A View on Cops

Type: Views Author: Mastin

History

Original Publication: February 17, 2011 by Mastin

Revised: April 02, 2017 by Mastina

Made by Mastin. Initial draft formed from Newbie 1048, specifically, post 314. Was then Generalized as a MD article.

Article

Cops should investigate competent players who are not obviously Town or obviously scum.

---Vi

Far too many cops waste their investigation on one of the more scummy players in the game. This is a mistake, because the player is likely to be eliminated anyway. If on scum, you're just confirming a suspicion. If on town, then you're forced to claim to save them, since your anonymity is not worth losing your result.

...But if you can't investigate the scummiest player in the game, what do you do? Investigate your strongest townread?

Not quite, but close.

There's one thing above all else you should consider when choosing the player to investigate:

You're not just investigating a player to see their alignment. Your investigation determines their influence in the future of the game. If you hit scum, that's "dead via auto-elimination". However, when investigating, assume you will hit town. When you receive an innocent, you've created a player who is never getting eliminated no matter what--and the town has to live with that selection. Said player will always be known to be town-aligned, barring special circumstances (strong reason to suspect godfather, strong reason to believe in a not-sane cop, etc., which are generally appearing less and less often).

If you hastily investigate a Village Idiot and they're town, then what? They might survive to see elo. Would you really want them to be the hammering vote? Most likely, you would prefer that if there is a confirmed town player alive in elo, they actually be someone competent.

Your investigation is a tool to determine who the town leaders will be. Players who are known to be 100% town carry a disproportionately strong weight compared to those who are unconfirmed. When it comes to who is sheeped, it generally goes "Roles > Confirmed Innocents > Pro-Town-Looking Players". If your confirmed innocent is not a strong player, they lose the potential to lead that a better player would be able to exploit.

You're setting the future course of the entire village with your choices. Someone easily manipulated and/or having difficulty getting reads is a sub-optimal choice for being confirmed town, as they will most likely miseliminate when the time comes for them to step up and give their insight. (Or, worse, they don't step up at all and that potential to have guaranteed town give good reasoning is lost forever.)

So who you investigation should be a player with a degree of competency that they will, in your opinion, get the job done when push comes to shove. After you are dead, you want your results to leave someone in charge who is a town leader with an open mind that will analyze situations carefully.

And, incidentally, this type of player will typically be among your townreads. If you hit scum, bonus points: a player fitting these criteria likely was thinking they were going to be endgame material, yet has been caught, messing up the scum's plans. But if you hit town as is most likely, you'll want these factors in mind:

• How likely is your target to be killed before you reveal your results? You'll want to avoid targets where the probability of this is too high.
• How much difference does your investigation make on their play? The greater the improvement, the better. You want to avoid investigating players whose play will deteriorate after becoming confirmed town (if as confirmed town they lurk out of apathy, they are the best target).

With these in mind, it won't necessarily be your scumreads you check, or your townreads, or those more neutral. You might catch scum, which would be good. But if you don't (and often, you won't), then you want your choice to be someone who you are happy to call an ally, with trust they will direct the town where they need to go and nail the scum you yourself could not.