Family Feud 2014

[mobius]

do we post a bribe in a post like this? [for everyone to see]

[ccexplore]

I'm pretty sure bribes are only to be seen by the QuizMaster, in the same way that you don't share normal feud answers to everyone before the round is over.

Not to mention that typically bribes are not made brazenly in public eye anyway......   [edit: okay to be fair, that's maybe a somewhat naïve view...but let's just say in those "public" cases you probably would call it by some other name like "campaign donations" or whatever ]

[geoo]

For question 3, if one answer specifies two different words to use based on gender, and another answer only includes one of those words, would that be scored as:  totally different answers?  subset rule (and which would be the subset)?  or lenient scoring (considered equivalent)?

Lenient scoring.

do we post a bribe in a post like this? [for everyone to see]

No, you submit your bribes as answer to question 9 to the Quizmaster via PM, preferrably in the format "I offer [bribe amount] to anyone for changing their answer to Question [X] to [alternative answer]. I accept any bribes above and including [bribe amount] for question(s) [X, Y, ...].".

[Quizmaster]

Round 7 - Results!

1. Name a member (not the Quizmaster) who is not participating in this round! (-0.5 points penalty if member ends up participating.)
Adam (1) - Clam, NaOH, Ramon
Giga (2/3) - mobius, Gronkling
Insane Steve (2/3) - Simon, RubiX
namida (2/3) - ccx, geoo
Prob Lem (1/3) - Akseli

2. Name a utensil useful for eating!
Fork (1) - Clam, NaOH, mobius, Simon, Gronkling, Akseli, RubiX, ccx
Spoon (1/8) - geoo
nutcracker (1/8) - Ramon

Maybe people considered the spoon essential rather than just useful? In the soup kitchen the spoon is the go-to tool if you don't want to end up hungry, only beaten by the ladle allowing to devour the soup even faster!

3. How do you address (i.e. call him/her to get their attention) a person unfamiliar to you if you don't know their name?
sir (1) - NaOH, ccx, geoo
excuse me (1) - Simon, Gronkling, Akseli
(hey) butthead (1/3) - mobius
(hey) pigface (1/3) - Ramon
(hey) man (1/3) - RubiX
hey (1/3) - clam

When I wrote the question I was really going for a noun referring to the person you address, but it seems the question wasn't quite clear, as ccx also elaborated on in a paragraph in his answer submission.

4. Name a cold place.
Antarctica (5) - Clam, NaOH, Akseli, geoo, RubiX
Adam's shoulder (1/5) - mobius
North Pole (1/5) - Simon
Space (1/5) - Gronkling
Finland (1/5) - ccx
fridge (1/5) - Ramon

mobius answer is oddly appropriate and quite creative.

5. Name an important ingredient for making cookies.
flour (1) - Clam, NaOH, Simon, Ramon, Akseli, RubiX, ccx, geoo
sugar (1/8) - mobius
chocolate chips (1/8) - Gronkling

6. If you were granted one super power of your choice, what super power would you wish for?
flight (1) - Clam, Simon, mobius, Ramon, Akseli, RubiX, geoo
shapeshifting (2/7) - NaOH, Gronkling
time manipulation (1/7) - ccx

I have to say the most useful superpower I've come up with for me is teleportation (many times I'd wish for that to be possible, while I can't say the same about flight), but I expected flight to be popular. My favourite answer though is Ramon's (before taking a bribe) 'Completing the Lix Community Level Pack'.

7. Name something one can say about your mom.
She's a good cook (1) - Clam
She is my mom (1) - NaOH
I love you (1) - mobius
She's great (1) - Simon (changed from 'She's female', which would have been a winner here)
She's cool (1) - Gronkling (in reference to question 4?)
She's fat  [not even remotely accurate of course, but decent chances for feud purposes? ] (1) - ccx
She looks like me  (1) - Akseli
She's female (1) - Ramon
She's old (1) - geoo (in reference to Clam insulting the quizmaster with that two rounds ago, thought it would be a good middle ground between saying something nice and saying she's fat)
She's nice (1) - RubiX

A lot of people complimenting their mom, or going for a quasi-tautology, rather than going for the obvious answer 'She's fat'. Afraid your mom is stalking you on the forums?

8. Why did the chicken cross the road?
To get to the other side (1) - Clam, NaOH, Simon, Gronkling, Akseli, RubiX, ccx, geoo
To secure the existance of this pitiful question (1/8) - Ramon
Did the chicken cross the road? Did it cross it with a toad? Yes! the chicken crossed the road, but why---I've not been told. (1/8) - mobius

Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends on your frame of reference.
Here's what various scientist think about this question: https://www.physics.harvard.edu/academics/undergrad/chickenroad

9. Here's what's been going on behind the scenes for question 5-8 (not much, really):
Akseli: I offer [0,05] to anyone for changing their answer to Question [7] to [She looks like me]. I accept any bribes above and including [0,05] for question [6].
Clam: I offer 0.10 to anyone for changing their answer to Question 7 to "She's a good cook". I accept any bribes above and including 0.15 for question 7.
Ramon: I won't bribe anybody but I'll take any bribe I can get.
mobius: I offer 0.3 to anyone for changing their answer on Question 6 to "flight" or "flying". I accept no bribes.
Simon: Bribe 0.06 to whoever changes the answer of Q7 to "she is great". Accept bribes of 0.51 or higher to Q5, Q6, Q8.
NaOH:  I offer for 0.001 points anybody willing to change Question 5 to flour. I accept any bribes above but not including 0.5 points for all relevant questions.
geoo:  I offer 0.10 to anyone for changing their answer to Question 7 to "She's old". I accept any bribes above and including 0.20 for questions 5, 6 and 7.
RubiX, ccx and Gronkling are not corrupt. Gronkling: "IM A GOOD COP"

Only benign bribes (i.e. asking to change your answer to something popular), so taking bribes was a good way to get some extra cash.

Best offers:
Q5: 0.001 by NaOH for changing answer to 'flour'. Accepted by Ramon who changes his answer from 'Cookie jar' to 'flour'.
Q6: 0.3 by mobius for changing answer to 'flight'. Accepted by Akseli, geoo (doesn't affect answer) and Ramon who changes his answer from 'Completing the Lix Community Level Pack' to 'flour'.
Q7: 0.1 by geoo and Clam each for "she's old"/"she's a good cook" respectively, but by the rules these offers cancel out.
Q8: No offers.

Clam and geoo had a good strategy going here considering the answers to Q7 were completely scattered, but failed in the execution (going for 0.11 wouldn't have been that far off now, would it?)

Net gain: +0.301 Ramon, +0.3 Akseli, +0.3 geoo, -0.001 NaOH, -0.9 mobius.

Final Results:
1   Akseli   7.63
2   Clam   7.33
3   NaOH   7.28
4   geoo   7.09
5   RubiX   7.00
6   Simon   6.87
7   ccexplore   6.01
8   Gronkling   5.28
9   Ramon   5.08
10   möbius   3.55

A very tight race with the first 6 players less than a point apart, but in the end Akseli emerges victorious for the second time in a row, getting ahead of Clam by taking a bribe.

[ccexplore]

All I have to say is that my superpower for question 6 would've probably been very useful for this game, if nothing else.

[edit: additional comment

In IRC they talk about how, um, talking about your mom's weight wasn't as popular an answer as may have been expected, due to apparent psychological factors.  I had in the past consider hosting a feud round where many questions have these sorts of answers (perhaps more extreme though) where there are psychological/sociological factors potentially leading one against choosing the otherwise very obvious answer the question is pushing for.  But I've had trouble coming up with good questions so far......]

[Quizmaster]

Round 8!

To celebrate the near-completion of the Lix Community Set, as well as Akseli's near-completion in playtesting, here is a Lix-themed round!

1. Name a word that rhymes with "Lix".

2. Which is the best Lix skill that's not present in L1/ONML?

3. You are playing the first level, "Any Way You Want" (screenshot attached below). For whatever reason, you've decided to challenge yourself to complete the level using only one type of skill. Which do you choose?

4. Which difficulty rating of the Lix Community Set is the most fun overall?

5. Name a Lix multiplayer level, other than those mentioned in this post.

6. Wait, why is there a tree?

7. Does this round have too many Lix-themed questions?

8. Name a puzzle game (individual game or series) that doesn't have Lemmings-like gameplay.

9. Name an anime (Japanese animation) series.

10. You wake up in a deserted military base. Over the intercom, your brother (or, if you don't have a brother, someone you trust absolutely) tells you that aliens have invaded and you are humanity's only hope. What weapon do you select?

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It's Lix multiplayer time! First select a colour. This is not scored, but determines which team you are on for the following rounds. Valid colours are, in the order they appear in Lix's selection menu: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, grey, black. (I will refer to this sequence of colours as "standard order".) No conferring -- the unpredictability is what makes this fun!

11. Round One -- Stepping Stones! (Screenshot attached.) We're playing an adapted version of the map for any number of players. It's cylindrical, with colours in standard order -- Red's exit is by Orange's hatch, Orange's exit by Yellow's hatch, and so on. Any unused colours are omitted without changing the order of the others. Each team has a crowd 80 lix; for simplicity, I will assume that work can be done without removing lix from the crowd. Each player must decide whether to work the ceiling route, middle route or floor route, or stay and defend the hatch. A team whose members all defend cannot reach their exit and scores 0.

Let's say the largest number of players on the same team working the same route is 3; then any route worked by three players from the same team is deemed to be complete after one minute, any route worked by two players from the same team after two minutes, and any route worked by a single player after three minutes. Each team will send their crowd as soon as one route is complete. If a team has multiple routes complete simultaneously, they divide their crowd evenly. It takes the crowd one minute to reach the exit.

If a crowd is travelling at the same time as a lix from another team is working the same route, the worker will sabotage, causing half the crowd to fall. Fallers from the ceiling route die, unless their team has the middle route already complete (in which case all survive) or their team completes the middle route in the same minute (in which case half survive). Similarly, fallers from the middle route die unless their team has completed or is completing the floor route. Fallers from the floor route all die.

If Red's crowd reaches their exit at the same time as Orange's crowd leaves (i.e. they beat Orange by exactly one minute) then they steal half of Orange's lix, unless an Orange player elected to defend the hatch. If they beat Orange by more than one minute, they steal all of Orange's lix -- and similarly for the other colours.

Each team scores (number of lix saved) / 80.

12. Round Two -- Shion's Fun Fun Torture Room! (Screenshot attached.) Each team has just one lix, and the last survivor wins. You may choose to hunt other lix, walk back and forth or build a bunker. If two or more players on the same team select different options, the lix gets confused and jumps into a sawblade.

The remaining lix are those committed to a single strategy. Let A, B, C be the numbers of hunters, walkers and bunkerers respectively. Hunters have an advantage over bunkerers, as building is slower and it takes three skill assignments (stop building, turn, bat) to defend against an incoming hunter. Walkers have an advantage over hunters, as they can just turn and bat the hunter away. Finally, bunkerers can slip out of their bunkers and surprise walkers. Each round can only have one winner, but we're playing enough rounds that it averages out. However, if there are multiple lix of the same type in play, victories are shared between them. Therefore:

Hunters score (C - B)/A if this is positive, otherwise 0
Walkers score (A - C)/B (ditto)
Bunkerers score (B - A)/C (ditto)

13. Round Three -- Downward Reduction! (Screenshot attached). This is a free-for-all with no bunkering. Each team has 80 lix and 40 miners. The map is cylindrical, with exits in standard order (again, any unused colours are omitted without changing the order of the others). Each player must decide how many miners to use in early play: the team then uses up the sum of the number used by each player, without going over 40.

The lix end up clustered above the exit of whichever team has used the most. That team has an "exit distance" of 1; teams with exits one place away have an "exit distance" of 2, and so on. Each team has a "saving chance" equal to their number of remaining miners divided by their exit distance. These "saving chances" are then added, and each team's score is equal to (team's saving chance x number of teams) / (sum of all saving chances). If two or more teams tie for most miners used early, the lix split into two (or more) groups and each is calculated separately, assuming that all teams split their remaining miners evenly between the groups.

[NaOH]

It's cylindrical, with colours in standard order -- Red's exit is by Orange's hatch, Orange's exit by Yellow's hatch, and so on. Any unused colours are omitted without changing the order of the others.

The map has two hatches; does that mean for N players there are N/2 copies of the map placed side-by-side? What happens if N is odd?

[Quizmaster]

No, there are N copies of the central playing area, in a cylinder, separated by N copies of the hatch/exit area (with only one hatch and exit in each). It doesn't matter whether N is odd or even.

[ccexplore]

Isn't there a possibility of a divide-by-zero error for question 12's scoring?  Or did I miss something?   [edit: got it; I can't read, as usual ]

[Quizmaster]

Hunters score (C - B)/A, where A is the number of hunters, so this formula will only be called on if A is non-zero, and similarly with the others 

[ccexplore]

This may be one round where the complexity/amount of work of the QuizMaster's job to score the round seems to greatly exceed the complexity of the participants trying to answer "optimally".

I'm actually fairly tempted to try to program some sort of HTML+javascript visualization aid to automatically work out the scores given a set of answers as input, and more importantly, especially for question 11, try to visually show the actual minute-by-minute progress of each team.  Besides simplifying the QuizMaster's work of scoring, it would be a lot of fun for the participants to view the outcome as well.  Sadly, given the time commitment and relative inexperience with HTML/javascript it may likely remain a wish......

=========

But in light of that, some further technical/clarification questions I'd have to ask if I were to implement such a thing:

* I think this is obvious, but each individual player would each earn the score of their team (or their choice of action for #12) for each question, correct?

* I think the answer here is likely "yes", but anyway:  #11 and #13's scoring involves splitting a team's lixes in case of certain tie conditions.  Will this splitting be done in fractional values if necessary (even if technically that can't actually happen in an actual Lix game, except as some sort of statistical average)?  If not, how will values be truncated or rounded during the calculations?

* For question 11, this may be simply because I haven't ever really played that map, or perhaps I misunderstand part of the description.  But I'm not sure I understand fully how different team's routes are overlapping such that sabotage is possible: "If a crowd is travelling at the same time as a lix from another team is working the same route..."?  With the exception of the ceiling route which I guess initially goes backwards, doesn't each team get their own copy of the 3 routes with no overlap, given N copies of the central playing area?  I think the screenshot of the original map may be confusing matters here unfortunately; it might be helpful to have a sketch that more accurately depicts the way the modified map is supposed to work for question 11, in particular the flow of the different choices of routes for each team and at which locations sabotage is supposed to occur.

[Quizmaster]

* Yes -- for the last three questions, each player receives their team's score.

* Yes.

* The rules are a rough approximation of the gameplay of the actual Stepping Stones level, which is strictly a 2-player (or 2-team) level, and expanding it to any number of players wouldn't really work in the manner described. So I just ask players to assume that workers on, for example, the ceiling route, can interfere with any other team's crowd travelling that route. I suppose the best way to approximate this with an actual map would be that each team is travelling to an exit N-1 places away, so they have to go through all the other teams' areas.

[ccexplore]

Thanks for clearing up question 11.  In light of the explanation, one more question:  in the sabotage case where the affected crowd(s) get split up, is the effect of the split up exactly the same whether it was one team causing the sabotage vs multiple teams?  In other words, there could be one or more than one team working the same route at the same time.  I'm assuming that the "multiple worker sabotage" case is no different than the "single worker sabotage" case--the affected crowd always get split half-and-half (as oppose to having more of the crowd fall down to a lower route the more worker-teams there are)?

[Quizmaster]

Yes, they always split half-and-half.

[ccexplore]

I'm actually fairly tempted to try to program some sort of HTML+javascript visualization aid to automatically work out the scores given a set of answers as input, and more importantly<snip>

Sadly, even though I really shouldn't be spending time on this, I can't resist and started the HTML/javascript score calculator.

Sorry, clearly no time to do any fancy visualization.  To be honest, now that we establish question 11's model of gameplay is a gross simplification anyway, it wouldn't have been possible to depict the action realistically anyhow.  So now I'm just aiming for detailed calculations, similar to seeing the scoring spreadsheet for this round.  (And honestly with maybe exception of question 11, the other 2 questions are pretty easily handled with just a spreadsheet.)

Attached WIP only scores question 12 for now, the easiest one to do.  I'll likely tackle question 11 next as it seems to be the more complex out of the three, and therefore the most useful for something like this.  Just download to your computer and double-click to open it in web browser.  Depending on your browser/browser settings, you may get a warning about ActiveX or scripting being blocked (due to the webpage living directly on your computer as opposed to remotely on a web server), select the option to unblock and allow scripting to run, otherwise it won't work (I promise it's safe; the page is completely self-contained and neither talks to any remote server nor tries to access anything on the computer itself.  You can also try uploading it to DropBox or a proper web hosting service, and see if you can browse to the same page completely over the web instead.).  Scripting is disabled if you see "You need to enable scripting" giant text on top of the page; it is enabled (and the page working as intended) if the "score now" button is the first thing at top of the page.

Start adding players with the "add" button, and additional controls will appear to allow you to input the player's answers for each question.  It should be fairly intuitive.  Whenever all players and their answers have been entered into the page, click the "score now" button at the top, and it will spit out the corresponding results at the bottom of the page (and automatically scroll there) for your viewing pleasure.

[edit: download removed, an updated version is now hosted on the web]