Friday, February 13, 2015

Proposal: Prevent Brendan winning by default

Timed out / quorumed 8 votes to 1. Enacted by Kevan.

(Note by ais523: you miscounted, it’s actually 3 votes to 1. This does not change anything about the enactment, because it was already timed out.)

Adminned at 16 Feb 2015 11:50:06 UTC

In the rule “Clearance”, replace

When a Crewmember is part of the Responder Team for a Mission that succeeds, their Clearance increases by 2. When a Crewmember is part of the Responder Team for a Mission that fails, their Clearance decreases by 3. If the Pilot posted a Roster Comment on a Mission, instead, none of its Responder Team gains or loses Clearance as a result of that Mission.

with

When a Crewmember is part of the Responder Team for a Mission that succeeds, their Clearance increases by 2. When a Crewmember is part of the Responder Team for a Mission that fails, their Clearance decreases by 3. If the Pilot posted a Roster Comment on a Mission, none of those Clearance changes happen for that Mission; instead, when a Mission succeeds for which the Pilot posted a Roster Comment, then the Pilot’s Clearance increases by 3.

 

Currently, the only players who can even potentially get the Human victory are Brendan and Josh (and Josh is almost certainly an Android, leaving it as just Brendan). This is because the only Clearance decreasers around are Mission failure (which Brendan has veto power over), and Mediator effects.

The intent behind this proposal is to prevent Brendan gaining an advantage from use of the Mediator power; because he a gets 3-point advantage over the mission team when a mission is Rostered (let’s face it, the only correct move is to Sabotage for the Clearance gain), this gives him a 3-point disadvantage to cancel it out.

Comments

Bucky:

14-02-2015 00:02:14 UTC

There is a flaw in your logic. against

ais523:

14-02-2015 00:03:53 UTC

Mind telling me what it is? It’s possible you could get me to co-operate or SK, but a bare statement like that isn’t very persuasive.

Bucky:

14-02-2015 00:07:24 UTC

Assume at least one Human gets Disabled by a trial.  I think this is likely.  That Human will have a Clearance of 0.  In order to beat them, Brendan would need a Clearance of -1, which would cause him to lose Pilot privileges, which would in turn allow someone else to lose even more Clearance.

ais523:

14-02-2015 00:17:47 UTC

Hmm. It’s possible (and even relatively likely, given the requirements on holding a Command Role) that he’d just get the role back again; that definitely does need fixing.

Also, Brendan could delay that happening indefinitely, so could wait for the perfect Mission to drop to -1 just before the last Android was eliminated, if he could figure out when that was. (And it would be terribly bad play for someone in Brendan’s position not to make an alliance with an Android, to be able to manipulate an ending in which one of them is basically guaranteed to win; I know I would if I could, but don’t have much to offer and thus haven’t heard any offers, whereas Brendan has enough of an influence on events that he’d be a more desirable partner for such behaviour.)

So the winning strategy seems to be “Human gets Disabled by trial (maybe two of them, to cause a tie, and thus ensure that the Disabled human doesn’t accidentally win early) → Brendan waits until Androids are eliminated → Brendan waits until a Mission where he’s the lowest-scoring member and doesn’t Roster it, three times (because the other players shouldn’t vote FOR if it would give Brendan a win, thus it’ll gain Unattended losses rather than Sabotage losses). This is lower-probability than I thought. On the other hand, at our current lack of Trial success, it’s likely to be 3 or 4 weeks by the time it breaks down, at which point everyone will be terribly bored.

So I still think this is a good idea to give the remaining Humans a reasonable chance. Brendan has a huge advantage, and hasn’t shown any unwillingness to use it. I’m less certain than I was, though.

ais523:

14-02-2015 00:20:38 UTC

Meh, Brendan’s behind many crewmembers on Clearance as it is, so this isn’t as much of a threat as I thought; he needs much luckier rolls to pull it off, which will take weeks. imperial

ais523:

14-02-2015 00:28:53 UTC

New worrying conclusion from this: Brendan failed to Roster a Mission, allowing players the chance to Sabotage it for Clearance. This implies that he’s most likely an Android, because that action a) doesn’t benefit the Human team, and b) wouldn’t benefit him personally either, if he were Human. I was hoping he was just not paying attention or absent, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

(Especially as the new Responder Team he picked for the “Propulsion Malfunction” includes Sphinx, who hasn’t posted for 4 days. That’s not a sensible choice if you want the Mission to succeed. It’s sensible if you realise you can’t get any Clearance advantage and just want to screw up the humans, though.)

ais523:

14-02-2015 00:30:04 UTC

Sorry for thinking out loud. I find it helps in Werewolf-style games. (And there’s still an advantage from knowing which players are on which teams, regardless of how you plan to win; it lets you know when the game will end, which is vital information for many potential plans.)

Darknight: he/him

14-02-2015 00:50:57 UTC

imperial

Bucky:

14-02-2015 05:57:35 UTC

Brenden seems to have been away ‘for real’ for more than 48 hours, based on PM response times.

Kevan: he/him

14-02-2015 11:21:04 UTC

imperial

Sylphrena:

14-02-2015 16:35:23 UTC

for

Josh: Observer he/they

14-02-2015 19:48:06 UTC

for

Brendan: he/him

15-02-2015 15:39:03 UTC

I stand in awe of your optimal-player mental version of me, ais. In the real world, Bucky and Occam’s Razor are correct: I haven’t had as much time to devote to the game as I would have liked.

Anyway, I tried to propose something along these lines back when Command Roles were first introduced and got voted down. I am willing to shoulder the credit/blame for my roster choices. Just don’t be surprised if I’m a little more reluctant to make those choices now.  imperial

ayesdeeef:

16-02-2015 02:44:02 UTC

for I don’t like that he didn’t post that roster comment, regardless of whether he was actually away or not. Being the Pilot is more of a responsibility than being a team member, and if we were happy to knock off ais523 (remembering that the case against ais523 did not rely on ais523 actually being an Android but rather on accounting for the fact that he was probably just a lazy human), then maybe by the same logic it’s time to shoot down the mediator.

Bucky, why are you PMing Brendan? It’s common knowledge that conspiracies are often formed between Androids and Humans to usurp everyone so you better explain yourself.

Put:

16-02-2015 08:32:32 UTC

imperial