When to bus!

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When to bus!

Post Post #0 (ISO) » Wed Aug 02, 2017 11:45 pm

Post by RadiantCowbells »

I'm tired of everyone* bashing busing so I wrote an article about it.

Hope that someone finds it interesting or informative or entertaining!
Last edited by RadiantCowbells on Thu Aug 03, 2017 12:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
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Post Post #1 (ISO) » Thu Aug 03, 2017 12:19 am

Post by gigabyteTroubadour »

yeah i agree
i no longer strictly go by they/them and honestly prefer she/her but they/them's fine if you're used to it i guess

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Post Post #2 (ISO) » Thu Aug 03, 2017 4:13 am

Post by Lycanfire »

i genuinely think people that think about never bussing only believe it's a valid strategy because they think if enough town lynches go through, they can place town morale in the toilet and walk away with a free win.

in a perfect scumgame you correctly pull the wool at every opportunity and the town never stands a chance, but sometimes games suck. i think in
Darkest Dungeon
there was a good solid 15 pages before any member of the scumteam managed to post, or something stupid like that. we were completely blown out of the water so i efforted extra hard to make one of the townier perceived people look like a scumfucker. then my teammates proceeded to be half a day behind (or in the case of the last night i was with slysly, seemingly 4 days behind...) i probably should have pushed harder than tldring the game and giving a ranked tierlist of who to push and reasons why, but i also assumed people saying they would post would post eventually. a universe without bussing in that game, and, god knows, i tried to lynch my partner so badly, would have only been achievable with a functioning team or if i shot varsoon instead of being an idiot.

i think you're underrating pine and mastina a bit though. both know the importance of going endgame. they're just messing with you.
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Post Post #3 (ISO) » Thu Aug 03, 2017 4:49 am

Post by Creature »

It's not about bussing for towncred, it's more about having reads others expect town!you to have, even if it means bussing your buddy or looking awkward for defending scum.
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Post Post #4 (ISO) » Thu Aug 03, 2017 4:59 am

Post by Lycanfire »

being overly conscious of your townplay is a good way to do nothing to further a scum wincon
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Post Post #5 (ISO) » Thu Aug 03, 2017 6:22 am

Post by RadiantCowbells »

well Stop Bussing! exists so I'm assuming it's at least a strongly held belief.
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
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Post Post #6 (ISO) » Thu Aug 03, 2017 9:18 am

Post by mastina »

My belief is actually commonly misrepresented.
My belief is not "no bussing, ever ever that is a big no-no".
My belief is that if you bus you need to gain more than you lose.
And that 90% of people who bus put absolutely no thought into that risk-reward analysis--and thus, shouldn't blindly bus.

The point of bussing is to secure the win. The point of bussing is to place the surviving scum in a situation where they have an almost assured victory. (Fuck a good bus doesn't even require scum to die. You can go hard enough on a scumbuddy and be voting them and it'll be something beyond distancing--a flat-out bus--but that doesn't mean the town actually lynches one of you.)
A bus which doesn't do that is a shitty bus.
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Post Post #7 (ISO) » Thu Aug 03, 2017 9:24 am

Post by Gamma Emerald »

I definitely executed the TvT bus method in open 688, when I picked up a strange statement from a buddy and went to town on it.
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Post Post #8 (ISO) » Thu Aug 03, 2017 10:18 am

Post by RadiantCowbells »

I did read the article! I think that Pine's position as a whole, as well as the position that people take away from your position on bussing, is never bus: which I find untenable as a style of play.
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
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Post Post #9 (ISO) » Thu Aug 03, 2017 9:09 pm

Post by Agent Sparkles »

That article echoes a lot of my own thoughts on the subject, especially the part about absolute no-bussing policies. You'd better hope your targets die before you in that case, because otherwise it just got that much easier for town to PoE the team.

Bussing is definitely risky and shouldn't just be done for the heck of it, but I don't know where the idea that it's inherently bad or anti-wincon comes from. Obviously in a game about manipulation people are going to make sacrifices to gain trust and confuse people. And you can't even pretend it's just harmful to scum because of the sheer number of towns that have fallen for it (most of them losing because of it).
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Post Post #10 (ISO) » Fri Aug 04, 2017 7:38 am

Post by Antihero »

In post 8, RadiantCowbells wrote:I did read the article! I think that Pine's position as a whole, as well as the position that people take away from your position on bussing, is never bus: which I find untenable as a style of play.
i think your issue is less w mastina than w people who take away the wrong message from mastina's "stop bussing!"

there's a difference between bussing to advance your win condition and needlessly drawing attention to a buddy's scummy behavior that otherwise would've gone unnoticed. i think mastina was arguing against the latter.
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Post Post #11 (ISO) » Fri Aug 04, 2017 8:04 am

Post by RadiantCowbells »

I'm not doing this to call out mastina fwiw.

I'm calling out Pine to an extent because I know his views are strictly -never bus-. I disagree with a lot of Mastina's play but that's not the point.

My point is that there's a lot of people who are knee jerk NEVER BUS and I think that's a bad way to play.
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
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Post Post #12 (ISO) » Fri Aug 04, 2017 9:01 am

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Post Post #13 (ISO) » Fri Aug 04, 2017 9:05 am

Post by Gamma Emerald »

YES
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Post Post #14 (ISO) » Fri Aug 04, 2017 2:29 pm

Post by LlamaFluff »

I think its far too complicated to fit into an article as its a very situationally dependent thing. Things like amount of players alive, what mafia roles are, size of game, if you have PR/VT reads, if certain roles are dead, who your partner is voting, what is the general read on you, etc... all things that come into play and can change what would be a good bus into something that loses the game quickly.

What IS forgotten too often though is the thought of "Who gains town points with partner flip." Some scum tend to forget that even if they gain a lot of town point, other people will at the same time. Buying a few days of town cred at the expense of a partner is not as worth it if you move other town people into the "prob town" group
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Post Post #15 (ISO) » Fri Aug 04, 2017 2:53 pm

Post by RadiantCowbells »

It's very hard to define good scum play in general outside of the context to which it belongs.
2019 stats: Town WR 76.7%, overall WR 81.667%, 1 scum defeat involving a major mod error in lylo vs 8 scum wins.
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Post Post #16 (ISO) » Sat Aug 05, 2017 4:54 pm

Post by Zachrulez »

Generally the art of bussing is looking like the cause of your partners wagon without actually being the cause. Generally you don't want to be the one causing your partners lynch as that tends to be a bad bus that loses you a member of your team for no good reason. Don't underestimate the town's ability to take the wrong path or your team's ability to influence them onto that wrong path.
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Post Post #17 (ISO) » Wed Aug 09, 2017 3:44 am

Post by TesXX »

RadiantCowbells wrote:I'm tired of everyone* bashing busing so I wrote an article about it.

Hope that someone finds it interesting or informative or entertaining!
I encourage everyone to read this article, whether you're a common hard busser, or an anti busser, or not sure if bussing is good or not.
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