Alright, turns out I have a few minutes now, and I expect some free time later in the evening.
I played the last version of this game (
http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=5187.0 for reference, as people name it but haven't bothered to link it). As mentioned, eHunt won that one as mafia.
One of the main differences between the original and this variation is that Slot 9. In the original, if mafia won a slot (say, Roleblocker), they had a built in fake claim that could not be counterclaimed (Doctor). If they didn't win a slot, VT was a safe claim, since they knew someone else got the slot they bid on. In that sense, the original setup provided some extra information for mafia (i.e., I didn't win my Roleblocker bid; ergo, there is a town Doctor OR Roleblocker in the game.)
In this game, Slot 9 removes mafia's built in fake claims. That meant that if the Mafia got the Strongman role, they couldn't safely fakeclaim Vengeful, in case it went to Slot 9. I figured we could just force a claiming order that would hem scum into dangerous territory and basically POE on D1 and just lynch from the liar pool. The basic idea was, force everyone to claim role, then claim draft slot. Scum can't fakeclaim a town role safely, and they can't claim VT if they won a role. One way around that would have been to claim to have chosen something of someone above them in the draft order, but that's why we'd keep draft order claiming until AFTER roles were claimed. I didn't see a way scum could beat my plan. I pointed this out to Faust pre-game because to me that was just gaming the system and not really playing a mafia game, and he made the adjustment that if Slot 9 was made with any roles from the mafia or SK slots, they'd be informed. Now they have safe fake claims.
I don't know for sure that there isn't a way we could still do it with some combination of number claiming following by draft order claiming followed by mass claiming. I actually think forcing an order claiming BEFORE the number claiming is the best way to catch scum, though, as I don't think role claims help us catch anyone -- scum can just safely claim the town role that isn't in Slot 9 and/or VT if they didn't win a role.
If there's something to be gained from claims, it's draft order and whole numbers. If we set the draft order correctly (and really, scum can't get out of telling the truth here, as we'll have missing turns), we can figure out who's lying or not pretty easily when claims happen. I'm worried though, that it just lets scum actually POE everyone's possible roles relative to their own draft rank -- so mafia who missed out on Strongman knows that someone above them on the draft order list is Vengeful or N3 Vig.
With faust's Slot 9 fix, I don't think there's a safe way of catching scum through claiming, based on my back of the napkin thoughts here. While we could get more information through number/draft rank claiming, I think it's too detrimental to town and therefore needs to be avoided.
Does that make sense? Did I miss anything?
Now to think about yuma's SK plan.