>>2781752
>Disperse the Scouts across the planet undertaking a variety of missions. This plan will not be as effective as focusing on a single area, but there is a chance that exploring multiple avenues simultaneously will provide serendipitous insight.
Whole tech tree get

>>2781754
>Disperse the Scouts across the planet undertaking a variety of missions. This plan will not be as effective as focusing on a single area, but there is a chance that exploring multiple avenues simultaneously will provide serendipitous insight.

>>2781752
>>Disperse the Scouts across the planet undertaking a variety of missions. This plan will not be as effective as focusing on a single area, but there is a chance that exploring multiple avenues simultaneously will provide serendipitous insight.

>>2781754
>>2781761
>>2781765

Looks like this is it for now.

Alright my dudes here’s how we’re gonna do things:
I’m going to use a roll under success count system. After each choice is made I’ll give a DC and ask the anons to roll a d100 each. The first 3 rolls are taken and each one that rolls UNDER the DC is counted as a success. Depending on how many successes are rolled from 0 to 3 an outcome will be decided. Sometimes I may explicitly state what those outcomes are, sometimes not. 1s and 100s are crit successes and fails respectively, where by getting one such result will automatically grant the best or worst outcome. If by some twist of fate a crit fail and success are rolled in the same set of 3 then they cancel each other out.

Not gonna lie: I’m ripping this system off from another QM. Credit where credit is due, but I’ve forgotten his name. I like it because it lets a QM have better control over the probability. Depending on how risky an action is it may have a low DC but require more successes to achieve a “good” outcome. If you guys really screw the pooch then all outcomes may be varying flavours of shit sandwich; but it’s not like you’d all collectively be that stupid… right?

Anyhow roll me some d100s!
DC: 50

>0 Successes: The scouts are a bit too conspicuous and the humans respond aggressively. Intelligence gathering is limited.

>1 Success: The scouts carry out their missions discretely, however prioritizing stealth means that not much more is learned about the indigenous species.

>2 Successes: The scouts uncover a modest amount of intel, while useful it is not as detailed as you’d like.

>3 Successes: The scouts uncover a modest amount of intel, while it is not as detailed as you’d like your analysts gain additional insight into the local situation by cross referencing reports. (1 auto success for future intel gathering/research actions.)

Rolled 5 (1d100)

>>2781791
>50
we basically can't fail!

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Rolled 74, 18 = 92 (2d100)

>>2781794
>>2781791

I don't have all night and since I'm not popular I guess I'll roll the dice for my own quest. ;.;

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>when nobody else wants to play

>>2781838
2 successes it is, writing...

>>2781842
It's okay. New quests can be a bit slow on the first thread.

>>2781845
For a month your scouts flit across the planet, sometimes observing population centres, sometimes taking samples of local life forms. Others monitor the planetary comm network and listen in on satellite communications. Their efforts grant you a general overview of the state of the planet but nothing that you can truly use to begin the invasion just yet. You learn that the dominant species call themselves humans and that their population seems to be divided into territorial factions. The strongest of these factions jockey for power constantly, some of these factions are more belligerent than others, regardless all seek to further their own interests at the expense of the other.

The information skimmed from the communications network turns out to be very hard to decipher, not because of any advanced encryption but because of the sheer complexity of cultural nuance generated by the humans interacting on this “internet”. Even after learning all the major human languages your analysts struggle to understand what a “meme” is.

The study of Earth’s biosphere is more straight forward, but the lack of focus in your research means that further work is still required before you can use this knowledge to further the invasion. Reconnaissance of strategic targets has likewise given you a starting point, but your scouts have refrained from probing too deeply into sensitive areas lest they provoke a hostile response from the humans before you are ready to begin the invasion.

The humans themselves have not been passive subjects. Some of their most powerful sensors managed to detect your vessels, on one occasion a squadron of their primitive flyers attempted to intercept a scout but ultimately failed. The humans are aware of your presence but it would a appear they do not yet know of your intent nor the size of your fleet.

You have gained little, but lost little as well, what will the next move be?

>Lay the ground work for infiltration, trawl the internet and deploy small ground teams to observe human settlements.

>Intensify research efforts, have your subordinates begin designing modifications to your ground troops, while collecting more examples of local wildlife.

>Begin more aggressive reconnaissance missions, some of your combat ships are now ready for atmospheric flight.

>Launch the invasion! You don’t need to understand insects before you crush them. Strike deep into the heart of a major population centre and convert it into a base of operations.

>Reach out to select human governments, perhaps you can begin subverting one or playing them against each other.

>Write in.

>Intensify research efforts, have your subordinates begin designing modifications to your ground troops, while collecting more examples of local wildlife.

Continue the experiments, we require more data for further modifications.

>>2781946
>Lay the ground work for infiltration, trawl the internet and deploy small ground teams to observe human settlements.

dice+1d100

"dice+1d100"

>>2781946
>Intensify research efforts, have your subordinates begin designing modifications to your ground troops, while collecting more examples of local wildlife.

Since we want the planet and species wholesale in the first place, we should start with this. Supplanting their ecosystems would be the most basic method, as in destroying parts of ecosystems that they rely on and providing the solution. Or not even providing a solution. For example, what do they eat? Can we destroy that? That's partial victory. Because genetic warfare > boots on the ground.

Rolled 18 (1d100)

>>2782001
dice+1d100 without quotes goes inside the options field. Remember to sacrifice to the dice gods for a better roll.

Rolled 18 (1d100)

>>2782004
ty

>>2781989
>>2781991
>>2782002

This is a decent amount of votes and I really don't have all night.

>0 Successes: One of the samples you brought back contaminates your minions.

>1 Successes: Progress is made, but the humans react aggressively.

>2 Successes: Progress is made but the humans grow more suspicious of your intent.

>3 Successes: Comprehensive research is done, laying a solid foundation for future projects.

roll dice plz.

>>2782066
Oh right: DC is 50 and getting 3 successes will net you an auto-success in the next research related action.

Rolled 85 (1d100)

>>2782066
research PUNCH

Rolled 64 (1d100)

maybe I should've specified to the dice gods that the sacrifice was for lower rolls

Rolled 25 (1d100)

>>2782066

>>2782071
>>2782075
>>2782085

That'll do. 1 Success, writing...

>>2781946
>Intensify research efforts, have your subordinates begin designing modifications to your ground troops, while collecting more examples of local wildlife.

I'd focus on researching how the decisions are made, how their thinking goes. How have they not nuked themselves yet?
And for that matter, why does overmind want them anyway? What does 'bring under control' mean exactly here - full biomass transfer in one day? Or just keeping tabs and making sure they don't threaten scorched earth policy when the fleet shows up and says that it's time to join the benefactors among the stars in the next 7 hours?

>>2782094

The Ayys here are basically out to pillage a civilization of any kind of genetic, technological and cultural advantage they may have and assimilate said advantages into their own civilization.

They're based mostly on the aliens from Xenonauts where they have a hyper evolved but decadent ruling caste that seeks to exploit everyone else.
At the end of the day our motivations are a bit contrived, this quest is gonna be more about the journey.

>>2781752
Hmm... this looks oddly familiar...

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>>2782160
Yeah this used to be reverse X-COM quest. Decided to give this another go.

>>2782088

Another month goes by and your scouts feverishly descend to the planet and begin landing small science teams. Samples are taken and more is learned about Earth’s various biomes. This is not an exhaustive study by any means, such an undertaking would have to wait until the humans were properly pacified, but it is enough to allow your engineers and geneticists to design modifications for your ground troops. This will enable them to breath Earth’s atmosphere and subsist on local biomass, as it stands any invasion force would have to be constantly supplied with air and nutrients.

However conducting all this research requires your science teams to take more risks. There are more and more encounters between your scouts and human aircraft. While attempting to collect specimens of large quadruped meat beasts that the humans enjoyed eating one of your scouts would finally be brought down by combined missile fire after waiting a little too long to boost itself back into orbit. Monitored communications show increasing alarm by the Earth governments at your activities. Until now said governments supressed common knowledge of your existence. Their efforts are on the verge of failing…

With more research done your engineers begin modifying your ground troops for operations on Earth while your specialist consciousness bring forth multiple proposals for you to review.

Your biological research has allowed you to initiate one of the following projects:
>Create a bio weapon; a virulent disease tailored to infect and kill humans.

>Create a monster; engineer a hyper aggressive organism that can be easily bred and used to strike fear into the hearts of the humans.

>Create infiltration organisms; engineer a creature designed to blend in with the human population.

There is now the matter on how to deal with the humans. Full scale ground invasion is temporarily not an option due to your troops being modified.

>Conduct air superiority missions across the globe. This could potentially make a future ground invasion easier. It is the least risky action in the short term but you will be openly declaring war and forfeiting any chance of to taking over the Earth in a subtle manner.

>Discretely contact selected human governments and attempt to manipulate them. Somewhat risky as you risk galvanizing human resistance against you.

>Reveal yourself to the general population. If done right this will sow panic and confusion among humanity, but as with approaching the governments you risk hardening humanity’s resolve.

>Write in

Alright guys I'm gonna call it a night. This whole thing has moved slower than I originally planned and if I continue to write while this tired the quality is gonna suffer.

Vote and discuss, I'll be back in about 10 hours ,do intermittent updates over the course of Sunday then once the weekend is over we'll see where to go from there.

>>2782256
>>Create infiltration organisms; engineer a creature designed to blend in with the human population.
We could use these to perform precise terror attacks on population centers and infrastructure.

>Write in
Send out our infiltration organisms, when completed, to sabotage or destroy global communication systems so sow chaos and confusion and radar so our scouts can move about more freely without detection.

>>2781752
>Alien Invasion Quest AyyLmao !!vBZJAzNIKX/
So you're back?
>>2781791
Was the quest restarted?

>>2782302
+1

>>2782256
>>Create infiltration organisms; engineer a creature designed to blend in with the human population

>Discretely contact selected human governments and attempt to manipulate them. Somewhat risky as you risk galvanizing human resistance against you
Present us as benevolent and play out the Russians against the Americans. Whoever downed our Scout, tell everyone else about that and inform them that whoever has done that is building weapons of mass destruction. We are just poor space refugees. Offer their leaders medical services and study them in the process (Soros would pay his soul and all of Europe if he could just live a day longer)

>>2782302
>>2782256
i like this

>>2782462
+1. Offer this, then offer
>>2782302?
Or perhaps we do the sabotage, then blame the sabotage on rival nations?

>>2782302
>>2782462
yes, supporting these

>>2782283
qst is a lot slower these days than when quests ran for sessions. when I get the hankering to run a quest I just do it over the week, updating when I've got some time. people can check in and drop votes over a longer period.

>>2782374
Yeah I've decided to try restarting it.
Although maybe it would have been worth carrying on from the previous thread, but that wasn't archived.

>>2782302
>>2782462

Alright it seems we have some kind of consensus.

DC: 35

>0 Successes: ???

>1 Successes: The Governments see right through you, overtures of diplomacy are rebuffed and your infiltrators suffer losses.

>2 Successes: The Governments are highly suspicious, but you find people who could be potentially useful.

>3 Successes: ???

If anyone is out there, roll me some d100s.

Rolled 49 (1d100)

>>2785236
>DC: 35
worry.png

Rolled 98 (1d100)

>>2785236

Rolled 17 (1d100)

>>2785236
going for 3

>>2785293
>>2785405
>>2785420

>1 Success

I gotta step out for a while. I'll write the update later today,

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>>2785429
You concoct a plan to ingratiate yourself with the most powerful of Earth’s governments all the while attempting to incite conflict with a series of false flag operations. You send a specially tailored infiltration organism to serve as an emissary, said organism being engineered not to look human but to look like what these humans would “expect” an alien to look like. Your emissary goes through an elaborate charade pretending to learn languages you have long since deciphered while the human’s brightest minds figure out how best to communicate with you.

Once communication lines have been established you spin the humans a grand lie about how yours is a refugee fleet, that any prior violence had been a misunderstanding and that you would be willing exchange advanced technologies in return for asylum. The kicker is that you plan to give each major power ONE technology they covet. Fusion power, life extension treatments, advanced (for the humans) electronics. All the while your infiltrators prepare to incite conflict by attacking different countries disguised as the soldiers of their enemies. Your plan fails…

Your infiltrators can physically pass off as human perfectly, but an underdeveloped understanding of human behaviour and societal norms mean that they act a bit weird. Their disguises also betray them; little details about their uniforms and the reproduced fire arms they carry mark them as imposters to the various intelligence agents scrutinising surveillance footage and corpses.

Your negotiations are cut brutally short when after having an aide whisper in his ear the Secretary General dismisses your emissary, telling him that the nations of the world need time to think about your offer. The emissary’s ship is promptly shot down as it attempts to take off…

You curse inwardly as the link is forcefully severed. Any hope you had of gently leading humanity into the night was now lost.

---------------------

That’s it for now. I’m sorry that this session has been a bit of a shit show regarding the updates. My current plan for this quest is to run a thread each weekend, while posting an interlude during the week. The main posts are written from the point of view of the disembodied Overseer. All the decision making will happen at this level. Interludes are not interactive but will show the events of the invasion from other points of view both human and alien. This will grant greater context and allow me to stretch my writing muscles a bit.

Anyhow thank you to the anons who have participated none the less. Feel free to stick around, ask questions and give feedback while the thread still lives.

>>2785571
Oh BTW: my twitter for those who care:
https://twitter.com/CognisQM

>>2785236
>Although maybe it would have been worth carrying on from the previous thread, but that wasn't archived.
Post didn't save, had to retype it.
Do you have the thread number, or post number of a post within that thread? I can find it on off-site auto-archivers.

>>2785665
I'm afraid not. All I can remember to narrow it down is that I ran the quest in the first 2 weeks of April earlier this year.

>>2785680
Found it, I had some posts saved from that time. Thanks for narrowing it down: https://archived.moe/qst/thread/2451993/

>>2785571
I didn't even know this was back, my bad senpai.

>>2785574
>https://twitter.com/CognisQM
Did you run a Mechanicus quest before? The name sounds vaguely familiar.

>>2785713
>>2781752
On that note, I would suggest you shill on /qtg/. I didn't know you were going to run either, and found this by happenstance on the catalog.

>>2785717
>On that note, I would suggest you shill on /qtg/. I didn't know you were going to run either, and found this by happenstance on the catalog.
>>2781753
Oh wait, you already shilled. I mixed it up with >>2780305.

>>2785703
Thanks for finding it I guess.

>>2785713
It's okay. I didn't leave any way of finding the quest again if I started it up. I wasn't even sure if I would start it up again. I'm surprised anyone even remembered it.

>>2785717
>Did you run a Mechanicus quest before? The name sounds vaguely familiar.

No, although I did take the name from the Mechanicus Codex simply because it sounded cool. I've run mostly skirmishes on this board so I'm not really that well known in the wider questing community.

Well, since Anon has gone and dug up the original thread I guess I'll present one more choice in this thread.

>Continue running this quest as is.

>Switch to the Reverse X-COM timeline. The Ayys have launched a devastating ground invasion but suffered heavy losses. Earlier alien successes have handicapped human research capabilities, however humanity is now hyper vigilant, and mediocre results on infiltration research has made covert action harder.
X-COM itself is weakened but you have failed miserably to find their base.

>>2787877
I'm fine with either. I do find it funny in either timeline we have poor luck.

>>2787877
I'm fine with either.

>>2785236
>>2782070
>>2781791
What made the DC on this so high compared to the others?

>>2787893
I don't have hard modifiers at this point. I come up with a number based on what feels right.

These are the factors I took into account for the last roll:

>You tried to bullshit the world's most powerful leaders all at the same time. Most of these people have to be quite shrewd to do their jobs so the baseline for this was already going to be hard.

>You tried to launch false flag operations at the same time, even harder.

>You've done research into Earth's lifeforms and environment. This allows you to craft infiltration organisms that are physically passable, however...

>You're research into human culture, psychology, and the geo political landscape was lacking. Without the fine details this knowledge provided it gets much harder to manipulate humans, plus your infiltrators would not be familiar with the local speech patterns and colloquialisms that would help them blend in.

>>2787901
What was going through the aliens' minds at the time? Overconfidence?

>>2787901
To be fair, I didn't want to do both, I just wanted to maximize usefulness with our infiltrators.

>>2787903
Hubris. To the Overseer the humans are stupid short sighted animals that need only be given the right incentive in order make them do what it wants.

The Overseer is a disembodied consciousness that exists within the alien noosphere. The closest thing it has to a body is the flagship. All the alien "individuals" are basically the same except hyper focused on their area of expertise, sort of like an office full of turbo autists. Lower ranking minds can barely even be considered sentient. The actual aliens are basically drone bodies that are controlled or inhabited as need.

Your infiltration organisms are a little more independent though, sort of like tyranid genestealers.

looks like we can abandon the false flag operations and focus on stealth and culture
but we can try this again and tell them of a race of parasitic aliens that send a false emissary to make peace and infiltrate the population to take over and we can do the whole double agent deal kind of thing we can let them shot down and defeat the parasites them with the help of this small alien race and blabla peace slowly infiltrate from the inside or something i am ranting and mumbling

>>2799412
>When you triple-agent the enemy.

if we are both the enemy and the ally we can control two fronts and manipulate a third one