Posted October 05, 2017
Well, since the current game is finished now and there was a little interest in my idea for nightless Mafia I thought I'd post a more fleshed out version of the idea.
Basically the idea is to prevent the whole 'Let's wait till five minutes before the deadline to secure a lynch' behaviour that seems to be the norm here by removing deadlines, and Night, altogether.
Instead 'Night' actions now have a cooldown (and in most cases a warm up) time before they can be used. Each power will get a different cooldown depending on it's usefulness (and the mod's discretion obviously). The cooldown might either take everyday into account or might allow players 'free' days which don't count towards the cool down (weekends being the most likely candidate).
The mod chooses a resolution time each day (let's say Noon for convenience) and players can submit their actions at any time up till that point if they wish them to be resolved that day (or maybe an hour before that point to make sure the mod has received them all?).
A player can submit their action at any time, even while it is still on cooldown, but it will obviously only fire when the cooldown is finished.
So let's take an example, say I'm part of the scum team and I'm going to perform the NK. In this game the NK happens every 5 days say (1 week of working days) and we're on day 2 of the game, so I can't kill anyone for 3 days. I can submit my action to the mod to NK trent (sorry trent!) on day 5 and change it any time up until the resolution time on my chosen day.
Alternatively I might decide to try and trick town into thinking they have more time between kills and put my kill in for the 7th day instead.
The way I see it working is to make the NK the base line for cooldowns and assign cooldowns to the other roles as fractions or multiples of the NK's.
For example:
Night Kill - 5 Day Cooldown
Alignment Cop - 7 Day Cooldown
Role Cop - 5 Day Cooldown
Flavour Cop - 3 Day Cooldown
Doctor - Requires a little more effort... I would say the Doctor would get a period (5 Days) during which he is protecting a target. The first time the target is hit during that period the Doctor stops it. This means the Doctor still can't protect the same person twice in a row but has a reasonably chance of actually protecting a target. Every 5 days he would have to choose a new target.
Tracker / Watcher - Probably the same as the Doctor, but maybe a shorter period and no limit on targeting the same person twice.
Role Blocker - Could either work the same as the Doctor or could have a 5 day cooldown and instead of blocking an action they could add X number of days to the target's cooldown (if they have one). Alternatively both roles could exist.
Godfather / Miller - No cooldown required, their role is active always as usual.
Vigilante - 5 Day Cooldown and 1 Shot (for typical use anyway) or a longer cooldown but no shot limit (say 10 - 15 days, but with a 5 day warm up maybe)
Strongman / Ninja - Are used in conjunction with the NK so don't need a separate cooldown.
Serial Killer - Either the same as a NK or maybe slightly less to give them more of a chance, depends on player numbers obviously.
Cult Recruiter - Depends whether recruiting is guaranteed or not, but probably a 7 or 10 day cooldown if guaranteed.
Roles that work once per day (say Governor) would still be allowed to be used once per lynch cycle.
Night Chats - These could either also occur on a cooldown (say open for 3 days, closed for 3 days) or just be open on set days (say scum chat is open Monday - Wednesday) or could be activated as a power by their users, stay open for a few days and then go on cool down. EDIT: Or the scum chat (and any mason chats etc.) could just be open all the time, which is definitely easier to manage but might be overpowered.
You could also use punishments (for not posting enough or double posting) to add time to cooldowns.
Basically the end result should be that while scum and PRs both gain from stalling to some extent in most games it won't make sense to allow scum free reign to NK while town doesn't lynch so it should hopefully cut lynch and game lengths down. EDIT: It should also help to moderate the power of certain roles which can otherwise be overpowered or game breaking.
I do have a game idea kicking around to test this set up, but it's no where near finished yet.
Basically the idea is to prevent the whole 'Let's wait till five minutes before the deadline to secure a lynch' behaviour that seems to be the norm here by removing deadlines, and Night, altogether.
Instead 'Night' actions now have a cooldown (and in most cases a warm up) time before they can be used. Each power will get a different cooldown depending on it's usefulness (and the mod's discretion obviously). The cooldown might either take everyday into account or might allow players 'free' days which don't count towards the cool down (weekends being the most likely candidate).
The mod chooses a resolution time each day (let's say Noon for convenience) and players can submit their actions at any time up till that point if they wish them to be resolved that day (or maybe an hour before that point to make sure the mod has received them all?).
A player can submit their action at any time, even while it is still on cooldown, but it will obviously only fire when the cooldown is finished.
So let's take an example, say I'm part of the scum team and I'm going to perform the NK. In this game the NK happens every 5 days say (1 week of working days) and we're on day 2 of the game, so I can't kill anyone for 3 days. I can submit my action to the mod to NK trent (sorry trent!) on day 5 and change it any time up until the resolution time on my chosen day.
Alternatively I might decide to try and trick town into thinking they have more time between kills and put my kill in for the 7th day instead.
The way I see it working is to make the NK the base line for cooldowns and assign cooldowns to the other roles as fractions or multiples of the NK's.
For example:
Night Kill - 5 Day Cooldown
Alignment Cop - 7 Day Cooldown
Role Cop - 5 Day Cooldown
Flavour Cop - 3 Day Cooldown
Doctor - Requires a little more effort... I would say the Doctor would get a period (5 Days) during which he is protecting a target. The first time the target is hit during that period the Doctor stops it. This means the Doctor still can't protect the same person twice in a row but has a reasonably chance of actually protecting a target. Every 5 days he would have to choose a new target.
Tracker / Watcher - Probably the same as the Doctor, but maybe a shorter period and no limit on targeting the same person twice.
Role Blocker - Could either work the same as the Doctor or could have a 5 day cooldown and instead of blocking an action they could add X number of days to the target's cooldown (if they have one). Alternatively both roles could exist.
Godfather / Miller - No cooldown required, their role is active always as usual.
Vigilante - 5 Day Cooldown and 1 Shot (for typical use anyway) or a longer cooldown but no shot limit (say 10 - 15 days, but with a 5 day warm up maybe)
Strongman / Ninja - Are used in conjunction with the NK so don't need a separate cooldown.
Serial Killer - Either the same as a NK or maybe slightly less to give them more of a chance, depends on player numbers obviously.
Cult Recruiter - Depends whether recruiting is guaranteed or not, but probably a 7 or 10 day cooldown if guaranteed.
Roles that work once per day (say Governor) would still be allowed to be used once per lynch cycle.
Night Chats - These could either also occur on a cooldown (say open for 3 days, closed for 3 days) or just be open on set days (say scum chat is open Monday - Wednesday) or could be activated as a power by their users, stay open for a few days and then go on cool down. EDIT: Or the scum chat (and any mason chats etc.) could just be open all the time, which is definitely easier to manage but might be overpowered.
You could also use punishments (for not posting enough or double posting) to add time to cooldowns.
Basically the end result should be that while scum and PRs both gain from stalling to some extent in most games it won't make sense to allow scum free reign to NK while town doesn't lynch so it should hopefully cut lynch and game lengths down. EDIT: It should also help to moderate the power of certain roles which can otherwise be overpowered or game breaking.
I do have a game idea kicking around to test this set up, but it's no where near finished yet.
Post edited October 05, 2017 by adaliabooks
