Undertale Semi-Open 1.1 - Snowdin Snowdown

[Chemist1422]

Overblown read on elements, acting like they're super towny (they're not), they don't really care for what's going on in the middle (the mechanics talk) but they're contrarian to the neutral route because "statistics" (fyi I haven't looked at the first game so I don't know if the neutral route is even the same here, I know stuff was changed), then weak accusations like rolefishing, and then scummy role soft when a little bit of pressure is applied to him (and you're not clever with that)

That was about as soft as a brick

[popsofctown]

Spare Votecount 1.0

Nachomamma8 -

Elements ------

(1)

Rakan

chennisden ----

(2)

Wisdom, Nymph

mastina --------

(1)

Ginngie

Ginngie -

Xayah -

Oversoul ------

(1)

Elements

Rakan -

Wisdom -

Chemist1422 -

Nymph -

Not sparing:

- (6) Nachomamma8, chennisden, mastina, Xayah, Oversoul, Chemist1422

Fight Votecount 1.0

Nachomamma8 -

Elements -----

(1)

Oversoul

chennisden ---

(1)

Elements

mastina -

Ginngie -------

(1)

Rakan

Xayah -

Oversoul ----

(1)

Xayah

Rakan -

Wisdom -

Chemist1422 -

Nymph -

Not Fighting:

- (7) Nachomamma8, chennisden, mastina, Ginngie, Wisdom, Chemist1422, Nymph

<3<3<3<3<3

<X<X<X<X

Modnote: Using playerlist order for VCs rather than vote sequence, this game. I will try to provide frequent enough VCs that this isn't a disservice

(expired on 2019-10-17 17:06:42)

[Chemist1422]

Wait you're allowed to have separate spare and fight votes now?

huh

[Ginngie]

Sure, I have no real reason to object to a soul vote right now. I'd love to see why they think there obv town.
What do you think of chem right now?
HURT: Soul
pedit: Are you being purposely obtuse?

He's been engaged enough that I like the content being made with him. Forget who but someone pointed out an issue they had with chen and it makes me want to go back and see if I can see it too. I'll make note of chen but he's a sack of potatoes for me rn.

HURT: OverSoul

[Oversoul]

I don't know if you've read the whole dead thread but I've calculated the level of fake townspew needed for scum to win Pacifist and Genocide routes to be equivalent.

Both me and my partner didn't really like Genocide because it requires you to pull off four mislynches to win. Usually when scum needs four mislynches it's because there are three scum. Four mislynches is a lot to pull off when there are only two scum. Not to mention that Genocide gives town the most information by far, with consistent flips along with the LOVE mechanic, which can be leashed/controlled.

There are other reasons why Pacifist benefits scum as well. One big one -- which surprisingly wasn't brought up a lot in the game thread -- is that it usually is easier to fake a townread on a townie than it is to fake a scumread on them. With the Pacifist route, the game primarily revolves around townhunting rather than scumhunting, which appealed to both me and my partner. I think on some level the Pacifist route is easier than the Genocide (or even Neutral) route as scum, because with each mislynch wagon that you are on you open yourself up to more and more scrutiny as the town gains more and more information. Whereas the Pacifist route denies town of key information and allows the town (if it is not vigilant) to be lulled into a false sense of security. And in particular, it allows you push your partner towards a spare on the grounds that they are the towniest player in the game. You can do this without consequence as long as everyone is convinced that it is optimal to stay on the Pacifist route rather than switch to the Neutral route. Even if you are unable to get yourself spared after getting your partner spared, it still hurts town when the core is reached in the Pacifist route because no one can ever prove that you were scum.

The idea is that this 9-2 setup has one more mislynch needed than, say, a newbie queue micro, but far less town power. I kind of question the "far less town power" part and am usually the one in open setup design pushing against high town EVs, which is why I ran this setup with several of Something_Smart's more powerful potential roles excluded and suggested a last minute nerf for Asgore.
The prevailing belief when the setup was being workshopped is that Pacifist was generally the most attractive route. I think when there are strong arguments both ways and the answer seems unclear that's exciting.

I want to point out that the scum can leverage some of your benefits for the pacifist route when playing the genocide route! Day 1 in a standard 2 scum game, if day 1 is ultimately going to be a d1 correct lynch, a scumpartner either has to be placing a vote that is wrong, or helping shoot his own foot. In Undertale you can vanity wagon a spare on another player and lose far less towncred for failing to participate in the lynch. The spare was even correct!

I'm optimistic the smalltown design can create more tempting reasons to bail into neutral.

A few setup notes:

Obviously, what I want from this setup is for all three routes to be potentially attractive options. They all have different benefits and drawbacks but I want the overall strength to be about the same.

I did EV calculations for Pacifist and Genocide without the PR. Pacifist was 46%, Genocide 35%. This is assuming that town no-lynches in post-Core MYLO, making the EV there 1/3.

I think the Pacifist numbers are good. The named townie aspect barely raises town EV (the only time it matters is if the PR is spared without claiming and they aren't killed no-lynching in the Core), and the Pacifist PR's are intentionally weak. Alphys got a buff since Jingle commented on her, but I do agree that she's still probably too weak to use, since you risk ruining a town win outright. I'm considering some mechanic where she's made more likely to spare a town (i.e. pick two people and one of them is spared, randomly if they're the same alignment but always town if they are different).

Genocide's a bit worrying. The named townie aspect definitely matters here, but probably only for 5-10% or so. The Genocide PR's, particularly Undyne (and the fact that Sans can WIFOM being Undyne to try to avoid dying), are meant to make up most of the rest of the gap. I'm fine with Genocide being lower EV than Pacifist, because Genocide is the highest info route and Pacifist is the lowest.

Neutral's a pain. There are a lot of moving parts, and this is the route that needs the most analysis. Quick breakdown of the different options:
1 kill (LV 1): Core will be 6 alive with 2 confirmed town (no scum spared) or 5 alive with one scum confirmed in a group of 3 (scum spared).

2 kills (LV 2): Sparing one scum and not killing the other is game over. Beyond that, one scum spared and one killed is 4 alive with a 1v1 (autowin if Asgore is outside of the 1v1), and otherwise game goes to 5 alive.

3 kills (LV 3): No killed scum is autoloss. Interestingly, if the one spared player is scum town autowins, making it a benefit to spare scum here. Otherwise, the one spared player will be confirmed town and will presumably die, leaving 4 alive and making this route functionally equivalent to Genocide. If town spares a single player and later decides they were probably scum, this route is beneficial.

I made a bunch of changes to my smalltown draft here: post 36

Some of it is based on his feedback about Pacifist vs. Genocide. I find a lot of it persuasive. Genocide being 2-9 mountainous is kind of like, balanced anyway, 2-9 mountainous is probably fine, and this new setup is stronger than 2-9 mountainous in the sense that you have options to bail into neutral if it offers a higher win%.
The Love mechanic was probably always about making Genocide less boring rather than more balanced, I think. So I put a genocide PR that is pretty interesting but a bit lower on power.
The current revision has two roles that can't be spared or are difficult to spare, which to me seems like a more interesting way to balance pacifist against neutral rather than jacking up the required number of spares to 5 or something. If the two roles that are both difficult to spare seem really townie this game, maybe this isn't the best time to go pacifist. If those two roles are both really scummy, cool go for it.
It'd be cool if I could manage more of that dynamic on the genocide side, but setting up a role that is just "you can't lynch this player" or "you can't lynch this player until X" happens is concerning. People get upset about governors and gladiators, and when there is no player's actions to blame for a mechanical inability to lynch someone who's openwolfing they might be even more upset. There is at least Moldsymal, a design a really like, who might get a hard guilty on night 1 but pretty much cuts neutral route out of consideration if he connects. And of course Metatron can verify an increase in townpoints and pull players towards neutral, that works on both pure paths.

EDIT: Oh wait, I lied, I did do a half-unlynchable slot. Ehhhh.. I think it's fine, it's too cute.

RC suggested looking at setup balance in terms of where mafia have to stand in "towniness rankings" to win and I think that's a really interesting way to look at it.

Suppose everyone locks in a unanimous reads ranking D1 and it never changes, what placements do the mafia have to get to win? If the PR were removed in Undertale, its:

Pacifist: One mafia needs to appear to be 5th towniest player in the game or better. The potential to clean sweep doesn't affect win%.
Genocide: One mafia needs to appear to be the 5th towniest player in the game, but successfully claiming both the 6th and 7th positions claims a sweep. And the sweep happens before the player with the most LOVE is revealed.
Neutral: I'll come back to this sometime Neutral is complicated.

With 2 potential players on the team potentially hitting that fifth place spot the town probably does need some power, I should keep that in mind when I design smalltown.

I really like setups that are hard on town but also in a way I like the idea of doing a redesign that is easier on town because having just 1 weak PR is unhelpful to town kind of randomly when that player would have been townread anyway and the power whiffs.
I want the setup to have like a 1-cop of unconfirmed alignment for example and then we get the same clear, but it's a clear that someone selected instead of me going on random.org before this game and deciding Chemist would eventually be an IC this game.

---

Gingie, these are the posts that show Neutral is really not desirable and something that the game designers themselves have been struggling with. Obviously, some changes have been made in terms of the power roles available for this game and it was discovered that Genocide/Pacifist are really not that far off from one another in terms of EV.

[Oversoul]

I'm obvtown because nothing I'm doing is to a scum agenda, let alone an Oversoul scum agenda?

[Rakan]

I didn't realize I could both be hurting and healing somebody

HURT: Oversoul

[popsofctown]

On second thought, votecount frequency cannot in and of itself offset VCs presenting an ordered wagon. I will adjust VC 1.0 and present participation-ordered voting lists in the future.
Thanks to all players tolerating sophomore modding

[Rakan]

Gingie, these are the posts that show Neutral is really not desirable and something that the game designers themselves have been struggling with. Obviously, some changes have been made in terms of the power roles available for this game and it was discovered that Genocide/Pacifist are really not that far off from one another in terms of EV.

Can you quote where she says it has the lowest win %?

[Oversoul]

There's no explicit percentage given because it is so variable, but if you read SS's posts two out of the 3 neutral options almost guarantee town loss if they flub on a scum Kill.
I will say that 2-2 seems like the worst possible option to choose because it opens town up to losing two fold - once on the double scum in spare and once on a scum in spare with no scum kill (which is made more likely by the fact that there is a scum in the spare).

[Rakan]

[/quote]

I'm obvtown because nothing I'm doing is to a scum agenda, let alone an Oversoul scum agenda?

Doing nothing doesn't make you look like town

There's no explicit percentage given because it is so variable, but if you read SS's posts two out of the 3 neutral options almost guarantee town loss if they flub on a scum Kill.
I will say that 2-2 seems like the worst possible option to choose because it opens town up to losing two fold - once on the double scum in spare and once on a scum in spare with no scum kill (which is made more likely by the fact that there is a scum in the spare).

But we get to choose which neutral option to use, yet you applied a broad brushstroke "neutral is bad" and said it was because of statistics.

What route do you want to go for?

[Rakan]

genocide is just vanilla though and poisoner is the worst pr in bad hands even if we have him

I think if we have poisoner theyre best off claiming and getting spared

This is where I'm at right now

[Oversoul]

I'm obvtown because nothing I'm doing is to a scum agenda, let alone an Oversoul scum agenda?

Doing nothing doesn't make you look like town

There's no explicit percentage given because it is so variable, but if you read SS's posts two out of the 3 neutral options almost guarantee town loss if they flub on a scum Kill.
I will say that 2-2 seems like the worst possible option to choose because it opens town up to losing two fold - once on the double scum in spare and once on a scum in spare with no scum kill (which is made more likely by the fact that there is a scum in the spare).

But we get to choose which neutral option to use, yet you applied a broad brushstroke "neutral is bad" and said it was because of statistics.

What route do you want to go for?

1. That isn't what I said. Why are you misquoting what I said?

2. Yes... because 2 out of the 3 are bad so the path is more bad than either Genocide/Spare just by that virtue. I want to go Genocide.

[Ginngie]

@Elements
OverSoul is now the leading wagon, now if you could explain why you chose to heal oversoul, that'd be great because you're interactions with Soul are softball questions and I can't find why you townread the slot.

@wisdom
you may scum read me but you also scumread Soul. Will you join or is your read on me as scum stronger than your read on Soul

@Chemist, Nymph and Chenn
You've yet to interact with Soul in any way this game, give us something to work with here

[Rakan]

2. Yes... because 2 out of the 3 are bad so the path is more bad

No, because we don't have to take those 2. It's not random chance, we get to choose.

[chennisden]

i'll try to make sense of it in the morning lmfao

rakan who you staring at rn

To kill? Oversoul.

Though I do still have an attachment to going spare-kill-spare-spare

I'm thinking this game plan up as I go along, I'm thinking it is best to put people we trust in the 3 spares after all, since both sides are essentially revealed (if you know 1 scum is in 3 people, you know 1 is in the other 2)

How about no, lover boy. We are not killing me. If anything we are sparing me.

This arrogance probably comes from town os

[chennisden]

chennis whats the deal with your chemist read

chemist has a lot of small talk but I did enjoy their remarks about a pocket read.

Is this more a behavioral meta read here or what

Chemist is doing fuckall the same way he does fuckall as town

[Chemist1422]

chennis whats the deal with your chemist read

chemist has a lot of small talk but I did enjoy their remarks about a pocket read.

Is this more a behavioral meta read here or what

Chemist is doing fuckall the same way he does fuckall as town

On one hand fair

On the other it’s literally been 6 hours

[Rakan]

I want to go Genocide.

Yeah, no. Here's what's going to happen:

You tell us if your post 188 being written in comic sans is you claiming to be the power role sans

If it's not, you're getting lynched for that. If it is, we wait to see if anybody counterclaims (if somebody does, then you die) and then if nobody does our best move is, ironically, to go for either neutral or pacifist after sparing you.

And if you are sans, here's where you went wrong:

1) Your soft was so obvious that it wasn't a soft but was instead a claim (remember, there are 2 mafia so they're more likely to spot it than a normal townie). In reality, your pr is bad and your pr in your hands is BAD
2) Arguing against the perfectly viable neutral strategy just because you wanted genocide is, in fact, an agenda, and I believe I was correct in 'catching on' that you were playing to an agenda
3) Stop trying to be clever

By the way, I don't want you to have the opportunity to use your power role to kill somebody anyway - though you'd die before then - because I think you are below average and unwilling to listen to others in your selection, and I am playing to win this game.

[chennisden]

@Elements
OverSoul is now the leading wagon, now if you could explain why you chose to heal oversoul, that'd be great because you're interactions with Soul are softball questions and I can't find why you townread the slot.

@wisdom
you may scum read me but you also scumread Soul. Will you join or is your read on me as scum stronger than your read on Soul

@Chemist, Nymph and Chenn
You've yet to interact with Soul in any way this game, give us something to work with here

Ur caring way too much about the os slot

[Rakan]

Stop playing mechanics start playing mafia zzz

This shit helps nobody with alignment solving and loses us the game

Play it by ear pls

@Elements
OverSoul is now the leading wagon, now if you could explain why you chose to heal oversoul, that'd be great because you're interactions with Soul are softball questions and I can't find why you townread the slot.

@wisdom
you may scum read me but you also scumread Soul. Will you join or is your read on me as scum stronger than your read on Soul

@Chemist, Nymph and Chenn
You've yet to interact with Soul in any way this game, give us something to work with here

Ur caring way too much about the os slot

weird trajectory

[chennisden]

No it really isnt Rakan

[Xayah]

He's been engaged enough that I like the content being made with him. Forget who but someone pointed out an issue they had with chen and it makes me want to go back and see if I can see it too. I'll make note of chen but he's a sack of potatoes for me rn.

The only real thing about Chen that I have right now is his confidence in the Ele read (It was Ele right?) felt somewhat real. Although I don't really remember scum chen. It's a base read for now. One that is 'subject to change' as people put it.

I'm obvtown because nothing I'm doing is to a scum agenda, let alone an Oversoul scum agenda?

A 'scum agenda' doesn't really exist and is subjective. But let me ask what you think one is. Since I get you're talking on a bases.
Also what would be an Oversoul scum agenda?

You tell us if your post 188 being written in comic sans is you claiming to be the power role sans

If it's not, you're getting lynched for that. If it is, we wait to see if anybody counterclaims (if somebody does, then you die) and then if nobody does our best move is, ironically, to go for either neutral or pacifist after sparing you.

No to all of this. Put on the breaks. We're not getting a claim right away. OverSoul isn't nearly as scummy as you're trying to make him out to be. So I don't get where this confidence is coming from. I get a few points that he made that I was questioning myself. But it wasn't even in a 'scummy' question it was a ??? The whole point of wagoning OS was to get more interaction out of him. At least for me.

[Rakan]

We're either fighting or sparing Oversoul today.

[Xayah]

No to all of this

Do you have any other reads since you have Oversoul already solved in your eyes? How do you feel about Gin?