3/2/1 after a circleprotect wouldn't actually be that bad for Town from an EV point of view. The SK and one Mafia is known.
- If town lims the Mafia, it's 3/1/1 entering night, they circleprotect excluding the SK. If the SK kills that's 2/1/1 or 2/1/0 entering day, with all scums known and all townies essentially bulletproof, so it's either an happily ever after or a town win; if SK does not kill (or their victim is saved) and maf kills SK (they can't kill town or they get caught), it's 3/1. Now, that isn't actually MeLo; if there's a mislim, town can still win if the two doctors circleprotect; so town wins iff they can find a group of two players containing the scum, which has a probability of 1/2 if it's done at random.
(I think the scum in 3/2/1 would try to kill the SK and try to win instead of risking an unavoidable draw; I have no idea what the SK would do since they would have pretty much lost already.)
- If town lims the SK, it's 3/2 entering night. circleprotecting here obviously doesn't work; if the docs protect at random (except that they don't protect the known scum), town has a 5/9 probability of not dying during the night, at which point it goes to 3/1/0 which like above has an EV of 1/2
after one miselimination
and if pretty much the worst thing possible happens N1.