DarkFlashlight wrote:Hoopla, you've been mighty discrete. I believe most if not everyone is willing to try your crazy strategy, but you seem to be keeping it underwraps. You even said that after you say it, we don't have to do it, so why are you so hesitant?
From a reads/information standpoint, I had a vested interest in hiding the strength and details of the plan. Slow-cooking it allows scum to get nervous, make stances prior to my plan, as opposed to me just dumping the plan in my first post and scum acting according to it's strength. I have some theories about how scum may have acted in the build-up, but I'll reveal my plan now.
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When designing an open game, the threat of a Day 1 massclaim being beneficial is always a factor you need to compensate for. Most set-ups prevent this strategy by having a high amount of VT's to minimise the ratio of unique roles to non-unique roles. By massclaiming in a game with a low ratio of unique roles, the scum have a big enough pool of VT's to hide within, and can eliminate the unique roles faster than the town can eliminate the pool of VT's. Another way for mods to prevent massclaim being a breaking strategy is by giving scum abilities that can manipulate other powers, or provide a set-up with slight uncertainty (ie; two possible set-ups, or certain roles possibly not existing, which gives scum fakeclaiming space). In this set-up, we have complete information - the only way for scum to fakeclaim is to set up a 50/50 between them and one of the power roles.
This set-up in particular has an unusually high amount of unique town power roles. This is what we want to capitalise on. The fact that the scum has no daytalk and is vanilla in every way makes crafting a plan even more viable. Essentially, we are trying to create a pool of confirmed town PR's and a pool of VT's/scum, and are racing scum to eliminate the VT pool faster than the PR pool.
Hang on, you say. If we're dividing the players into groups of 4 and 8 - how are we suupposed to whittle down that group quicker than the scum? This is where the vig comes into play. As opposed to having a kill cycle that operates like this; T/S/T/S, a vig changes it to T/T/S/T/T/S. The only problem here is that outing the vigilante Day 1 means we don't get to cash in on that cycle of improved town to scum kills - the scum can just kill off the vigilante N1. This is where zmuffin was on the right track. We keep the vigilante hidden from scum. However, I want to go one step further and keep it hidden from town too.
Having the Hider/Hider Tracker/Detective-Psychologist as the only claimers means we have a new problem to solve. We run the risk of running the vigilante up on D1, essentially outing it for the N1 kill, meaning we can't cash in on the improved kill cycle long-term. We also now create a fakeclaim option for scum - they can claim Vigilante D1 upon being wagoned to lynch. Although the real vig will kill this scum N1, we now don't get the chance of lynching scum D1. Coupled with potentially outing the real vig, we need to find a better way to organise the lynch, whilst still keeping the vig hidden. Here is how we do it;
After the three town PR's are claimed, we have scum locked in a pocket of 9 players. Voluntarily, four players (not the vig) will claim they are a VT and not the vig. And we only lynch from that pool of VT claimers. The vig then shoots from the pool of non VT claimers. This means that scum now has to choose which sub-pool to position themselves in. If they go all in the lynch pool, they essentially guarantee one of them being lynched today. If they all go in the vig pool, they essentially guarantee being vigged N1. The only rational play here is for scum to split 2 and 1 across the two groups.
This doesn't matter to the town, really. We're purely focused on our PR group outlasting the scum group. And we give ourselves a very good chance of doing so by hiding the vig. A false scum kill targeting a VT (if they attempt to hit the vig N1) all but loses the game for them, as that is a two-player swing. One VT gone, plus one PR still alive. Unless scum want to gamble on going for vig N1 (and losing if they're wrong) we force their hand into killing from the pool of PR's. Fortunately, we have a Hider, which we can use strategically to avoid scumkills and/or pinpoint scum. It's preferable in this instance, if the Hider DOESN'T die from hiding behind scum, as this gives scum a free PR kill, even if it does yield us scum the next day.
My plan for Night 1 entails the Hider flipping a coin between hiding/not hiding. If it hides, it is to hide behind our pool of claimed VT's, because we don't want it to hide behind the Vig - and it is likelier than the scum are divided 2:1 in the 5:4 pool respectively, making the VT pool a lower chance of dying. Now that I've said this, scum could easily tailor a plan to have two scum claim VT and nominate themselves for the lynch - in which case, I welcome it. We now have a 50/50 chance of lynching scum today, and the vig is even more well hidden, as there are more VT's in that group.
This should be enough margin for error to make shooting at the Hider a gamble too - if scum miss, they've just killed another VT falsely (or got no kill if going for the Hider), which is enough for us to lock down the game. Scum's only real NK options on N1 is to kill the Hider Tracker or the Det/Psych. Neither of these are net losses for town. We either get an investigation from the Det/Psych, or confirmation from the Hider Tracker on what the Hider did (this is handy if the Hider flips hide, and chooses to hide behind scum).
In most instances, we should wake up tomorrow with 9 alive. There is an outside chance of the Hider failing - if the Hider flips hide and hides behind scum, leaving us with 8 alive tomorrow. Even if that were to happen, we still have a 50/50 chance of the Hider Tracker being alive, netting us a guaranteed scum from that info. Really, we stand a strong chance of hitting scum Day 1/Night 1 as well, so if we wake up with 9 alive and one scum down, we're in a supremely advantageous position. I'll elaborate on what happens from D2 onward after I dump this plan. I just want to make sure everyone understands everything so far, as it is complex.
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Of course, to get into that position, we need to ensure that scum DON'T counterclaim one of our roles on Day 1. I think it is more beneficial for us in the long-run if they do, but I haven't thought this path through as deeply as I have the other. But locking themself into a 50/50 claim with a player means they cannot kill that powerrole without outing themself. It isn't viable for scum to counterclaim the Hider, as the Hider playing as an investigation role has a chance of dying on its own, proving the other player to be scum. It isn't viable for the scum to counterclaim the Hider Tracker, as the scum now has to fake results on what the Hider did - something scum cannot know. It's not viable (but the most viable of the three options) to claim Psych/Detective, as we can leave these two players alive until deeper in the game, knowing one is scum, forcing them to constantly produce results. We should get to a stage where scum cannot keep clearing/incriminating players.
As the Psych/Detective is the only rational counterclaim option for scum, we should have this role claim first WITHOUT the other roles claiming. If no scum counterclaims, great. We can move onto the massclaim idea. If scum does, and we have two Psych/Detective claims, we still have the Hider/Hider Tracker/Vigilante hidden and we've forced scum into going into a 50/50 for no gain. The beauty of that situation is that scum cannot kill the Det/Psych, meaning we can generate results for free and take the 50/50 chance later in the game when we get results either way. Surely by then, we should be good enough as a town to work out which player is likely the liar. I also have some ideas on how to play it so we protect the vig if scum choose this path, but I'll let you all read this post before I continue.
Sorry for the giant wall.
