Machina Mafia (Game over!)

[DiamondSentinel]

I just realized that sounded really emo or somethin like that.

That was more just like, "I doubt he'd want to hydra with me because I'm far too careless with my words."

[Voidedmafia]

imo, I'd say you need someone who can help you slip through the radar. You're already a smaller character (as in you don't have a grand impact on the game like people like Titus and LLD do), but not small enough to go unnoticed. If you're going to play that type of game, then you need to be completely unnoticed. (plz tell me this is good advice)

That sounds more like a scumpartner than a hydra partner, but I get your point.

Besides, I don't think I could take being a big-impact guy, anyways.

[Marquis]

i need someone who can articulate my ~feelings~

[Netherspite]

@Wisdom

Just read the dead PT.
I actually DID re-read your D1 and found that you were pushing LLD.
That was what cemented my scumread on her.

Also her reaction to the mod error with the watching result was very scummy when I thought about that.
It was scum caught for the wrong reasons.

When I was going to sleep yesterday I really expected Titus to wait and not quickhammer. I was going to look whether LLD slipped anything that only been known in the hood + to point at you scumreading her.
Not that Titus would change her mind but well...

As for me being scummy during the first game days... Didn't you see my play before? I'm often apathetic early in the game and look scummy because of that.

[Ranger]

Game should be called LLD and the 3 lurkers.

Oi, I didn't lurk. ika did, but I was active up to near my lynch at which point it was more beneficial to lurk to see which way the wind was blowing: onto a mislynch, or onto me.

i think ranger did a good job of hanging in there even when things were looking really bad. i respect that.

<3
Was kinda disappointed, though. This scumgame was actually

really

different from my Mafiaception scumplay,

and

my Blitz 7 scumplay,

and

my Blitz 1 scumplay. It's probably the closest scum game I have to my town game, but there were players reading ME, not ika, *ME* as scum, so I failed there.

Yeah, Ranger never gave up. It's admirable.

Technically, you could say self-hammering was giving up? That was still me, not ika as many had assumed. It killed any chance at a mislynch. Of course, I was hoping to have a short twilight, but apparently I timed it wrong. :(

[Titus]

Tbh, I wasn't really reading you but just trying to limit calling you scum so loudly that ppl got annoyed. Ika was the issue, not you. *hug*

[Ranger]

I do think hugs are what this post-game needs the most of.

[Titus]

*double hugs*

[Wisdom]

As for me being scummy during the first game days... Didn't you see my play before? I'm often apathetic early in the game and look scummy because of that.

Yeah, I know. If I was in the game maybe I'd get rid of my scumread on you through interacting with you. It's different when I'm just watching.

[Tammy]

Tammy, I never did get a chance to completely thank you for this.

Thank you so much. I needed to hear this kind of thing after that game and it meant a lot.

You're welcome. I meant it!

Great job there at the end. Congratulations!

[Tammy]

So, that was an end game chat that happened.

Good game scum. Congratulations!

Thank you for running it Kagami. I still can't believe we forgot to send in a night action night three. We had been discussing who to send in, but were both really busy and just forgot to do it. :/

The game was fun at times, but also a bit frustrating.

Sorry for suspecting you nether! To be fair though, I think I'd have you as town the day after we died.

Sorry for suspecting you too marquis, but at least I turned that one around early enough. I still think it's funny that people get so incredulous when I change my mind on a strongly felt read based on one post.

It was fun playing with you again anti; I just wish you hadn't died so soon!

Titus - I think one of the biggest issues this game is that you didn't really listen. You say that you want town to work together and that's one of your strengths, and I think that's a really good thing, because I'm a firm believer that the best way town has to win is if they find each other and find a way to work together. Take mafiaception for example; I think we did a really good job of doing that and of listening to each other's reads. But in many instances, it feels like what you mean when you say you want town to work together is that you want town to do what you want them to do, and that's not how this game works. Take for instance your reaction to our read on Snarky and our reasoning. We and Antihero gave a really valid reason for our read there, but it ran counter to yours so you dismissed it with wifom or coaching. Any argument can be dismissed with this, but you have to look at how likely it would be for that to occur. The coaching argument is rarely a good one and almost never happens in the way that people argue it does.

Wifom really only applies to two situations that are just as likely to happen as the other, not oh scum could do that too, thus wifom often gets overused as a reason to discount a valid argument. Working with someone means listening to what they have to say, and if you aren't as good at the behavioral stuff as you say you aren't, then when someone who is good at the behavioral stuff is trying to explain something then maybe don't just dismiss it immediately?

You looked really super town though. I think at lylo you didn't ask yourself why you were there. You thought you were going to die early because you had the neighborhood and could coordinate. If you're not dying when you thin you should, you should always ask yourself why.

Wisdom - I'm so super happy that I finally called you town and you not be scum!

It was fun for the most part, and I look forward to playing with you guys again when I have time for mafia!

[Wisdom]

Wisdom - I'm so super happy that I finally called you town and you not be scum!

Heh. I think it's the first time you play with town-me, after all.

[Vampirate]

Game should be called LLD and the 3 lurkers.

Oi, I didn't lurk. ika did, but I was active up to near my lynch at which point it was more beneficial to lurk to see which way the wind was blowing: onto a mislynch, or onto me.

Sorry, the thing I remembered about your slot was Ika lurking and when the pressure came on your slot you had a real big burst of activity. That's what I remembered about it anyways, I could be wrong. I envied your exit though, you went out with a bang and no regrets.

[Kagami]

I slept through most of the discussion last night, but since it's already there, I'm not going to lock the thread unless it continues.

[Kagami]

Alright, mod-talky time.

Roles

Town

6 Receivers
1 Vengeance Emitter
1 Rolestop Emitter
1 Neighborhood Emitter
1 Alignment Sensor
1 Tracking Sensor
1 Role Sensor
1 Grand Machinist

Scum

3 Receivers
1 Watching Sensor

As rolled, this was probably one of the best versions of the setup for scum, but I'll talk about balance later.

Setup philosophy

The trick to success in this setup is for town to somehow get their receivers to target the right people, without alerting the scumteam to the identity their powerful roles (including the most powerful one, the Grand Machinist). Essentially, it was a game of town coordinating well without scum being able to sabotage it. Unfortunately, things didn't play out very well for town in that regard. None of the powerful sensor roles were discovered until after the machinist was outed, with the result that the scum could have prevented town from getting a single cop investigation, and succeeding in holding town to only getting one cop investigation and one track.

Originally I had considered a fourth archetype, an Applicator, who simply targeted a player with some effect and that player got it. I decided against it, since I wanted the possibilities of the setup to be somewhat limited. As soon as an applicator exists, pretty much anything is possible, and the design immediately loses its uniqueness and elegance.

I've been debating whether I want to make another machina-like setup (probably a Mini), but despite the relative normalcy of the effects included in the game, the setup might be too mechanically heavy. Too many players were confused about how things worked for too long for it to work out in a smaller setting.

Notes on Roles:

The Grand Machinist

: This was pretty much necessary to prevent the game from simply being a scum wash if they find and kill the good sensors early on, which is highly probably since most of the time they're going to have 2-3 rolecops in addition to the nightkill. He originally didn't have a vig, but rather turned non-receivers into receivers. FG felt there weren't enough kills, and I agreed, so he became a vig for non-receivers. With an infinite backup-izer, though, it became possible that the scum would be in the position of having to hunt down the Alignment Sensor over and over, while town is getting investigations from them all the while. I gave scum the Roleblock on their kill so that they would never be locked down in this way.

Rolestop Emitter

: In practice, this was a slightly-worse Protection Emitter. Obviously, getting "blocked" on an investigation is just as good as a guilty once he's outed. The Rolestop emitter had two major roles in the setup. Firstly, I expected him to claim early. Since he's also the most "complicated" role in the setup, I had hoped that discussion surrounding the claim would help everyone properly understand how things worked. That sort of happened on Day 2, but Peregrine still hadn't sorted things out, leading to his tragic demise. The other purpose of this role was as a fairly weak deterrent to a receiver-elimination scum strategy. This, unfortunately, was probably the most boring role to have.

Vengeance Emitter

: I was a little sad that this was never used. This was also a late addition, and imo, a very fun one. I had intended this to work as a receiver-vig and as another catalyst for town organization. The vengeance emitter could compel scummy receivers to visit him, and then lynch them the next day while forcing another scummy player to make the hammer. If town failed to organize well, then scum could theoretically use this for an extra kill.

Neighborhood Emitter

: This was a fun role. Town could use it instead of trying to organize in the main thread, but at the price of losing receiver shots for a Night. If infiltrated by scum, they immediately learn the roles of several other players, helping them narrow down who they should kill, while also being able to much with organization. Originally, the neighborhood emitter wasn't part of the hood, but I changed it just before setup generation because I decided it would be un-fun if left that way.

Alignment Sensor

: The primary investigator. Pretty straightforward role. Since it's compulsive, it doesn't really matter too much which alignment gets it, unless scum can find and eliminate the GM before their Alignment Sensor is outed.

Watching Sensor

: Watchers are generally very strong, but that's not really so in this setup. Almost any reasonable NK target is going to have multiple visitors including the Watching Sensor himself. In general, town would learn there's scum among a set of 3-ish players on a watcher guilty. If scum can't ensure that one of the visitors is "supposed" to have visited the target, they messed up anyway.

Tracking Sensor

: Also pretty weak here, since a false positive is a reasonably likely results unless scum are sending people to kill who should be visiting their victims already.

Role Sensor

: The only not-so-fun role other than rolestop emitter, imo. Generally worse than a receiver. This was included in part because I didn't want town to have too many receivers, and to give the GM another early vig target.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

Rolesensor wasn't that bad for me!

[DiamondSentinel]

Set-up wise, town was pretty screwed here. Watcher sensor, which could potentially find scum pool, was taken by scum. Alignment sensor was killed N1, and then wasn't used until way late in the game. That was a bad move, in hindsight.

[Wisdom]

Alignment sensor was killed N3, not N1.

I wish we had a better GM though. Not a single dayvig after staying alive for so long was pathetic.

[Netherspite]

GM was terrible, I agree on that

[Kagami]

on balance

Ok, so firstly, is the setup balanced? Before rolling for alignment, I think it's probably somewhat townsided. I think this particular instantiation (scum gets 3 receivers and 1 watch sensor) is actually pretty even, despite the objections people are raising.

What actually happened

Let's take a look at how the setup actually played out. LLD had a very difficult time winning, which she attributes in part to not having enough tools to deal with town power.

So what was this overwhelming town power? Town had an IC she had to kill because he could backup-ize and vig people. Town had an Alignment Sensor who got a single investigation off throughout the entire game. Town had a tracker who gave town a single Track result (on titus). Town had a neighborhood that had been infiltrated by scum.

Is a 4-13 game with an IC, and one-shot Loud Cop, and one-shot Loud Tracker, and a neighborhood that starts with a scummo in it townsided? No, in fact, it would be incredibly scumsided. Both investigations would have to get positives on scum to bring the game to a 2-11 mountainous (which is still extremely scumsided).

That LLD had a challenging game has nothing to do with roles, it's that she was a one-man scumteam. Games are not supposed to be balanced such that a single scum should have a 50% shot of winning through their own prowess, while the rest of their team does nothing.

An aside on NK choices

LLD has said in post-game discussion that she's good at picking NK targets, which people are agreeing on. This is actually a pretty critical thing to talk about at a theoretical level.

What does it mean for a setup to be balanced? It means that if all the players are equally skilled, I should not be able to guess which team is going to win with accuracy above chance. As a corollary to this, the scum's NK decisions in the world of balance theory are dictated by which roles are best to eliminate (since the players behind them are equally skilled).

So what should happen if the scumteam chooses

not

to kill important roles, instead choosing individuals players who they feel are more skilled? What should happen is that the roles of the town should start to feel imbalanced, because at that point they are. The scumteam has opted to enter a gamestate that is more townsided from a role standpoint in exchange for a gamestate that benefits them from a player-skill standpoint.

LLD did this numerous times. In the end, she won despite poorly performing partners, so it's quite possible she made the correct decision. It is, however, absolutely no surprise that she could have lost to roles, since she had no respect for the role-based balance of the game in making many of her kill choices.

From an role-killing perspective: Imperium was a better kill N1 than Wisdom, Imperium had softed sensor and is even a pretty great kill from a skill standpoint. Antihero was another skill-kill, and he had a role that was

known

to be doing absolutely nothing for town. Firebringer's role, the most powerful role in the game, was given very little respect despite the fact that it could have swung the game against LLD at numerous points. He was ignored for skill-based reasons (and, I think, LLD also underestimated the power of his role). Firebringer could have easily been killed instead of Imperium, even if the scumteam didn't believe he was GM going into N2.

[Kagami]

Alignment sensor was killed N3, not N1.

I wish we had a better GM though. Not a single dayvig after staying alive for so long was pathetic.

Alignment sensor is VT if no one visits him!

[Kagami]

Rolesensor wasn't that bad for me!

It was ~great~ for you, mostly because Peregrine screwed up.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

Alignment sensor was killed N3, not N1.

I wish we had a better GM though. Not a single dayvig after staying alive for so long was pathetic.

Yeah except you didn't want him to day vig.

He was gonna dayvig Marquis (submitted too late) the day PV was lynched.

Which would have meant I only needed 1 more mislynch to win, which makes this game sort of trivial at that point.

[Lady Lambdadelta]

Rolesensor wasn't that bad for me!

It was ~great~ for you, mostly because Peregrine screwed up.

I mean in the end it didn't matter, but, we did find out Nacho was a tracker through my role too.

[Kagami]

You could have done that as well or better as a receiver, though.

I think it was a mistake to receive from players whose role you already knew (such as SDBs). There is power in exploring, especially with an alignment sensor on the loose (and you guys should have probably speculated the likely existence of that role).