TL Mafia XXVIII - Page 45

Yo, thanks for the PM.

My inactivity was partially due to me working most of the day, and partially due to me scrubbing and forgetting that the game had started :/

My logic behind vet roleclaim was thus, and I hope this makes sense:

In most TL Mafia setups, hosts choose to mask the number of certain roles actually present in the game (example: they won't tell you how many medics there are, only that medics are present in the game). This is to prevent situations like mass roleclaiming, where the town forces everyone to claim or get lynched, then checks the numbers against the numbers in the OP. This can be a very powerful town move if pulled off correctly, or give the mafia a ton of free blue roles to hit, but regardless, many hosts don't like it happening, so they prevent it from being possible.

In a setup like the one above, its impossible to say "all vets claim" and get an accurate result, because you don't know if there are 1, 2, or 3, or maybe even 4 vets, so it's trivial for scum to sneak a fakeclaim in there. Thus, nobody claiming can really be trusted, apart from DT rolechecks or people who get protected from a hit/vets who soak a hit.

Thus, in a normal game, vets fulfill the role everyone has said they should fulfill: They exists under the radar and hope mafia hits them, so they can soak a hit that would have otherwise killed someone. The problem is, this happens rarely (usually only once a game, if that), and somehow, vets always end up getting lynched. Thus, they aren't always the most helpful role.

My idea was thus: Since BM has told us there are exactly 2 vets in the game, we know there are exactly two vets in the game. In my experience, as I mentioned above, vets don't always do their job (not their fault, its just "doing their job" hinges on another group outside their control targeting them). As we've seen in other mafia games (Caller's RO3K game is a good example), when town bands together and has good organization, it's really easy for town to win. Mafia usually wins if they prevent town from organizing in this way.

Thus, I believe in this setup, the vets would actually be more helpful to town in the spotlight as town organizers, rather than in the shadows hoping to soak hits. As a vet has 2 nightlives, mafia has to waste an entire night just to kill one vet, rather than kill 2 others (and possibly hit other blues like DTs). This isn't something most mafia teams would be willing to do (especially if medics start protecting the vigis - they become unkillable).

So basically, we'd have the vets claim. If only 2 claim, we're set, we just have blues PM them, and start an epic town circle. Vets would know if people were lying because of the openness of the setup: if 3 DTs claim to them, they'd know one of them was scum, and could probably figure it out pretty quickly. This would be a great way to coordinate rolechecks, medic protection, even vigi kills or Mad Hatter Bombs depending on which of those roles we have. Essentially, town would become a well-oiled machine and would screw mafia over.

If more than 2 vets claim, we just have to rolecheck them, nail a mafia, and go back to the first scenario from that point out.

Now, naturally this plan isn't perfect. There are three major flaws:

1) If GF decided to appear as a vet to rolechecks, it sinks this plan completely, obviously.

2) If one or both vets is inactive/doesn't read the thread, that also sinks this plan.

3) The Suicide Bomber. This role exists to counter mass roleclaims and to prevent us from telling medics to protect certain people IN THE THREAD. It's very possible that the mafia might decide to bomb one of the vets - but that's why we have two. Mafia would be trading a scum for a townie.

Hope this makes sense! Ask me if you have any more questions.

sarcasm