[Setup] Myrmica sabuleti

[Isis]

Let the record show if this setup isn't good, other people should make Myrmica sabuleti themed setups and I will probably make more of them. Their story is so tragic and horrifying

3

Caterpillars

6

Worker Ants

Nightless
Arrange the playerlist in a circle.
Standard elimination is not an action that can be taken. Instead, one of two actions can be taken repeatedly. Droning cannot be selected if a successful droning would leave all living player exhausted.:

• Droning : A majority vote on two unexhausted players that are equidistant from a third player. If those two players are both caterpillars, the caterpillars immediately win the game. In all other cases, the two selected players become "exhausted" and the third player is flipped (becoming a drone or picking a fight and losing). Flipped players are removed from the circle (exhausted ones aren't).
  
• Queening : A majority vote on one unexhausted player. If that player is an ant, and the two players in the next two clockwise position are ants, they become a queen and the ants win the game. If that player is a caterpillar or any of the players in the next two clockwise positions are caterpillars, a caterpillar becomes a false queen and the large blue butterflies win the game.

Hee hee, I got the colors backwards because I'm .

[Something_Smart]

Reading about this species like

If the mimicry is not perfect and the ants become suspicious, death is highly likely.

I didn't know this was Among Us

Anyway now to actually look at the setup.

[Something_Smart]

Seems pretty scumsided. You only get one or two kills before you have to pick a coalition, probably only one since I think if you do two it's unlikely that a winning coalition even exists. And then, if you hit scum or the arrangement is lucky, you might have two winning coalitions out of six, but you probably only have one.

[Isis]

Seems pretty scumsided. You only get one or two kills before you have to pick a coalition, probably only one since I think if you do two it's unlikely that a winning coalition even exists. And then, if you hit scum or the arrangement is lucky, you might have two winning coalitions out of six, but you probably only have one.

either you're miscounting or i am, in my head I imagined a lot of winning coalitions existing after 2 or 3 flips.

Let me actually work through an example

STSTTTSTT
misflip player 5
STSttSTT
scumflip player 3
STttsTt

If clockwise means right, there's one winning coalition, and if it means left there just isn't one. Ok, yes, definitely not what I want.

Hmmm

[Isis]

I think there are lots of knobs that could be turned to get this to work, but I'm not sure which ones.

That's not there definitely exists a balanced form of the idea, that's not necessarily true
Just, there are lots of changes I wouldn't view as killing the conceit.

[Something_Smart]

Well, the most obvious thing to change is the faction ratio. How would this look at 7:2?

[Isis]

Well, the most obvious thing to change is the faction ratio. How would this look at 7:2?

most of my motivation for finding a way for this to be a 6:3 rather than 7:2 is how there's a drastically lower probability of triggering the instant victory condition if there's only two scum. By default I cringe at the idea of a 7:2 nightless but it's possible these mechanics are so brutal towards town that it averages out to balanced.

I guess I could buff the loss condition to keep it relevant, make it trigger if either dronifier is scum instead of both? That seems too harsh.

Maybe this is just a good 7:2, the interestingness would move out of the drone instant loss mechanic and into the positional coalition mechanic, which I think is a decent conceit

[Isis]

TTSTTTSTT
TTSttSTT
tTsttTT

Working through this example makes me question the design choice of requiring the queen selection to be unexhausted. It's maybe just good design to say, that person you trusted enough to help with an execute d1 or d2, you categorically can't use them to try to build a coaliton

because in this example it seems to actually reduce the chance of a losing coalition with an exhausted townread scum
because