Soldato Buff Suggestion

Soldato sucks nards. Triad gets DOUBLE FREAKIN FLOWER and Mafia gets... a role that almost always blows up his bomb on a dead body. I have seen one good detonation out of like 30 Soldato appearances, which was EPIC, but let's face it, it takes a stroke of wicked luck to do anything with the role.

So I suggest we give him a button like Jailor gets during the day so he can place his bomb on someone he thinks is going to be visited *that night*. This will allow for bait plays like "invests on 6, he's sus" and then you can bomb the shit out of the invests.

But you say, Govs will get rekt every time! Make Bodyguard block Soldato detonation. No Bodyguard worth their salt doesn't have a bomb diffuse kit handy am I right?

Also, no sound for the explosion? Don't worry I got you fam. This shit needs to POP!

https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/search/explosion/

Personally, I like the "Explosion" by frolickingdp1. It's not too loud, and it has a mild build up unlike some of the other ones. We don't want to startle anyone. It also kinda sounds like a house blowing up.

In summary, Soldato is probably one of the coolest concepts I've seen in this game. HE'S GOT A BOMB! KABOOOOM! BUT, he's a limp dick. He can't fuck shit.

BUFF EM

Oh yeah, and Frinckles....

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Nice idea, but won't this be similar to Mass Murderer, except day action?

Pros: Day action so not affected by RB or jail

Cons: Can't change target at night, meaning night discussion is useless (any discussion is AFTER Soldato already picks a target). It's bad design for a team evil role.
But I guess DF has the same issue, and can be circumvented by preemptive strategizing, e.g. "Save your bomb for gov reveal" or "Use your bomb on X tomorrow".

Also, the strategy you outlined, "baiting player into a bombed player" also works with a 1 night delay. You plant the bomb first, THEN bait players onto the bombed player. But I concede it's much trickier with a delay.

Personally supportive to see this change in a beta map.

I think the biggest pro would to make it actually viable.

As it stands currently, it's basically an MM and Arson combined, two roles that are notoriously difficult to get kills with. You basically just have to get lucky that you happened to plant a bomb on someone that turned out to be Mayor, who doesn't get shot randomly, and who reveals early enough to where you aren't dead yet or turned into a Mafioso.

The reason why I think you need the day plant is because that's how MM works. You have to spree someone who would most likely be getting a visitor *that night*. Even that can be hard. Imagine having to do it a day in advance, and you only get one shot at it. It's literally the two hardest killing mechanisms in the game combined, which makes it absurdly hard to kill with.

I like that you brought up RB. Town can still RB the Soldato if they find him, and this would prevent him from detonating correct? So there's still counter-play at hand.

Furthermore, you bring up night discussion. I think night discussion can be done preemptively on N1 or N2 discussing how to use the bomb correctly. I also think the Pros of having a much more reliable bomb outweighs the Cons of not getting to talk about your target with the team as you're taking your shot. Would you rather discuss with your team which target to shoot with a weapon with 5% accuracy, or would you rather have a brief discussion early on and use the weapon yourself with 50% accuracy?

The day button is all about just making him viable.

Agreed on most of your points.

Why not make it a night detonate with no delay then? You pick a target, and that night, anyone who visits the target dies from the bomb.

It makes the killing ability viable, it allows night discussion, it can be countered with RB/jail.

Basically a 1-use MM spree.

Wow. I like that even better than my idea.

One night MM. That's perfect!

EDIT: Maybe make him able to bomb his own Mafia, even his own house like an MM does (without dying of course). Since his teammates know what he's doing, they won't be home. This would also make it so BG could protect Mayor, and die in combat with a Soldato, because it would also function like an MM.

I really like the idea.

DF is extremely strong in that you can take out a Mayor and bypass BG, but a one-night MM style Soldato will have its own strengths in that you can essentially blow up invests checking YOUR OWN TEAMMATES, providing an entirely new element to this game.

The idea needs some refining but yeah, I think the possible strategies you outlined above are pretty great. It would make Soldato a very versatile and viable role, but only 1 use.

I think Mafia teammates shouldn't be given immunity. This gives rise to even more counterplay with BD, Escort/Liaison, Witch, etc who can outwit the Mafia into bombing their own teammates.

Thematically, I'm not sure if Soldato should die in a shootout with a BG?
Maybe BG protection simply blocks bombs, similar to Auditor and Cults "BG prevents conversion" mechanic.
Not sure whether that's balanced when juxtaposed with MM, who would simply die in a shootout.

I have a spreadsheet somewhere, I was tracking Soldato, had 56 games tracked if I remember correctly. Basically, it broke down to this. With one soldato, 70-75% chance the bomb doesn't go off. Two soldatos, slightly higher chance both bombs don't go off, and a slightly reduced chance 60-70% that the only one bomb doesn't goes off. Remember I'm looking at this as failed attempts.

So much can happen, as it turns out, to ruin a good bombing. All of these percentages go up when one or both soldatos do not plant the bomb N1. And the amount of times a bomb was planted but not detonated would probably surprise us. That is what I would improve @Frinckles . Soldato needs a tweak so people plant their bombs N1, OR mafia needs a way to be able to detonate bomb in the event of the soldato's demise, OR code conditions in which a bomb is triggered and will explode without the soldato detonating, because remember if the target dies before detonation, the role is worthless, and that happens a lot too. Those three things, any one or all, are what I noticed regularly stop soldato contributing to the mafia team.

What if we just made soldato immune to detection? Nothing else, no other buff or ability to trigger a bomb, just gave the soldato detection immunity. We might see better results. @Frinckles