Elements Mafia 39 - by eljoemo

[Mort]

1. What do you think is the best ability available in this mafia?
2. Why do you like playing mafia?
3. What is the best strategy for the town to take with their abilities?

1: the ability to troll people. After all, it would be very hard for the trolls to win otherwise.
2: dunno, I just like playing games in general.
3: Let the investigationing people do their investigationing, then rally the town to lynch confirmed trolls, and protect confirmed civvies.

Also: mandatory retaliation vote:

Mort (1) - qwerter
Dm1321 (1) - justaburd
SpikeSpiegel (1) - iancudorinmarian
qwerter (1) - Mort

(well, not really mandatory, but quite mandatory nonetheless (shaddup, you know what I mean!))

[mathman101]

1. What do you think is the best ability available in this mafia?
2. Why do you like playing mafia?
3. What is the best strategy for the town to take with their abilities?

1. not sure, maybe the hacker or the veteran.
2. I enjoy getting to know people and making myself known. I started playing mafias here before I started playing other pvp events, which helped me to be recognized and remembered by other members when I started to participate in other events/comps.
3. Not sure, most of the time I rely on my ability and others abilities that get publicly confirmed or can confirm others.


For the vote, I'll vote later after I've finished reading through everyone else's RQS answers.

[Ungaros]

Mort (1) - qwerter
Dm1321 (1) - justaburd
SpikeSpiegel (1) - iancudorinmarian
qwerter (1) - Mort
justaburd (1) - Ungaros

answer the questions or I'm loading the pellet gun

[RootRanger]

3. What Ungaros said, but I think if the Hackers somehow find each other, they need to figure out a pattern to 'not vote' and let the admin investigations reveal themselves so people can figure out who is who.

There is only one Hacker.

1. What do you think is the best ability available in this mafia?
2. Why do you like playing mafia?
3. What is the best strategy for the town to take with their abilities?

1.) Hacker.
2.) To win.
3.) Listen up, because this is important:

The Veteran should role claim ASAP. As in, right now. I'm being serious. Make a post saying you're the Veteran. If two people claim to be the Veteran, one of them is probably a troll, and that would only further our investigation. The Veteran is a weak role unless it's claimed. I know this sounds crazy, but just think about it for a minute. If the Veteran is killed by a lynch or trolls (on their first attempt) without ever having role claimed, then it will have been a useless role. If the Veteran survives a troll-kill, then it will have been the same as if the Veteran had simply bothered to role claim. The mafia will have wasted a kill, but that can happen anyways if the Veteran role claims. The reason the Veteran can be a powerful role if it is role claimed is because it gives the admins someone to target. The admins will know, with a fairly high degree of certainty, that their target is innocent. This helps them narrow down their identity to 2 possibilities, rather than 4, as Fippe explained.

The advantage of having the admins target the veteran in round one, as opposed to themselves, is that it allows the Hacker to reveal the information. Obviously, if the admins target themself, we won't want the Hacker revealing who was targeted by the admins. So, by having the admins target the veteran - who was most likely the only one to claim to be the veteran because the trolls don't want to put themselves at risk and the civilians don't want to screw themselves over - both the admins learn which 2 of the 4 possibilities they could be, and it narrows down what order they could be in.

This means the veteran needs to role claim, and the Hacker needs to abstain from voting. This maximizes the information we can gain this round.

Now, to protect the identity of the Hacker, everyone needs to follow his voting pattern. If the Hacker reveals information, then every single player who voted is proven not to be the Hacker. Likewise, if no information is revealed, then every single player who did not vote is proven not to be the Hacker. This might seem pretty insignificant at first, but as the game goes on, the number of people who could potentially be the Hacker decreases, and our odds get worse and worse. The exception, of course, is if we find out someone is a troll. In this case, we would need a few people to vote for the troll, while the rest will vote just as the Hacker does.

Now that I've come up with the best way we can win, I suppose this makes me a pretty big target for the mafia. So, Helper, I'd really like you to target me tonight. I realize this can only happen once, but I'd like it to be tonight. It's the early game, and it's important I stay alive at least one round.

[RootRanger]

To recap, the very first thing that needs to happen is for the veteran to role claim, right now.

If the veteran is the only person to role claim, then we proceed with Plan A:
1.) Everybody no-votes, to protect the identity of the Hacker.
2.) Admins target the veteran, who is almost certainly a civilian.
3.) Helper targets me to keep me alive for the next day phase.

On the off-chance that a second player claims to be the veteran, we go to Plan B:
1.) One player votes for the first veteran. Two players vote for the second veteran. Everyone else doesn't vote. If a fourth player votes, then that player is likely a troll.
2.) If the player lynched is a troll, then we know the other veteran is confirmed. If the player lynched is the veteran, we know the other player is a troll (or really, really stupid.)
3.) Admins target themselves to narrow down their identities.
4.) Helper targets me to keep me alive for the next day phase.

Mort (1) - qwerter
Dm1321 (1) - justaburd
SpikeSpiegel (1) - iancudorinmarian
qwerter (1) - Mort
justaburd (1) - Ungaros
No Vote (1) - RootRanger

[Fippe94]

One problem with Plan B. You say a total of 3 people should vote, an also that the Admins should target themselves. This won't work so well. Either the hacker is one of the no-voters, and all admins are revealed for the mafia to see. Or the hacker is one of the 3 players to vote, which narrows it down to 3 people, which is bad too. The only solution to this would be everyone spreading out their votes on the other players. Other than that, the rest of your stuff seems really good, and I agree.

Mort (1) - qwerter
Dm1321 (1) - justaburd
SpikeSpiegel (1) - iancudorinmarian
qwerter (1) - Mort
justaburd (1) - Ungaros
No Vote (2) - RootRanger, Fippe94

[RootRanger]

One problem with Plan B. You say a total of 3 people should vote, an also that the Admins should target themselves. This won't work so well. Either the hacker is one of the no-voters, and all admins are revealed for the mafia to see. Or the hacker is one of the 3 players to vote, which narrows it down to 3 people, which is bad too. The only solution to this would be everyone spreading out their votes on the other players. Other than that, the rest of your stuff seems really good, and I agree.

Right, thanks. So then, we could have all 19 players vote. 9 on the first veteran, 10 on the second.

[Aneninen]

I can see a problem with your plan, RootRanger.

Since the Admins can target themselves, in my opinion they should do so during the first night. In this case the Hacker mustn't hack now or else the Trolls will know who the Admins are!!! So, the Hacker must vote today and so should everyone else do. Because, the results of the Admin Check are public only if the Hacker hacks. (That was told me by eljoemo – I hope it's not against the rules revealing a PM information about the rules. If it is, I'm really sorry and delete this post.)

Spoiler for Hidden:

I know that I told something entirely different in a previous post but at that point I misunderstood the rules. As we know, it's forbidden to edit our posts.

There is another minor thing: the Inactive One must vote every day if he or she is active unless gets mod-killed (if I can understand the rules correctly).

Also, what will we do if one (or more) of the Trolls start following the Hacker's voting pattern? So, maybe only some of us should follow the Hacker's pattern so as to protect him or her as long as we can. (In this case the Trolls can only pick one out of the "Hacker-looking" players.) And, in my opinion it's definitely not useful if someone "important", eg. the Helper or the PVP-er endangeres self with this pattern. Maybe the Lurker should not waste the double-vote by non-voting.

Otherwise, it seems to be a sensible plan.

Since RootRanger is probably neither the Veteran nor the Hacker and most likely none of the Admins, the Helper might indeed protect him; protecting those roles will be important later.


I have another question. Is it allowed to request a certain role to PM me?

[Ungaros]

Plan b suggestion. ..Since the veteran gets -1 to his vote total, if two claim vet we can put 8 votes on each and the non vet would die. if one person has to not vote, it could be the vet because we know that he isn't the hacker (once he claims)

[RootRanger]

Plan b suggestion. ..Since the veteran gets -1 to his vote total, if two claim vet we can put 8 votes on each and the non vet would die. if one person has to not vote, it could be the vet because we know that he isn't the hacker (once he claims)

True. Yeah, this is a better way to do it.

[RootRanger]

Since the Admins can target themselves, in my opinion they should do so during the first night. In this case the Hacker mustn't hack now or else the Trolls will know who the Admins are!!! So, the Hacker must vote today and so should everyone else do. Because, the results of the Admin Check are public only if the Hacker hacks. (That was told me by eljoemo – I hope it's not against the rules revealing a PM information about the rules. If it is, I'm really sorry and delete this post.)

If the admins target the veteran, they get the same results as if they had targeted themselves. Only this way, by targeting the veteran, the Hacker can safely reveal the order of the admins, which will help us in the future.

There is another minor thing: the Inactive One must vote every day if he or she is active unless gets mod-killed (if I can understand the rules correctly).

I think the Inactive One is only required to post if he/she has missed the last two days due to being "inactive." The earliest this can happen is round 3. And if the Inactive One's identity is revealed, it's not really a loss. There's no reason for the trolls to target that player.

Also, what will we do if one (or more) of the Trolls start following the Hacker's voting pattern?

Nothing? The idea is that on the odd-numbered rounds, nobody votes. On the even-numbered rounds, everybody votes. This allows the Hacker to blend right in with everybody else. The more people who do this, the safer the Hacker is.

[Aneninen]

If the admins target the veteran, they get the same results as if they had targeted themselves. Only this way, by targeting the veteran, the Hacker can safely reveal the order of the admins, which will help us in the future.

That's true. Now I can see the plan.

I think the Inactive One is only required to post if he/she has missed the last two days due to being "inactive." The earliest this can happen is round 3. And if the Inactive One's identity is revealed, it's not really a loss. There's no reason for the trolls to target that player.

According to the rules he or she can (and perhaps should) be active on the first day and perhaps the Inactive can give a No Vote as well with no consequences. I'm not sure. But, that role is not important right now.

Also, what will we do if one (or more) of the Trolls start following the Hacker's voting pattern?

Nothing? The idea is that on the odd-numbered rounds, nobody votes. On the even-numbered rounds, everybody votes. This allows the Hacker to blend right in with everybody else. The more people who do this, the safer the Hacker is.

So, we should all hope that the Veteran reveals himself/herself during the day. If not, we still have to vote, including the Hacker. It's possible (unfortunately) that the Veteran doesn't agree with this plan but, it he or she must reveal his/her role if anyone else posts "I'm the Veteran" !

Assuming that those who have already read your post would have told if they had been the Veteran, the following players are not the Veteran:
RootRanger, Fippe94, Aneninen, Ungaros.

Also, RootRanger is not the Helper and might not be the Hacker, nor an Admin.

Those who have already posted at least twice (or once but with no vote, shown in brackets) are most likely not the Lurker. Namely: Ungaros, Aneninen, Fippe94, iancudorinmarian, RootRanger, (qwerter), (ddevans96), (dawn to dusk), (Kuroaitou), (dm1321), (SpikeSpiegel), (mathman101)

That's all we know right now.

Meanwhile, can someone answer this question: Is it allowed to request a certain role to PM me here on the forum?