I like the game but there are aspects that leave a bit to be desired. 

As a player who has played this game less than a month I have a rather "virginized" view of it.

  To watch entire 30+ man crews wiped out in an instant (mere hours) is incredibly unrealistic. If there's a war and a crew starts getting slaughtered then okay, there's the element of surprise. There should be some mechanic to allow remaining crew members after "x" amount of deaths or high ranking members or something to allow those not online or "the remaining" the chance to be aware of what is going on, plan a way to  defend themselves, retaliate or even turn chickenshit and run to another crew. I don't have the answer but its just not feasible 39 people die with only one member of that crew able to pick off a few people. ( I honestly have no clue how to implement this, sorry) 

  Another dumb noob idea..... how about when people die (mainly the big guns) then people within their crew can inherit these big guns, that way that last A-Hole can make a stand and actually kill/hurt people who matter , possibly giving the uppers second thoughts on such attacks and maybe even allow them to send those guns to people outside their crew, further concealing players firepower. Maybe put a limit on how many times these guns can be passed along or used or give them a 24 hour window to allow the person who inherits to use them to avoid everyone in the game carrying around a hand cannon (don't get me wrong, I think that would be fun as hell for us all to be WACK! all-stars but unsustainable)

Gun tracking seems to be a recurring theme. I think being able to pass along some of the larger guns (with or without restrictions) would add an element of fun and excitement to the game and just maybe give  an incentive to not to just go wipe out entire crews. It also could throw a wrench into gun tracking and age killing if done properly.

Welp, have fun ripping that to shreds with your longtime game experience, I'm going to go get drunk now :D

Oh, and don't shoot me over a suggestion please, I'm loyal to my crew, if you don't like Larry then you don't like me  & THAT'S a reason I should be shot at.

Your first point has some merit to it, but ultimately I think the current system is perfectly justifiable and appropriate even if it is 'gamey'; this is a game, after all, and if you implement some mechanic to basically 'pause' a war so the other side can respond it'd just drag on and turn it into a turn-based strategy game. It's a fair game: tons of planning and preparation goes into a takedown. One mistake and it can drag on for hours, if not days. I think the current system works fine.

I really don't agree with your second suggestion, I'd tend to agree with you in saying it's a ''dumb noob idea''. See above why. It's just too easy, imo, if you suddenly make cap-killer guns 'inheritable' and some random goomba who never trained his gun can suddenly kill a Godfather.

Ok, the idea isn't to make it turn based & I agree it shouldn't be but the idea of a war dragging out for more than a few hours is where the fun is for me. Even though I wasn't involved with what happened yesterday the fact that two guys were able to survive & take a few potshots kept me glued to the game for a few hours and judging by the number of people online continuing to grow I wasn't the only one. I'm not familiar with all the perks you can get with credits but I'm sure something more drawn out could cause people to buy relevant perks with creds (If there are any, sorry for my noobness) I enjoy the chaos parts of the game & think a war should be a war & not so entirely one-sided & short. I could care less if I got shot, that was the most fun I've had in the game for two weeks. To borrow a term I've seen elsewhere, being a 'click monkey' gets old. The action is the biggest draw of the game for someone new such as myself. I'm unfamiliar with how the upper ranks of the game work, maybe they're more fun & interesting but if you want to draw & keep new players those short bursts of excitement should be more prolonged or more often and even give the crew that's been sentenced to death a chance to do more damage. Also if the site can't sell creds (I have several opinions on this but I'll save that for another day) Having relevant perks during a prolonged war may provide a reason to get people to spend more creds.

As far as the "dumb noob idea" I figured some restrictions could be placed but it seems steps were already being implemented as I typed it out to muck up the shot reports people are being required to submit. No offense Larry but I hope they become obsolete. I can understand a need for some control but having absolute control & turning the game into a job can and will suck the fun out of it as well as the community.