[CHALLENGE] September Challenge

[mith]

Question: would Miller Neighborizer count as a modified role or a combination role?

[mith]

So, I don't love the balance here really, but this is the idea I was toying with that prompted the question:

2 of 2 of 4

Setup is one of the following, with equal probability:

• Mafia Godfather, Mafia Role Cop, Town Cop, Town Vanilla Cop, 5x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Role Cop, Mafia Goon, Town Cop, Town Vanilla Cop, 5x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Godfather, Mafia Encryptor, Town Cop, Town Miller Neighborizer, 5x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Role Cop, Mafia Encryptor, Town Cop, Town Miller Neighborizer, 5x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Godfather, Mafia Encryptor, Town Cop, 6x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Role Cop, Mafia Goon, Town Cop, 6x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Role Cop, Mafia Encryptor, Town Vanilla Cop, Town Miller Neighborizer, 5x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Encryptor, Mafia Goon, Town Vanilla Cop, Town Miller Neighborizer, 5x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Godfather, Mafia Role Cop, Town Vanilla Cop, 6x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Godfather, Mafia Goon, Town Vanilla Cop, 6x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Godfather, Mafia Goon, Town Miller Neighborizer, 6x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Encryptor, Mafia Goon, Town Miller Neighborizer, 6x Vanilla Town

Mafia is 2 of Godfather, Role Cop, Encryptor, Goon
Town is 5 VT + 2 of Cop, Vanilla Cop, Miller Neighborizer, VT

Each combination of Mafia roles appears twice, and each combination of Town roles appears twice - the allowed combinations are (very roughly) chosen based on the number of investigators, the number of false negatives and positives for those investigators, and whether scum have daytalk and/or town has a neighborhood.

Each individual role (other than VT) appears in half of the setups, so town power roles don't have a lot of setup knowledge going in, while scum teams have it narrowed down to two possibilities and can possibly claim a power role without getting countered.

[mith]

Assuming the setups that don't have encrpytors just have general daytalk, because otherwise half of these don't meet the requirements.

Jingle - Vig setup is problematic, both because it is the strongest (and possibly swingiest) role and because it would be immediately obvious that it was in the setup in the majority of setups. I would expect the setup with 6 VTs to be a bit scumsided? But otherwise the others are probably fine.

mith - As I said, I don't love the balance, though I doubt any of them are wildly scum- or town-sided. Just an incomplete idea. ~shrug~

NK15 - That is a ton of subsetups. I'm not entirely clear what a Town Ninja or Town Encryptor is supposed to do? And the number of repeats suggests the columns could be reduced to about 4 without losing anything. Meh overall.

OkaPoka - Pretty simple concept; my guess without running the numbers is that this is slightly townsided, but not badly so.

popsofctown - [edit]Ok, now that I'm not confusing roles... this is probably ok? It's a bit weaker than a Cop of course, but with the backup.

Something_Smart - Meh on the interaction between Ascetic and the investigatives. I think this would be improved by either using only the middle two setups (which is basically Carbon-14 but with false positives for the investigators on each other), or replacing the Ascetic with a VT. Or perhaps have a pair of setups allowing the possibility for a role that prevents the target from using non-kill abilities (______ is to Ascetic as Roleblocker is to Rolestopper). This should be a thing anyway.

student - Parity problems, and I disagree on mass-claiming as a viable option. I would no lynch after mass claim. Scum have three options for where to put the Mafia Doctor. If they put it with the Gunsmiths, neither group can investigate the other successfully, but a cycle investigation within each group would effectively make them a pair of masons (with investigations) and the Gunsmiths can investigate the VTs. If they put it with the Vanilla Cops, a cross investigation may reveal both scum in those groups immediately. And if they put it with the VTs, the Vanilla Cops can still investigate the Gunsmiths, while the Gunsmiths can investigate the VTs. I suspect the play is for town (most of the time, see below) to have the Gunsmiths investigate in a cycle and the Vanilla Cops to investigate the Gunsmiths. This is guaranteed to either reveal the fake Gunsmith or pair the fake Gunsmith and fake Vanilla Cop (worse?), so probably scum's best play is to put the Doc with the Vanilla Cops, kill one of the Gunsmiths N1, and kill the other N2 after the fake is lynched. That leaves a (1:2)/(1:5) census game, with an EV of 45%... but that's ignoring that if the scum will put the Doc with the Vanilla Cops 100% of the time, the Gunsmiths could instead be tasked with investigating the Vanilla Cops and bump the EV substantially above 50%, so there is a Nash Equilibrium to be found between the strategies. All that said, I wouldn't say this is a bad setup, a not-fun setup, or an imbalanced setup - it's just one that is likely susceptible to massclaim. (I suppose it's also possible that you could do a partial massclaim D1, force the investigators to investigate in a cycle, and leave the scum in the dark about which real investigators have which role. Not sure you can get more info this way, especially with the nightkill, but maybe? I'm now dreaming up strategies involving an initial partial claim on day 2 that looks like "either I am a Gunsmith that got a Gun result, or a Vanilla Cop that got a Vanilla result" and then full-claiming in reverse order.)

TemporalLich - The balance here probably isn't that bad. 3:8 with a Vig has an EV around 36% (with some assumptions, but in that ball-park); the Rolecop helps the scum some, the Neighborizer helps the town some. Swingy, but probably not horrible.


pops
OkaPoka
TemporalLich
student
Something_Smart
mith
Jingle
NK15

[mith]

Aha, I'm thinking of the old Switch role. Will edit above.

[mith]

I would expect the setup with 6 VTs to be a bit scumsided?.

Observed winrate of jk 9er in m6 was 53%

~shrug~ Not a large enough sample to rule out it being "a bit scumsided". I'd be curious how many of those wins had the JK actually playing a significant role - a quick check of the first Matrix 6 Newbie shows that it had that setup, the JK died N1 after a whopping 10 posts D1, and then town won anyway with back-to-back LyLo success.

(FWIW, the Cop setup was 42% in the same sample. I'd expect Cop to be a bit stronger, but I tend to devalue blocked kills in most cases, so.)

Anyway, it's probably fine, just my very quick thoughts on it.

[mith]

As far as #6, I’m open to advice. It’s the only setup with a vig. The cop has a false guilty and a false inno and mafia has a doctor to interact with the vig. I agree that it’s git the most going on, but I don’t think it has too much for a newbie and I’d like to hear the why from people who do.

My main issue with it is that it's out of place in the setup overall. It is very likely that after N1 everyone is going to know what setup they are in, the other five setups have protective roles vs. a killing role here, etc.

As far as balance, 2:7 just with a Vig is townsided, and the Mafia Doctor probably doesn't give enough compensation - best play is almost certainly to always protect the Goon, so the Vig failing to kill is almost as good as an investigation (there is the possibility of mindgames, with scum protecting a townie they think the Vig will kill, but this makes it twice as likely one of them will die). Then you add a Gunsmith on top of that, and the Gunsmith isn't quite as hampered by the potential false guilty because of the likelihood the Vig will be revealed (either by a second kill or by trying to shoot the protected Goon and coming out immediately with the result).

[mith]

What happens if they target each other? Magical bouncing bullets?

[mith]

I kinda like the role idea though. That's two reverse roles we need names for now.

[mith]

also technically does not meet guidelines because GF is not normal

In my great and unmatched wisdom, I have absolute power to determine what is normal.