Can this ever work in town's favor?

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Post Post #2 (isolation #0) » Tue Sep 04, 2018 1:24 pm

Post by mastina »

The strategy I believe is called hypoclaiming and is common offsite.
There are merits to it, but there are also drawbacks.

While it is a decent way to prevent scum from, in advance, figuring out night actions, the tradeoff is that, so much as after a single night, it makes it
much, much easier
for them to PR hunt. In other words, it has an upside for a single night, but past that night it will cause the town PRs to be manipulated and destroyed by the scum in record time.

The reason for this is, that if you know you are scum, and you know who else is scum, and you know who every player claims they targeted, even without them claiming the type of PR, you instantly are positioned such that based off of the town players' reactions come start of D2 (especially in comparison to D1!), they are revealing to you what they are and are not.

In particular, the latter is devastating on the town. You might think scum knowing what you
aren't
even if they don't know what you are isn't as bad as them knowing what you are, but the scum have more information than the town to start with (they know what roles THEY hold, and off of what roles THEY hold can reasonably setup spec what the town has fairly reliably) so knowing what you aren't helps them narrow in on what people ARE.
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Post Post #10 (isolation #1) » Wed Sep 12, 2018 9:14 am

Post by mastina »

In post 9, callforjudgement wrote:Oh, I like the "hypotarget for each role" method. It'd be useful for scumhunting even beyond trying to make fakeclaiming harder, in that it'd give you a good view of people's reads.

One issue is that it might make it easier for scum to determine which players are least likely to be lynched (to aim the kill), but they can often do that anyway, especially in smaller games, and if the game does have a doctor they have to trade off between killing a universally townread player and running into the doctor.
The problem with hypoclaiming each role is that the strategy is only advantageous in a known setup, beit Open or Semiopen.

In a closed, even a Normal, the original problem still exists. Town doesn't know what roles/modifiers (the latter is especially important) are in the game, and it's literally impossible to list them all because there are millions of role combinations possible even on just the whitelist, with more added each time the list is expanded.

Neglecting to mention a specific detail, or mentioning a detail you shouldn't know, gives info on roles to the scum, who start with a better idea of what to look for.
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Post Post #12 (isolation #2) » Thu Sep 13, 2018 6:57 am

Post by mastina »

In post 11, callforjudgement wrote:You can still break it down by category, "I think the best target for an investigative role would be A, for a protective role B, for a killing role C". If you act against that you'll get some weird looks at massclaim, and it helps clarify what your current views on the setup are.
Still runs into problems. What does a JOAT with a Cop, Doc, and Fruit Vend say?
How do you track all types of role?
If you are X-shot or Nonconsecutive, how do you tell people you're holstering without giving away that you're one of those two?

What if the scum have an Even-night role and you claim actions they're pretty sure would require you to be a role not suited for the setup? What if they have a N3 roleblocker? By claiming actions, you give away knowledge that they can use to pin PRS down.

This is not even close to a complete list. Closed games can't have it work without the associated downsides.
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Post Post #13 (isolation #3) » Thu Sep 13, 2018 7:57 am

Post by mastina »

Also: weak doctors are both a protective and an investigative. How do you tell the town which you are using it as?

Similarly so for jailkeeper. It's both a protective and a blocker. (Well, technically speaking, per Normal guidelines, its role type is "jailkeeper"; it has its own classification. But to MOST people, its role type would be both protective and blocking.) How do you tell the town if you are using it as a protect or a block?

Not all investigatives have the same targets. Sure, a tracker's target is similar enough to a cop, but what about a voyeur? Watcher? Both are investigatives, but have an entirely different optimal target pool. Vanilla Cops, too.

All have vastly different utility in spite of all being investigatives. So how do you not give away which you are with a target claim?

And back to a Joat, what do you do if all your powers are different investigatives? (Say, Voyeur/Watcher/Vanilla Cop.)

Like I said, endless number of examples; a complete list is impossible.
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Post Post #20 (isolation #4) » Wed Oct 17, 2018 2:50 pm

Post by mastina »

In post 19, shortaru wrote:Would that be good town utility?
The idea has potential. Newbies are a bit tricky on strategies and whether they work tho.
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