BulletNLynchProof's 9p pre-designed setup

[callforjudgement]

Well, JK+6 vs. 2 is balanced to slightly townsided (53.3% win rate in Matrix6, for example; being Closed should reduce town winrate but not by much). This setup's clearly very similar to it, so we need to assess the balance impact of the differences:

a) Scum know that one specific player is a VT. They could use this to aim their kills more accurately. On N1, assuming a VT is lynched D1, that gives a ~3.3% increase in the chance of hitting the JK, but also a ~3.3% increase in the chance of hitting the Commuter. This clearly helps scum if the Commuter isn't active; the effects if the Commuter is active are more mixed, and might even hurt scum.
b) Scum can claim their actual role (thus allowing them to dodge any potential rolecop issues; there aren't any in this setup but they don't know that). Informed is normally a bad fakeclaim as scum but it could be viable at massclaim time (as long as you make the information up, e.g. roll a dice to see who you claim you know is town), and could be viable if you believe you're just about to be lynched. An all-VT scumteam could also do pretty much the same thing, though, so this is likely to have only a minimal balance impact. (Choosing good fakeclaims is normally a skill issue, and the aid this gives the scum in choosing fakeclaims is pretty minor compared to the range of fakeclaims you see from skilled players without any additional innformation.)
c) Town's ability to commute increases the chance of two missed nightkills, which would heavily favour town by buying them an additional day. (A single missed nightkill doesn't give town any real advantage, as it's normally correct to no-lynch in mylo.) On N1, there are three potential ways for the kill to be stopped (JK/scum target the same person, JK hits scum performing the kill, scum hit commuter) with probabilities ⅛, ⅛, ⅙. On N2, the commuter is unlikely to commute (they're more likely to do that on N1 instead), so the JK, if they're still alive, will have two ⅙ chances to stop the kill. That comes out to around a 36% chance of an N1 no-death, and a 30% chance of an N2 no-death, if the JK survives until N2. In the original setup, these chances were 23% and 30%. This means that the commuter gives town an extra 4% or so chance to gain a mislynch, in the case where the JK survives until at least N2 (which is around a 3 in 4 chance, so 3% total). I'd expect this to lead to an EV adjustment of 1-2% in town's favour.
d) The commuter may cause false-positive Jailkeeper guilties. I'd expect town to be able to work out the situation at massclaim time, so this likely won't have much of an effect other than making power role hunting easier for the scum (slightly counteracting their advantage from the Informed player, as those overlap).
e) A fairly big one if you have the right playerlist: this setup is highly internally consistent and close to a well-known setup, meaning that if the Informed scum claims as Informed, town are likely to be able to judge the commuter as town based on their claim. (Non-consecutive commuter is also a fairly rare role; presence of a rare role in a setup, when it's consistent with the rest of the setup, is decently helpful to town's setup speculation and often confirms the holder's alignment.) How much of an effect this has depends on the playerlist; as an approximation, I'd rank it as comparable to the advantage of playing a variable-open rather than closed setup (as in both cases you have an obvious potential setup but also other possibilities).

All in all, I'd rate this as a bit more townsided than the old Newbie subsetup, probably in the 55%-60% town win range. That's clearly runnable (especially as towns tend to do worse than predicted, so we should probably be aiming to make setups which we believe are slightly townsided in order to get an actual 50% town win rate).

If you wanted to lower the town win rate a bit, the most obvious way would be to add a bit of confusion to the setup without radically changing the way it plays. For example, you could make one of the VTs into a Miller; that would add extra uncertainty as to how the setup works, helping to reduce the town's advantage from setup speculation. (This is, as long as the playerlist doesn't believe that Miller claims are confirmed town; they

shouldn't

, but the meta is weird sometimes.) Alternatively, making one of the VTs Ascetic would be a way to (probably) reduce town win rate a bit while keeping the setup more internally consistent (if the Ascetic claims, the JK won't target them, so it might help town, but scum might well kill them anyway,

especially

if there's been a missed kill already).

[callforjudgement]

I like the idea of it as an investigative that's potentially actually useful in a Micro. I agree that it doesn't really serve that purpose combined with a Commuter, though.

A Doctor would fit the idea behind the setup well (it's a role that it greatly benefits scum to hit directly) but unfortunately the resulting setup would probably be too townsided if that's the only change you make. (2d3 A2 is a comparable subsetup, which is currently running at 4 town wins to 4 scum wins; the JK/Doctor setup is more townsided than that.) Probably you could add modifiers to fix it; making the JK odd-night is the right scale of nerf although I'm a little worried about swing in that version of things, so perhaps you'd make the JK 1-shot and give town an additional weak power role to compensate (e.g. make the JK into a JOAT and give them a Rolecop shot as well; that has interesting interactions with the rest of the setup).

So my current suggestion is this:

1 Mafia Goon
1 Informed Mafioso ("

player

is a Vanilla Townie")
5 Vanilla Townie (one is the player who information is given about)
1 Town JOAT (Jailkeeper, Rolecop)
1 Town Doctor

Role interaction ruling: A rolecop investigation returns "Vanilla" on all 5 Vanilla Townies and the goon, and "Informed" (without specifying the information or alignment) on the Informed Mafioso. (The Doctor obviously returns "Doctor".)

A "follow the cop" style of town strategy is possible here but not likely to be devastating, due to the inconsistent powers of the "cop" (also, town are unlikely to try it unless the JOAT's forced to claim D1). If you think it could be a problem, you could throw an Ascetic modifier onto the JOAT to break up the combination.

PEDIT: I wrote the above before seeing your recent three posts. I'll evaluate that in my next post.

[callforjudgement]

The thing about an N3 vigilante is that when it's deployed, the remaining players will be (scum:town) 2:2, 1:3, 2:3, or 1:4. In the 1:3 setup, it's just a plain bad idea to use; that's also the most common likely setup, and the vigilante is just dead weight (other than for setup speculation purposes) when it happens. In the 2:2 setup, we don't have an automatic scum win as town have a protective role and a killing role; that situation is awkward in Normals because many mods and players aren't sure how it's resolved, and given that it's post-lylo, has a high potential (if it actually occurs) to completely screw over scum who thought they'd just quickhammered for the win (which would pretty much put the game on a pure coinflip based on whether the JK correctly predicts which scum will make the kill). So that's not a good situation for it. In 1:4, it gains town a mislynch, which is pretty powerful. In 2:3, it gives town a second chance to save themselves after a mylo mislynch (or else an only chance, if the JK is dead); town are normally unwilling to try for a lynch in mylo, though, so we'd be likely to assume that town power roles have claimed for that to happen (but the claim wouldn't particularly make things easier for scum, other than allowing them to avoid shooting the JK's target via shooting the JK directly). So it's by far the most powerful if the JK stopped a kill, which is presumably the point of having it in the first place.

If we limit the JK to work only on N1 and N2, we avoid the problematic role interaction. There's about a 15% chance of the vig being alive N3 and town being on evens at the time (allowing for scum potentially finding the JK and thus reducing the chance that town are on evens), allowing the vig to put the town back where they should be; that's actually a pretty decent chance. That might not be enough by itself to compensate for the loss of the vig's third shot; however, the other huge advantage it has is that it's a 100% confirmable role (unless the JK is alive and blocks it), meaning that the vig helps out town in a 2:1 lylo just by existing (and may be helpful at 3:2 via the plausible claim). I'm not convinced that the N1,2 JK + N3 Vig + 5 vs. Informed + 1 setup isn't scumsided, but it could be balanced, and if not is at least close. Given that the town power roles pretty much confirm each other, I'm leaning towards considering it balanced (but the scum may be frustrated at the difficulty of fake-claiming in a setup like that).

[callforjudgement]

Actually, I would like to bump this to a 10p and try this:

1 Informed Mafia Goon "Player is VT"
1 Mafia Goon
1 Town JOAT {Doctor, Jailkeeper}
1 Town Night 3 Vigilante
6 Vanilla Townies

So if the vig dies, town are basically relying on the JOAT to stop a kill to gain their mislynch, otherwise they get it for free N3?

This setup is an 8:2 that plays more like a 9:2, and the JOAT is town's only pseudo-investigative (with both halves of it being very situational in terms of their investigative ability, they're more strongly used as protectives). As a result, I suspect it's probably scumsided (although the 9:2→8:2 change basically works by eliminating one scum-directed kill, which should help out town considerably compared to a vanilla 9:2 by improving the average quality of surviving townies); the odds town never get back onto odds are, although key to the setup, sufficiently large that town needs more of an advantage in the case where they do.

The most obvious solution to me would be to add an investigative that functions best in the late-game; if scum are killing the vig and JOAT, then the investigative will likely survive until when it's most powerful, thus reducing swing. That would imply either a Tracker (most likely a full Tracker), or a Cop with a modifier to stop it functioning well in the early game. The Tracker setup sadly doesn't work, though (it almost works but it falls apart really badly if scum get lynched D1). I can't make the Cop setup work either (an N3 Cop gets results too late to be useful, an N2 Cop is too likely to still be alive).

Luckily, this is a predesigned setup thread, so there's less time pressure than in a "to run now" review thread, so I don't have to have a working setup ready in every post. I think this style of setup could work, we just need balance tweaks somehow. In particular, it's hard to stop town running away with things if they lynch scum D1 while keeping their odds of winning high enough in the much more likely case that they miss. (9:2 setups, and thus this setup, are awkward because it's hard to lynch scum D1, and N1 not much information is likely to be known, so scum will just kill the strongest townie, and then you're going into a 7:2 setup where town are likely behind; however, that's hard to balance against the setup where town get valuable results D1/N1. This effect is less pronounced in shorter setups and setups with a higher proportion of scum.)

[callforjudgement]

I also feel like this setup needs three town power roles, but "8:2 with three town power roles" is something that I don't have a balance yardstick for, even if they're all really weak.

The original 10p version is likely to be scumsided, though, and I'd be surprised if an even night Tracker had a large balance impact in a small Closed, so the setup would look like this:

1 Informed Mafia Goon "Player is VT"
1 Mafia Goon
1 Town JOAT {Doctor, Jailkeeper}
1 Town Night 3 Vigilante
1 Town Even Night Tracker
5 Vanilla Townies

I'm still a bit concerned about the size of the gap between an early scum lynch and no early scum lynch, but in win/loss terms the balance seems about right (modulo the fact that I don't really have much to compare the setup to). If town use the Doctor shot first (and they probably should), then after a scum lynch D1 or D2, town get to potentially confirm two players as townie overnight (one with the JK, one with the Tracker). With three town deaths and a scum death in the first two days, that gives us a 5:1 setup with two confirmed townies, and a potential for a vig shot coming the night after. So town get greatly rewarded for lynching scum early, at least if their power roles don't die too quickly. On the other hand, that does rather seem to be the "idea behind the setup", and might not actually be a problem? It's a setup about scumhunting and PR-hunting and that doesn't necessarily seem like it has to be a bad thing.

One alternative possibility might be an Even Night Traffic Analyst; that reduces swing rather than increasing it, and the results come early enough to be useful but late enough that scum has a decent chance to kill them. I'm not convinced that isn't townsided, though.

[callforjudgement]

It's OK for town to not buy the vig claim on D3. You don't want too many players to be confirmed by their claim in a setup which has almost as many town power roles as vanilla townies.

The change of the vig from N1 (effectively guaranteed to push the setup onto odds, meaning that the protective doesn't really do anything if it hits) to N3 (can die with a wasted shot, meaning that the protective greatly benefits from a hit) rather changes the nature of this setup from the ones you linked.

Now I've written that, I'm wondering if what we actually need here is a second Doctor shot, rather than an investigative. With the most sensible shot arrangement (i.e. least likely to modWIFOM town into doing something stupid), we'd get:

Mafia Informed Goon (

player

is a Vanilla Townie)
Mafia Goon
Town 2-Shot Doctor
Town Even-Night Jailkeeper
Town Night 3 Vigilante
5 VTs

(The JK is being forced to act on N2 via the modifier, rather than giving them a choice, because acting N1 would defeat the point of the setup somewhat, and acting N3 might accidentally block the vig, which would be a disaster that we want to steer town out of.)

[callforjudgement]

I don't think so. A lone Doctor isn't nearly enough power for a 9p setup, the JK is very nerfed, and the N3 Vigilante is mostly a swing reducer (if the protectives are doing well, the vigilante doesn't help out town at all, so it's really only helps them when the protectives miss). Even-Night roles in general are very weak in smaller setups because they rarely have much use on N4, so you only get one use and it isn't right at the start of the game. (Also, bear in mind that this is allowing for the fact that scum have an easier time hitting the power roles than usual.)

7:2 with a full Jailkeeper and full Doctor is currently run against a Roleblocker in the newbie queue, with a 50:50 win rate. The reduction of the JK to one shot and Doctor to two has a much greater balance impact than the loss of the Roleblocker does, so it seems unlikely that town would do at all well in this setup at 9p. (The 10th player is, of course, very relevant because it gives town a real shot at earning themselves a third mislynch via stopping or making a kill.)

[callforjudgement]

I guess the situation at the moment is that BNL doesn't really like the setup as it is, and BNL and I disagree on what the balance should be. So I assumed that this had been abandoned.

Performer and I apparently agree that the setup in 22 is runnable, and there hasn't been a counter-offer from BNL yet. So if there's an emergency, you could probably run that.

[callforjudgement]

Oh, note that that setup's a 10p, an extra player got added at some point.

I don't think we've been looking at 9p variants of this setup for a while. I could try to design one of those if you need it?

[callforjudgement]

It's happened before. We just correct the setup size before allowing mods to choose it.

The situation here is unusual in that apparently a 9p got advertised by mistake.

[callforjudgement]

I think that's in the balanced range? My normal concern would be massclaim, but there's nothing particularly town-indicative about Doctor Enabler in this setup (it's believable as a scum role, even if you know all the other roles).

I am concerned with swing – if the Informed Goon dies early town has a huge advantage – but that may be close to unavoidable. (I'm assuming that Informed flips as "Informed" without giving the actual information, just like Cop flips as "Cop" without showing results.)

I would suggest adding an interaction that prevents the Jailkeeper from being protected (probably Ascetic, it gives away less about the setup than Macho does). Otherwise, town will be rewarded rather than punished if the Jailkeeper ends up having to claim early. (This is something that pretty much needs to be done as standard, I think; whenever I miss this potential interaction it seems to end up causing problems.) Actually, cross-protecting town power roles seem to cause problems generally if one of them is claimed; the issue is that scum tend to shoot at the claimed role, miss, and the unclaimed role then later has an opportunity to save someone else for a mislynch. This problem probably affects the 10p above too (I wasn't aware of it at the time I approved it as balanced).

So my proposal:

1 Mafia Goon
1 Informed Mafia Goon ("

player

is a Vanilla Townie.", with

player

selected at random from among the VTs)
1 Ascetic Town Jailkeeper
1 Town Doctor
1 Town Doctor Enabler
4 Vanilla Townies

There still could be a problem if a town power role other than the Jailkeeper claims early, though (scum shoot it, and it gets protected by the JK or Doctor or both). At least scum will know that they have to aim elsewhere the next day, and things aren't a disaster until a second protective hits.

[callforjudgement]

I'm concerned about that too, but I'm not sure there's any fix available, so we might just have to risk it. (Doctor's one of the roles that's least likely to claim and expect a protection, at least.)

[callforjudgement]

It's a potential problem but I'm not sure it's big enough for it to be worse than the problems that would be caused by potential fixes. (For example, the D1 Jailkeeper shot is likely the least useful of them, but removing it would nonetheless be a large enough nerf to town that we'd need to increase their power elsewhere to compensate.)

[callforjudgement]

I like the Ascetic Town Roleblocker variant from a design point of view, actually. Unfortunately, it's probably a little scumsided (because town are hardly likely to stop two kills, it's pretty comparable to Matrix6 C, which had only a ~45% town win rate; counting the Enabler as scum power, both sides are a bit more powerful than in the Matrix6 version, but I'd expect the improvements to roughly balance). Perhaps town need a fourth power role (1-shot Role Cop could work).

That said, trying to make this work is probably a good idea; if the previous setup is balanced and the "fixed" version is 45% town win, that means about one tenth of town's 50% win chance is coming from the potential for brokenness. Making it come from some other source instead is likely an improvement. (Also, note that two of town's power roles, the Roleblocker and the Role Cop, are going to naturally look scummy when they claim, meaning that the setup is unlikely to be broken by massclaim despite the five power roles total.)

[callforjudgement]

Role Cop gets a (soft, but still helpful) investigative result on a Doctor, and to a lesser extent on an Enabler. Neither of those roles are commonly given to scum.

It's pretty weak, but it has to be, because the setup is close to balanced already.

RB is pretty close to JK but slightly weaker (basically, because it has less scope to help town if it misaims, and can be used as a protective in a pinch). Additionally, scum has more ability to aim in this setup, and a Doctor is a very weak role unless it's protecting PRs or pushing the game from evens to odds (in both those situations, it's a very strong role, typically making it hard to balance).

[callforjudgement]

Worse, due to the potential issues caused by a D1 claim.

[callforjudgement]

That's always a risk in a block+protective setup, but it's something that the players are aware of (and JKs have two possible explanations for a missed kill anyway, so a third won't typically be too much trouble to deal with).

[callforjudgement]

Not until the Doctor Enabler died. At that point, the Enabler's flip would allow the Doctor to know their role had been disabled

[callforjudgement]

The way I've been writing Enabler PMs, the death of any Enabler for a role would shut it off, even if there are multiple Enablers (and thus making a Backup Enabler pointless if it backed up the enabler; the more sensible reading of the role is as a player who enables backups!). I don't know whether that's NRG consensus, but it seems like it would be a good thing for players to always be able to work out whether or not their role is enabled from the flips.

[callforjudgement]

I thought you'd approved it already in #64.

Just to avoid any ambiguity, though, I approve that setup.

[callforjudgement]

Just to confirm: when the Informed player dies, their flip is just "Informed", it doesn't also contain the information (otherwise the death of the Informed player would confirm a player as town). This is the same principle as Cops not flipping with their results.

[callforjudgement]

I can look at something for you but am not sure what you want me to look at.

[callforjudgement]

The role PMs in #82 look correct. (Note that you'll have to replace "Player" with an appropriate name, every time it occurs.)

[callforjudgement]

Oh, as you're new, an important note that it's easy to miss: if/when the Informed player dies, you flip them as "Informed Mafia Goon" but you don't say what their information was. (Informed information is the same sort of thing as Cop results, which don't flip with the role either.)