I'm on the fence with this one in all honesty, but I feel that there should be an option so that the notification only goes out to Made Man plus if you wish. For example in a first wave takedown scenario only a select few trusted people should know especially if the first shots are all BG wacks on offline leader(s).

Oops, should have mentioned this would also give more value to the rank of Made Man as you may hold back promotions if you don't trust people enough that you are about to enter a war.

There is a lot to take in with this new idea. I see some good things and some bad things. Essentially you would be eliminating single person rogues which is not a bad thing to most people but is part of the game as it currently stands. It would also make it a lot harder to wack other people members by accident since you don't have full power of your gun unless you are in war mode. That, in my opinion, is a good thing since we won't have many accidental shots. I do like the idea of being able to have war rooms since that would make it easier to communicate with the whole family, including those who can't get on IRC.

There are some bad things I see here. It kind of takes away from the secrecy of planning a war. It allows for people to slip up and let information get out. For example, there are many people who are friends and sometimes people who are friends leak information such as "hey my family just went into war mode" which could take away the element of surprise.

Another issue I have with this is who would be able to turn war mode on? Just the crew leader? or the Crew leader and both hands or what? Sometimes business needs to be handeld when the crew leader or maybe even the crew leader and RHM cannot be online. This would then make it so that one crew is attacking with guns worth basically nothing while the other crew who has the ability to go into war mode is fighting with full potential. For example, if your an RHM and you just got intel that somebody plans to wipe you out but your CL is not able to get online then you are screwed since only the CL can turn on wack mode.

All in all I personally am not a huge fan of this idea.

The S&A perk is top quality in my opinion, though I agree with rico, if the CL can only flick the switch then any survivors of a takedown/current war are left in a pretty pickle especially if any response has a percentage drop in regards to wack retaliation.

Perhaps also, as the hitsquad leader has been encoded in, also allow this particular person to be able to flick said switch.

All in all though, great thought, idea and implementation into a massive feature. Good work guys

Most I'm likely to see is the colour then the dead screen....if I'm lucky :P

"Essentially you would be eliminating single person rogues"
Let's be honest, they were long ago eliminated by bodyguards. Like at least two years ago. So I figure this effect to be a total nonfactor.

"That, in my opinion, is a good thing since we won't have many accidental shots. "
The sorts of people that would even know and understand what "war mode" means aren't the sorts of people that accidentally shoot people anyway. Another nonfactor in my opinion.

"There are some bad things I see here. It kind of takes away from the secrecy of planning a war. "
Agree wholeheartedly on this point. Loose lips sink ships. This takes away discretion of the leader to NOT have loose lips.

Also agree wholeheartedly with the points about "who turns it on?" But I'd throw in another twist: What about those times that the GF wants to go to war, and can't get every last one of their CLs online, but can get the HS members from those CLs crews? It's a frequent occurrence. A city practically never goes to war with their entire slate of hitters. There's always someone that's got an RL commitment. This change essentially hamstrings cities with more leaders like that.

On the other hand, if the GF can flip the switch for the whole city, then your city is hamstrung in the case that the GF isn't around to flip the switch. Sometimes a GF's RHM, LHM, or even the city HSL will pull the trigger, too.

My second read seems to indicate that it would be an "any leader can flip the whole city switch" but that seems worse than either of the above two options, since it actually would bring back rogues. Rogues that set up an HQ, flip the city-war switch, and laugh at the carnage -- or at least the lost profits if everyone ignores it instead. But if everyone ignores the war switch anyway, that rather defeats the purpose of getting everyone involved, no? So there will need to be a safeguard of some sort to stop "rogues." Problem: any safeguard that stops abuse from rogues is also a "safeguard" that would prevent the "zomg my leader just died, RHM sets up" leaders from going into war mode.

Which leads me to another problem: this change in general puts the city that just got attacked at even more of a disadvantage. They've just had a swath of their leaders wiped out -- almost certainly all of their online ones, if the war planner did a good job -- so they're not there to flip the "war mode" button anymore. Now all of a city's hitters that did survive the first wave have to shoot back with a wack penalty? Heck, let's not even consider the case where the leader dies. Let's consider the case where someone misses you, you notice on IRC that it's war, and you want to immediately shoot back at them before the pro-shot lands. Now you have to take a wack penalty on your shot -- why? Because you were on your game with the very quick reactions that are supposed to make a hitter more effective, not less? This strikes me as the exact opposite result from what we want.

Wow. This post got rather negative. Sorry about that. It really is a neat idea in abstract. Perhaps there are ways to address my concerns, and if there are, I'll positively love to see this implemented. Just as a simple, purely optional (no effect on wack/defense stats) "the GF has a 'evil city turns evil-looking on the online list' button" I positively love the idea and think it would be a great addition. But the unintended consequences of fiddling with wack stats based on an artificially constructed switch seem too extreme for my tastes.

I agree with rofldog about his GF argument and also in the case that the CLs are wiped out and then the city is at a huge disadvantage because they cannot go into war mode. I also just want to clarify one of the things I said above that rofldog pointed out. I did not mean that there would be accidental shots during war. I meant that the fact that guns are weaker without war mode would make it so that a made man who is training his gun has a lot less chance of wacking a made man from another crew by accident becaue their gun would not be at full potential.

The premise of basic War Mode is that there will be a switch for every Crewleader to turn on for their entire city or just their crew that will turn the surrounding border a different color alerting the city or crew that a war is about to happen or is currently happening. If you try to war another city without hitting the switch you will do so with the guns of your city operating at a significantly lesser % of what their actual wack is. In theory when the switch is on, you are calling on all of your firepower to help and it will give you an attack bonus to what your wack would be without War Mode.

So, say NY sets war mode, they come at NO and kill all our crew leaders first wave but I somehow make it through, am I going to have to first purchase an hq and turn on war mode before I am fighting with my real gun?

When War Mode is switched on, two War Room threads will open to the city for use. The public War Room will be accessible to everyone in the city, however only the assigned Hit Squad Leaders will be able to post in the forum, no other replies from city members can be submitted. Which brings us to the Private War Room which will be for family only. This thread can be posted in by anyone in the immediate family, but will still ultimately be controlled by that family's Hit Squad Leader. This will bring relevance back to the Hit Squad Leader position as an active war leader and allow for anyone without IRC capabilities to get immediate replies to questions via the Private War Room.

This private war room, will be it a rolling chat or a forum?

Along with War Mode, there will be a Strategy and Analysis Perk (S&A Perk). These will be perks that a Hit Squad Leader is normally responsible for as part of their job description only now encoded into the game. The S&A Perk will cost 5 credits and will need to be purchased prior to War Mode being initiated to be utilized.

The absolute last thing this game needs is more ways to spend credits.  The credit marketplace has been severly out of wack for months.  I am a player who has donated to the game on numerous occasions.  I am happy to donate to the game and I will likely do so again in the future.  I want the game to be sufficent, but some control needs to be implemented. The people who can afford to mass buy and sell credits are selling them at insane prices.  They not only have all the credits to keep themselves in constant 3 mias every 2 days, but also can afford to pay for up keep on BGs, AND can buy more BGs.  The newer, younger, less experienced players of this game can SOOO not keep up with this practice.  The game is less fun for them because the gap between the people who can afford all the credits they want, and those who cannot, is ever widening.  More and more the people who want to keep up, have to buy their own credits, or lose out.  I understand that the game needs money to continue, but this is going another step in the wrong direction. If you want to let us plan our war IN the game interface, please dont make it a pay to play feature.  This may even defeat the purpose of coding it into the game, because Google docs works just fine for sharing a note pad and target list. 

One feature in the S&A Perk will be to add crews to a target list that will be visible to everyone in War Mode. Furthermore, when you look in the locals and click an "Update Target List" icon, if a target is on the list, their location will be updated and listed on the target list. This can be done by anyone in War Mode, however if you cannot see someone in the locals due to their high stealth skill they will not be updated on the target list.

Whose vision will determin what targets you can see?   Will it be a collective or will each individual person see only the targets they would have seen anyway based on thier vision.  If everyong in the city can see targets, I can see this leading to more accidental pros during war for people who are brand new, or are not great with English involving thmselves without waiting or looking or instructions. 

Finally, the S&A Perk will allow for auto-hitlisting to occur. For example, if you Johnny Made Man shoot at a Goomba who hasn't been online for 12 hours, money will be withdrawn from your crewleader's bank account and will post the hit for you, not delaying your shot.

Why would the player not pay for their own hit lists? I dont understand the need to take the money from the Crew Leaders acount.  If they dont have cash, I suppse that is one thing, but a war effort should be a family effort.

 

For a long time the most fun events on MafiaReturns have been missed out on by the majority of our population. There is substantial disappointment if you miss wars or aren't informed about them. It's time for war to be revolutionized and for our community to be inclusive of everyone. There's never been anything wrong with our wack/defense balance, and with War Mode we'll prove it.

The most fun part of this game for me has always been the trust aspect.  I enjoy working hard and gaining the trust of my family and my city.  As a leader of a city or crew you can prove that you trust your mebers in a couple ways.  One important way is to show trust to a crew member is by promoting them to made man.  Another is by allowing them access to privileged hit squad informatin.  JohnSmith who has been around for 2 months but still as wise guy is probably not a person I trust.  I don't want to pre-warn that person of a war... and I think that if that person really wanted to get involved, they could show up for the city and prove it every day, instread of during a war that they likely arent prepared to participate in past protection wacking.  As rolfdog mentioned, part of why I wouldnt want to tell JohnSmith wise guy about my war is so that he doesnt run to to the streets, or his friend in another city and say something nonsense like, "Hey man take my money there is going to be a war"

Additionally, you say you want to keep roguing a possible element of the game, but this will significantly decrease my interest in attempting to allow someone who rogued before a chance to remake a name for themselves with me.  Maybe I am wrong, but I feel like this would force us to bloodline hunt. 

Finally, I think there is also a strong possibility that this will further continue the cliquey aspect of the game where the same people continue to work with the same people over and over.  I would be less likely to want to take a chance on training and teaching a brand new person I never met before if I knew the cities most secret plans would be announced without discretion.  

to be honest, most wars are all buy over after the first wave coz the number of bg's and hitters some cities have.   Most parts of this feature a good hsl already manages except for the whack boost.  so not needed in my mind

Or in regards to being attacked with someone that has a war switched on, you pay 5 credits every lets say 2-3 weeks(Or however much admins decide) for a "ambush defense". Which would operate as a warning in the DL blinker saying "Your family is being attacked" or something along those lines, and your war switch is automatically turned on.

I would be willing to say this will cause a bigger imbalance in the game than doing nothing. This idea should be scrapped before it gets implemented.

All I have to say on this matter is...

Sigh... more buying credits. Buy credits for crimes next? This place is becoming far too credit orientated. Soon you will have us on a monthly subscription with the way things are going. Credits are already ridiculously high as it is. This is just going to up the price.

*shakes head*

I usually love your ideas Squishy, but I think this is a particularly poor one.

One quick note. If/When you hardwire the HitSquad leader position into place, can it be given the ability to send out mass mails? I know in the past it was a bitch if the HSL wasn't a hand to get in touch with everyone even in peace times.

Personally I like it.

It's not enough to create an imbalance. I'm all for preserving the core of what this used to be, and evolving it into something no one thought it would become. I think this is just another step in that. I am a fan of staying away from credit based gameplay, but this all seems thought out and fair.

I have to say I couldn't agree more with almost all of Egwene's comments and my viewpoint ultimately summarised by the comments of FiveFingerDeathPunch (grhs)

Aside from the credit aspect of it, basically by spending credits you get war preparation handed to you on a plate, the fact is it's making life easier for people to plan and execute a war.

The planning of wars and locals gathering, target ID and tracking, arranging pro's etc... that's where extra-game effort and skills come in to play, separating a hitsquad with a load of big guns but no strategy from precision planned hitsquads capable of winning through good organisation, planning and stategy.

Basically it's dumbing down the game so any half-wit can pay some credits and have all the work done for them.

"If you are unsponsored you will have your normal wack capacity, just minus any of the bonuses that might come with having an HQ."

So right off the bat, CLs get taken out during a first wave, the rest of the city is now without a wack bonus that their attackers have. Those who strike first already have an advantage, and this just makes it even greater.

Perks? Been playing a lot of CoD lately?

Besides the CL, who is able to turn on the war mode in each crew? RHM/LHM? the HSL?

For all the reasons which people before myself have already very eloquently described, I am very very much against this.