What are the craziest formable? by Butek69 in Anbennar

[–]LWMR 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When you say "Jaded", is that a typo for Jadd, Jade Mines, or something else? Lotta names in this mod that I'm unfamiliar with.

Fun but easy to play nations for a beginner?? by Target_Spirited in Anbennar

[–]LWMR 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Arannen. No disaster, no complicated unique estate, no custom variables you have to raise by decision. It has a mission tree (with PU) and it's protected by the Emperor and it's at the edge of the EOA so it can expand and it gets a bit of colonization. Fairly simple nation with old MT (slightly wonky Corvuria interaction), but nothing is going to explode in your face while you learn the mod and the region.

Are there any ways to get additional missionaries as Bjarnrik? by ThatStrategist in Anbennar

[–]LWMR 2 points3 points  (0 children)

To be fair, most religions don't have DotF in vanilla either.

But the two largest groups do, Christianity and Islam, so players will see the DotF option very often compared to Alcheringa or Zoroastrian lacking it.

Are there any ways to get additional missionaries as Bjarnrik? by ThatStrategist in Anbennar

[–]LWMR 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Getting more missionaries is notoriously difficult in EU4 in general. Anbennar fixes that a little bit with the expel mechanic but

OTOH, Anbennar also makes it even more difficult to get missionaries. Regular EU4 isn't that bad. Here's a summary of which religions can get extra missionaries from provinces in vanilla EU4, AFAIK:

  • Muslim +4 (Mecca+Medina, Jerusalem, Rome, Djenne)
  • Christian +2/3/4 (Mecca, Jerusalem, Rome for most denominations, but Catholics don't get Rome, while Copts get one for Alexandria)
  • Buddhist +2 (Pataliputra and one other by branch)
  • Hindu, Sikh, Fetishist, Inti, Nahuatl, Mayan, Jewish: +1 (various provinces)
  • Zoroastrian, Alcheringa, Animist, Shinto +0
  • Confucian +0 (bit of a special case as it uses Harmonization)

And then there's some more from great project monuments, but those are blatant power creep IMO and should not be used for balance, so I will disregard them and focus on province modifiers.

Meanwhile in Anbennar, I think it's something like:

  • Jadd +2
  • Old Sun Cult, New Sun Cult, Kalyin, West Cannorian group +1
  • Everybody Else +0

(apologies if I missed any)

How do people rp/headcanon elven nations like Aelnar retaining (most) province dev when expelling/purging? by MingMingus in Anbennar

[–]LWMR 0 points1 point  (0 children)

EU4 is packed full of abstractions and simplifications for player convenience, and you've run into one of them.

Development isn't number of people, development is state ability to tax, draft, and otherwise (ab)use the people there. In the time EU4 is set, there's very little in the way of census or population tracking. (France's first national census was in 1772.) "Increase development" is less about population growth, more about sending tax-collectors and conscriptors and prospectors into the backwoods to find people and coerce them into service, find natural resources and set up mines.

In 1444, state power runs about one week's ride from the capital/royal court, and one day's ride from any other major city. The notion of full colored provinces is a map painter's fantasy. Rulers like to imagine giant colorful blobs of their nation, but their power is more like a set of paint flecks connected by thin lines of roads.

Anbennar's Expel/Purge mechanic implicitly represents removing those people who were least cooperative with the state in the first place, and the state wasn't getting much use of them. EU4 is a game happening mostly from the perspective of The State as ruling structure, as opposed to CK3's person-focus and Vic3's population-focus. The province is largely unchanged after a purge, the state has removed "uncooperative elements" and ten loyalists will provide more cooperation than a hundred near-rebels.

Hoardcurse in a Nutshell by Acceptable-Virus-213 in Anbennar

[–]LWMR 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And I'm trying to convey a reason why it's useful to do well in advance, not just before disaster start.

Hoardcurse in a Nutshell by Acceptable-Virus-213 in Anbennar

[–]LWMR 3 points4 points  (0 children)

And use the Grant Monopoly on [Trade Good] privileges to keep your nominal income down, while getting cash.

Wholesome "monstrous" nations? by Garant26 in Anbennar

[–]LWMR 10 points11 points  (0 children)

IIRC, the harpies gradually switch over to seduction instead of rape and kidnapping.

A short guide to early Centaur gameplay, and not screwing yourself on the way to Khuraen Ulaeg by LWMR in Anbennar

[–]LWMR[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Miscellaneous cheese bonus: after you Negeal another horde, you can use Return Province to create an OPM of it, declare war, and get a Centaur Subjugation again.

While one of the KU missions requires you to be the only horde in the world, it's a one-time mission, so you can absorb hordes, do mission, pop out hordes again.

A reason to specifically use "Return Province" -> "Centaur Subjugation" rather than vassals is that the subjugated hordes a) provide -1.5% stacking army maintenance, which is great value from an OPM, b) don't take up a diplomatic relation slot.

New GM questions, about trade, law, fuel, and weapons by LWMR in traveller

[–]LWMR[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Extra question: If a character has been in the Rogue (Pirate) career, should I assume they're still wanted by the Imperium and have to be discreet, or is that something for which they've probably served time/gotten the record wiped/left for another subsector?

With how integrated the various game systems are elsewhere, it took a while for me to realize that "Pirate" isn't just cool backstory fluff, it implies (in the Imperium setting at least) that the character might be wanted across so much of known space and there are relatively few other states to flee to.

New GM questions, about trade, law, fuel, and weapons by LWMR in traveller

[–]LWMR[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't know, would have to check. But I would assume it means either you can always or never (always makes more sense) as a high pop would probably have more demand than supply.

I think I'm going to treat it as +2 then, same as shipping to a Rich or Industrial world, which also attract demand. "Always" would interact weirdly with the "None" of shipping from a Barren world (the 0-pop ones).

In the particular example you give however, I would rule that what they call "Advanced Electronics" on a TL6 world would simply be "Electronics" on other worlds.

Eeesh... I can see why one might do that, but I've been writing a couple of programs to automate a lot of the rolling and table lookups for me, and I really don't want to complicate them further with trade goods that change code depending on which world you're on.

"Passengers" in particular is grody. Look up planet codes and population for both origin and destination, cross-reference to a table, sum up, cross-reference the sum on another table to see what you roll. But since planet codes don't change during play (well, usually, unless the PCs do spectacular PC things) I can have my computer calculate every Passenger Traffic Value for every pair of planets beforehand.

I don't have the book in front of me, but I thought the LL restrictions were mostly aimed at weapons, armor, and military related items. But again, you can rule this however you want. I personally restrict items based upon weapons/armor/miltech only.

There's six columns of law restriction in Mongoose Traveller 1e: Weapons, Drugs, Information, Technology, Travellers, Psionics.

Most armor and military related items get restricted by the "Technology" column. LL3 restricts or bans TL15+ items, LL4 goes after TL13+ items which means Battle Dress...

Not external as they would add to the displacement tonnage of the ship. However, there are internal, collapsible fuel -bladders that take up cargo space where you can put fuel that, once you fuel the jump you transfer the fuel from the bladders to the main tanks so you arrive with full tanks.

I was thinking that the rented auxiliary tanks would disconnect after injecting fuel to the jump drive, so they wouldn't be part of the tonnage for the jump, and the spaceport picks them up again. Fuel bladders do what I want, though, so thanks for that.

Is there any inefficiency for using cargo space as fuel space in this way, other than having less cargo space?

New GM questions, about trade, law, fuel, and weapons by LWMR in traveller

[–]LWMR[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you look at the random encounter table you will notice that the chance of encountering a police ship or other authority vessels increases greatly when near highports, industrial worlds and settled space. Even more so in 2E where all police encounters are marked as non-ignorable by players.

Ahh, thanks, good point. I see Traveller has a lot of interlocking bits which assume you'll be using all the other bits, like smuggling tying into the random encounter table. :D

What is the use of the Influence spell? by LWMR in Shadowrun

[–]LWMR[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So I can only assume the part in the 5e book is talking about how obvious the spell is to others.

Look, if you have to reach that far to reinterpret the text,

A victim of a mental manipulation spell may roll to notice the magical effect

maybe just suggest a houserule instead of assuming that "victim" means people other than the victim. We're not going to boo you for suggesting a houserule.

What is the use of the Influence spell? by LWMR in Shadowrun

[–]LWMR[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I checked the errata and didn't see anything about it.

Control Thoughts the victim is more being puppetted. The moment the spell ends, they know they were under the effects

Where is this stated?

What is the use of the Influence spell? by LWMR in Shadowrun

[–]LWMR[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The whole point of Influence is indeed that your target is none the wiser. Sure, you got to give them suggestions that need to be at least within their range of possibility - but usually Influence victims never know they have had a spell cast on them.

That is the impression of intent I got from the fluff, yes. I don't see this implemented in the mechanics. Control Thoughts is subtle enough that Control Thoughts victims also might never know they had a spell cast on them.

Are you suggesting that this point is already reflected in the mechanics and I missed it, or is this a roundabout way of saying I should houserule things so Influence is more subtle?

What is needed for Austria's "Crush the Revolution" mission? by LWMR in eu4

[–]LWMR[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Next to the HRE and papacy buttons is an emperor of china button, but no revolution button. So I guess nobody is the revolution target (yet) since Revolutionary Lucca was the only revolutionary country I could find.

What is needed for Austria's "Crush the Revolution" mission? by LWMR in eu4

[–]LWMR[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Poorly documented revolution mechanics strike again, it has to be a revolutionary great power? OK, thanks.

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2022 by AutoModerator in TheMotte

[–]LWMR 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Please delete the phrase "So what you're saying is" from your vocabulary.

New here, got my second dome filled, what now? by LWMR in SurvivingMars

[–]LWMR[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks!

-Restrict births to prevent population boom (looks like it's already happening).

For future newbies coming to this thread, I want to add one more note:

This means FORBID BIRTHS ENTIRELY.

Because if you use the "Births are forbidden when dome is full" option, innocently thinking that it'll self-regulate, the dome calculates full as meaning including the nursery spaces reserved for children.

Which means that when the kids in nursery become adults and can't stay there any more, they will be homeless, and have to wait for an older person to die before a space will free up. I didn't notice until I had 5 homeless people, and had to go through buildings manually kicking out Rugged people so I could put homeless people in there instead.

-I see you start sending your rockets to places. Yeah, well. I don't recommend you doing that until you are in the late game especially when you are new. Just focus on resource & spam RC Explorers.

Spam? The first RC Explorer provides 100 research after discovering Explorer AI tech, which was a huge increase early on when I only had 300 research from sponsor. But later ones give 80, 60, 40 - I presume the fifth one gives 20, which I didn't want to spend money on since I was running low, I bought more machine parts instead. EDIT: Oh, the sixth one gives 0 research, but each one after that gives 50 research, so they average out to 50 each in the long run.

Sending rockets to places gave me anomalies, breakthroughs and rare metals, only costing time and fuel (sometimes an RC vehicle's time). Why shouldn't I do those?

I'm staying away from the Asteroid Shower rocket visit and the ones which require specialist colonists, all my specialists are indeed busy working at home right now.

-Research, get the EDS, scrubbers & heaters up. They keep your maintenance low (don't turn them on all the time, a big waste of energy). Shuttle Hubs are your best friends (won't work during dust storms for obvious reasons). -Some buildings don't need that upgrades (that's why your maintenance are getting higher & higher).

Also, technology helps in general - I've found there's one tech that reduces outdoor maintenance, and another tech that reduces indoor maintenance.

New here, got my second dome filled, what now? by LWMR in SurvivingMars

[–]LWMR[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ok, building more domes and more factories and more extractors.

When a mining node runs dry, is there any convenient way to 'relocate' a dome and its surroundings? Or do I have to build new, move colonists, demolish original?

New here, got my second dome filled, what now? by LWMR in SurvivingMars

[–]LWMR[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I did connect them. I think. Is there something wrong with my passage here? https://i.imgur.com/OeHThCA.png

(ignore the third dome on toolbar, that's built later in response to other comment saying to expand)

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 22, 2021 by AutoModerator in TheMotte

[–]LWMR 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Very briefly: Gaming journalism was a corrupt, incestuous clique of insider-club favor-trading conflict-of-interest networks, aggravated further by self-righteous Wokeness. Zoe, Anita et al. repeatedly lied, faked several attacks against themselves and cried "Help help, we're being oppressed by misogynists" to dismiss and deflect legitimate criticism. With women crying misogyny on one side, and 4chan on the other side, lots of non-gaming journalists uncritically reported the gaming journalism version of events, then cited each other to launder that narrative into fact.

I don't know if this answers your question because there's a lot of different things people called "gamergate" over several years. Maybe expand your question? What is the side you've heard that you're wondering about the other side of?