way down.

 

[Cytokinesis]

This is ridiculous. At this point I'd be willing to bet that half the forum would gladly chip in to pay for a new server. Why is this problem so difficult to fix that it's taken nearly a year with no progress?

 

[Alectai]

This is ridiculous. At this point I'd be willing to bet that half the forum would gladly chip in to pay for a new server. Why is this problem so difficult to fix that it's taken nearly a year with no progress?

Click to shrink...

The guy who handles the server has been fighting a lawsuit for two years now, and it's basically kept him from doing his job. He won, but now he's busy playing catch-up.

It's a small miracle SB just has to deal with daily levels of crippling lag instead of being shut down.

 

[TheOtherSandman]

Haha!
Now I can wave the [Perception II] flag in two places at the same time!

None can escape my propagandizing!

Also, laaaaaaaaag.

 

[Alectai]

I'm not against it, but we'll need to know how much XP we're rocking first. Scope 4 is just too good to not pick up, everything beyond that is based on our options (Whether Discreet or Arsenal won the argument in the end when Rihaku makes a ruling) and available resources.

Perception II is likely good, but Scope 4 is amazing.

 

[Guile]

The guy who handles the server has been fighting a lawsuit for two years now, and it's basically kept him from doing his job. He won, but now he's busy playing catch-up.

It's a small miracle SB just has to deal with daily levels of crippling lag instead of being shut down.

Click to shrink...

That lawsuit ended months ago.

Anyhow, I think we should hit the yak kid now. Kyoko would be necessary if Tetsu has some cronies, but Tokyo is supposed to be this magically dead zone or something. So yeah, given Tetsu and MC's magical apotheosis things are a-changing, but I think if we just go in, do Discreet or Arsenal (pick up the Ultimate if we can afford it) and hit him with everything we got, we'll manage. Kyoko is another 1-2 weeks for Tetsu to figure stuff out, plus the potential that Kyoko isn't going to play ball or we'll owe her half a dozen grief seeds.

If we hamstring his operations in a sort of magic-y way, I think we could get him hunting us (as the only magician in his organization, hopefully), but I really can't help but think the most direct approach is best. Blow his brains out from a mile away, using Discreet stealth or Arsenal misdirection to keep him away from us. At most, we get in trouble and pop our Mysterious Voice Power.

 

[Alectai]

That lawsuit ended months ago.

Anyhow, I think we should hit the yak kid now. Kyoko would be necessary if Tetsu has some cronies, but Tokyo is supposed to be this magically dead zone or something. So yeah, given Tetsu and MC's magical apotheosis things are a-changing, but I think if we just go in, do Discreet or Arsenal (pick up the Ultimate if we can afford it) and hit him with everything we got, we'll manage. Kyoko is another 1-2 weeks for Tetsu to figure stuff out, plus the potential that Kyoko isn't going to play ball or we'll owe her half a dozen grief seeds.

If we hamstring his operations in a sort of magic-y way, I think we could get him hunting us (as the only magician in his organization, hopefully), but I really can't help but think the most direct approach is best. Blow his brains out from a mile away, using Discreet stealth or Arsenal misdirection to keep him away from us. At most, we get in trouble and pop our Mysterious Voice Power.

Click to shrink...

I thought I said t...

Oh, no I didn't, silly me You're right, it's been over for months, I just failed to mention that.

 

[Pipeman]

That lawsuit ended months ago.

Anyhow, I think we should hit the yak kid now. Kyoko would be necessary if Tetsu has some cronies, but Tokyo is supposed to be this magically dead zone or something. So yeah, given Tetsu and MC's magical apotheosis things are a-changing, but I think if we just go in, do Discreet or Arsenal (pick up the Ultimate if we can afford it) and hit him with everything we got, we'll manage. Kyoko is another 1-2 weeks for Tetsu to figure stuff out, plus the potential that Kyoko isn't going to play ball or we'll owe her half a dozen grief seeds.

If we hamstring his operations in a sort of magic-y way, I think we could get him hunting us (as the only magician in his organization, hopefully), but I really can't help but think the most direct approach is best. Blow his brains out from a mile away, using Discreet stealth or Arsenal misdirection to keep him away from us. At most, we get in trouble and pop our Mysterious Voice Power.

Click to shrink...

People keep saying that Tokyo still is a magical dead-zone, but all we do know is that it has been one.
For all we know it now has a steady supply of Liches and enough new Magician's cropping up, for Tetsu to easily one or two of the ones more easily manipulated.
While I agree that we shouldn't wait for long enough that whatever help he did manage to pick up to become competent, I'd rather have that one week of surveilance to identify possible dangers and weak-spots before we try to kill him.

We are capable enough to find a way around most problems we'd identify and, even if that one week allows him to do something like recruit more help, it's not like he's going to keep another Magician he just met and can't be sure to trust yet around at all times.

Once we know enough about his schedule and habits, I'm sure we could not only nullify whatever advantages he might acquire in the time lost on recon, but would also be able to make the engagement a lot more favourable for us than if we'd just rushed in now.

 

[TheOtherSandman]

If we hamstring his operations in a sort of magic-y way, I think we could get him hunting us (as the only magician in his organization, hopefully), but I really can't help but think the most direct approach is best. Blow his brains out from a mile away, using Discreet stealth or Arsenal misdirection to keep him away from us. At most, we get in trouble and pop our Mysterious Voice Power.

Click to shrink...

I know that it might work, but having Word of God say that it would be really unlikely for it to be as easy as popping him from behind the grassy knoll makes me quite hesitant to do that without something more substantial to go on.

And for either of those Weapon Ideals to be at the level needed for what you want, we're going to need at least another 40k experience which we are unlikely to have if we go right now.

And what Mysterious Voice power are you talking about?

 

[LoreOfClarke]

That lawsuit ended months ago.

Anyhow, I think we should hit the yak kid now. Kyoko would be necessary if Tetsu has some cronies, but Tokyo is supposed to be this magically dead zone or something. So yeah, given Tetsu and MC's magical apotheosis things are a-changing, but I think if we just go in, do Discreet or Arsenal (pick up the Ultimate if we can afford it) and hit him with everything we got, we'll manage. Kyoko is another 1-2 weeks for Tetsu to figure stuff out, plus the potential that Kyoko isn't going to play ball or we'll owe her half a dozen grief seeds.

If we hamstring his operations in a sort of magic-y way, I think we could get him hunting us (as the only magician in his organization, hopefully), but I really can't help but think the most direct approach is best. Blow his brains out from a mile away, using Discreet stealth or Arsenal misdirection to keep him away from us. At most, we get in trouble and pop our Mysterious Voice Power.

Click to shrink...

It is possible that kyubey is trying to repopulate Tokyo with witches/litches so the land isn't going to waste. The obvious way to do so is recruit several magicians and just not tell them how to clean their seed so they'll wait away the rest of their gem.
If that is happening they'll want several magicians all on the same side.
The other reason for several new magicians working together is for them to find out and destroy whatever injured our kyubey.

Remember that we were told that killing Tetsu isn't going to be easy.

 

[Rihaku]

I really hope this lag doesn't last the entire fucking day as it has in the past.

 

[Eler0]

I think we should go and try to hire Kyoko because it gives us a plan B if he has minions or can detect our bullets or has some other ace up his sleeve. It just helps with dealing with something unexpected. In an ideal world, we could just headshot him from several kilometers away, but she willl be really helpful if we can't. It will also mean more character interaction, so that's a huge plus as well.

 

[Pipeman]

Dammit.
I was just going through with the effort of nitpicking the shrapnel thing in spite of massive lag, only to notice Rihaku ninja'd me already.

Well, anyways, in regard to what to spend our XP on, I'd say it largely depends on which option we take, but Scope 4 should be a given if only for the immense utility of always having that insane spacial awareness and being able to see magic.
Otherwise, if I get my way and we do recon, at least one level in Perception would be pretty important (and not to mention get a gigantic boost from Scope 4) and, if we have enough surplus, upgrading our Special Perception would be a decent option as well, though that may be more of a gamble than I'm sure we should take before combat.

 

[Deadly Snark]

I had a though, it's not very relevant to the choice, but I feel that it's something that we need to consider.

We've been mostly assuming that Magicians are at the end just a variation of the magical girl system, however judging by information from canon, that shouldn't be the case.

For one, there's a reason why Incubators uses girls, the in-series justification is that girls are far more self consicious, more emotivaly variable and thus fall into despair and become witches easier. The problem with boys is not that they're more mature or anything like that, in fact it's possibly the opposite. On average guys enjoys being almost immortable magic wielding badass heroes of mankind much more than girls and are more comfortable with the truth, so it takes them a lot longer to fall into despair.

Now, that's a problem since the goal is to harvest energy from Grief Seeds, and I doubt that granting the wishes is entirely costless for the Incubators. The longer it takes for a magic user to change, the less efficient and profitable the system is. It's not a problem with Puellas, because most of them witch out in months, weeks or even possibly days, resulting in a near constant supply of Despair laden energy that comes reguarly. With guys, it's a lot harder.

We all know this, is what you guys are thinking, so what are you getting at, is what you guys are asking yourself. Easy, my point is that by introducing Magicians into the system, it becomes less profitable and less efficient. Every time a new male user is created, the whole system get's bogged down.

Why? Because they consumme about as much as Puellas, but don't change/produce nearly as often. So it's hard to create a stable population of Litches. Without a stable population of litches and with the population of witches constantly going down due to the new consummers, that means less seeds, that means less energy overtime.

My point is that Magicians are a virus, they are an attempt to sabotage the Incubators's entire energy harvesting system.

 

[TheOtherSandman]

I'm not exactly sure why, but the fact that guys are fucking everything up amuses me greatly.

 

[Deadly Snark]

I'm not exactly sure why, but the fact that guys are fucking everything up amuses me greatly.

Click to shrink...

Because that's just like us?

 

[LoreOfClarke]

I had a though, it's not very relevant to the choice, but I feel that it's something that we need to consider.

We've been mostly assuming that Magicians are at the end just a variation of the magical girl system, however judging by information from canon, that shouldn't be the case.

For one, there's a reason why Incubators uses girls, the in-series justification is that girls are far more self consicious, more emotivaly variable and thus fall into despair and become witches easier. The problem with boys is not that they're more mature or anything like that, in fact it's possibly the opposite. On average guys enjoys being almost immortable magic wielding badass heroes of mankind much more than girls and are more comfortable with the truth, so it takes them a lot longer to fall into despair.

Now, that's a problem since the goal is to harvest energy from Grief Seeds, and I doubt that granting the wishes is entirely costless for the Incubators. The longer it takes for a magic user to change, the less efficient and profitable the system is. It's not a problem with Puellas, because most of them witch out in months, weeks or even possibly days, resulting in a near constant supply of Despair laden energy that comes reguarly. With guys, it's a lot harder.

We all know this, is what you guys are thinking, so what are you getting at, is what you guys are asking yourself. Easy, my point is that by introducing Magicians into the system, it becomes less profitable and less efficient. Every time a new male user is created, the whole system get's bogged down.

Why? Because they consumme about as much as Puellas, but don't change/produce nearly as often. So it's hard to create a stable population of Litches. Without a stable population of litches and with the population of witches constantly going down due to the new consummers, that means less seeds, that means less energy overtime.

My point is that Magicians are a virus, they are an attempt to sabotage the Incubators's entire energy harvesting system.

Click to shrink...

The positive side for the incubators of magic users with increased average lifespan is that it means there are magic users with more experience and are unlikely to witch out being told the truth. This allows magicians to be excelent combatants against a power that already knows the truth.
In short: we were made to fight the incubators enemies, not to witch out.

 

[Deadly Snark]

The positive side for the incubators of magic users with increased average lifespan is that it means there are magic users with more experience and are unlikely to witch out being told the truth. This allows magicians to be excelent combatants against a power that already knows the truth.
In short: we were made to fight the incubators enemies, not to witch out.

Click to shrink...

Us, fight against the Incubators's enemies...

...

Yeah, I don't see that, because if they're fighting at all, it'll be at a scale that completely dwarfs anything we can imagine. Considering how advanced they should be, they're likely at a level where a few guys with Magic aren't going to do jack shit on the frontlines.

 

[EnderofWorlds]

Us, fight against the Incubators's enemies...

...

Yeah, I don't see that, because if they're fighting at all, it'll be at a scale that completely dwarfs anything we can imagine. Considering how advanced they should be, they're likely at a level where a few guys with Magic aren't going to do jack shit on the frontlines.

Click to shrink...

I think he means that we're Homura hunters; we're meant to off the puella magi that try to unravel the whole system after finding out the truth. We're the cops that drag Thorn away as he screams aloud that Soylent Green is made of people, the operatives that hunt down The Question to keep CADMUS safe.

 

[TheOtherSandman]

Look like we're going to hit the 25k mark for spendable XP according to Rihaku.

Remote firing weapons is at Lv.2 Arsenal, or is it Lv.3?
Because if we don't have enough to grab all the way to Drone weapons, I think we should toss it into our Special stat.

 

[LoreOfClarke]

Us, fight against the Incubators's enemies...

...

Yeah, I don't see that, because if they're fighting at all, it'll be at a scale that completely dwarfs anything we can imagine. Considering how advanced they should be, they're likely at a level where a few guys with Magic aren't going to do jack shit on the frontlines.

Click to shrink...

There are plenty of reasons why the incubators might fight a proxy war without making them impossible for us to kill: their enemy may be able to permanently damage the incubators or their collective mind meaning that a proxy is the only way to protect themselves from accidental casualties, the enemy may be able to detect or intercept messages from the collective consciousness meaning magicians are the only beings that can ambush or outplan them, the incubators are incapable of magic (kyubey hints towards this in the anime with a Clarke's third law quote but he isn't exactly a reliable source) and magic is vital to harm the enemies more than superficially.

I think he means that we're Homura hunters; we're meant to off the puella magi that try to unravel the whole system after finding out the truth. We're the cops that drag Thorn away as he screams aloud that Soylent Green is made of people, the operatives that hunt down The Question to keep CADMUS safe.

Click to shrink...

That works too.

 

[Deadly Snark]

I think he means that we're Homura hunters; we're meant to off the puella magi that try to unravel the whole system after finding out the truth. We're the cops that drag Thorn away as he screams aloud that Soylent Green is made of people, the operatives that hunt down The Question to keep CADMUS safe.

Click to shrink...

Which doesn't make sense, because a growing population of Magicians is far more harmful to the system than any Puella who wanted to stop the operation could.

 

[LoreOfClarke]

Which doesn't make sense, because a growing population of Magicians is far more harmful to the system than any Puella who wanted to stop the operation could.

Click to shrink...

The magician population doesn't grow. They are made by incubators and so their population is perfectly controllable. We've had no indication that magicians are being created outside of Tokyo.

 

[Deadly Snark]

There are plenty of reasons why the incubators might fight a proxy war without making them impossible for us to kill: their enemy may be able to permanently damage the incubators or their collective mind meaning that a proxy is the only way to protect themselves from accidental casualties, the enemy may be able to detect or intercept messages from the collective consciousness meaning magicians are the only beings that can ambush or outplan them, the incubators are incapable of magic (kyubey hints towards this in the anime with a Clarke's third law quote but he isn't exactly a reliable source) and magic is vital to harm the enemies more than superficially.

Click to shrink...

Okay, tell me why we haven't been instered with knowledge neede to fight this war and send on the frontlines or behind the lines already? It's more than possible with the Incubator's technology.

How do you know that Magic can reliably harm the enemy more than whatever weapon or fleets that the Incubators could use? This isn't a 1st world nation arming 3rd world rebels or native here. This is a nation trying to arm chickens in order to fight in a near future battlefield.

Earth is worth far more to them as a energy producing facility than it is a inefficient soldier camp.

The magician population doesn't grow. They are made by incubators and so their population is perfectly controllable. We've had no indication that magicians are being created outside of Tokyo.

Click to shrink...

It just grew from 0, to 2. And you've apparently missed the implications of my theory. So let me spell it out for you.

Magicians aren't created by real Incubators.


Also, I think the lag stopped.

 

[Pipeman]

I think we should go and try to hire Kyoko because it gives us a plan B if he has minions or can detect our bullets or has some other ace up his sleeve. It just helps with dealing with something unexpected. In an ideal world, we could just headshot him from several kilometers away, but she willl be really helpful if we can't. It will also mean more character interaction, so that's a huge plus as well.

Click to shrink...

If figuring out Tetsu's various defenses, neatly bypassing them and then cleanly taking him out is Plan A, then we already have a Plan B.
We have a sniper rifle capable of firing normal shots with a stopping power of 2.5 times what modern technology is theoretically capable of achieving.
With our Scope, especially if we get Scope 4 as well, we have such a ridiculous spacial awareness that we can box him in with bullets whether he's normally fast enough to dodge them or not.
And we have homing bullets on top of that.
Thanks to our ability to see magic we also going to be warned of any non-visible magic shenanigans or traps or untransformed magicians guarding him, which we'd all be capable of shooting at the same time as him thanks to Grapeshot.
Our X-ray vision combined with our ridiculous stopping power and Shieldbreaker lets is practically ignore whatever cover he's going to find.
Or we could just blow him and whatever building he's hiding behind up with an Impactor.
Should he ever come close enough to become troublesome we can rocket jump away.
And to top all of this off, we have easily enough energy for two uses of our contingency magic, should everything go to crap in spite of all these things.
If things really come down to nothing but a slugging match we are quite capable of putting the hurt on.

True, our chances in an all out battle would be even better if we had Kyoko with us, but the issue with that is that we'd practically give up Plan A.
After taking so long to get help, we couldn't afford to take the time to gather the info necessary to try to outmaneuver Tetsu properly.
And even if we were willing to give him even more time, Kyoko is neither suited towards subtlety nor would she be willing to stick around for so long unless we significantly up her pay.
Once we involve Kyoko we'll pretty much have to just risk the head on battle.
And if one considers how harmful involving Kyoko could be to our relationship with Mami and therefor how much this would jepordize our safe haven in Mitakihara, I really don't want to risk this.

 

[Alectai]

Shit, looks like Lag's come back for another go.

 

[Deadly Snark]

Goddamn it, well at least we had a few good discussion before the end.

 

[Malcolmo]

Uh Rihaku I don't suppose you could post the recent few updates here since even trying to get to the update thread is an exercise in futility at the moment.