mhsmith0's Large Normal Review

[Nexus]

Below is where I'm at for large normal pre-review. I'm pretty flexible on details, the big thing is no cops and I want to make sure it's reasonably balanced.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Normal guidelines faction powers
Date: Wed Sep 14, 2016 6:37 pm
From: mhsmith0
To: N

Like, I might do:

Mafia
Goon
1-shot elder
Roleblocker

Wolves
Defector (knows wolves, they don't know him)
1-shot bp
Odd night ninja, even night strongman

Town (12 total)
Vig
Vengeful
Doc (works on all kills)
Tracker (works on all actions)
Hider (standard mechanics, dies if visiting anti-town, not sure about defector)
1-shot bp
6 vts

If that's too much power for town or anti-town I can tweak, but I think it's about where I'd want it to be.

[mhsmith0]

I'm actually pretty flexible about specific power mix here, what I primarily want is a 12/3/3 game where one scum team has a traitor, and both scum teams have a little bit of nk protection, and I'll freely admit that I really don't know what the "right" mix of town power for that to work appropriately is.

For instance, turning vengeful into like a 1-shot strongman vig.
Or hider into some other reasonably useful role.
Or adding or tossing a town pr.
Etc.

[Firebringer]

[quote]Mafia
Goon
1-shot elder
Roleblocker

Wolves
Defector (knows wolves, they don't know him)
1-shot bp
Odd night ninja, even night strongman

Town (12 total)
Vig
Vengeful
Doc (works on all kills)
Tracker (works on all actions)
Hider (standard mechanics, dies if visiting anti-town, not sure about defector)
1-shot bp
6 vts[//quote]
First of, I think number wise this hugely favors scum already. 33% of the players are scum. Thats too much.

Defector needs to be renamed traitor. Does he join werewolves if attacked? Are scum informed of them?

Full role blocker for scum is too powerful, I would limit shots.

Town roles are kind of meh (in power terms).
I believe hider does die if it targets a traitor, ill check that again.

Just reminder that Doc can't heal through a strongman and Tracker can't see a ninja actions at all.

I think half of these power roles are pretty weak to give to town in this circumstances.
Hider is relatively weak, BP is weak (especially 1 shot)

Full vigil probably needs a nerf too.

[Firebringer]

Whats an elder btw?

I would take off the defector/traitor btw.
Make this game 5 scum max.

[mhsmith0]

Notes

1) I think I'm gonna revise to just red mafia and blue mafia, and get rid of confusing werewolf terms (elder is werewolf kill proof fwiw)

2) 9/2/2 is standard for mini normal multiball, so I'd think 12/3/3 is about right for 18p multiball. Overall scum #s are higher in multiball than single ball since there's cross-killing IIRC. It's also pretty messy to balance a game of this size if scum factions are NOT equal size.

3) If town is overall under-powered (and I'm very curious what balance considerations are for this # of players), why does it make sense to nerf the vig?

4) traitor is non-recruitable, gets end-gamed if his teammates are killed. not sure about hider vs traitor though. If that's messy I can easily sub in a different role (or two, but that would mean >50% of town is PR, which I'd GUESS is too much)

5) I can nerf roleblocker to be odd night role blocker if that would help balance. First consideration IMO is balancing the two scum teams, then after that I'd want to balance town against them. My thought was roleblocker is much less powerful in mutilball compared to single ball but could be wrong.

[mhsmith0]

So let's say:

Red Mafia
Goon
1-shot elder
Roleblocker

Blue Mafia
Traitor (knows teammates, they don't know him)
1-shot bp
Odd night ninja, even night strongman

Town (12 total)
Vig
1-shot strongman vig
Doc (works on all kills)
Tracker (works on all actions)
Hider (standard mechanics, dies if visiting anti-town, not sure about traitor)
1-shot bp
6 vts

If hider is messy, I can do something else like jailkeeper, innocent child, etc. not doing cop though.

[Firebringer]

Whats a elder?

[mhsmith0]

Typo, should have been bp.

So let's say:

Red Mafia
Goon
1-shot bp
Roleblocker

Blue Mafia
Traitor (knows teammates, they don't know him)
1-shot bp
Odd night ninja, even night strongman

Town (12 total)
Vig
1-shot strongman vig
Doc (works on all kills)
Tracker (works on all actions)
Hider (standard mechanics, dies if visiting anti-town, not sure about traitor)
1-shot bp
6 vts

If hider is messy, I can do something else like jailkeeper, innocent child, etc. not doing cop though.

[Firebringer]

1) I think I'm gonna revise to just red mafia and blue mafia, and get rid of confusing werewolf terms (elder is werewolf kill proof fwiw)

2) 9/2/2 is standard for mini normal multiball, so I'd think 12/3/3 is about right for 18p multiball. Overall scum #s are higher in multiball than single ball since there's cross-killing IIRC. It's also pretty messy to balance a game of this size if scum factions are NOT equal size.

3) If town is overall under-powered (and I'm very curious what balance considerations are for this # of players), why does it make sense to nerf the vig?

4) traitor is non-recruitable, gets end-gamed if his teammates are killed. not sure about hider vs traitor though. If that's messy I can easily sub in a different role (or two, but that would mean >50% of town is PR, which I'd GUESS is too much)

5) I can nerf roleblocker to be odd night role blocker if that would help balance. First consideration IMO is balancing the two scum teams, then after that I'd want to balance town against them. My thought was roleblocker is much less powerful in mutilball compared to single ball but could be wrong.

1) I don't think "werewolf proof" is normal at all.

2)I still don't believe a 9/2/2 is really balanced in all honesty. I think it favors scum to high degree. Ill let someone else chime in here, but I don't think number wise it balances but ill have to do worst case analysis to see with this.

3) I meant to divide town power up more equally than having power up in just a few roles. One role having alot of power can be disastrous if that role died early on. A full vigi can be huge for town in some situations.

4) If you insist on those numbers I think thats an okay traitor.

5) I will have to relook at scum but in terms of multiball the most important thing for scum is survivability.

[Firebringer]

I think you should probably announce that Multiball when this goes into sign ups.

[Firebringer]

Red Mafia
Goon
1-shot bp
Roleblocker

Blue Mafia
Traitor (knows teammates, they don't know him)
1-shot bp
Odd night ninja, even night strongman

Changes id suggest here:
Goon
1 shot Bp

Odd Night Roleblocker

Blue Mafia

1 shot BP Traitor (Knows teammates, they don't know him)

1 shot BP

Even Night Strongman

I think this is more easier to balance against for town.

[Firebringer]

If you also want to keep the full vigi, it should probably be made macho.

[mhsmith0]

1) yeah so I'm just swapping to two color mafia factions and making terminology more normal. I'd just missed the elder the first time.

2) 9/2/2 setups are standard mini normal multiball. Though there's only like two such games run from 1401 on. I'm open to making it 19p instead of 18p, MAYBE even 20p if needed for balance.

3) interestingly, towns have done much better when power is concentrated on fewer more useful roles instead of multiple crappy roles.

4) I'm a bit flexible on town #s if needed. I do think 12/3/3 ought to be ok but 14/3/3 is something I'm willing to do if it is balanced correctly. I do like having traitor on one team, make sit more interesting. I'm inclined to not give the traitor a bp; that SHOULD be a potential point of weakness IMO.

5) could you clarify what you mean by "survivability" here?

6) yeah I'll announce multiball

7) I don't especially see why vig should be macho? Doc only stops one shot anyway, so if scum gang up there they can combine to kill him.

[mhsmith0]

Wrt vig, there's also strongman from one team and roleblocker from other. I feel like it's fine for town to have 1-2 strong roles without counters to them baked into their own design. If town kills roleblocker and strongman then they SHOULD potentially be able to press the advantage.

[mykonian]

I think we have a bit of an issue at first. I don't even know for sure if defector is doable in a normal, that has some sharp edges, but then you have a hider, elder and a vengeful, which also aren't whitelist, so right now this setup wouldn't be normal.

[mhsmith0]

@myko: I eliminated werewolf terminology, so where I am right now:

Red Mafia
Goon
1-shot bp
Roleblocker

Blue Mafia
Traitor (knows teammates, they don't know him - can't be recruited, endgamed if/when teammates die)
1-shot bp
Odd night ninja, even night strongman

Town (12 total)
Vig
1-shot strongman vig
Doc (works on all kills)
Tracker (works on all actions)
Hider (standard mechanics, dies if visiting anti-town, not sure about traitor)
1-shot bp
6 vts

And I'm pretty flexible on hider here.

[mhsmith0]

^doctor: stops 1 kill per night only, but works on any source of kills. Given that killers are mafia/vig this is less interesting than previously.

[mykonian]

and I forgot the ninja/strongman. That's not strictly normal either. So you are still at 3 roles. You reworded the defector, but the role is still the same as far as I can tell.

[Firebringer]

and I forgot the ninja/strongman. That's not strictly normal either. So you are still at 3 roles. You reworded the defector, but the role is still the same as far as I can tell.

I am pretty confident that versuon of traitor is allowed

[mhsmith0]

Traitor is normal given

is Mafia-aligned
knows the identities of all of the Mafia team
identity is not known by the Mafia team, although they should know a Traitor exists
cannot be recruited to join the rest of the Mafia team, and (unless Bulletproof) is killed if shot
is endgamed if all other Mafia are dead
gives a "guilty" result to Cops, an "innocent" result to Gunsmiths, and a "Traitor" result to Role Cops

right now only non normal variants are 1-shot strongman vig and the hider, so I think it fits. I'm also flexible about those two roles in particular; could do 2-shot vig instead of strongman for instance, maybe could do innocent child or role cop instead of hider if that's considered better.

I think my #1 priority is getting a sense of balance; if it's about right, then I can play with details, but if it's way off, then bigger changes will be needed.

[mykonian]

must have misread then. I'm not really up to snuff analysing anything today, but normality should be alright then.

As for rough sense of balance, 4 dead per cycle initially, that's 4 town kills before virtual mylo. The vig should do a decent bit of work for town here. I don't think the scum BP's are needed. Otherwise can't be too far off, I think?

[Firebringer]

Changes id suggest here:
Goon
1 shot Bp
Odd Night Roleblocker

Blue Mafia
1 shot BP Traitor (Knows teammates, they don't know him)
1 shot BP
Even Night Strongman

I think this is more easier to balance against for town.

I still think this is a good idea, unless you really want to give scum that much power.

[mhsmith0]

So that'd look like:

Red Mafia
Goon
1-shot bp
Odd night Roleblocker

Blue Mafia
1-shot bp Traitor (knows teammates, they don't know him - can't be recruited, endgamed if/when teammates die)
1-shot bp
Even night strongman

Town (12 total)
Vig
1-shot strongman vig
Doc (blocks one bullet per night)
Tracker
Hider (or possibly some other power like IC)
1-shot bp
6 vts

I'm a little bit concerned that blue mafia is UP compared to red, but the BP on the traitor does help with it. Overall there's enough weird stuff going on that town doesn't have an easy roadmap to victory through cheap PR investigations, but it's also potentially winnable at night with really good doc/vig/tracker actions. I'm open to adding another 1-2 VT's and/or swapping something for hider if you guys think that would improve the balance, but my gut says that we're at least close.

[Firebringer]

Perhaps replace Hider with Follower?
hmmmmm

[Firebringer]

Theres a lot of killing and bulletproof vests to make it hard to see how swingy it is going to be.
I wonder how this will go since essentially 4 people are set to be targets on night 1.

I should do a worst case scenario analysis.