Team Mafia 2015 Winners: Young and Beautiful

[zoraster]

i've considered the vote, but don't think having the town vote would be a wise idea.

[Zachrulez]

i've considered the vote, but don't think having the town vote would be a wise idea.

Because they'd pick the most beneficial setup to them, or that players may go after others for their setup choice in their scumhunting?

[zoraster]

Because they'd pick the most beneficial setup and it'd introduce gamesmanship to picking the game where it doesn't necessarily create a great atmosphere (there is a little bit if i just allow votes: you could pick a super town-sided setup and then put all your tokens on being town in that setup, but this is less than just outright letting town choose). It also seems a unfair to scum.

[InflatablePie]

Could have every team submit a suggestion for the Open and have the TM Mods decide the final choice?

I'd vote for either Twin Trap or Alternating 9p if I had any choice/input. Twin Trap is probably the more fun setup though.

[zoraster]

alternating 9p is a good suggestion too

[Zachrulez]

Anything that isn't matrix I'm probably okay with.

[Marquis]

could try a variant of triplicate

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

In your suggestion above CES, isn't Town JK, VT, Goon pretty different in win chance than Town JK, Mafia Tracker, Town Motion Detector?

I tried to get them all fairly close to 50-50 and I don't think any of them are that far off for it to be an issue. The advantage here is that we do have the Matrix6 statistics at our disposal to calibrate. If you look at those, the major outliers are the JK/Cop+Townie vs. Goon set-ups (in favour of the town) and the two 1-shot Bulletproof set-ups (in favour of the scum); I can't really imagine that the JK+Townie vs. Goon set-up is town-sided (a Cop is definitely a notch above Jailkeeper), so I left that alone, weakened the Cop Role and replaced the 1-shot Bulletproof Townie with a meaningful town PR instead.

I'm not really that fond of either Twin Trap or Alternating 9p. They both suffer from having 2 guaranteed power roles with individual names, which is just boring. The Power roles in Alternating 9p mostly just don't do anything unless the Cop makes it to D3. And Twin Trap is silly; I don't want Team Mafia to possibly come down to whether the Mafia and the Watcher can outguess each other nor do I want a 4-player team to be arguing about who the correct Track target is when the Mafia have already decided that the Track-immune Goon is making the kill.

Having had more time to stew over the set-up, I think the set-up can be improved upon (for one, having multiple PRs whose power level increases once there's only one scum left is probably undesirable + I'm a perfectionist). What I'm thinking of right now is:

	A	B	C
1	Town Jailkeeper	Vanilla Townie	Mafia Goon
2	Mafia Role Cop	Town Odd-Night Cop	Town 1-Shot Friendly Neighbor
3	Town X	Mafia Goon	Town Motion Detector

Where I haven't decided on the role in the bottom-left corner. One possibility I was thinking of was just another 1-shot Friendly Neighbor, in which case the set-up is a bit more straightforward but we probably shouldn't be using a Matrix to represent it (but we still get the benefit of being able to compare the set-ups to Matrix6 to help determine balance!).

[Cheery Dog]

I don't know if the role cop has enough power equal get friendly neighbour

[hitogoroshi]

I don't know that I like the idea of trying a new open setup for Team Mafia; feels like part of the appeal of doing opens for TM is to get something that's been field tested.

To that end, I think my suggestion is Chosen Mafia. I'm digging the 50-50 win rates, and searching for mafia tells of knowing who the chosen are seems like a good way to engage the whole team.

[zoraster]

Just a reminder that sign ups close tonight at 20:00 edt

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I don't know if the role cop has enough power equal get friendly neighbour

I think those two roles do a pretty good job of cancelling each other out; friendly neighbors help the Town narrow things down and Role Cops help the scum kill power roles, which has pretty much the opposite effect. I've always liked that pairing.

I don't know that I like the idea of trying a new open setup for Team Mafia; feels like part of the appeal of doing opens for TM is to get something that's been field tested.

That's part of the reason why I'm basing my set-up on Matrix6, which we have lots of statistics about. A game like Twin Trap has only been played 5 times, so that's not particularly telling in terms of whether it's balanced; my guess would be it's scum-sided (in the 40-45% town win percentage range) but it's hard to say. And we've got plenty of experienced mods paying attention, so I doubt some weird unforeseen interaction is going to pop up.

To that end, I think my suggestion is Chosen Mafia. I'm digging the 50-50 win rates, and searching for mafia tells of knowing who the chosen are seems like a good way to engage the whole team.

I do like Chosen Mafia as a set-up (I know Fenchurch would happily play in it) but considering that White Flag and Nightless are already in the mix, I assumed there'd be desire for something more standard, less stripped-down and purely based on day play.

[Cogito Ergo Sum]

I don't think I'm going to come up with anything better than 1-shot Friendly Neighbor (maybe someone else will?), so this is how I'd present the set-up.

Flip a coin to choose between Jailkeeper and Odd-Night Cop. Then pick at random from the following three set-ups:
1. JK/Cop + 6 Townies vs. 2 Goons
2. JK/Cop + 1-shot Friendly Neighbor + 5 Townies vs. 1 Mafia Rolecop + 1 Goon
3. Motion Detector + 1-shot Friendly Neighbor + 5 Townies vs. 2 Goons

[TierShift]

What's wrong with a simple open setup like JK9 or just JK+6 townies vs 2 goons?
Maybe a sole cop or a JK plus doc? (Field day, isn't it?)

Matrix6 is nice and all, but it's not a simple open setup, something we are really looking for here.

Even doc+cop vs RB seems good.

[fferyllt]

What's wrong with a simple open setup like JK9 or just JK+6 townies vs 2 goons?
Maybe a sole cop or a JK plus doc? (Field day, isn't it?)

Matrix6 is nice and all, but it's not a simple open setup, something we are really looking for here.

Even doc+cop vs RB seems good

.

If the RB is lynched on day 1 then follow-the-cop would ensue.

[Zachrulez]

What's wrong with a simple open setup like JK9 or just JK+6 townies vs 2 goons?
Maybe a sole cop or a JK plus doc? (Field day, isn't it?)

Matrix6 is nice and all, but it's not a simple open setup, something we are really looking for here.

Even doc+cop vs RB seems good

.

If the RB is lynched on day 1 then follow-the-cop would ensue.

That's actually why I went with a 1 shot cop/doc combo vs 2 goons in a 9p normal a while back. Follow the cop is impossible because they can only get one guilty. The only real problem with that is balance, but it seems like it would be close enough to do the job, and if it doesn't a weak town power role could probably bridge the gap.

Chosen is also an interesting setup I've never played in, but I don't think we're going to want both that and white flag in play.

Matrix has a lot of variables and I don't think simply mathematically balancing it if they even are is going to account for the actual win rates off play. I mean I actually prefer 'boring and simple' because it allows me to try to bust the game via day play rather than having a deep setup to think about and speculate on.

Also I'd say that 9p setups in their nature are best off being kept simple. You actually do need around 12-13p to actually make a setup interesting role wise if that's the kind of thing you're looking for. Semi-open setups with many possible power roles might make things a little bit more interesting for those who love the setup having variables, but I don't really think it's a good thing for a smaller player base like 9p.

[TierShift]

What's wrong with a simple open setup like JK9 or just JK+6 townies vs 2 goons?
Maybe a sole cop or a JK plus doc? (Field day, isn't it?)

Matrix6 is nice and all, but it's not a simple open setup, something we are really looking for here.

Even doc+cop vs RB seems good

.

If the RB is lynched on day 1 then follow-the-cop would ensue.

I don't like this argument. Scum should first of all make sure the RB isn't lynched, failure to do so

should

punish them. Other than that, scum usually have an idea who is doc.
They really shouldn't find themselves in a follow the cop situation.

I think the current playerbase of micros likes complex setups more than simple ones, but I think a simple setups is what we're aiming for here.

[TierShift]

Of the current suggestions, I'd go for old plain newbie matrix6. Not the revised version, I don't really get why we are going to test new setups here. Old matrix6 has been proven to be balanced enough.

[Zachrulez]

Of the current suggestions, I'd go for old plain newbie matrix6. Not the revised version, I don't really get why we are going to test new setups here. Old matrix6 has been proven to be balanced enough.

The overall stats might be balanced, but some of the draws aren't necessarily.

[wgeurts]

Could we not do a semi-open?
To a certain extent the normal game does this. Open games are different to semi-open in my oppinion, they take a very different approach.

[TierShift]

@zach: what's the prob with that?

[zoraster]

it sucks to make RNG the biggest individual player in the game. Also, Town Cop vs. 2 Goons is a setup that robs a lot of agency from the scum, not to mention the nearly 60% town win rate for newbies is going to be very tough in a team mafia environment.

[SleepyKrew]

SELECTION MONDAY

[zoraster]

Why are you awake? What is your life.

[mastin2]

Zor, we're on mafiascum.

What

life?