Here is a suggestion that I feel makes sense about the protection levels of bodyguards.

The reason for the protection status is to give a rough idea of how many bodyguards a person has and also from a role play stand point you would see them and be able to have a rough guess how many they had following them around. What I propose is that your bodyguard effectiveness is used in your protection status as it is people who are Insanely Well Protected could have an effective bodyguard count less than someone who is Very Well Protected that keeps their bodyguards healed. This also would make sense from a role play view as you see if a bodyguard is weakened after being shot because they could have their arm in a sling, or bodyguards that have been left to drop to 20hp you would notice they where old and out of shape with beer bellies or eaten too much burger king like Clause.

So this way someone with 100 bodyguards (Insanely Well Protected) who has let all their bodyguards drop to 20hp would have have the effectiveness of 20 bodyguards and therefore have the status of Well Protected.

I believe this would also discourage people taking demotions for bodyguards as they would not be able to afford the upkeep and their protection status would drop.

I approve of this suggestion.

As much as I hate that no name C, Flash, this is actually a good idea.

I like this suggestion.

But I also think there would be more to be taken into consideration as well, if like in the last example, the player has 100 bodyguards at 20hp and thus only being protected by 20 bodyguards at their best, would you just be able to kill the 20 bg's or all 100? And if nothing has changed since I last played, more bg's means higher prices when traveling? Would that be reduced too as well or would you be paying for 100 bg's when 80 of them wouldn't even be traveling with you...

It's complex, but a good idea nonetheless, and could work.

Overall a very sound idea. The problems Silenzio brings up made me think of this - in addition to this suggestion, why not make it more realistic and have flight costs adjusted to reflect the effective BG count rather than the overall. If your BG's are injured, chances are you wouldn't be bringing them with you, they'd weigh you down. I would very much like to see this idea implemented.

Sick unhealthy people spend the same amount of money on airplane tickets as body builders

I'm not saying the price of tickets should go down because they're not healthy, I'm saying why would you bring an unhealthy or injured person along with you to begin with? Extra baggage that could weigh you down in an emergency, it would make more sense to leave them behind.

I like the idea, about the Body Guards, the ones that aren't "healthy" (That would have to be decided as to at how high/low their health would be classed as healthy) would they stay in whatever city they are in when they become unhealthy , or would they go back to your home city, IE:

Someone has 100 Body Guards, but only 50 of them are "healthy" these said 50 would be able to fly with you... Would the 50 "unhealthy" stay in your home city to add protection for when you got back to your home city? Or would they remain in the city that they became unhealthy in until they were made healthy again?

I hope that makes sense, because I'm not sure if it does

Great idea Flash, would love it to be implemented.

To be honest all BG's should travel with you no matter how much health they have, the amount of cost to pay their flight is nothing compared to the protection they give. If weak BG's only stayed in the home city no one would leave their home city, especially in a war.

When you shoot at a BG you automatically shoot the one with the lowest health so if there are 100 at 20hp there are still 100 to shoot.

The idea isn't to change the amount of BG's you have just amend the protection status to better represent a players protection provided by BG's.

i think peoples bodyguard status should go on the BG equivelant they have at any given time rather than the total they have.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to go against the grain here and disagree.

In times of war, seeing that somebody is IWP (or whatever) makes you think twice about which guns are going to be pointed in their direction. If that person has let their effective BG count drop down into the 20s, unless you happen to know that, then it's likely that only a few select people would take the shot. Now this works both ways; on the one hand you potentially have someone using a cannon to take out somebody who is comparatively unprotected when their shot may have been put to better use elsewhere, but it also means that only someone who is probably going to hit takes the shot, minimising the chances of missing. A person with a low effective BG count will probably not therefore survive.

There is more to this game than simply what happens within the code itself, and part of that is to do with building relationships and finding intel about such things as whether someone keeps their protectors healed up.

I don't like this idea. Adding this sort of thing would only provoke more conflict. For instance I went away for a few days to somewhere with no internet connection for a couple of miles and only having a chance to jump online briefly at a wifi hotspot. I'd have been worried knowing that even though my BGs would only drop 5hp each until I got home that my profile would have shown me to have dropped a BG tier which could encourage a rogue to try to take me out knowing im away. Some people have to take unplanned breaks or simply go on vacation, This feature would punish them for that.

Going back to the initial post, Although you'd see if a BG had a broken arm there is no way to see how trained a bodyguard was just by glancing at them.

I'm going to have to agree with Charlie and Spuff on this one. I don't thnk this would be a good idea especially because if somebody takes a vacation they now become a potential target. If a CL were to go on a vacation and not be on for a few days naturally his RH would run the family in his absence..however, the CLs BGs would drop down to a lower level and now the whole game knows he isn't that and that the family is now a bit weaker without there CL, therefore, making them a potential target for a take down.

2 points.

1) I don't see how this makes sense RP wise as you wouldn't see the difference an unhappy or a happy BG. Mobsters aren't out in public enough for their BG's feelings to be analyzed.

2) All this does is take another degree of uncertainty from the game which isn't something that would help the game long term. The uncertainty is what makes this game fun and the difference between the individual BG statuses is significant (especially in terms of war planning)

Personaly i think its a great idea. Means youll spend that little extra to keep your status at insanely or whatver it happens to be thus taking more cash out of the game and making it that little bit more tricky for the CL.

Takedowns would be more effective and perhaps more often, who knows.

I don't see how BG status going down due to being on holiday will make a difference because if people wanted to take you out and knew you where on holiday BG status wouldn't be much of a factor. For instance when Deimne was away for a long time did anyone attack? the same could be said for Iota who was gone for about a month and his RHM was practically IA too, and more recently yourself and Altidore have been away and neither of you where attacked.

In most case's you can tell who would and wouldn't healed their BG's judging by rank an protection level and knowing that the person couldn't possibly make enough cash to afford it (other than those that sell credits on a regular basis and those tend to be well known).

The whole idea of having a protection status is to give a vague idea of how well protected someone is, as it is with people who are IWP but don't heal their BG's we may as well remove protection status altogether.

The reason for having a BG effectiveness based on BG health was to reduce the amount of people buying more BG's than they can maintain as it would no longer be worth it, however it is still worth it because as it has been said the appearance a high protection level prevents shots from anyone but those certain to hit.

How would this not fit into the RP perspective of the game? If you have wimpy bodyguards, other people will be able to see that when you're walking down the streets. I'm not sure where you're getting "happiness" from. It is about their health and shape. The fact that we would see how out of shape someone's bodyguards is would encourage more attacks. You say that taking part of the uncertainty out of the game would make it less fun. Quite frankly, the lack of wars makes the game less fun, yet most people seem to be okay with it.

Is there a theme but are the only two complaints coming from heads of cities?

Come on you guys know better than most that this a is a good idea. Take yourself out of your position and be impartial. Then you'll agree with it, you shouldn't have a status that doesn't represent your effective BG count, or the effective BG count shouldn't of been implemented, simples!

You basically walk around all scary with your IWP status buy you have an effective protection status of WP/VWP I don't think that should be the case.

To me, BG tiers are the same as witness statements... You can get a general idea of somones gun by the small glimpse into it provided by the game.

This game is about balance and fairness, if exact BG effective count is put in, which reveals a huge amount of info, woudlnt it only be fair that we see the guns that others have?

(Notices the objection of everyone)

It really is the same.

If you witness someone murder someone, you can get an idea of how skilled they are by how they perform it. But unlike with BGs, you cant tell how trained someone is just by their physical appearance. College athlete? Or Marine Veteran? They can look the same, but there is a world of difference.