So first off, thanks to Karl for running this game. With two turns a day this was already demanding for us players, but with your processing of nanomods and story updates (which were great) this must have eaten up a considerable part of the 5 days it ran across!
From starting as the Hacker and the lone member of the evil team, my game plan was pretty simple.
1) Definitely don't die
2) Recruit the most active players
3) Don't let people work out it's a recruitment game
(1) is pretty self-evident for mafia, but it was doubly important considering that I (to my knowledge) was the only person capable of recruiting more bots, and if I died that would die with me. Hyperion and Ironhide were the only players I didn't myself recruit. Ironhide came too late to really affect the game, and when Hyperion was recruited I was guessing that some one-off role power had been used (like Hyperion being able to switch sides at a point of his choosing or something).
I actually kept an entirely made up list of nanomods I had "used" and updated it every day, to make sure I was consistent in my claims. I think claiming to have scanned 10 was one of my better moves for staying under the radar, and that was just completely made up. One of my great worries was that I would get data dumped and my identity revealed - I knew I was safe from virus scan after the very first turn (thanks Drum), but I still don't know if data dump would have revealed my recruitment nanomod (or either of the two nanomods I won, once I won them). I do think the innocent side missed a trick by not calling for an exact history of everyone's nanomod use at any point to try and catch out anyone lying through an inconsistent claim.
(2) I decided would be the best general gameplan as this was a recruitment game. The actively posting players were the ones most in danger of working things out, so that's who I targeted. I realised it would lead to a few bot deaths - because active players are more likely to get called out on their post history too - but I wasn't overly worried about losing bots early on when. Recruiting every turn meant our numbers were either going up or staying even, and the constant vigi kills were rapidly reducing the innocent side. I'm really interested in knowing who was behind all the vigi kills, I have no idea if it was bots on my team or just innocents making bad calls.
(3) I figured the only way the town really stood a chance was to focus on outing myself as the Hacker, but until people knew we were playing a recruitment game that wouldn't occur to them. To that end I didn't recruit anyone who had been scanned, because that was the only way recruitment was going to become obvious. PsychicSykes was the first previously scanned player I recruited, and I felt we were a little unlucky in him then being immediately outed the turn after. I only switched at that point to recruiting someone who was previously scanned because the number of bots (who all hadn't been scanned yet) was approaching the same number of unscanned innocents, so the odds of the town finding the bots by naively just working through the scan list was going up.
There were two (and at a point three) players on the innocent side I decided I would keep as innocents regardless, where my effort instead was focused on getting them to trust me. The first was Drum, which is why I backed him to be champion from the start and then to keep him as champion. It felt wise to ingratiate myself with the person that quickly turned out to be the most infuential player. Also, once he had acquired Serene Mind but not told us what it did, my guess was that it was a persistent mod that granted him protection from recruitment. Then I was more than happy for him to be champion as it would waste that aspect of the mecha's protection, and I thought it was too risky to try and recruit him from then on anyway.
The second player was Roon, which I decided on after receiving his first cipher text PM very early on. He basically outright said he trusted me, so I thought that if I kept him as an innocent I'd be much more able to persuade him to switch vote if needed, and he was unlikely to target me himself. Finally there was 10, who after going after for a while I then switched to pretending I trusted him. However once he started posting some uncomfortably accurate theories in thread about the nature of the game, I decided to turn him.
On the subject of balance, I think it was skewed in our favour because of the recruitment variation being unknown, but it was much more balanced than WTLM. I was particularly concerned by the number of virus scan and vigi mods. The game would have flipped to the town's advantage had I been killed early on, and there wasn't anything I could do to protect myself other than do my best to appear innocent through my posts.
Once I picked up Mind Backup I was less worried, as on my death that would have transferred my nanomod that allowed for player recruiting to another bot. Luckily it never got used, but I think the existence of that probably sealed the deal for the town. However it's also worth noting that that was very much not guaranteed - first of all we had to win a challenge, then we had to pick that nanomod to take, and finally it was only so useful because I was the one to pick it. If another of the bots had taken the challenge (like I chose Hexx to do on the first night - you said in thread you were available Hexx!) and taken that mod, it would have been pretty useless.
My favourite part of the game was definitely the Denster debacle. Denster and ObBob were both innocent, yet both trying to get each other lynched. I recruited ObBob as the vote swung against Denster, and all seemed good. Then that vote rig came out of nowhere and ObBob was dead, and Denster was hailed a hero for doing it - but had I not just recruited ObBob it would have not been the case! I then won Necromancy in the following challenge, but thought I'd save it. Combined with Mind Backup it meant that should I get killed, Necromancy would get transferred to a bot and I thought I'd likely then get revived with it.
Then amazingly Denster got voted out the next day. It didn't feel optimal from a gameplay perspective, but I couldn't resist the urge to revive him immediately. What made it even more hilarious to me was him coming back /quite clearly evil/, and yet still not being killed! I'm very glad you made it to the end of the game Denster
My final comment is that no PMs was a good rule and it definitely drove thread activity. My only complaint would be that I felt very disconnected from my team, so it often felt like I was playing solo despite having recruited a lot of bots. I felt bad for playing 2 of the 3 challenges myself, but unfortunately I had no way of knowing if any of the bots were available and wanted to play (this is why I let Hexx play the first challenge as he had put himself up for champion in the thread). I know part of what makes being in the mafia so fun is that feeling of knowing what's happening, and I hope that wasn't lost too much for the bots when they instead had to simply watch what I was doing, rather than being able to make suggestions.
tl;dr Great game Karl and I really enjoyed it!