So I'm going to briefly touch on the situation with Ra's al Ghul and the Court of Owls. Ra's al Ghul hates the Court of Owls and more or less wants them all dead. The following is not known by Lex in universe but I'm fairly certain I've already written in the text that the reason why Ra's al Ghul hates the Court of Owls is because of what they did with his son Arkady Duvall and because the Court is exploiting the Lazarus Pit in Gotham. The Menagerie Riots were basically Ra's al Ghul's attempt to just murder all of the Court.
This is not something that I've explicitly written out before but Ra's al Ghul thinks he killed the Court of Owls. He set Gotham on fire and murdered them on an unprecedented scale but, despite thinking he got all of them, he missed quite a few of them. Ra's also did massive damage to their collection of Talons. Ra's is not perfect and he can miss things just as much as anyone else can. He's certainly not "keeping them around to train his rookies against", Ra's outmatches the Court, but not by that much. In any sort of straight fight Ra's annihilates the Court of Owls, but that's not really relevant to too much.
Soberan 123 said:
One thing I have a problem with these quest is that it doesn't have resource limits to make voters think carefully of each action. Kryptonite proliferation is all well and good but won't that mine will run out sooner or later? Even if can last for centuries, can it handle all that distribution with what's produce per turn?
Also money often is mentioned and how costly some actions are but it doesn't seem to have a impact both on the story and gameplay mechanics.
See AlsoLex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest SuperheroLex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest Superhero30th Annual GP2A Medicinal Chemistry ConferenceLex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest SuperheroYou are free to correct me if I wrong since I just start but I would like some clarification to clear my doubts.
So I'm probably going to disappoint you here as I elaborate on this stuff.
Frankly I do not have the time to accurately calculate specific resource numbers on things. I'm not the best with numbers and even when I do use resources with specific numbers, I struggle to keep things up to date and it often turns into a slog. I'm not against numbers but what you're proposing would make every problem I have with keeping up with this quest a million times worse. Keep in mind that I'm one guy who does this entire quest for fun without pay, and I'm running it while also going through law school (which is a fairly big time sink) and unless the quest ends in a year or something goes wrong for me IRL, I'll be running it while I'm a practicing lawyer. A big constraint for me is the amount of time and energy things take up for me.
For a start I'll talk about kryptonite. I could theoretically quantify kryptonite. It would quickly become a massive pain in the ass. For a start I would have to figure out how much power an average kryptonite battery outputs and thus what the size of kryptonite would need to be for that. I'm not an electrical engineer or a physicist so it would rapidly turn into a massive pain for me. I would have to do calculations for how much kryptonite is in a car versus a standard battery versus a powerplant and it would all turn to hell very quickly as I'd have to do calculations for every new product using what numbers I do have. I'd then have to follow that up with a calculation of how much every kryptonite product sold. I'm not an economist which would mean I'd either have to research specific sales and population numbers and learn things or I'd have to make things up and hope people don't point out any potential weirdness that results out of me doing guesswork on something I know nothing about.
Trying to keep track of "what's produced per turn" would very quickly turn into hell and I'd probably almost never update due to needing to do tons of calculations. Between needing to account for the exact size of kryptonite in every object powered by kryptonite, the second hand market and having to come up with numbers being sold every turn (even when you don't take actions), it's an absolute sh*t ton of stuff to do and frankly it's not worth it in my opinion.
The mine will eventually run out and I do have a general sense of how much kryptonite is being distributed. There are no hard numbers or specific limitations, but I am keeping track of things. The big issue with why the thread hasn't had many problems with Kryptonite is because I made the choice to make kryptonite fairly prolific and fairly good at powering things. This is based off of some DC media (notably there have been entire continents of kryptonite and Metallo, a killer robot/cyborg with lasers that should be an energy hog, typically runs off of a fist sized piece of kryptonite) and while I don't think it's as bad as some of the extremes, it's enough that it's not a huge issue.
I will not track the specifics of kryptonite as a resource and while I do track in a general sense, that's a lot harder for the thread to be kept abreast of, especially when the properties of kryptonite make it difficult to use up too quickly.
Now onto money. Money's another thing where I will not track it in specificity. I'm not an economist and I'm not up to the task of even attempting to recreate a fictional millionaire's finances, much less a multi-billion dollar company. I could not handle it and if I were to try to do so it would lead to a worse experience for me and the thread.
Like with kryptonite, I do keep track of money in a vague sense. I don't have a specific number attached to anything but I do have a loose system in place and a general sense of how much money you have. Money does have a gameplay interaction, namely it affects the DC's of certain actions. It has had a gameplay effect, even if I haven't spelled things out.
That being said the thread has already made so much money for LexCorp that I can't really drop the DC's further without it completely wrecking game balance, and they can generally offset any losses they take in money. As such while the thread could theoretically be limited by money as a resource, it's generally not a struggle for them, and because I keep it vague and don't use specific numbers, they often don't get worried about it and don't really bother with it.
I'd also argue that money has a huge impact on the story. It's not constantly talked about but it does pretty regularly come into play. Jinx's desire to be Cassandra's number two so as to live a relatively easy and comfortable life? Caused in part by the amount of money LexCorp and thus Cassandra has. Lisa Snart's desire to work for LexCorp, which in turn brought along Leonard, Sam and Mick? Also motivated by money/a good salary mixed in with a desire for fame. Ivo going to work for you? In part caused by money because you were willing to burn money subsidizing his work. Louise Lincoln and Caitlin Snow approaching Lex with their idea for the Cold Engine so he could subsidize it? Also caused by money. I'm sure I or the thread can think of more if given time.
I don't really spend so much time in the narrative fixating on how much money Lex makes because that would get very old very quickly but it's very relevant to the story of the quest that he has this amount of money. Often times you don't get much narrative on Lex losing money besides a blurb in the results saying the basics of "Lex is annoyed he lost some money and it was costly but he's fine with it" because it's not that big a deal to him most of the time.
Now I'm going to circle back to the general criticism of "lack of resource limits that don't cause the thread to think carefully about the actions". There are resource limits in place but they're not hard and generally either the resource's properties or the thread itself regularly making money leads to the thread generally not needing to worry about it too much. If I made the resource limit hard and showed people numbers they'd probably care a lot more but that would make it a lot less fun for me and would lead to massive delays that would make things less fun for the thread. Are a lack of resource limits causing the thread to be flippant about some things a potentially point of criticism for this quest? Yes but I also think that the type of consideration for resources when dealing with my system of vague generalities when tracking those resources would not be fun for most of the thread.
If I were a full-time quest-runner, and this was my job, or if I had a team of people to run this quest under me, then yes I would potentially make significant overhauls to the system to make it better. However because I am one person on my own, I compromised on plenty of things and because of that while there are resource limits, they're often not relevant and so they don't factor into the thread's decision making all that much, especially since they don't really feel the impact of anything beyond absolutely massive swings.
I hope that clarifies things for you and while I don't think it will assuage your doubts, I don't mind talking about this especially since it's a relevant discussion for quest design and brushes up on a very relevant issue (specifically that there are changes I could make to have the thread become more invested/calculating of resources gained/lost, but that they'd come at a very large strain to myself and thus are outside the limitations of what I can/am willing to do). Let me know if you've got any further questions and I hope this was coherent as a response to your problem with the quest.
Edit: I apologize for harping on things but I do want to reiterate a point about money and the narrative. The following quote is part of the narrative despite appearing in the results section of the turn
King crimson said:
As such while you have visibly and publicly donated to various organizations assisting reconstruction efforts, you've been less focused and efficient then you might've been and subsequently lost some of the money you put in. Not a massive amount thankfully, but enough that you probably should be more careful in the future when doing these kinds of donations
I'm pretty obviously talking about Lex's reaction to losing money on an attempt to donate to reconstruction efforts here. Notably it is popping up in the story and having at lest some impact. That being said it's also not a huge part of the overall narrative so it's not really having that much of an impact when in the same turn you also have multiple things making you money. If it fundamentally changed something about the status quo I'd emphasize it more but ultimately it's a fairly small thing.
Following that if this were purely narrative, I'd probably cut that part of the narrative since it is irrelevant to the larger narratives going on right now. However due to the gameplay aspect of the quest and how this is an action the thread voted on to be taken, I have to cover what occurred even if it's not really super relevant in the broad scheme of things. It does have fairly minor gameplay effects (albeit ones that are mostly cancelled out) so it is something that needs to be covered.
