Logistics and Dragons [No Kaeliks]

[Ancient History]

I think you're having a critical reading failure there Kaelik, because the entire reason I'm talking about a slight change in how create food and water works - one which won't be evident at the local level - is because I don't just want to say "Okay, you can't create a magic item that casts create food and water repeatedly." That feels like an unnecessary and heavy-handed nerf, whereas a slight change to how create food and water works (i.e. drawing on the local environment rather than creating out of thin air) preserves the macroeconomics and avoids work-arounds like, say, mass-producing wands of create food and water.

As for your bizarre focus on "conquest" - besides the general koku generated naturally by the ecology of the hex, I figure the additional koku would be generated by Holdings that the players develop and work, like your much-beloved mushroom farms. The innate koku derived from a hex is just a factor of "Wow, there's more food and fresh water available in this jungle than there is in this fire swamp, or on this unforested mountain, or in the middle of this desert." And of course keeping your minions and denizens fed and happy is a large part of the general logistics of any dungeon.

Which I think everybody should understand is kinda fundamental to the acknowledgement that dungeons have ecologies, and that the monsters and humanoids and whatnot that live in them must eat something, though this is rarely gone into in great and laborious detail in most adventures and setting-books...which is half the point of a Logistics & Dragons game. You want to figure out the population statistics you need to keep your resident mindflayers alive and healthy; you want to know how many supplies you need on hand to attract a dragon.

[Kaelik]

I think you're having a critical reading failure there Kaelik, because the entire reason I'm talking about a slight change in how create food and water works - one which won't be evident at the local level - is because I don't just want to say "Okay, you can't create a magic item that casts create food and water repeatedly." That feels like an unnecessary and heavy-handed nerf, whereas a slight change to how create food and water works (i.e. drawing on the local environment rather than creating out of thin air) preserves the macroeconomics and avoids work-arounds like, say, mass-producing wands of create food and water.

So instead of telling people they can't spend resources to create an item, you tell them that they can spend resources to create an item that does literally nothing.

That is a huge as fuck nerf. Nerfing the spell so that it literally has no effect on your game, such that casting the spell and not casting the spell are fucking identical is a huge as fuck nerf as compared to just telling people they can't make a trap.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I think you fucking obsession with Koku is pathetic and damaging to the game, and you wouldn't be fapping it so hard if koku didn't sound cool, because pretty much everything about your proposed rules focuses on how cool koku sounds to the exclusion of anything having any actually good gameplay results, but if you are going to fap to koku so hard, making it so that someone who casts Create Food and Water from their spell slots is objectively worse than someone who casts Dazzle from those same slots is a terrible idea.

As for your bizarre focus on "conquest" - besides the general koku generated naturally by the ecology of the hex, I figure the additional koku would be generated by Holdings that the players develop and work, like your much-beloved mushroom farms.

Ah, the old, if I claim that in the future I will totally make rules that don't suck, that completely contradict the rules I have written so far, then my current rules are amazing, defense.

Sure think Zak.

And of course keeping your minions and denizens fed and happy is a large part of the general logistics of any dungeon.

Which I think everybody should understand is kinda fundamental to the acknowledgement that dungeons have ecologies, and that the monsters and humanoids and whatnot that live in them must eat something, though this is rarely gone into in great and laborious detail in most adventures and setting-books...which is half the point of a Logistics & Dragons game. You want to figure out the population statistics you need to keep your resident mindflayers alive and healthy; you want to know how many supplies you need on hand to attract a dragon.

Which is much better handled by applying actual D&D rules, like minions that don't eat, magic items that create food, dungeons with internal farms, the Plant Growth spell, having your minions actually do work to create food, and really, anything besides declaring that hexes produce PRECIOUS KOKU without any labor, and expansion is required to produce more PRECIOUS KOKU.

[Ancient History]

You're welcome to make constructive suggestions, if you have any better ideas.

[angelfromanotherpin]

You're better off addressing the traps issue directly. There are a *lot* more abusable things that can be done with spell 'traps.'

[Kaelik]

You're welcome to make constructive suggestions, if you have any better ideas.

Let people use their actual D&D logistics ability to negate or blunt concerns about PRECIOUS KOKU and light your obsession with PRECIOUS KOKU on fire, and remove literally every reference to it in the rules you have presented so far.

[Username17]

Yeah, having the output of over seven thousand casters from a "trap" is able to do things way more bullshit than just mimicking a farming village. Summon traps, creation traps, healing traps, and so on. The trap guidelines straight up don't work once you leave the realm of standard attack spells.

-Username17

[Ancient History]

A fair point.

[Username17]

You're welcome to make constructive suggestions, if you have any better ideas.

Let people use their actual D&D logistics ability to negate or blunt concerns about PRECIOUS KOKU and light your obsession with PRECIOUS KOKU on fire, and remove literally every reference to it in the rules you have presented so far.

D&D actually has the concept of Koku in it. It's right in the spell we're talking about:

Food and water to sustain three humans or one horse/level for 24 hours

That's a really cumbersome way to talk about it, but that's one day's worth of 3 Koku. It's much much simpler to just talk about the amount of Koku you have. It's just a simplification of the normal supplies rules. Iron rations, mushroom farms, and whatever the fuck else you got all turns into Koku.

You're literally throwing a temper tantrum because people are suggesting a moderate simplification of the supplies rules that scale easily to potentially large numbers of creatures or large creatures. What the fuck is wrong with you?

-Username17

[Kaelik]

You're literally throwing a temper tantrum because people are suggesting a moderate simplification of the supplies rules that scale easily to potentially large numbers of creatures or large creatures. What the fuck is wrong with you?

No, I'm upset about the part that negates all possible methods of interacting with food aside from arbitrary control of hexes that produce arbitrary amounts of food with no input in labor or abilities and no ability to change. To whit, literally all of this:

While the dungeon may not control everything that goes on in its hex, it does depend on the basic resources in the hex to feed and maintain the dungeon - effectively, each hex produces an amount of koku determined by its type. See Table 1-6: Hex Production.

. . .

Koku is a representative of necessary materials for life, usually food but also potable water, basic medicines, material for clothing and simple weapons and other necessities of life. Unlike gil, koku is much more abstract and measured on a yearly basis: one koku is the amount of supplies necessary to sustain one small or medium-sized creature and keep it healthy, and includes both stored food and goods as well as that available year-round from hunting, farming, and other activities. Larger creatures require comparatively more resources to feed and take care of (see Table 1-3: Koku Costs).

Koku is generated by Hex and Holdings or acquired by trade, though it may be temporarily boosted by spellcasting or raids; the total amount available in a given turn is deemed the Supply.

. . .

a rule is made that create food and water doesn't actually create food and water, but draws it from the surrounding environment. In that case, while convenient, it wouldn't actually increase the koku of the hex, since you're drawing on already-existing sources and materials.

If we wants to peel back the incredibly stupid second bolding, and go back to the first bolding, that is certainly less terrible, even if the very nature of the hex koku incomes is super fucking terrible.

There is nothing wrong with having an arbitrary larger measurement of food and food costs. The problem is that the method of Hex generation of koku, and AH's commitment to Hex generation of koku being the cap which cannot be exceeded is god fucking awful.

[Ancient History]

...Jesus wept, the whole idea of mildly nerfing create food and water was just one possibility I was considering, off-hand, to address the problem. It's not like it's set in stone.

As for the rest of it, yes spellcasting could conceivably boost koku production in a hex. I was thinking specifically of plant growth and similar spells since those, y'know, affect the land instead of just make bullshit appear.

[PhoneLobster]

All this wouldn't be a problem if food supply chains were just a binary Y/N instead of an elaborate, and breakable, income/expenditure spreadsheet.

Your food could come from "those farms over there we aren't supposed to care about", "the underground mushroom farms that are actually part of the dungeon we actually are supposed to care about", "some guy with a spell", or "a stupid trap" and it wouldn't matter as long as you sourced something from somewhere.

Then you could oh I don't know, determine how many troops you support by something that either ties into a more interesting resource like TREASURE or actual dungeon buildings/rooms that currently don't have a good enough reason to exist even through we are supposed to care about them as the primary focus of the game. You know, or both those things even, with troop supporting rooms simply being direct and simple one off treasure costs.

But no. This game is apparently going nowhere without a multiple currency income/expenditure spread sheet that requires a (on first basic pass alone) 7 phase strategic turn resolution. And if you are surprised people will take offense at your various currencies or attempt to find significant exploits to abuse them, maybe you should consider that it's the rather clearly needlessly complex methodology itself that motivates such responses, and will very likely continue to heavily motivate dysfunctional responses in players in game if this design scheme makes it to play.

[OgreBattle]

Been enjoying the base management portion of Metal Gear Solid V, so might as well talk about it here. Soldiers you recruit/kidnap have different stats that determine how much they contribute to different roles on motherbase, which is...

Combat: How well they do in combat deployments (send X guys out for Y time with Z% chance of success to earn resources) and base defense.

R&D: What level of equipment you can develop (like stealth camo and homing missiles), sometimes certain equipment is locked by needing blueprints ("homing missile blueprints" etc.)

Intel: Their ability to scan for enemy threats and resources on the field. low level intel will tell you a radius that enemies may be found, good intel will tell you enemy numbers, patrol routes, and where their supplies are stashed.

Support: How well armed/versatile calling in a support helicopter or airstrike is.

Base Development: They passively process raw materials into resources, basically generates income every X time unit.

Medical: Helps your other troops recover from potentially fatal injuries or mental stress.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Then you could oh I don't know, determine how many troops you support by something that either ties into a more interesting resource like TREASURE or actual dungeon buildings/rooms[/ur] that currently don't have a good enough reason to exist even through we are supposed to care about them as the primary focus of the game. You know, or both those things even, with troop supporting rooms simply being direct and simple one off treasure costs.

This is a Hall of Temptations. It allows you to recruit five succubi per week, if you've got the gold.

EDIT: Succubi are Outsiders (Extraplanar), and thus do not require koku.

[PhoneLobster]

This is a Hall of Temptations. It allows you to recruit five succubi per week, if you've got the gold.

EDIT: Succubi are Outsiders (Extraplanar), and thus do not require koku.

Even that is more complex than what I would suggest. I say the hall should have a cap on how many succubi you get, and they come up front for free with their cost included in the cost of the hall. And if you want more you build more halls of temptation or you build some sort of secondary troop support/assignment room that adds more succubi to the cap (and also includes their cost in the cost of the room again).

Hall of temptations as a simple shop for troops is an improvement on the elaborate current scheme. But still involves a bunch of regular rather than somewhat one off accounting complexity and has less of a direct tie in between the size of your army and your actual dungeon rooms. And even if I made it a flat out troop shop I'd drop the annoying weekly cap, which may have good reasons to exist, but none which are good enough once your main goal is a modified D&D campaign.

[Username17]

In the original Dungeon Keeper, in order to get more creatures you need food (from Hatcheries), sleeping space (in the form of Lairs), and payment (in the form of Gold). This is not, in fact, a complicated or difficult system. And the Kaeliks and Phone Lobsters of the world really need to make a much more compelling case than they have that tracking these three things is a terrible imposition.

For fuck's sake. Koku is just a number. Your supply generators (like farms or whatever) make Koku. People and monsters continuously eat Koku. As long as the first number is bigger than the second number, you can still recruit more soldiers and monsters. That is not difficult or complicated.

Koku is time independent, because it's a measure of food production over time. It functions just like "hatchery space" in Dungeon Keeper. The only way you could make things simpler is to dispense with food altogether, which is unlikely to be satisfying for people who signed up for a game called "logistics and dragons."

-Username17

[Kaelik]

In the original Dungeon Keeper, in order to get more creatures you need food (from Hatcheries), sleeping space (in the form of Lairs), and payment (in the form of Gold). This is not, in fact, a complicated or difficult system. And the Kaeliks and Phone Lobsters of the world really need to make a much more compelling case than they have that tracking these three things is a terrible imposition.

I would kill for that to be the actual system, because using actual farms or other abilities to produce food would be a hell of a lot better than passive food accumulation from hex conquereing.

[PhoneLobster]

In actual practice though in dungeon keeper you pretty much put down a whole one hatchery at a relatively low gold and space cost and forgot about it basically forever.

Technically there was food income and expenditure, hell, also proximity and wandering (which I don't think is going to be used here, lets be honest) but in practice? It was a one off expend and forget.

[Ancient History]

You are obsessed with this non-existent idea of hex conquering. There is no hex conquering. You've got base food from a hex so that you don't start starving the minute you arrive, and then you build Holdings like mushroom farms or hatcheries or blood fountains and go from there. Jesus wept.

[RobbyPants]

For fuck's sake. Koku is just a number. Your supply generators (like farms or whatever) make Koku. People and monsters continuously eat Koku. As long as the first number is bigger than the second number, you can still recruit more soldiers and monsters. That is not difficult or complicated.

Koku is time independent, because it's a measure of food production over time. It functions just like "hatchery space" in Dungeon Keeper.

Just to make sure I'm understanding this: all you're tracking is production vs use at any given time?

So, if you produce 100 and use 80, is that other 20 lost? Since you're just looking at the current value, it seems that there is no way to store extra in silos or sell extra to neighboring regions? I guess allowing for that would make it much more annoying of a thing to track and you could assume a certain amount of "storing surplus" in such an abstract system where some food sources are gathers annually at different times of the year.

So, it's really as simple as tracking total production vs total consumption, this doesn't seem like a pain in the ass to track at all.

[Ancient History]

Yep, you've got it. I was aiming for less Dorf Fortress "you have 16 urists of Dwarf Ale remaining" and more like farms in Warcraft, where you have supplies for XX units and you are currently using YY/XX. Storage and the like are very much abstracted.

[Judging__Eagle]

Additionally, in Dungeon Keeper, there was a fourth limiting factor to the amount of creatures you could have which was tied to the amount of Portals you controlled. Controlling more portals, raised the maximum amount of units you could have in your dungeon. This was such an deciding factor in a Dungeon's force composition that throwing "trash" monsters back into the portal, effectively "firing" them, was a requirement to be able to get better creatures filling out your Portal cap once you were already at the cap. You didn't really need flies and orcs; if you could get dragons and bile demons; and a savvy Dungeon Keeper tried to keep their combatant creature cap filled with things that could take a beating, and bring the hurt.

By comparison, the Imps you burned gold to summon didn't interact with the "Portal Cap" in any direct way. Although Imps were what you took control of a portal with in the first place, or wrested control of an already claimed Portal from an other Dungeon Keeper.

The most approximate abstraction for this in a Kobalt Dungeon game might be to have: "Accessibility" [edit: and/or possibly "Remoteness"] be a measured rating, in addition to "Koku", "Lairs", and "Wages".

If used as "Accessibility" it could measures the ease with which new recruits can actually reach your location, but has a cap that is lower than the possible Koku, Lairs, or Wages.

Perhaps it could instead be a measure of "Remoteness", and the fact that dungeons are considered locations in which species outliers dwell away from the majority of their population due to their desires for being unlike the rest of their kind might be what draws them (and keeps them) at such a location. With locations that are overcrowded discouraging the sort of newcomers who are seeking a dungeon within which to get away from the trappings of developed societies. Leading to why bases in Kobalt Dungeon are underground stealth fortresses, instead of above ground oppression palaces.

Perhaps "Remoteness" affects the amount of actually useful creatures who would want to show up at your dungeon; while "Accessibility" affects the total amount of creatures that could show up at any one moment to replace the casualties that a dungeon might incur.

An other approach could be that "Remoteness" determines the amount of combat-capable creatures (i.e. creatures who want to fight, and thus went to the nearest "front lines" to find such work). While "Accessibility" determines the ease with which any creature; non-aggressive minion, mercenary combatants, and enemy delvers, can reach your dungeon.

I'm sorry that this makes things more complicated; but "infinite gold", "colossal lairs" and "fields of chicken farms" weren't enough to get even one more Fly to join your dungeon once you had reached an other population limiting cap that was tied to how many creatures could join you at a time; and "population caps" seem to be at the core of the discussions on Koku right now, when maximum Koku isn't an actually limiting factor towards recruiting mercenary murder monsters.

[Seerow]

Yep, you've got it. I was aiming for less Dorf Fortress "you have 16 urists of Dwarf Ale remaining" and more like farms in Warcraft, where you have supplies for XX units and you are currently using YY/XX. Storage and the like are very much abstracted.

I'd want to go at least a little more in depth than that. If nothing else, convert any excess food/koku/whatever into gold each turn, so you are basically selling off excess supplies automatically. It does add an extra step, but I feel better about that than just having say 20% of my food supply go unused and be completely worthless until I get around to recruiting more monsters.

[RobbyPants]

Yep, you've got it. I was aiming for less Dorf Fortress "you have 16 urists of Dwarf Ale remaining" and more like farms in Warcraft, where you have supplies for XX units and you are currently using YY/XX. Storage and the like are very much abstracted.

I'd want to go at least a little more in depth than that. If nothing else, convert any excess food/koku/whatever into gold each turn, so you are basically selling off excess supplies automatically. It does add an extra step, but I feel better about that than just having say 20% of my food supply go unused and be completely worthless until I get around to recruiting more monsters.

This might be reasonable, assuming you had resources to invest in trading with neighboring areas. So, X extra food on turn 1 can become Y extra gold on turn 2.

[Dean]

If you've built a marketplace that is. Or a granary to store it as food which if you have a marketplace could then be turned into gold at your leisure

[Username17]

Yeah, if you have trade routes available (and the ports/marketplaces to use them), then you can convert some amount of unused Koku into gold at some rate and/or spend gold at some rate to make up for having insufficient Koku. It's extremely not complicated. It's the part of logistics and dragons which writes itself and is extremely easy to explain and use.

The part that is difficult is deciding on the rate at which infrastructure can be built. You could just do it dominion/puerto rico style (you can make one improvement per turn unless and until you have improvements that allow you to buy additional ones), or you could do it Civilization style (you have a number of production points and your projects are in a queue and each turn production points go into building the next thing on the list until it's done and the rest go into the one after that). For an RPG, I would actually suggest the production points model, because it may be important to scale in to the personal scale where a specific number of slaves are freed or captured or whatever.

A production point is equal to one Kobold unskilled laborer put to work for one turn. Obviously craftsmen and magewrights or whatever would produce a lot more than one production point each.

-Username17