Seeing as this is OOC i am going to try to keep it as short and sweet as possible.

For those of you who have been here roughly the same amount of time as i have or maybe a little longer (2006) you will have noticed the vast amount of improvements that have been made.

The one i'm here to talk about is protection as we can all remember back in the day all we had was BG's to protect us and our life depended mainly on them and Pro wacks.

Now we have alot more we have HQ fortifications etc which should increase the likelihood of a CL's survival drastically.

However i maybe wrong in this respect but i feel that it does not, back in the day wars would usually last a couple days and a takedown when people were asleep usually a day.

Which was understandable seeing as we would just BG wack the hell out of them and then get our best gun to take the penultimate pop.

But now it seems it's even easier and this is just my opinion you may correct me but having saw how quick Philly and Detroit fall in less then a day it makes me wonder how effective these fortifications actually are.

Now when we think about it each CL were obscenely well protected and fortified etc and yet with all this were still killed without their stuff being depleted.

I looked at their profiles and they still had obscene bodyguards and obscene HQ forts and when i read this i wonder does it actually make a difference? i mean someone shot this person by themself and somehow got past 200 or so trained BG's and a HQ that has 14" walls, bulletproof, railings, secret passage etc.

Now i'm not expert on these things but i'd say thats president protection right there and in my opinion you would need to gradually wear down their resources to a point where they are weak and vulnerable.

This is pretty much how gangs fight in real life with the occasional successful Vito corleane assassination as they buy fruit.

Now don't get this mixed i am not complaining or calling into question any persons marksman skills but i just want your honest opinions on this as i feel mob wars should have more of an affect and should require more skill and planning like in real life mob wars.

I feel wars should be longer and more exhausting like they are in real life, it should not be an easy task to wipe out an entire cities mafia which would mean other options might come into play such as peace offerings and cease fire's when things reach a stalemate because they have gone on too long.

And you could argue that this could make people invincible etc but let's face it someone with that kind of protection is kind of and it would take a well organised and pre planned war which would be long and draining on resources but that was a massive factor that mobsters such as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano had to think about it was about business and profit and not just some rash decision to easily wipe out another family.

If you look most mob families are descendants of the 1920's mobsters just handed down over years and sometimes these things would drag out and people would die and negotiations would take place.

War was not something they took lightly or wanted and it genuinely was something to fear because even if you win the loss is substantial and your family would be in a tough position as others could see this as an opportunity to strike.

Now i'm not saying make our wars long and OP but seriously war should be something we have to plan and think about and taking down another family should have repercussions because this is a role playing game and we have all the tools to make it work and add more roleplay and think and make decisions as they did back in the day.

Now i hope when you read this you give this thread the respect it deserves and actually think and debate this and not just cast it down because it is something new or something different which tends to be the case 99/100.

What i am saying makes sense when you think about it, we are mobsters not soldiers our main concern is making money and watching our own and starting a war should always be a last resort if you watch any mafia movies or documentary what you will find is that they hated war and war was always something that could never be taken lightly and meant extreme measures and consequences.

Now my thoughts are that protection is not what it could be we don't have to achieve 100% realism that is not what i am saying but maybe an increase so that a war requires strategy and depleting resources as opposed to just shooting a Godfather with 200+ BG's and a HQ that's locked up tighter then a nuns ass.

Honest thoughts and opinions please and non biased this should be an interesting and intelligent debate.

I think that It should take longer, more planing and skill to take down on gang. Maybe they would have to kill all the BG, RHM, LHM,

and maybe some some of the crew members first..

Maybe it should take longer to build fortifications as well?

I have played for 1 week so I haven't been in a crew war yet, but I don't think its should be easy to take down a CL. 

Squishy i did not mean that HQ forts are meant to be impenetrable but it just seems like a HQ with over 200 BG's and mobsters and all their BG's and these 14" walls with electrified fences and a secret escape route would do a little more protection then low level guns.

So basically, everybody is an easy target/kill?

Yeah, I find it very easy for a "full on war" to end in a couple of hours with only a hand full of shooters. I guess in the game everyone is fighting like its the civil war shooting in the open one at a time. 

I agree with you Telkin i too think that one persons bullet go go through an entire HQ fort, i know ingame the HQ forts only protect members but seriously why would the Don who is head of the family also not be residing in his HQ maxed out in protection in a time of war.

War should come at a cost to both sides that way we don't just have a quick takedown in someone's sleep and war has a risk and reward factor and means that being a leader means you need to take this into account as well as....

1. What is the risk?

2. What is the reward?

3. Does the reward outbalance the risk?

Also it could bring more emphasis on negotiating and calling for peace in a war because you are both equally matched or the resources being drained is too much and a cease fire works. (It happens more often then not IRL)

It adds more strategy to winning a war and is something people would be slightly more hesitant to start.

War should never be easy and i feel this could be better represented and that way people would be more concerned about wars happening that don't include their family.

Also it adds more RP because a war could last for example 2 weeks and be exhausting only for another family to take advantage and enter the frey.

These are only suggestions i am open to hearing more ideas 

Going a bit of a different angle here, I think something that could/should be considered is affecting the first wave.

As it has become easier and easier to train guns, even the low-mid range guns are far more available.  The first waves are simply incredible now. 
Besides taking out the major hitters in a city, a lot of the BG wavers and possible protection wackers are also being demolished. 
Although generally the side to attack first has in our history always held a huge advantage, I think we might need to start considering means of balancing it out.

As Squishy mentioned in another post in the OOC in regards to users spending hundreds of hours, only to sign on and find that they've been killed in a first wave with no whisper/no reason, etc. 

I think if we can somehow limit how many sponsored members from a specific crew can be shot in the initial hour of a war, or increase the defense for all members in a crew for each time a crew member in the same crew has died within that hour. 

Kind of like... since people are dying, you're now on "high alert" and harder to kill.

This would utilize more planning in wars/first waves. It would also allow the side being attacked time to get online and become available to fight back. 

Actually a very good idea there from pops and something i missed i have often found that the first wave is unbelievably devastating and all one simply needs to do to create damage is the first wave.

I don't think the current system has to be changed. If a city build itself up to the level of them being to wipe out a city in one wave - why shouldn't they be able to do it? Rewarding the hard work of hitters is only fair.

Frankly, I disagree almost entirely with this, as the best thing that has happened to this game in recent times is the increased availability of targets and the lowering of the BG cap. 

The game, for me, was borderline unplayable as it was before. There is just no way I have either the time or the commitment to spend 12 hours+ every day playing a game just to be successful at it. Why would I do that? It doesn't make sense for a hobby to require more dedication than my job; it almost renders it not fit for purpose. And have you forgotten the monotony when nothing changed for months...years, even? It was hideous. 

Whereas what this current system does is enable a level of accountability that was often excused in the past through the mechanics of the game rather than the skill of the protagonists, thereby enabling change and reducing account longevity. Fortunately the result is that the age of being either grossly incompetent or a raging dickhead just because you have an obscene amount of bodyguards has more or less come to a close and that is great. More than a handful of die-hard people now need to be appeased in order for victory to be achieved which is exactly how it should be. Negotiation and diplomacy should be well honed tools in any worthwhile leader's arsenal and that is what it now takes to survive. 

Moving onto wars, and honestly, why is it advantageous for these things to last days when there is typically just 1 or 2 people alive with an army of pro wackers dragging this shit out? That's not particularly fun or exciting in my opinion, just a labour-intensive delay for awhile before normal service can be resumed.

What is fun and exciting is where families trade shots with each other and scores are slain on either side...but the reality is people are much better at the game than that now so it wouldn't happen regardless of the BG count or availability of targets. Proing is a much more understood and utilised. People follow orders better and increases in technology make the whole process much easy to convey to a larger audience quickly. 

In my opinion, increasing HQ fort protection would simply make less people able to shoot a real player, because the leaders would just switch that shit up and make them target BGs rather than have them miss. It would drive the one-shot obsession even higher so things would be more delayed and likely just as effective when they do occur.

I think the best bet is to join a leader who knows how to get things done, doesn't needlessly endanger their people and chooses their fights carefully. That's my operating directive when selecting my Dons and I've always found it a pretty successful strategy. Making people harder to kill just slows down the options for change and that's a path we shouldn't consider walking down any time soon.

The idea behind long continuous wars and people losing of both sides is because it means people would think twice about fighting a war much like in real life no war was ever won in a matter of hours or even days and while i say that i understand that this is a game and nobody wants 100% realism but at the same time if we are a role playing game we would put our selves in the shoes of someone who is actually in the mafia and these things were gritty these wars were prolonged and it did often end up with two or three people being left alive at the end and that long wait until business can resume as normal.

Which is why they had to balance business and war because it was not a decision taken lightly and in my opinion this is one of the key things that when role playing as a Don you would have to consider instead of people just going full rambo.

Also wars are not meant to be fun i don't think in the history of the world there has been a single war that has been fun be it mafia war or world war.

Don't take this the wrong way i am not calling for a change i am just stating my opinion and this thread is just for people to state opinions and see what we all think i am not trying to make change i just thought it would be interesting to see other people's thoughts and ideas concerning wars and protection.

This is indeed a game, and you have to get some sort of balance between realism and good/enjoyable gameplay. Some wars last for days, and no one really likes that. Do you propose that wars should take longer?

You say wars aren't supposed to be fun. Some people like wars, others don't. I think wars, as part of a game, should be fun. At least, they shouldn't be designed not to be fun. We have to remember that this is a game. If you want the real gritty aspect of real mafia wars, I'm sure they're recruiting. Are you Italian?

I agree wars should take longer a way to make this happen is a player can't be shot while logged off, and cannot be shot at until 5 minutes after logging on. Giving that player a small chance in hell to fight back.

I disagree. Why shouldn't you be able to be killed ''in your sleep''? I really wonder why people think wars should be longer. Wars are long enough already. If people can perform a perfect takedown, why shouldn't they be able to to give others a ''fair'' chance? Maybe those others should've been the ones to strike first. Less game mechanics, more players making decisions and actually doing stuff.