The Syndicate

JaggedJimmyJay wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 10:31 pm To expand on a few obvious questions:

The two extra kills entering the merged thread were granted to the mafia team as a planned mechanic. Merging the threads is, on its own power, a town-sided mechanic (and potentially very town-sided). This was meant to counteract at least these two issues:
1) If town enters the merge with one mafia alive from either or both threads, then the elimination of that mafia member implicitly confirms every other player from that thread as town. That is incredibly powerful.
2) The flat numbers are town-sided in that, essentially, a "new" game begins at the merger with numerous cycles of information already gather prior. This provides the town with a handicap.
The two kills were meant to offset these issues.

Also, this Day Five was a "pseudo-endgame" phase. This is also a planned mechanic based upon the numerical game states in each thread at the time they merge. The Lumon thread town had one miss left before an endgame phase (5v1). The Home thread town had already reached an endgame phase (3v2). The merger was meant to reflect the "average" of those two states, which would be "one half miss left before endgame". Obviously "half of a mischop" is not possible, but a conditional game-ending chop that isn't guaranteed was the best approximation in my view. And thematically, the innie-outie dynamic just made it all fit nicely.

In the end, I am not entirely satisfied by my own balance. This was a weird one, clearly, and if I were to do it all again I'd do some things differently. But all in all, it was a thrill to see the game play out and the effort that both teams put forth to get the win. @Delta was awesome too.