mastina's 13p Pre-Designed Setup


Forum rules
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #1 (isolation #0) » Tue May 15, 2018 4:45 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

/egosearch

Can't do much reviewing until the setup has been posted :-)
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #3 (isolation #1) » Wed May 16, 2018 2:36 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Scum absolutely need the town power roles dead quickly in this one.

Mason, Mason, Vigilante is townsided against a vanilla scumteam in a 10:3, but Mason, Mason-Vigilante is substantially weaker (as fewer townies are confirmed).

There's more synergy in the roles than you might expect: the Jailkeeper can keep a claimed Mason alive (they lose their power but losing the Tracker power early doesn't matter much), and the Jailkeeper stopping a kill (either way) synergises with the Vigilante pushing the setup onto evens.

I think that if the Vigilante gets off two kills (even if they hit town), and/or the Vigilante kills and the Jailkeeper stops a scum kill, then town are in really good shape. So the setup's going to have to rely on town power roles dying early. I fear that the Rolecop might be too slow for that? Their results are no real use until Night 2, so the Rolecop is no use in stopping the Vigilante killing twice; scum would need to hit the Vigilante naturally, and the odds of that are less than 1 in 4 (a bit higher because the information allows the scum to look for interactions, but it's hard to find a two-person team amongst 9 players on night 1). A third Vigilante kill would make the Jailkeeper into an incredibly strong role, assuming the game was still going; that's the case even if two scum were left (although by then probably only one would be).

I think the changes needed here are: a) buff the Rolecop (e.g. by making them into a Rolecop + Roleblocker JOAT, allowing them to block a power role N2 that they discovered N1); b) cap the Vigilante's effectiveness to help limit situations where town is running away with the setup (e.g. making them 2-shot or odd-night; in the latter case scum wouldn't need to be as powerful). It's a weird setup so I'm not sure that'd put it in the right place, but it'd have more of a chance of being balanced. It might be worth considering a swing warning, too; this setup is clearly very swingy, which makes the balance hard to measure.

As for Normalcy, I'm not 100% sure giving a player two roles, e.g. Mason and Tracker, is allowed, but it's equivalent to Informed Neighbour Tracker which would be. That said, I'm not sure how well this setup fits into the spirit of the Normal queue; it feels more like an asymmetrical multiball setup, it's just that one of the "scumteams" wins with town.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #5 (isolation #2) » Wed May 16, 2018 11:33 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Ah, OK, I see what you're going for with the mason-vig combo.

I think the problem here is basically that there's a lot of things that can randomly go right for town. So I'd mostly be looking to get potential swing to town under control, rather than balance to town. That's why I wanted to gate the vig; the most positive town swing possible is the vig surviving for ages. You can do a pure swing reduction via limiting the vig to two shots, or impact on balance as well via changing them to odd night; it sounds like the two-shot version is what you'd want there.

The main thing to remember with vig setups is that the dayplay goes faster than expected, relative to nightplay (vig shots are basically dayplay in effect). There's highly likely to be six deaths by the morning of D3, four town-controlled and two scum-controlled. In a non-vig setup, missing the lynch four times is game over; in this setup, it's lylo, and yet scum have only just managed to make use of a pure Rolecop's results (in time to kill investigatives to deny their results, but not other sorts of roles). A 4:3 lylo is normally very hard for town to win, but if their power roles are alive, they have the tools they need to make a decent shot at it, even though they should be more or less lost at that point.

So I'd say that we need to gate the vig so that at least they aren't killing on all three of the first three nights (which would lead to a runaway town situation if the JK managed to stop a kill); that's why a 2-shot modifier helps. If you do that, plus change the Rolecop to a Rolecop/Roleblocker JOAT, I think we're probably within range; I'm still a bit concerned about townsidedness but we nearly always aim too scumsided, so I guess that's OK. (Given that the Mafia aren't Multitasking, there are no loop scenarios that require special resolutions; everything is based off the Golden Rule. It's important that moderators know that the JK can block the RB if the RB is aiming for someone other than the JK, though.)
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #7 (isolation #3) » Wed May 16, 2018 12:12 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

The ideal defensive ability would be something that's most useful when the scumteam is small, rather than when it's large. So letting them protect each other wouldn't be great. That said, a lone scum can't activate power roles anyway if they want to be able to kill.

I considered putting Ascetic on one of the other scum but it has too many problems (basically that it blanks the Tracker until it dies, as nobody else should be doing kills, and can give misleading JK results if it's the last scum left).

Perhaps the correct third shot for the JOAT is Watcher. That gives scum flexibility in how they can catch the town power roles, but using Rolecop and Watcher together isn't broken because it's too slow to make much of a difference.

It strikes me that given that the setup has no plain Masons, it's going to be quite hard to word the Informed information in a way that doesn't give the game away. Perhaps "The Town contains at least one Masonry" would look natural enough that people don't suspect that the wording is trying to hide something.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #9 (isolation #4) » Wed May 16, 2018 2:42 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Right. I think that would work. There's still a lot of swing (which makes it hard to gauge the balance) but it seems to be within the normal bounds.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #10 (isolation #5) » Wed May 16, 2018 4:11 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

So /approve, I guess. I'll go PM implosion.

Final SetupTown Mason Tracker
Town Mason 2-Shot Vigilante
Town Jailkeeper
7× Vanilla Townie

Mafia JOAT (Rolecop, Roleblocker, Watcher)
Informed Mafioso ("this game contains at least one Masonry")
Mafia Goon
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #17 (isolation #6) » Wed Jun 13, 2018 1:14 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

I think factional abilities need to say they're factional. If you don't already know it can be hard to guess.

"You may not both kill and use another action, and may not kill when one of your teammates is killing." would be clear enough.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
User avatar
callforjudgement
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
User avatar
User avatar
callforjudgement
Microprocessor
Microprocessor
Posts: 3972
Joined: September 1, 2011

Post Post #19 (isolation #7) » Thu Jul 12, 2018 4:26 am

Post by callforjudgement »

You'll need to contact implosion, I don't think anyone else has admin rights to this thread.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
Post Reply