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.
Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2019 6:54 am
by popsofctown
I still think this setup is amazing as is.
I just want it to be even better.
Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2019 6:27 am
by popsofctown
"Ah cool you're too cool for curfews too. They're so dumb. I'm max chill."
"This game needs more action, sparing is boring"
"Wait, no, not me. Come on, killing the guy with sunglasses is too cliche!"
"Tell Snowdrake..... I dig him...."
Emperor flippyNips
who was a
Chilldrake, Vanilla Townie
, has been nightkilled.
With five unspared players alive, it takes three votes to make a decision.
Deadline: (expired on 2019-08-30 02:00:00)
Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2019 6:34 am
by popsofctown
Deadline: (expired on 2019-08-30 02:00:00)
Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2019 6:49 am
by popsofctown
Next time I'll make a separate mod notes PT, this is getting sloppy. Sorry guys, it felt like my game already had too many PTs already and I didn't realize I would use this as much as it turned out.
Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2019 1:33 pm
by Emperor flippyNips
Oh no I died! I was too young! I had so much to live for! I.. I.. I had sunglasses?! dope
Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2019 1:35 pm
by Emperor flippyNips
I honestly didn’t expect to get nk’ed this game
Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2019 7:41 pm
by Emperor flippyNips
@mod—Can I have spoilers
Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2019 5:16 am
by Emperor flippyNips
Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2019 7:41 am
by popsofctown
Flip flavors have all been based on the players. Snowdrake seemed like the best fit for you among what I could find.
I actually had to fight a truckload of Chilldrakes in my progress on the genocide run on Tuesday, it turns out that he replaces Snowdrake for the rest of the game if Snowdrake is killed and the snow area doesn't have a large pool of enemies to begin with so there's a lot of him.
The game is pacifist so far so it's a flavorfail for me to give you a Chilldrake flavor, but I made Gamma Emerald a Madjick when we haven't "reached the CORE" yet, so whatevs. Chilldrake is pretty dope.
Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2019 9:38 am
by popsofctown
So, there are two things I want to improve in the setup:
1. Neutral route is messed up in terms of overly similar win%s
2. Pacifist + named townie is even more problematic than Named Townie in general. You can balance around it but it's not satisfying gameplay for the named townie to just claim and get spirited away to the spared PT where the mafia can't NK them. And I don't want to fix that by giving scum some kind of "window" to kill players that are going to be spared because the fact that you can develop a strong group townread all in one day and profit off of it while sequestering that player is unique to this setup and not present in normal mafia (your collective townread just gets NKed). The only problem is that named townie clears are Not Mafia.
To try to kill 2 birds with 1 stone I'm trying to brew a smalltown setup where most of the power roles only dictate how neutral route win/losses work. I'm not married to that solution but I think it's interesting. I'm going to put an initial draft in here. I can't post it in open setup discussion while the game is ongoing because it could reflect on how scumsided/townsided Undertale Mafia is going right now and could influence the game.
Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2019 10:10 am
by popsofctown
Overall system mods: Add an exception rule that says the mafia and only the mafia do stuff from the spared PT.
Scum can nightkill scum.
Genocide route no longer does the LOVE thing.
Neutral route no longer reveals the alignment of players in the spared PT and neutral route has a normal typical N4 kill.
Neutral route is now only won by the town scoring 5 townpoints. Townpoints start at zero and can go negative. They are kept secret from the town but printed in the scum PT whenever they change. Scum win the neutral route by locking the town out of their 5th townpoint.
In addition to power roles, the ways to earn townpoints are:
Lynch scum: 1 town point.
Spare two townies: 1 town point.
Spare scum: -1 town point.
Nightkill another scum as scum: -10 town points
Lynch a scum who has killed scum this game: +20 town points
Toriel: Pacifist: Night 3 doctor.
Sans : Genocide: Sans makes a list of players on Night 3. During a Genocide night 4, the mafia is notified they cannot target the highest living player on this list with the factional nightkill.
Dogert: If Dogert is in the game thread, Dogessa can't be spared.
Dogessa: If Dogessa is in the game thread, Dogert can't be Killed.
Monster Kid: You can't spare Monster Kid.
Undyne: Bodyguard
Jerry: If Jerry is mislynched or nightkilled, town receives 1 townpoint. Jerry is unable to selfvote. (Jerry sometimes loses in 4 point "happily ever afters").
Temmie: If Temmie is town, gain one town point when she is scared but do not count her towards the "spare two townies" condition.
Metatron: 1-shot Predictor: Target a player. If that player dies tonight, gain one townpoint and lose this ability.
Moldsymal: 1-shot psychologist. When Moldsymal obtains a guilty result, the guiltied player is no longer worth townpoints when getting lynched unless Moldysmal is mafia.
Motion dog: 1-shot. Target a player. If the player is scum, receive 1 town point (you are not informed of your success).
Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2019 10:15 am
by popsofctown
This post is becoming a list of role ideas:
Vulcan: On day 2 or 3, Vulcan may govern a Spare or Kill from the spared PT, immediately spare a player, make a single post in the game thread, and die. The next mafia NK is skipped. After votes are reset the town can resume the same selection they made if the single post was not convincing enough.- really cool but the setup is already complicated
Papyrus: N3 cop. Using the ability costs 1 town point - Wifom around Papyrus being left alive seems too intense.
Super Training Dummy: Can't be killed before CORE - I like having some simple roles but being unable to lynch your top scumread is probably bad gameplay.
Final Froggit: Can't be killed or spared unless (smalltown role X) has been killed or spared.
Madjick: During the Pacifist special kill, Madjick may try to predict the kill and also target a player that was "removed without flipping". If the kill is predicted correctly, Madjick sane cops that player.
Aaron - N3 Lightning Rod, genocide only.
Froggit: As a day action from the spared PT, can swap 1 player in the spared PT with 1 unspared player. Requires the approval of 1 other player in the spared PT.
Tsundereplane - If Tsundereplane is alive in 5p Genocide LyLo, she may loverize one other player. If that player is mafia, she dies. If that player is town, Tsunderplane becomes lovers with that player and the mafia become lovers with eachother.
Muffet - If Muffet is alive when the core is reached in Genocide, she becomes bulletproof for the rest of the game.
I would play this just because we need more small town games
Posted: Thu Aug 22, 2019 8:41 am
by popsofctown
Smalltowns are astonishingly rare on-site, huh?
Posted: Thu Aug 22, 2019 11:28 am
by popsofctown
So, looking over this, Froggit seems like the weak link in the setup. He adds complexity and he encroaches on some of the uniqueness of the spared PT and there's no reason to kill the beauty.
Meanwhile genocide looks like the least attractive route here without the love investigation, I think. Bodyguard on Jerry - > Spare Temmie is a more appealing opening play than kill Jerry -> Bodyguard Temmie, assuming Jerry is getting null-read D1. So let's come up with a genocide route replacement for Froggit.
Aaron - N3 Lightning Rod, genocide only.
Tsundereplane - If Tsundereplane is alive in 5p Genocide LyLo, she may loverize one other player. If that player is mafia, she dies. If that player is town, Tsunderplane becomes lovers with that player and the mafia become lovers with eachother.
Muffet - If Muffet is alive when the core is reached in Genocide, she becomes bulletproof for the rest of the game.
I like Aaron the most, the other two seem way too strong. Maybe even Aaron is too strong though.
Posted: Thu Aug 22, 2019 12:02 pm
by popsofctown
Spared PT activity overview:
chennisden 99
Elements 9
Chemist1422 8
popsofctown 5
Posted: Thu Aug 22, 2019 2:59 pm
by popsofctown
I thought of a good one.
Moldys - Genocide double backup: Bodyguard if Undyne was NK'ed, learns Moldysmal's N1 result at Core if Moldysmal was NK'd.
Yes, also one of the greatest games I've played on the site despite me losing was one
Posted: Thu Aug 22, 2019 7:16 pm
by popsofctown
depending on the roles in the smalltown, not every run of a small town will be 50% winrate scum 50% winrate town. This quality is vastly, vastly overrated though, netrunner taught me that.
Here's a weaker version of Aaron that I think could replace Froggit to put Genocide where I want it:
Veggie - After the day 2 Kill, if both day 1 and day 2 was a Kill, Veggie publically chooses a player. That player becomes bulletproof for the night.
Posted: Fri Aug 23, 2019 9:26 am
by popsofctown
Something I'm noticing here is that this process here of adding 1 more town player to the game, then immediately killing off one town player, there's a lot of signal to noise ratio. In runs of the setup where the named townie ICs like this time around, the mafia get to pick which conftown to remove, but it's not a particularly fascinating decision and not worth 48 hours.
The significant part is the risk of town immediately losing the game when they spare the 5th player. That needs to be kept. The empty nightkill doesn't though.
I think maybe it should be reworked to this, in both semi-open and smalltown variants of the setup:
When the CORE is reached, if all four spared players are town, town immediately wins. Otherwise, the players remaining in the game immediately spare a fifth player. Shortly after that player is spared, the unspared players are removed from the game without flipping, and the spared players are returned to the game thread to select the remaining mafia by majority vote. If they choose correctly, they win, and if they choose incorrectly, they lose.
So, it's a 4-1 with 1 conftown that designated to be a LyLo arbitrarily. It's a little stronger for town to have an additional cleared participant in the decision, but it skips the mostly meaningless nightphase. In my Smalltown setup there is no clear so I think pacifist is significantly weaker and the extra player is more than acceptable, in the original setup maybe you need to do something else because pacifist is already pretty strong. If scum want to sweep pacifist 1 spare is the free PR spare, they have up to 1 correct spare they can do for towncred then every single other spare has to be scum. Sweeping on the fifth spare can happen some. Overall I think pacifist needs a nudge though. I think this run wasn't a town sweep because the mafia are performing well.
Posted: Fri Aug 23, 2019 10:11 am
by Oversoul
Phew. Did my job
Posted: Fri Aug 23, 2019 10:18 am
by Oversoul
In post 9, popsofctown wrote:Post 326: I can post, just not about your alignment S_S :p
I agree Gamma I feel like Oversoul should be more of a focus and they should be digging even more into the gambit to determine whether it's a town gambit or scum Gambit.
No one noticed that he claimed the role that chemist kinda crumbed day1.