Size: 14 players (5 mafia goons, 9 vanilla townies).
Mafia can converse in private at all times.D1 lynch works normally. With 14 players, it's 8 to lynch. But this is a crucial lynch as the outcome determines what happens next. If there is a no lynch, mafia choose someone to nightkill N1. Otherwise, it's nightless.
Starting from D2, each day mafia set up a duel between one of their members and a town player. The same player on either side cannot be chosen twice. During each duel, the only players that can be voted for are the two duelers. The duelers can't vote. The duels are always between one town player and one scum player.
Anytime a scum player is lynched, the townie who won the duel is confirmed town by the mod and made into a tree stump who can offer opinions but not vote. When a town is lynched, the winning scum is confirmed scum and can continue posting in the mafia private thread but is not allowed to post in the main thread (to prevent trolling spam). The losing players are dead and can't post in any capacity in the game. No lynch at any point counts as a scum win of that duel.
Here are the two gamestates that the game can possibly go into:
Gamestate #1: Mafia is lynched D1
This leaves 4 mafia, 9 town - total 13. All four mafia each need to duel a town player. Town need to lynch 2/4 right to win. Mafia need 3/4 mislynches to win.
Spoiler: Test cases
Gamestate #2: Town is lynched D1
(or there is a no lynch and a nightkill)This leaves 5 mafia, 8 town - total 13. The mafia can choose which four of their members are going to duel. Town need to lynch 3/4 right to win. Mafia only need 2/4 mislynches to win.
Spoiler: Test cases
On the whole including the D1 lynch, it looks like town need to lynch 3 scum to win, scum need to mislynch 3 town to win. But a D1 scumlynch heavily advantages the town and a D1 mislynch heavily advantages the mafia. Based on that, there can be a lot of scumhunting going on given the mafia have a ton of motivation to push a mislynch.
The outcome pretty much comes down to who can win these 1v1s. I think having a 50% chance of lynching scum in each duel compensates town for having fewer mislynches in hand than normal - typically I've seen it as one more mislynch than the number of scum. There's also the fact that regardless of whether the town mislynches or lynches scum, they have confirmed scum after every duel to look for interactive tells although lack of wagons might hamper that a bit.
One concern I have is that it's rather unlikely to lynch scum D1 unless they bus. Getting 8/9 town players to agree on a lynch would be quite difficult so in most cases, you are looking at gamestate #2 which could lead to a pretty quick town loss. But the large number of scum players mean a lot of associative-tell hunting. The second concern is in the test scenario of gamestate #1. When the last scum duels, everybody but the duelers is confirmed town. That would lead to an interesting interaction.
Potential changes I'm looking at is possibly including an Innocent Child to increase the chances of a scum lynch D1. At a minimum, there'll be four townies that'll never be in a duel. Potentially, the strongest, most obv-town players. Using an IC would require the scum to duel a stronger player. Alternatively, I could change the D1 mechanics so if town is lynched, they don't die but instead become an IC and town gets another shot for their D1 lynch. This way the IC is the scummiest townie as opposed to randomly chosen by the mod which should reduce swing.
Something I've seen with other setups and on the wiki is this concept called EV which I don't fully understand and presumably is a tool to balance games. Perhaps someone in the know can educate me on how it works and how I can apply it here. Also, general comments and feedback are very welcome.