MINDNIGHT is a game of intricate strategy and rewarding logical mechanics, but the sheer depth often greatly intimidates the new players - frequently the amateur is overwhelmed by advanced players shouting phrases at them like "prop anti why" and "you don't even know proto". Most elusive of all however is an emerging strategy "SITU meta", named in reference to the supposed founder, an anonymous player who was "situ" in the game they proposed the idea. The aim of this guide is to explore all that is known about this meta to give newer players that "edge" to appear confident amidst a sea of advanced players.

As SITU is a new and emerging agent-focussed strategy, there has been great dispute thus far as to the details of this mechanic, and given the nature of MINDNIGHT, a great deal of misinformation has been spread. Below is a refutation of various statements I've seen
over the last few weeks, I've tried to compile as much as possible but please DM me if you hear more:
- SITU is not an N1 propping protocol
This is a common one as SITU most often comes up at the beginning of a game, where a player typically will call the meta based on the evolution of the N1 props. This has led to the misconception that this is a proposal protocol for N1, with some confusing it with the "no-holds-barred" approach which has appeared recently. However, while elements of the N1 delivery can infer the evolution of the primary and sometimes secondary stages of SITU, SITU can be performed regardless of N1 play and is still optimal in most cases.
- SITU is optimal among known strategies
I will outline further below in detail the current modular assessment of SITU, but most dispute about its optimality is sourced from the very misconceptions I am outlining.
- NEVER play N1+1 on night 3 during SITU
This is basically just a way to out yourself as a hacker if you are playing SITU and have completed primary. Veterans often try to abuse this which is how the misconception has developed. See below on ideals for the secondary.
- SITU is not a confusion tactic
In its infancy SITU has become somewhat infamous among the community for its supposed complexity. I maintain there really is an elegance and perhaps untapped potential in the existing foundation, however, and strongly suggest players ignore the memes surrounding its characterisation as some sort of theoretical nightmare, as this, as you will see, is far from the truth.
- SITU is not too complicated to be useful
This is the most important one. Many disregard this strategy for its complexity, but a persuasive player should hope to learn from this guide how even in a game with 4 new players SITU can be employed for efficient section analysis. Further details on section analysis, motive paging and agent blocks are in the "justification" section.

I have placed this section of the guide here for chronology and to make clear some points to those unprepared to read the full meta, but for those invested I encourage reading this after secondary and before justification for the most thorough treatment of the subject.
SITU is not a discreet strategy, perhaps noteworthy in a game of deception. Based on a thoughtfully considered set of probabilistic inferences, the agent proposing its use can trust in its authoritative dissection of the hacker cohort. Generally an agent will simply ask "are we playing SITU" to initiate the run. Since SITU operates somewhat unconventionally at a glance, it is important to make clear your intention. It may seem appealing here to consider calling SITU as hacker to appear innocent, but this is strongly discouraged given the failsafe mechanism (see "justification"). If you agree to SITU, while it is not vital, accepting the proposition immediately after the agent initiates SITU, going clockwise the player opposite them (on the plane) is the standard. The reasoning for this should be self evident following completion of this guide. The order of propositions following the initialisation by other players can also provide hints, in particular any proposition against standard which does not include the proposer should encourage the initialiser to increase their inclusion factor between 0.2 and 0.5 for that player, dependent respectively on the time they take.

Alright, this is it. The initialiser has been accepted and you're commited to SITU. What next? Well, for the next 3 propositions we are going to perform section analysis. Section analysis is actually taken from the classic title "The Fool's Errand" but has been repurposed here for its statistical motivation and structure. A more rigorous treatment is technically possible, but would only benefit a 6 node game and thus only the single variable approach is used.
Section analysis is a procedure of assertions in the form of player propositions. Agents should always propose the players left, south and clockwise of their location. Furthermore, assign to each player a value between 0 and 1 called their "inclusion factor". This should be uniformely distributed across the other players, unless the values were shifted in night one (see above). These should sum to 1 to form our random variable. Now, take each vote, and take the geometric mean (sqrt<ab>) of their product factors (inclusion factor x 1.1 if acc, 0.9 if ref). Shift the inclusion factor of each participant accordingly, then normalise to maintain the measure of 1. By the hammer proposal, the expectation of the random variable (the lebesgue integral over the event space with P as the measure and the random variable a member of the L^1(P) space) will determine the 3 most likely agents, simply by choosing the supremum expectation for any combination proposal. This is easy to calculate, as you already derived the product factors and can just take their sum and check if its greater than 3.

This section is shorter than the previous, since primary has already narrowed the agents to a 70% window. If n2 was accepted, the game is likely won for agents. Otherwise, take the player with the lowest inclusion factor has their factor diminished, the norm is updated and we move on to motive paging. This essentially involves going through each possible set of hackers and asking them to sum their perceived next geometric mean. if this is greater than the sum of the product factors, well done! You've found the agent. If not, unfortunately SITU starts to break down. However, at the last frontier we can employ our variables in "agent blocks". This essentially just means assigning a weight to each confirmed agent and considering their propositions against the delays and orders and making conclusions from there. After this, the rest is up to you!

I won't labour on this section as there are plenty more detailed breakdowns which do a far superior job to I, however I will attempt to make clear the reasoning for the primary actions of the meta.
Essentially, SITU is based on a combination of classical probability theory with concepts taken from elementary cryptography and number theory. First, this process can be considered user - failsafe, as the initialising agent is always counted first in the ordering for the inclusion factors. This allows the unique prime factorisation of the ceiling of the inverse of the product factor to give a "key" which is then replicated in the primary protocols. This allows a redundancy technique other protocols simply cannot match, as instead of isolated examples of combinatorics allowing external agents to make claims of a secure N1 as "a 1/6 chance" we instead appeal to the chebychev inequality with respect to the random variable, which has been constructed from an unbiased weight of all perspectives and allows the 70% window quoted earlier. This converges at O(n^2) to this window so 3 propositions is sufficient even in an 8 player game. Secondary considers the failure of section analysis with supplementary techniques of motive paging and agent blocks. Neither of these is conclusive, but it is a way to extract all remaining information from primary and would be a waste not to exploit.

It should be clear now the superiority of the SITU technique. If not, I encourage discussion in the forums so we can develop this theory as a community. This has been an absolute pleasure to write. I put so much time into this because I think SITU is more than a gameplay technique, but an example of a group of empassioned individuals expanding the existing library of human knowledge via MINDNIGHT as an axon to a broader and more beautiful theory. I hope to see these ideas blossom into a rich foray of exciting times ahead for this fantastic community.