[CHALLENGE] September Challenge

[Jingle]

I know that a watcher setup would fit these guidelines and that is what you truly wanted from me Jingle
But I can never give that to you

I don’t like watchers. I just don’t like cops more than I don’t like watchers. Basically, if it doesn’t require interpretation and doesn’t promote creative claiming I’m not a huge fan. Tracker is probably my favorite allowed investigative role.

[popsofctown]

Vigilante is probably my favorite allowed investigative role.

I fixed it for you.

[Jingle]

God no, vigs are awful. I’m of the opinion they should act once per game to confirm their role and then never shoot again. Just cause I use/know how to balance a role doesn’t mean I like it.

[Something_Smart]

Hey everyone forgetting about me

Here's the full list of setups:

Spoiler: Jingle

Prospective Newbie 3

1. Mafia RB, Goon, JK, Tracker, 5 VT
2. Mafia RB, Goon, GSmith, Doctor, 5 VT
3. Mafia Rolecop, Goon, Tracker, Doctor, 5 VT
4. Mafia Rolecop, Goon, Doctor, JK, 5 VT
5. Mafia Doctor, Goon, JK, 6 VT
6. Mafia Doctor, Goon, GSmith, Vig, 5 VT

Spoiler: mith

So, I don't love the balance here really, but this is the idea I was toying with that prompted the question:

2 of 2 of 4

Setup is one of the following, with equal probability:

• Mafia Godfather, Mafia Role Cop, Town Cop, Town Vanilla Cop, 5x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Role Cop, Mafia Goon, Town Cop, Town Vanilla Cop, 5x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Godfather, Mafia Encryptor, Town Cop, Town Miller Neighborizer, 5x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Role Cop, Mafia Encryptor, Town Cop, Town Miller Neighborizer, 5x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Godfather, Mafia Encryptor, Town Cop, 6x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Role Cop, Mafia Goon, Town Cop, 6x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Role Cop, Mafia Encryptor, Town Vanilla Cop, Town Miller Neighborizer, 5x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Encryptor, Mafia Goon, Town Vanilla Cop, Town Miller Neighborizer, 5x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Godfather, Mafia Role Cop, Town Vanilla Cop, 6x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Godfather, Mafia Goon, Town Vanilla Cop, 6x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Godfather, Mafia Goon, Town Miller Neighborizer, 6x Vanilla Town
  Mafia Encryptor, Mafia Goon, Town Miller Neighborizer, 6x Vanilla Town

Mafia is 2 of Godfather, Role Cop, Encryptor, Goon
Town is 5 VT + 2 of Cop, Vanilla Cop, Miller Neighborizer, VT

Each combination of Mafia roles appears twice, and each combination of Town roles appears twice - the allowed combinations are (very roughly) chosen based on the number of investigators, the number of false negatives and positives for those investigators, and whether scum have daytalk and/or town has a neighborhood.

Each individual role (other than VT) appears in half of the setups, so town power roles don't have a lot of setup knowledge going in, while scum teams have it narrowed down to two possibilities and can possibly claim a power role without getting countered.

Spoiler: Not Known 15

Mafia 1+2+Player 11	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
1:Mafia Bulletproof + Mafia Hider + Mafia Encryptor	Mason+Mason+Mason	Mason+Mason+Mason	Vigilante + Vengeful + Universal Backup	Vigilante + Vengeful + Universal Backup	Vigilante + Vengeful + Universal Backup	Rolecop + Hider + Motion Detector	Rolecop + Hider + Motion Detector	Vigilante + Vengeful + Universal Backup
2:Mafia Hider + Mafia Ninja + Mafia Encryptor	Mason+Mason+Mason	Mason+Mason+Mason	Rolecop + Encryptor + Motion Detector	Vengeful + Cop	Rolecop + Ninja + Motion Detector	Encryptor + Encryptor + Cop	Rolecop + Hider + Motion Detector	Vigilante + Universal Backup
3:Mafia Bulletproof + Mafia Ninja + Mafia Encryptor	Mason+Mason+Mason	Mason+Mason+Mason	Rolecop + Encryptor + Motion Detector	Vengeful + Cop	Rolecop + Ninja + Motion Detector	Watcher + Watcher + Watcher	Vigilante + Universal Backup	Vigilante + Universal Backup
4:Mafia Encryptor + Mafia Bulletproof + Vanilla Townie	Ninja + Ninja	Ninja + Ninja	Encryptor + Encryptor	Encryptor + Encryptor	Encryptor + Encryptor	Vengeful	Vengeful	Encryptor + Encryptor
5:Mafia Encryptor + Mafia Hider + Vanilla Townie	Ninja + Ninja	Ninja + Ninja	Ninja + Ninja	Encryptor + Encryptor	Motion Detector	Motion Detector	Motion Detector	Vengeful
6:Mafia Encryptor + Mafia Encryptor + Vanilla Townie	Ninja + Ninja	Ninja + Ninja	Encryptor + Encryptor	Encryptor + Encryptor	Encryptor + Encryptor	Vengeful	Vengeful	Encryptor + Encryptor

13 players.
Randomly pick a number between 1 and 8 to pick a column, then randomly pick a number between 1-6 to pick a row. Pick the roles associated with the row (2 mafia+11th player) and the intersection of the picked row and column(1-3 power roles), the rest of players will get a VT role PM.

Spoiler: OkaPoka

Vig 10P

Daytalk standard blah blah

1x Town Vigilante
7x Vanilla Townies

1x Informed Mafioso (You know that one of these three town-aligned players are a Town Vigilante)
1x Goon

Spoiler: popsofctown

Three Can Keep a Secret If

1

Mafia Traffic Analyst Enabler

2

Mafia Goon

1

Town Traffic Analyst

1

Town Universal Backup

8

Vanilla Townie

Modnote: Normal Queue Universal Backup only triggers on own alignment, so Town Universal Backup cannot inherit Traffic Analyst Enabler.

Spoiler: Something_Smart

Carbon Copy

Randomly choose one of the following subsetups, all equally likely:

• 2 Mafia Goons, 1 Town Gunsmith, 1 Ascetic Townie, 5 Vanilla Townies
  
• 2 Mafia Goons, 1 Town Gunsmith, 1 Town Vanilla Cop, 5 Vanilla Townies
  
• 2 Mafia Doctors, 1 Town Gunsmith, 1 Town Vanilla Cop, 5 Vanilla Townies
  
• 2 Mafia Doctors, 1 Town Vanilla Cop, 1 Ascetic Townie, 5 Vanilla Townies

Spoiler: student

Sigh

Too many guns V3

2

Mafia Goon

1

Mafia Doctor

2

Town Gunsmith

2

Town Vanilla Cop

5

Vanilla Townie

I like this version because it gets rid of double days with Vig. Under Mass Claim, with a 1-1-1 fakeclaim sort, Lynching in any 1 PR pool could be disastrous if wrong (day2 1 investigate + 6VT vs 3 goons is scumsided) . Under correct lynch, it gives 1 conf town PR (other is killed) in day 2, but the investigate effects are halved: did mafia sort against Vanilla Cop or Gunsmith? (1 IC + 1.5 investigate + 6.5 vt vs 2 goons is townsided). Overall, it doesn't seem like mass-claiming day 1 is optimal.

Without Claim: Gunsmith conditional probability on is scum, when has gun is about 2/3, While Vanilla Cop is about 1/2. Seems like reasonable rewards to investigating correctly, but not so much as to game-breaking.

Spoiler: TemporalLich

Normal Setup #63 v1.1

11 players

1 Mafia Multitasking Rolecop

2 Mafia Goons

1 Town Neighborizer

1 Town Vigilante

6 Vanilla Townies

A Normal setup.

All PTs have daytalk.

Hopefully this is closer to EV-balanced.



I may create an actual setup, but the challenge requirements don't provide much in innovation. My current setup is just called Normal Setup #63 because it's a normal setup.

[mith]

Assuming the setups that don't have encrpytors just have general daytalk, because otherwise half of these don't meet the requirements.

Jingle - Vig setup is problematic, both because it is the strongest (and possibly swingiest) role and because it would be immediately obvious that it was in the setup in the majority of setups. I would expect the setup with 6 VTs to be a bit scumsided? But otherwise the others are probably fine.

mith - As I said, I don't love the balance, though I doubt any of them are wildly scum- or town-sided. Just an incomplete idea. ~shrug~

NK15 - That is a ton of subsetups. I'm not entirely clear what a Town Ninja or Town Encryptor is supposed to do? And the number of repeats suggests the columns could be reduced to about 4 without losing anything. Meh overall.

OkaPoka - Pretty simple concept; my guess without running the numbers is that this is slightly townsided, but not badly so.

popsofctown - [edit]Ok, now that I'm not confusing roles... this is probably ok? It's a bit weaker than a Cop of course, but with the backup.

Something_Smart - Meh on the interaction between Ascetic and the investigatives. I think this would be improved by either using only the middle two setups (which is basically Carbon-14 but with false positives for the investigators on each other), or replacing the Ascetic with a VT. Or perhaps have a pair of setups allowing the possibility for a role that prevents the target from using non-kill abilities (______ is to Ascetic as Roleblocker is to Rolestopper). This should be a thing anyway.

student - Parity problems, and I disagree on mass-claiming as a viable option. I would no lynch after mass claim. Scum have three options for where to put the Mafia Doctor. If they put it with the Gunsmiths, neither group can investigate the other successfully, but a cycle investigation within each group would effectively make them a pair of masons (with investigations) and the Gunsmiths can investigate the VTs. If they put it with the Vanilla Cops, a cross investigation may reveal both scum in those groups immediately. And if they put it with the VTs, the Vanilla Cops can still investigate the Gunsmiths, while the Gunsmiths can investigate the VTs. I suspect the play is for town (most of the time, see below) to have the Gunsmiths investigate in a cycle and the Vanilla Cops to investigate the Gunsmiths. This is guaranteed to either reveal the fake Gunsmith or pair the fake Gunsmith and fake Vanilla Cop (worse?), so probably scum's best play is to put the Doc with the Vanilla Cops, kill one of the Gunsmiths N1, and kill the other N2 after the fake is lynched. That leaves a (1:2)/(1:5) census game, with an EV of 45%... but that's ignoring that if the scum will put the Doc with the Vanilla Cops 100% of the time, the Gunsmiths could instead be tasked with investigating the Vanilla Cops and bump the EV substantially above 50%, so there is a Nash Equilibrium to be found between the strategies. All that said, I wouldn't say this is a bad setup, a not-fun setup, or an imbalanced setup - it's just one that is likely susceptible to massclaim. (I suppose it's also possible that you could do a partial massclaim D1, force the investigators to investigate in a cycle, and leave the scum in the dark about which real investigators have which role. Not sure you can get more info this way, especially with the nightkill, but maybe? I'm now dreaming up strategies involving an initial partial claim on day 2 that looks like "either I am a Gunsmith that got a Gun result, or a Vanilla Cop that got a Vanilla result" and then full-claiming in reverse order.)

TemporalLich - The balance here probably isn't that bad. 3:8 with a Vig has an EV around 36% (with some assumptions, but in that ball-park); the Rolecop helps the scum some, the Neighborizer helps the town some. Swingy, but probably not horrible.


pops
OkaPoka
TemporalLich
student
Something_Smart
mith
Jingle
NK15

[popsofctown]

Traffic Analyst Enabler enables traffic analysis as long as he is alive, not once he dies. You evaluated the balance in reverse. Town can actually get as many as 2 purely mechanical lynches before finding any scum with dayplay, as opposed to needing to lynch a specific scum with dayplay to unlock their cop.

[Jingle]

Assuming the setups that don't have encrpytors just have general daytalk, because otherwise half of these don't meet the requirements.

Jingle - Vig setup is problematic, both because it is the strongest (and possibly swingiest) role and because it would be immediately obvious that it was in the setup in the majority of setups. I would expect the setup with 6 VTs to be a bit scumsided? But otherwise the others are probably fine.

Observed winrate of jk 9er in m6 was 53%

As far as #6, I’m open to advice. It’s the only setup with a vig. The cop has a false guilty and a false inno and mafia has a doctor to interact with the vig. I agree that it’s git the most going on, but I don’t think it has too much for a newbie and I’d like to hear the why from people who do.

Oops, hit edit instead of quote! Sorry - mith

[Jingle]

Traffic Analyst Enabler enables traffic analysis as long as he is alive, not once he dies. You evaluated the balance in reverse. Town can actually get as many as 2 purely mechanical lynches before finding any scum with dayplay, as opposed to needing to lynch a specific scum with dayplay to unlock their cop.

Oh, lol, that analysis makes way more sense now.

[mith]

Aha, I'm thinking of the old Switch role. Will edit above.

[mith]

I would expect the setup with 6 VTs to be a bit scumsided?.

Observed winrate of jk 9er in m6 was 53%

~shrug~ Not a large enough sample to rule out it being "a bit scumsided". I'd be curious how many of those wins had the JK actually playing a significant role - a quick check of the first Matrix 6 Newbie shows that it had that setup, the JK died N1 after a whopping 10 posts D1, and then town won anyway with back-to-back LyLo success.

(FWIW, the Cop setup was 42% in the same sample. I'd expect Cop to be a bit stronger, but I tend to devalue blocked kills in most cases, so.)

Anyway, it's probably fine, just my very quick thoughts on it.

[mith]

As far as #6, I’m open to advice. It’s the only setup with a vig. The cop has a false guilty and a false inno and mafia has a doctor to interact with the vig. I agree that it’s git the most going on, but I don’t think it has too much for a newbie and I’d like to hear the why from people who do.

My main issue with it is that it's out of place in the setup overall. It is very likely that after N1 everyone is going to know what setup they are in, the other five setups have protective roles vs. a killing role here, etc.

As far as balance, 2:7 just with a Vig is townsided, and the Mafia Doctor probably doesn't give enough compensation - best play is almost certainly to always protect the Goon, so the Vig failing to kill is almost as good as an investigation (there is the possibility of mindgames, with scum protecting a townie they think the Vig will kill, but this makes it twice as likely one of them will die). Then you add a Gunsmith on top of that, and the Gunsmith isn't quite as hampered by the potential false guilty because of the likelihood the Vig will be revealed (either by a second kill or by trying to shoot the protected Goon and coming out immediately with the result).

[popsofctown]

If I wanted killing power in the newbie queue I think I would do 2 townies that have an inverse bodyguard ability, where each night they target a player, and if they get nightkilled, the nightkill skips them and travels onward into their target instead.

Is there a name for this role?

Also am I on acid?

[mith]

What happens if they target each other? Magical bouncing bullets?

[Something_Smart]

What happens if they target each other? Magical bouncing bullets?

[mith]

I kinda like the role idea though. That's two reverse roles we need names for now.

[TemporalLich]

I kinda like the role idea though. That's two reverse roles we need names for now.

personally I'd call the reverse enabler a disabler (though that name apparently exists for the "block all abilities including passives" roleblocker) or jammer and a reverse bodyguard a VIP.

[TemporalLich]

because I still need a vote:

Normal Setup #63

(TL) - Cold hard bias.

Vig 10p

(Oka) - A simple yet decent setup. Similar to mine, but stands on its own.

Three Can Keep A Secret If

(pops) - If I were rating these setups on normalcy instead of innovation this would

easily

win.

Prospective Newbie 3

(Jingle) - Seems fairly interesting to run, doesn't seem too newbie tho.

Carbon Copy

(S_S) - eh don't really care for the Ascetic setups.

Too Many Guns

(student) - that's a lot of power roles for a 12p open...

2 of 2 of 4

(mith) - 2015 was 4 years ago.

Mafia 1+2+Player 11

(NK15) - I'm having trouble understanding the setup. Doesn't seem like a fun setup tbh.

[popsofctown]

What happens if they target each other? Magical bouncing bullets?

Good point.
Not sure whether it moves towards balance to say "ignore this effect if this would redirect endlessly" or "You are Informed: x is the other Passthrough and is not a valid target for your ability"
I really feel like it's a role that should be like a normal queue role though, not because I'm some genius but because there's lots of consensus Town Bodyguard is one of the cooler untoxic PRs in mafia, so anything that is essentially a rebranding of that is probably also good.

It might be more feelsbad for scum if town was not using their agency to specifically protect their nightkill target, perhaps, but can't ever be more feelsbad than BP town.

EDIT: On second thought, making the passthrough bullet Strong and Unredirectable might be the best angle to go in the sense of making it a role that you put into closed setups. Like if I tossed it into a Large Theme that would give the least away about the rest of the setup.
Strong is unnecessary but has this nice aesthetic once it's unredirectable anyway and minorly maybe fixes resolution questions somehow.

[northsidegal]

that role is called Deflector

at least for all actions, not for killing specific

[northsidegal]

or i guess deflector targets another player and not themselves

thought it was a self redirecting thing

[popsofctown]

Condorcet Method Results
There has been a tie. The winners are: Temporal Lich and popsofctown.
A tie occurs when there is no candidate that emerges unbeaten in all pairwise elections. Normally, it is possible to find the candidate who had the least votes against them in any pairwise election. However, in this case, Temporal Lich and popsofctown had equal numbers of voters voting against them in their poorest showings (n/a votes). As a result, a second election may be necessary to determine a winner.

Copeland Method Results
Copeland's method returns the same result as Condorcet's.

Smith Method Results
The Smith Set consists of: Temporal Lich and popsofctown.

[Something_Smart]

Oh, I was intending to vote but kept forgetting to. I can put together a full list if people require but between the two I'd break the tie in favor of pops.

[popsofctown]

Oh noes

I didn't really check to see whether the 3rd or 4th place person was in firing rage before I closed the webpage.

Possibly since Concordet is preference based that only has the possibility to generate a tie, though?

You should do a full list because it is fun.

[TemporalLich]

I do want to make the challenge something likely to generate insane setups...

But pops might have the initiative

[Something_Smart]

Sure.

S_S - Ascetic awkward, yes, but far better than the VT alternative letting scum claim the missing investigative after getting guiltied in these setups.
NK15 - This is real interesting. Balance is definitely off in some subsetups (esp. the 11:2 motion detector ones) but that's true of literally every semi-open here.
Jingle - Pretty standard newbie-style, although a lot of these are really hard on an early scum lunch.
Mith - Innovative idea that I think can be improved on (cop + 6VT vs godfather is disgusting)... also technically does not meet guidelines because GF is not normal.
Pops - Fairly bland and probably townsided compared to Friends & Enemies, but there are a few interesting interactions.
TL - Real close to pops when I was considering the tiebreaker, but the swing of this turned me off. Vig dying before N2 screws town whereas hitting double VT's N1 screws scum.
Oka - again not a huge full vig fan, the randomness of the information, which no townie can predict, also leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
student - this has the potential to swing HARD based on results and claim order, and an early doctor lynch is also really bad for scum. Would work better as a semi-open for sure.

I like semi-opens, if you hadn't noticed