In a nutshell, the only thing I sort of regret is that I couldn't see all the couples interacting.
Building on noona's points , we were hoping that in at least some cases, the partner dynamic would accentuate both players strength. Personally, I expected players that formed their own hydra to have 1. high inter-hydra compatibility and 2. Hydra with disagreeability between styles to be less active on the thread.
Point 1 means that players are unlikely to choose players that they can't agree with (or easily communicate with), and in-pair instabilities are (very) unlikely to occur. Furthermore, such Hydra will be more likely to confide in each other when they get suspicious, another event that saps away activity from the thread. Point 2 means that part of the sparring on ideas that would happen on the thread will happen in the pad. If player A poses a theory in the pad and partner B already disagrees, some of their posting activity will be taken away from the thread and be sharpened in the pads. PRESUMABLY, this would be the greatest advantage the mafia had; players that are prone to talk a lot could talk in the pad and discuss things they'd say beforehand.
Unfortunately, except in the Groovy Hydra case, it would appear as though at least one player in every non-town pairing was kind of inactive (not as though this was their own fault). In fact, in most hydra pairs one player was posting way less compared to their partner. Though disadvantageous in both cases, especially in the mafia case were more brainpower means better plays, you could say this was detrimental to their cause. Maybe at the start there were 8 players in the mafia pad, but over time that number decreased very quickly. Players not communicating with each other, or playing past each other (for all kinds of reasons, all valid) did make it that much harder for this party to play well together. In other words, I didn't really get to test my expectations on this game, because of player circumstance and not seeing any of the pads. Presumably, once people have gotten used to this style of playing, and are less hampered by external influences, the game would play out more smoothly.
In terms of balance, a 16 player game is a bit easier to balance than a 32 people game. Both sides complained about the other side being much stronger, naturally meaning that the game was very balanced. It was mentioned that some of the Santa gifts were spicy, but I thought overall Santa could have influenced the game in spicy ways. The mason discussion between the recruiter and the gifted Shinko was quite funny lol. We chose gifts that would be relevant to the style of play here; masons as a group could form a voting block against the day powers of the mafia (overall, the game was actually meant to stimulate agressive usage of day roles, though the first few days turned out to be quite tame). Part of the game is of course voting out one hydra means killing two players worth of activity. Day phases that take the lives of 4 hydra result in 8 people less posting in the thread, meaning that in the case of some hydra that's a lot of IQ that's removed from the game in one go.
Ultimately I was quite content with this system though. In theory no player should feel alone; having a partner to talk with ought to make a meaningful difference to playstyle, if exposed to the other enough. Next time... I'm not sure if I'd change much. Wanting to see pads is cool, but there's couples like say PomSun that are in promixity of one another and are better off talking irl than in pad. Likewise, players that have their own shared spaces could prefer those (and the privacy it brings). It'll be taken into consideration.
A relatively shorter while ago on Hydra Vote Z 
