[OLD] Open Setup Ideas and Discussion

[ortolan]

and Delayed Reaction!

[Korts]

Delayed Reaction

12 Players:

3 Mafia Bombers
1 Explosives Expert
1 Explosives Expert's Understudy
7 Vanilla Townies

The mafia do not night-kill, instead each night they choose from two options: plant a bomb on a player, or detonate all previously planted bombs. Being blown up kills a player. The explosives expert can check a player each night to see if they have a bomb planted on them. The understudy gains the abilities of the explosives expert when they die. Mafia cannot plant bombs on themselves. The explosives expert will receive a positive result on whomever they investigate if a bomb was planted on them on a previous night or during the night the investigation was undertaken. All roles are revealed upon death, including that of the understudy.

This is an interesting mechanic, and gives scum a lot more to think about--but for all intents and purposes, mafia only have a fraction of a kill per night here. Assuming mafia will try to maximize efficiency and plant as much bombs as possible before detonating, though, and let's say the balance between killing a few early on and more later on is around Night 3 or 4, the mafia kill per night ratio will be 2/3 and 3/4 respectively. In a 3:9 ratio town needs considerable power to counterpoint a vanilla scumgroup, so obviously even a scumgroup with 2/3rd or 3/4th strength needs some town power in response.

What is the purpose of the explosives expert? Can they disarm the bombs, or only find them? If the latter, and it's the latter unless I'm mistaken, they have little to no purpose, since the mafia kill will go through one way or another--it's basically just a pre-emptive death scene reveal.

So basically my verdict is that in its current form town needs slightly more power.

[ortolan]

well, say the mafia has planted a bomb on someone and the explosives expert finds it

If they claim, then unless the mafia counter-claim them then the town gets both a confirmed townie in the explosives expert who has claimed and the person whom a bomb has been discovered on. If the mafia wishes to kill the explosives expert, unless they already have a bomb on them, then they need to spend another night to plant a bomb on the explosives expert before they can kill the two, essentially giving the town at least two days with two confirmed townies to narrow down the potential scum. Also, the explosives backup can claim and if not counter-claimed you get another townie during LYOL. Asides from that, assuming perfect play from the mafia they cannot win until they have

four

mislynches in a row rather than the standard three from a 12 player setup. In light of this I do not think it is clearly imbalanced in favour of the mafia. Note I still disagree with BAB's suggestion that the mafia actually needs

more

power. The setup is somewhat unpredictable, but I don't see it clearly being biased towards one side or another.

But no, the explosives expert cannot disarm the bombs. Do you still think that would improve the setup in light of the above? It seems that might make it potentially too town-skewed (although in this case the mafia might choose simply to play it like nightless or alternatively target some of the scummiest townies to get some extra kills in here and there).

[Korts]

I hadn't thought of it like that. That puts things in a different perspective.

I'll give this more thought tonight or tomorrow, depending on how drunk I'm gonna be when I get home.

[Kelly Chen]

The mafia do not night-kill, instead each night they choose from two options: plant a bomb on a player, or detonate all previously planted bombs.

I played a game that basically had this mechanic. Suicide Bomber mafia by mikeburnfire.

IIRC that game had a bomb-defuser and a roleblocker. I strongly recommend against these roles. They make it impossible for the mafia to know what "kills" they have to do over, or even (in the case of the game I was in)

that

there is a possibility that bombs need to be replaced.

A bomb detector is basically a type of cop. I really don't think this role needs a backup, since this guy isn't going to get lynched, it is quite expensive for mafia to kill him in the first place... and on death he gets a replacement? ugh.

One thing to consider as scum is that detonating bombs not only forfeits a bomb placement opportunity, it reduces the pool of players that can be lynched going forward. I believed (incorrectly) that the game I played was vanilla, so I considered detonating the placed bombs to be something to avoid at all costs

[ortolan]

IIRC that game had a bomb-defuser and a roleblocker. I strongly recommend against these roles. They make it impossible for the mafia to know what "kills" they have to do over, or even (in the case of the game I was in) that there is a possibility that bombs need to be replaced.

Yer I'm not keen on putting that in really.

A bomb detector is basically a type of cop. I really don't think this role needs a backup, since this guy isn't going to get lynched, it is quite expensive for mafia to kill him in the first place... and on death he gets a replacement? ugh.

Hmm. Well I guess the worst case scenario is the detector gets wagoned to a claim day one then the mafia have to plant a bomb on him that night and presumably detonate the next, then they progressively plant bombs on the townies until the point where they can end-game by detonating them. I think I'd still rather keep the backup because the detector isn't that powerful in the first place- it only has a small chance of confirming an innocent even when it does investigate someone (and I don't think giving it a defuse ability is a good idea as you say).

[BridgesAndBaloons]

Insomniac Town

In this town, no one sleeps. People spend their time walking aimlessly, following other people, or hiding.

3 scum (all can either track, walk, or hide each night, also they as a team together have ONE one-shot secret poisoning. Poison kills their target the first vote-count of the day and the poisoner is untraceable. Also, it wouldn't affect a hider.)

4 Compulsive Trackers
2 Compulsive Hiders
3 Compulsive Walkers (They simply choose one player and they walk to that player's house during the night.)


The gimmick would be a potentially busy night game. However; I think scum have a huge advantage in determining what happened that night, and so it's possible town could focus on false clues from the night and not focus on scum tells, and thus lose. This game would hopefully train players to focus on day tells more. Unless this isn't designed well.

Not sure how balanced this is, so someone help me balance it Please!

Should I ditch the poisoning power?

[ortolan]

Do they get a nightkill as well as the poison powder?

Also the game looks broken by mass-claim to me

[Kelly Chen]

The poisoning ability seems hardly different from an NK...

I agree that mass claim seems like it would break it; instead of fixed allocations you could have a % chance of getting each role.

What hider role are you using? In my experience hider roles often choose not to hide.

What happens if somebody tracks a scum who does more than one thing at night?

[ortolan]

also bear in mind that in open setups with hiders the town usually always hypoclaims

[Kelly Chen]

hm, I haven't seen that in my own games for some reason. Maybe it's more likely in a smaller game

[ortolan]

I think it's more likely in a game where someone has seen it before and therefore knows to suggest it

http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9768

[Kelly Chen]

Hm, that hider is simpler than I'm used to.

edit
or maybe the role pm just isn't complete, on further reading.

[ortolan]

yer, if the person they hide behind gets killed they die too (from what I remember that applied in that game).

[BridgesAndBaloons]

The poisoning ability seems hardly different from an NK...

I agree that mass claim seems like it would break it; instead of fixed allocations you could have a % chance of getting each role.

This is a really good idea. I will majorly rework it now. I was trying to think of way to balance the different role distributions to give places for scum to hide during a massclaim, but this works MUCH better.

What hider role are you using? In my experience hider roles often choose not to hide.

Hider's hide behind player A. If player A is targeted for a nightkill, the hider dies. If player A is scum, the hider dies; however, if the hider is targeted for a nightkill, the hider does not die because she is hiding.

What happens if somebody tracks a scum who does more than one thing at night?

They see everything. So that would confirm them as scum. So, scum probably wouldn't risk doing more than one action each night.

[BridgesAndBaloons]

Insomniac Town v2

In this town, no one sleeps. People spend their time walking aimlessly, following other people, or hiding.

3 scum (all can either track, walk, or hide each night, also they as a team together have ONE one-shot secret poisoning. Poison kills their target the first vote-count of the day and the poisoner is untraceable. Also, it wouldn't affect a hider if they hid behind the person that was poisoned. In addition, the scum team has the ability for one of its members to make one night kill each night)

9 Townies.
Their role is determined as followed:
1) First roll to see if the townie is a compulsive walker or not. 1/3 chance of being a compulsive walker.
2) Now roll again if the townie is not a compulsive walker. 1/3 chance of being a hider, 2/3 chance of being a tracker.

this means each townie has 3/9 chance of being a walker, 4/9 chance of being a tracker, and a 2/9 chance of being a hider. So it is roughly same as before, except it isn't broken by mass-claim.

Poisoning is used so scum have an untraceable kill. I neglected to mention before that scum can kill each night.

[chenhsi]

9 Townies.
Their role is determined as followed:
1) First

roll

to see if the townie is a compulsive walker or not. 1/3 chance of being a compulsive walker.
2) Now

roll

again if the townie is not a compulsive walker. 1/3 chance of being a hider, 2/3 chance of being a tracker.

*cough*

[BridgesAndBaloons]

9 Townies.
Their role is determined as followed:
1) First

roll

to see if the townie is a compulsive walker or not. 1/3 chance of being a compulsive walker.
2) Now

roll

again if the townie is not a compulsive walker. 1/3 chance of being a hider, 2/3 chance of being a tracker.

*cough*

thanks for the spelling editing. But what do you think of the balance of it?

[BloodCovenent]

Delayed Reaction

12 Players:

3 Mafia Bombers
1 Explosives Expert
1 Explosives Expert's Understudy
7 Vanilla Townies

Orto, what if you made it 3 Suicide Mafia bombers.

So, if they wanted to detonate, they had to kill one of themselves to set the explosives off.

[nhammen]

I haven't seen any open setups with an SK, so I propose

F11 + SK

Take the standard F11 setup and add a serial killer. Add x townies to counteract the additional nightkill.
Questions:
What is the best value of x?
Is the SK NK immune?
Is the SK roleblock immune?
Is the SK investigation immune?
Is the SKs kill doctor immune?
Should the SKs immunities depend on what other roles are in the setup? Thus the SK could have the same info as the mafia.


Also, I hope that x is 2 or less, so that I can mod this myself (I will be putting my name on the mini list as soon as my 3 months are up... a week and a half left!)

[nhammen]

Well, now I have more time to look at this, so how do people normally calculate expected values? What do you do to account for claims? Counter-claims? Also, 5 days until I can enter the mini queue!!

[BridgesAndBaloons]

Delayed Reaction

12 Players:

3 Mafia Bombers
1 Explosives Expert
1 Explosives Expert's Understudy
7 Vanilla Townies

Orto, what if you made it 3 Suicide Mafia bombers.

So, if they wanted to detonate, they had to kill one of themselves to set the explosives off.

No, this makes it much harder for mafia to win

and

impossible to win in a 1mafia 2townie scenario. (town just nolynches each turn).

It's more balanced as it was before.

[nhammen]

Also, 5 days until I can enter the mini queue!!

OMG I FAIL! I could join a month ago! I added 4 months instead of 3. Must get this setup completed now.

[Empking]

Reaction which is Delayed

3 Mafia (win scorched Earth)

9 Townies

Each night the mafia can either plant a bomb or sacrifice a member to blow up th bombs.

[BridgesAndBaloons]

3 Mafia (win scorched Earth)

9 Townies

Each night the mafia can either plant a bomb or sacrifice a member to blow up th bombs.

No, this makes it much harder for mafia to win

and

impossible to win in a 1mafia 2townie scenario. (town just nolynches each turn).

It's more balanced as it was before.