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[notquitethere]

Oh you guys! You consistently make me laugh. I say something friendly and you guys scream SCUM! I think it's really too early to say who may be a spy and who may not. This game more than others invites careful examination of the actual results (of missions etc.). Casting baseless accusations before we even do anything is pointless.

I think it makes sense to send the more active players on the first mission, as we'll get more of a response from them when questioning the results. Disallowing team-pickers to pick themselves removes one tool from the spy arsenal, so I can broadly assent to this policy (though I'm not sure what difference it will make either way). I'm happy to get started with the game, so if Nerjin wants to actually make his pick in red text, we can proceed.

Ford, the active spy would have to be someone competent at lying to others, so a more experience mafia player. Nerjin or Leafsnail, perhaps. It would obviously depend who was on the spy team.

[Captain Ford]

notquitethere:

This game more than others invites careful examination of the actual results (of missions etc.). Casting baseless accusations before we even do anything is pointless.

Now you see, this is why I think you're scummy. Sure, examining the results is important, but there are choices to make first, and those choices affect our chances of success and of finding spies. This isn't as simple as a day 1 lynch.

I'm happy to get started with the game,

Yeah, that's the thing. It has started, and you aren't playing it. You didn't hesitate to weigh in on other games. What's different about this one?

Ford, the active spy would have to be someone competent at lying to others, so a more experience mafia player. Nerjin or Leafsnail, perhaps. It would obviously depend who was on the spy team.

I find it hilarious that you said Nerjin, considering he and I played in the same BM.

So, how long would those sleeper agents be sleeping for?


Toonyman:

Are you a Freedom Fighter Ford?

ಠ_ಠ

Yes, I am.

I have this nagging feeling you're scum (beyond having no confidence we will succeed the first mission) and Dariush and Captain Ford are probable scum by association. Proof being Dariush and Ford trying to get you to switch (this would be in the spies favor for the early round, you only need one spy and any more would just get the group suspected and less able to sabotage)

My first problem with this is that you think Nerjin is dumb enough to include 3/4 of his team on his first proposal for the first mission.

My second problem with this is that you are assuming that if there was more than one spy on a mission, that they would all sabotage.

My third problem with this is that you're making the incredibly dumb assumption that the spies would include more than one spy on the first mission, and then sabotage it. If the spies were going to throw one of the missions to the rebels to try to gain credit, it would be the first one.

My opinion right now is for you to construct an entirely new team.

That is an incredible amount of paranoia right there.

and Captain Ford also says that they "know myself to be a rebel" just now.

See that's funny, because I for one like to call myself a Freedom Fighter.

ಠ_ಠ

[notquitethere]

The difference between this game and regular mafia though is that it essentially doesn't matter who goes on the first mission. I see the game like a big Mastermind logic puzzle to work out who's a spy; we submit a team and if the mission fails we learn that there's spies there and we submit a different team and so on. In mafia there are lynches so you want to be damn sure you're not hanging the wrong people first (and even then, you only get positive info from lynches). Idle accusations at this point harm the cause. There's no way of knowing who's a spy until we submit a team and get a result. Everything before that is meaningless speculation. That's why I want to get on with it. I'll weigh in when we actually have something of substance to talk about.

In the scenario, sleeper agents would sleep until the active agent is confirmed by everyone else to be a spy (probably by the third mission), and until then manipulate the roster each time so that the active agent is on the team. Thinking about it more, you might want half the spies to be active, rotating between them. I'd obviously have discussed the idea with my fellow spies and they might have been able to foresee some weaknesses or whatever. We true rebels should hope that they didn't actually manage to agree on a workable game-plan in their planning phase.

[Captain Ford]

EBWOP: Retracting part of my statement:

My third problem with this is that you're making the incredibly dumb assumption that the spies would include more than one spy on the first mission, and then sabotage it. If the spies were going to throw one of the missions to the rebels to try to gain credit, it would be the first one.

On second thought, I'm still uncertain about how valuable throwing missions might be, although I suspect it would be best to wait for a later mission to do it. The rest of the point still stands, though. If the spies pile more than one agent onto a mission intentionally, it's probably an attempt at misdirection.

On an unrelated note, why does my last post have a scrollbar? Does anyone else see that?

PPE: Dangit, NQT.

[Leafsnail]

I don't know about Nerjin but I'm pretty sure Captain Ford is a spy.  I would reject the proposed team on that basis.

My reasoning is that he's avoiding directly referring to his inclusion on the team, but is implicitly supporting his inclusion with his responses to Nerjin and ToonyMan.  I don't have a problem with trying to get yourself on the team, but he seems to be trying to do it without directly attracting attention to himself.

I also don't think Nerjin should be on it since I'd prefer to see more relational tells (IE Nerjin's links to other people) early in the game, although I do think that later on including team leaders in teams would be better numerical.

Re: game theory
@Captain Ford "We should send spies on the first mission" - not a good idea because scum can lay low.  Sending spies on a mission is basically always a bad thing because they get to make the decision whether a failed mission is good or bad for them.

@NQT "Have one active member and everyone else lay low" - I really hope you're scum and they follow this plan, because it would make them lose hilariously easily.  You'd have to push your one candidate super hard and expose yourselves.

[Toaster]

Dariush:

Dariush:  Mission two, four people go out, and there are two sabotages.  Mission one was a success, and one of the three people on mission one went on mission two.  How do you gauge the four mission two people?

What do you mean, how do I gauge them? I know that among them is one person who is at least 66% likely to be scum and that whoever organized or approved of the team is either an idiot or scum, because there's really no sane reason to do so, since if the repeater is scum, then he basically handed the scumteam the victory.

Fair enough.  If you could swap one person from Nerjin's list to yourself, who would it be?


Nerjin:

Nerjin
Dariush
Ford

Is who I'm thinking so far. Anyone have suggestions or reads on these people that would indicate I shouldn't take them?

I'm inclined to distrust this list merely because you didn't say why you picked those people.

A) Mission goes well and we're all rebels.

It's been said, but if one of you is a spy you could lay low to build town cred.  Also, you gave a non-answer as to why you picked that team- another minus to it.

Toony:

Not scum
Trustworthy Player.
and so far there are precious few. I sorta wish I wasn't the one who had to do this. All the pressure is sorta hard to deal with. I don't want to be responsible for the first failure.

See that's funny, because I for one like to call myself a Freedom Fighter.

I see what you did there.


NQT:

Nerjin, just go for that team. We'll only know it was a good one if it succeeds. (Besides, spraypainting isn't that hard, and your team has the smarts, the muscle and the heart to win!)

The difference between this game and regular mafia though is that it essentially doesn't matter who goes on the first mission. I see the game like a big Mastermind logic puzzle to work out who's a spy; we submit a team and if the mission fails we learn that there's spies there and we submit a different team and so on. In mafia there are lynches so you want to be damn sure you're not hanging the wrong people first (and even then, you only get positive info from lynches). Idle accusations at this point harm the cause. There's no way of knowing who's a spy until we submit a team and get a result. Everything before that is meaningless speculation. That's why I want to get on with it. I'll weigh in when we actually have something of substance to talk about.

While I get what you're saying about there being no mission-based evidence on D1, the way you're going about it is super scummy, especially the underlined bits.  Saying we can't find anything useful on D1 is like saying we should just lynch at random on D1 in regular Mafia.  Suppressing discussion is scummy, not trying to hunt scum is scummy.  You are scummy.

The comparison to Mastermind breaks down when you realize how few trials we have compared to how many combinations of scum/town there are.  We simply don't have time to completely solve this logically- we have to work via behavioral analysis as well.

[Captain Ford]

The difference between this game and regular mafia though is that it essentially doesn't matter who goes on the first mission.

You're right.

But you're also wrong, because the person who chooses the team is also a very important piece of information. Whether or not the person picking the team is also on the team dramatically effects the information we get after the mission, and it also dramatically affects our chances of success (which are dismal).

In the scenario, sleeper agents would sleep until the active agent is confirmed by everyone else to be a spy (probably by the third mission), and until then manipulate the roster each time so that the active agent is on the team. Thinking about it more, you might want half the spies to be active, rotating between them. I'd obviously have discussed the idea with my fellow spies and they might have been able to foresee some weaknesses or whatever. We true rebels should hope that they didn't actually manage to agree on a workable game-plan in their planning phase.

Hmm...that's a fair answer. Your plan is terrible, by the way. And yes, if they didn't figure something out, it will make it a lot easier to catch them.

Odds are good I've already talked to at least two spies already.


Nobody in Particular: Talking to NQT has given me an idea for another option, which I'll throw out into the ring: We could just choose a team completely at random. Coming up with trustworthy random numbers is a challenge, but the simplest solution would be to simply have Glyphgryph roll them for us (if he's willing. It would save us a lot of time and shenanigans, though).

PPE: Leafsnail, Toaster

[Captain Ford]

I don't know about Nerjin but I'm pretty sure Captain Ford is a spy.  I would reject the proposed team on that basis.

My reasoning is that he's avoiding directly referring to his inclusion on the team, but is implicitly supporting his inclusion with his responses to Nerjin and ToonyMan.  I don't have a problem with trying to get yourself on the team, but he seems to be trying to do it without directly attracting attention to himself.

Well, that could also be because you're the first person to bring it up.

And that post from ToonyMan was really bizarre. I'm not in opposition to the idea of rolling up a new team. At one point I had written a suggestion to reject the current team, just to see what the next person would come up with, but I think it got lost in my numerous rewrites.

I also don't think Nerjin should be on it since I'd prefer to see more relational tells (IE Nerjin's links to other people) early in the game, although I do think that later on including team leaders in teams would be better numerical.

That pretty well sums up my feelings on the matter. I have a feeling that later teams might be chosen more by consensus. Which will be a totally insane process. Oh man.

This is going to be so much fun.

Re: game theory
@Captain Ford "We should send spies on the first mission" - not a good idea because scum can lay low.  Sending spies on a mission is basically always a bad thing because they get to make the decision whether a failed mission is good or bad for them.

We can't win this game by playing the odds, no matter how we look at it. We have to identify spies. We have a choice between two options, one of which has a greater chance of success, and the other gives us more information. I'm saying we need to prioritize information over success on the first mission.

And if the spies do lay low, well, good for them. It doesn't mean I trust 'em.

[Leafsnail]

Ultimately this is like mafia, only the priority is to identify town rather than scum, and you only get vague feedback on whether your suspicions were correct.  I think that's how we should play it.

[Nerjin]

Dariush:

Dariush:  Mission two, four people go out, and there are two sabotages.  Mission one was a success, and one of the three people on mission one went on mission two.  How do you gauge the four mission two people?

What do you mean, how do I gauge them? I know that among them is one person who is at least 66% likely to be scum and that whoever organized or approved of the team is either an idiot or scum, because there's really no sane reason to do so, since if the repeater is scum, then he basically handed the scumteam the victory.

Fair enough.  If you could swap one person from Nerjin's list to yourself, who would it be?


Nerjin:

Nerjin
Dariush
Ford

Is who I'm thinking so far. Anyone have suggestions or reads on these people that would indicate I shouldn't take them?

I'm inclined to distrust this list merely because you didn't say why you picked those people.

Well as I said, that's just who I was thinking at the time. Now however I'm against either of them due to scum-NQT [who still has awful reasoning with the whole "May as well wing it and hope for the best eh other townsfolk?" logic.] wanting him on the team. Also if it will make everyone feel better I will remove myself from the team-list. Though now I have to find 3 people to trust...

@mod do weekends count towards the day timer?

[Captain Ford]

Leafsnail:

Ultimately this is like mafia, only the priority is to identify town rather than scum, and you only get vague feedback on whether your suspicions were correct.  I think that's how we should play it.

Hmm...I got the feeling it was some of both, actually.

Here's my reasoning: If we send 3 people on a mission, and we get one sabotage, it's still possible that the other two were spies.

To be clear, there are four possibilities:
0 spies
1 spy
2 spies
3 spies

And the single sabotage only eliminates one of those possibilities. The only concrete information we get tells us the presence of spies, not the absence of them. So we're still hunting to identify the spies, not the rebels.

[notquitethere]

Nerjin, please don't misrepresent my arguments. I'm not saying "let's wing it": I'm saying, we don't have anything useful to discuss right now but we will very soon. Or at least, that's what I was arguing. I did the maths and I can see the benefit of getting behavioral reads and my behavior has given me some excellent reads on the lot of you. 

[Nerjin]

Nerjin, just go for that team. We'll only know it was a good one if it succeeds. (Besides, spraypainting isn't that hard, and your team has the smarts, the muscle and the heart to win!)

Nerjin, please don't misrepresent my arguments. I'm not saying "let's wing it": I'm saying, we don't have anything useful to discuss right now but we will very soon. Or at least, that's what I was arguing. I did the maths and I can see the benefit of getting behavioral reads and my behavior has given me some excellent reads on the lot of you. 

I misrepresent nothing about your argument. You said it quite literally. We have plenty to discuss based on that little slip-up of yours. Not to mention everyone weighing in on options gives us plenty of things to discuss.

 As for your reads, tell me truly I implore. Is there, is there balm in gillead? Wait... Anyway, tell me truly I implore, what reads do you have?

[notquitethere]

At the moment, Toaster looks most rebel because he gave a good reason why my argument about it being like Mastermind wasn't sound. Nerjin looks most spy due to his overblown language and a bizarre insistence in taking what was obviously a flippant remark as some kind Freudian slip. I'll need to reread the posts of others before I come to more conclusions.

[Dariush]

See that's funny, because I for one like to call myself a Freedom Fighter.  I have this nagging feeling you're scum (beyond having no confidence we will succeed the first mission) and Dariush and Captain Ford are probable scum by association.  Proof being Dariush and Ford trying to get you to switch (this would be in the spies favor for the early round, you only need one spy and any more would just get the group suspected and less able to sabotage)

This is a stinking pile of WIFOM. It is just as possible that there are several spies on the mission, but only one sabotage, since the other spies know that the town may view them equally as a non-sabotaging scum and as townies. Thus, there are the following possibilities for the first mission:
1) 0 sabotages: there are probably no spies on the mission.
2) 1 sabotage: at least one spy. Absolutely no information beyond those four words.
3) 2+ sabotages: spies are idiots.
Also, what Ford said about including 75% of the team.

My reasoning is that he's avoiding directly referring to his inclusion on the team, but is implicitly supporting his inclusion with his responses to Nerjin and ToonyMan.  I don't have a problem with trying to get yourself on the team, but he seems to be trying to do it without directly attracting attention to himself.

This is WIFOM because neither rebels nor spies should really care whether they are included or not. If anything, the rebels have more to gain from being included (though I haven't thought on this too deeply, this is my first hunch). The only exception is if the spy knows that there are no spies on the proposed roster.

Fair enough.  If you could swap one person from Nerjin's list to yourself, who would it be?

...I am already on his list.

The difference between this game and regular mafia though is that it essentially doesn't matter who goes on the first mission.

Uh, no. This doesn't work if the leader is allowed to pick the team by himself. In that case, if he is a spy, the scumteam will have an advantage both in the form of one guaranteed sabotaged mission and in the form of being able to plant any possible combination of sleeper agents.

I propose to switch Nerjin for whoever is the author of the first post after this one where minutes and seconds begin with the same number. I.e. 06:04:03. This gives us a 1/36 possibility of anybody fitting the criteria and is virtually impossible to manipulate, thus ensuring almost true randomness.