Tutorial #2: Principle of Least Action of the Second Kind

by SyxP

Many Snipers have a difficult time on Balcony, due to it’s distinctive lack of hard tells, myself included. There is a sense of being lost, unsure of what to do. In this tutorial, we explore a common motif in SpyParty, and from there derive a strategy which can be viable to use on this map.

There are many different motifs in SpyParty. The first motif that most people encounter while playing is the concept of “Camping”. “Camping” basically states that “There is this subset of missions which I can reliably spot. I also know the Spy must do at least one of them. I will shoot him if he attempts it.”. We can observe that there are various disadvantages of using this strategy, namely, what to do if you have this subset does not exist. This is often the case on Balcony. Here, we explore a different motif, “Avoidance”. Very often, the Spy would choose to avoid doing certain actions because it will impede his progress on the missions. For example, he might decide not to take a drink from the waiter as it would prevent him from doing two-handed actions for a while.

How can we utilize this motif to devise a strategy? Let us consider an action where the Spy would typically avoid in his/her game. A very common advice given to Beginner Spies is that they should always plan where they want to go. They should have a purpose in their actions. Moreover, there is a downside to being too active. Pathing and Collision are both actions that Spies can fail to reproduce accurately. This makes Spies develop the tendency of not moving unless they need to.

From this, we derive the Principle of Least Action of the Second Kind: The Spy will not undergo redundant movement. This would allow us to attain more lowlights (by lowlighting those who violate the principle) and reduce our suspect pool. In an “Any 2 of 3” game mode on Balcony, they would either have to complete a hard tell, or Seduce the Target. Seduction is a mission which requires the Spy to move. With the thought of minimizing the amount of movement, they would try to make every visit to the Conversational Circle count.

From this principle, we can derive a more complete strategy. We will lowlight anyone who made a visit to a conversation circle and leave without talking. Then from our remaining suspects, shoot (or timeout) the most likely person. It is important to note that this strategy is not the emphasis of the article, but the method we used to derive the strategy. By learning how this motif is applied, you can derive strategies of your own. Nevertheless, allow us to carry on the analysis of this strategy.

An important step in every strategy discussion is to dissect the strategy to find it’s weaknesses and strengths. We first note that it is a behavioral lowlight strategy. This has two important consequence. First, it depends on luck whether the NPCs would behave in a cooperative manner such that lowlights can be attained. Secondly, we need to pay more attentions to the lowlighted people. In contrast to hard lowlight strategies, there is a significantly higher likelihood that the Spy would be lowlighted in the process. Moreover, let us consider the most natural counter to this. The Spy can simply not take control till a later time. This strategy does suffer from a natural drawback, it decreases the amount of time the Spy has. A lowlight a Spy obtains may not be detrimental to you as it might imply that the Spy is too slow to complete his missions.

Another question we can ask is how effective is this strategy. Using this, we can lowlight approximately 1-2 people every game. Considering this is Balcony, it is really effective as there are only 7 partygoers. This does lead us to the caveat of this strategy. If the Spy rushes his missions, we will not be able to get enough lowlights before he/she completes. Another flaw is that it is a complex strategy, requiring memorization of who had been talking in the Conversation Circle, which is attention-taxing.

In this discussion, we have seen how we can take a motif, “Avoidance”, and apply it to derive a general principle, Principle of Least Action of the Second Kind. It is too general to apply. So, we have taken the concept of lowlighting idlers to a specific Map, Balcony, to derive a strategy. Subsequently, we analyse this strategy and weigh it’s benefits and limitations, as well as it’s effectiveness. Whether you decide to incorporate this into you game or not, is solely up to you. But I hope that you can devise stratagems on your own, suiting your style of play, which is a vastly superior skill to have.