Vaudevillain

Riptide finished hugging Sweet Dream, “Dude, I almost forgot. I need a new board!”

“Later, Rip,” Sweet Dream said. “We need to finish this planning.” She looked to Dylan, “I like the idea of one bomb with a bunch of fakes. It ups the stakes.”

“Hold up a minute,” Oro said. “What if we used a nuke instead of TNT? Or some other explosive?”

“I ignored nukes because I figured it wouldn’t be easy to get materials for it. But we could try other explosives. How strong is C4 compared to TNT?” Jack replied.

Oro shrugged, “No clue.”

“We should work on making this simple. The quicker we can gather materials, the quicker we can announce this,” Sweet Dream said. “Trying to gather so many explosives would take too long.”

“Do we need to worry about the amount of time it takes?” Oro asked.

“If we want to use this as recruitment, yeah. Otherwise, we should think of something else.”

“She’s got a point,” Jack said. “The sooner we do this, the more people we’ll attract.”

He typed some entries into his power, settling on one after a few revisions and a bit of alliteration.

This device causes massive waves to form in the ocean that could easily flood a city. Dr. Zlo created the weapon so the world would fall under his control! The machine works on a timer and charges up to create one unstoppable wave.

Steel Rod (10)

Wire (2 m)

Inflatable Swimming Pool (1)

Alarm clock (1)

Salt and Pepper Shakers (1 pair)

Seismometer (1)

Sciencium (200 g) or Alienite (25 g) or Phlebotinium (2 g)

“Making a simple wave machine doesn’t look too hard. How much Alienite do we have left?” Dylan asked.

“Nothing to share, unfortunately,” Jack said. “We’ve been using it all to make generators, and I’ve been using the rest to make the construction bots. It doesn’t help that someone keeps breaking them.”

The woman gave a pointed look at Riptide.

“What?”

“Rip, stop breaking the construction bots,” Sweet Dream said.

“Dude, it’s not my fault they get in the way when I surf.”

“Okay!” Oro said. “Before we get into another argument, can we please decide if we’re going with the decoy plan?”

“I don’t know, hitting one city isn’t as exciting. I can’t threaten the world as Dr. Zlo with one machine. What if we made three?” Dylan said.

“That’s six grams of Phlebotinium or seventy-five grams of Alienite. Because let’s face it, you aren’t waiting for six hundred grams of Sciencium,” Jack said.

“We can grind the Alienite, right? Especially now that we have some land,” Oro said.

“That’s true. The tower defense mini-game is still going.”

“Did someone beat the final boss yet?” Oro asked.

“Yeah. I heard it’s a solid boss fight. The adaptive AI means players have to think on their feet each time they face it,” Jack said.

“Dude, that sounds awesome. We should try it!” Riptide said.

“I dunno, I’ve never been a fan of alien invasion stories,” Oro said. “They’re just so unrealistic.”

“Oh I know right. Like, any alien race advanced enough to explore the galaxy wouldn’t bother with us.”

“No, there’s a lot of reasons why they might invade,” Dylan said. “My favorite is we get used as cheap labor.”

“No, see, automation would make using slave labor useless,” Oro said.

“Didn’t stop companies from doing it to third-world countries,” Dylan countered.

“But anyone advanced enough to travel to space would have such good automation using slave labor would literally be more expensive.”

“You don’t know that, though. It’s not like space travel requires amazing automation,” Dylan said.

“Guys, stop nerding out,” Sweet Dream said. “Are we going to grind out the Alienite, or are we doing something else?”

“Sorry,” Dylan said. “How long would we need to spend grinding?”

“On average, we can net one to five Alienite per wave, depending on the difficulty,” Jack said.

“I remember getting a lot more at the start,” Dylan said.

“Vert nerfed the drop rate in the patch notes,” Jack replied.

“How long does it take per wave?” Oro asked.

“Not sure. Vert didn’t release wave times.”

“Well, there’s no way the fight could take an hour, and I’d say ten minutes would be pushing it. Is it an equal drop chance?”

“Hold on, let me check the forums.”

Jack logged out and returned a minute later.

“Okay, I found a forum with assumed drop rates.”

Jack motioned for the marker. Obliging, Dylan handed it over. Smiling her thanks, Jack started writing.

Armor 50%

Weapon 25 %

Misc 15%

Alienite 10%

Finished, Jack tossed the marker back to Dylan and slapped the whiteboard. “These are the odds listed in the thread.”

Sweet Dream walked over to the whiteboard, “So for every ten enemies we get one Alienite. If we assume the one to five is accurate, we’re looking at ten to fifty enemies per wave. Say each wave takes ten minutes tops, and on average, we fight thirty enemies. That nets us three Alienite per ten minutes. We need seventy-five, which means going through this around twenty-five times. Twenty-five times ten minutes is two-fifty, which is a little over four hours. That’s not terrible.”

“It’s a pretty forgiving drop rate,” Oro agreed.

“We can do half a night grinding to get that,” Dylan agreed. “Are we all agreed on this part of the plan?”

“I think so, dude,” Riptide answered.

Dylan looked around. The rest nodded their agreement, Jack giving a thumbs-up for extra emphasis.

“Cool, let’s start planning the rest of this.”

_____

Below Skyline, Thomas and Nikola were hard at work deforesting the surrounding area while Rampart and Merla crafted their outpost. Well, Nikola was working, Thomas had purchased a few mercenaries and paid them extra to help out. After all, the corporate villain would never get their hands dirty. Shizuka was patrolling the area, cleaning up the last of the monstrous squirrels. Every so often, Thomas heard the ninja laughing through the treetops.

Shizuka’s voice rang through the trees, “Just one hug!”

The others shook their heads. Nikola grabbed another log and rolled it toward the hill.

“So, how much can we get from this place?” he asked.

Thomas turned to look at him, “Hmm. It depends on what we need. Jack told me that the building is coming along nicely, but we’re starting to run out of funds.”

“That makes sense. Doesn’t construction cost millions of dollars?”

“Yes. Which means anything we can take from here will cut our costs immensely.”

“What we need is a player who takes the money creation power,” Rampart said, literally jumping into the conversation.

“You finished the outpost?” Thomas asked. He looked over in the direction of the hill to see a small tower sitting atop it. The construction was barely more than a few sticks tied together, and it reminded Thomas of a tripod. A flat piece of wood sat on top of three wooden logs tied together with rope. Merla kept watch on top of it, sometimes releasing a blast of magic.

“I’ll switch out with her in a bit, or we could get one of Shizuka’s clones.”

“That’s a good plan,” Thomas said.

“Why should we get someone who makes money? Isn’t Vert going to fix that soon?” Nikola asked.

Rapport twisted to look at the villain, “Are they?”

Nikola shrugged, “I don’t know, but something like that will ruin an economy. And if they want a sandbox game they need money that takes work to create.”

“We might see a nerf to money creation, then,” Thomas said.

“If it does get nerfed, we need to build an economy,” Rampart said. “Otherwise, we’ll never be able to build everything we have in mind. No offense to Zlo, but all his designs look expensive.”

“That’s what this is supposed to help with,” Thomas said. “Processing materials here can net us money.”

“Yeah, but how much?” Nikola said.

“Yeah, let’s face it, we’re going to need more than millions of dollars,” Rampart said.

“Could try to do some bug hunting,” Nikola mused. “I’ve heard that Vert pays for that.”

“I doubt it’s a high enough payout,” Rampart countered. “What we need is something that players want.”

“So, weapons, armors, gadgets,” Thomas said. “But raw materials work as well if we can sell to crafting factions.”

Rampart leaned back against a tree and ran a hand through his hair, “Why does planning have to be so hard!”

“Wish I could tell you,” Nikola said. “I take things one step at a time. Dex is the one with large plans.”

“Do we even need an external economy?” Thomas muttered.

“What?” Rampart said.

“Oh, I was wondering if we needed to sell materials. Menagerie isn’t looking to specialize in anything. Isn’t our best bet to buy up everything in the wilderness that we can?”

“That creates more places to defend,” Rampart stated.

“True,” Thomas said. He brought a hand up to Dextra’s chin and pulled up the locations tab with his other.

“I purchased this land for sixteen hundred dollars, which means four resources are located in this area. The forest is one, and I’m assuming the hill holds the other three since nothing else stands out in the forest.”

“I thought you were looking for Phlebotinium?” Nikola said.

“I am, but the only thing my power could give me was rumor and conjecture. I’m only as smart as the information I receive. I’d hoped for a bit more info on the site, but I think I won’t be able to learn more until we develop this land.”

“I think we’re getting too focused on Phlebotinium,” Rampart said. “Right now, we should be looking to make Skyline defensible.”

“You really think someone’s going to attack us so soon?” Nikola asked.

Rampart shook his head, “I’m not sure, but I do know that if we don’t have some defenses, we’ll get shot out of the sky during our first fight.”

“So we should at least get the drones running, and the cloud cover,” Thomas said.

“I’ll message Jack to see if she made something already,” Nikola said.

“Sounds good. I’ll stay down here and keep hiring more NPCs so we can get wood and other materials for Skyline,” Thomas said.

“Hold up, Zlo just sent something,” Rampart said.

Thomas looked at the corner of his screen to see his friends list flashing.

Superfan39526:

Hey, we need to farm some alienite if we want to do this heist.

Dream said it would take four solid hours of grinding.

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