More Agonizing over Deals

I continue to wring my hands over the deal structure. My primary concern just now is with the “information injection” process, by which actors get additional information about the auragon counts of others. This is absolutely central to the gameplay.

The problem is that yesterdays’ information is obsolete today. Let’s walk through an example. Koopie has 3 red auragons, 2 green ones, and 1 blue one at the beginning of the game. I begin the game believing that his auragon counts are 2.5, 1.6, and 1.5, respectively. On the first night, he could lose zero, one, or two auragons. My information about him is almost useless now. So how is it updated?

We could make it possible for one actor to tell another actor about combat results, but the stoolie doesn’t want to reveal anything about his own auragon counts. So does the stoolie say “Koopie deployed a red auragon”? Or does he say “Koopie lost a red auragon”, implying that he, the stoolie, used a blue auragon against Koopie? 

Perhaps an actor should have both verbs available. 

But this raises a new problem: logic. It’s no problem for me to write algorithms for the actors to assess the reliability of their information and adjust it accordingly. But what about the player? How do we keep track of the running estimates for the player?

We could, of course, just apply the same algorithms that are used for the actor, but that nullifies the whole point of the game. To truly assess all that information, we have to present the player with the complete history.  The player would see something like this:

Initial estimate: 2 red auragons
On day 1, Camiggdo said that it was 3
On day 1, Skordokott said that it was 2
On day 2, Camiggdo said that Koopie used a red auragon in combat.
On day 2, Skordokott said that it was 1
On night 2, I fought Koopie. He used a green auragon, and I used a blue one, so I lost.

So, how many red auragons does Koopie have now? 

This is way too messy. We have to have a way of re-setting the auragon estimates, so that you can forget about yesterday’s information. Thus, each day is independent; you start all over each day in terms of your knowledge of other people’s auragon counts.