This suggestion is in reference to this post, of which I'm certain most of you have viewed (if not, take a gander, but read all the threads at least up to page 4 so you can't really get an idea of the points ALREADY made before you post your opinion): http://mafiareturns.com/comm/thread/162311

Alright, here's the thing. This is a suggestion coming from both a realistic perspective and enhancement perspective.
We need police. I propose the idea (officially) that we turn the RIA's (the people we practice shooting on) into a police militia. There is an unbalance in the particular area of "war against other cities". At the moment we can ONLY war against other cities, eachother, exact revenge or what have you. We should not take away from that because it adds character and creates stories and history in the game. It's awesome, we know it, it's fun. BUT!


There should also be an outside threat. Yes, mafioso betrayed eachother, killed eachother, had qualms with one another and it became a massacre, but we should also have a force to fight against TOGETHER. The real threat to the mafia was the goverment and the people that it used to infiltrate and disable the mafia. So why not implement that?

I say, make the MIA's and other NPC characters in a police or other goverment type fighting force who have the following abilities:

1). They can affect the money we can make. Have them intercept our drugs deals and put the element of arrest into the mix. Have cops or other NPCs disguise themselves as NPMs in our family and then try to distroy our family and structure from the inside out. (Though I suggest a small chance of it happening). Things like this with the element of surprise and the larger possibility of death involved will enrich the game and make stagent stages in this world less frequent. It adds more unpredictability without the constant need for players to make it themselves.

2). Spawn a certain amount each day in each city. Whatever system you want to use, there need to be some amount of police at hand. They're always there. You can either have an outright attack, or even have the ability to bribe them not the mess with you and your profits. This will also help the city as a WHOLE work together rather than have each crew work and do their own kind of thing. It will create a system where newer weaker families will have to have good ties with the rest of their city in order to survive. This is a good thing, in my opinion.

3). Have points in times where the police NPCs will work together against the mafia. This gives us the chance to ALL work together if we wish to beat them. Or, you could work with the NPC's to get rid of your own enemies inside the mafia.

Just a few things to be considered. I realize this would be a kind of overhaul and would require a lot of time, but it would seriously enrich and balance the game more without taking anything from it.
Feel free to add on and discuss this suggestion. 

Thank you,
Alesia 

Also, I'd like to add that your own stats could be an asset in this. For example, the idea of police disguised as your NPM's could be balance by having a character with high vision being able to see through the guise and warn their CL.

I have no problem with the idea of having a police force, because it is realistic. However, the problems lie in the incorporation of this.

The Mafia didn't kill the police on the whole. They feared drawing attention to themselves and any sort of targeting of the police tended to have massive consequences for them. Indeed, whilst it did happen, the instances where it did often led to a significant setback for the Mafia right up until modern times. They instead tried to bribe, intimidate or bargain from the government or police what they required. With this in mind, to turn RIAs into the police would surely have to invite massive retaliation, because whilst I could (at a stretch) believe that people would turn a blind eye to us killing each other, the destruction of civilians would most certainly not be ignored.

This then begs the questions of consequence, what should happen if I kill a police officer? What should happen if I kill a police chief? What should happen if I kill a judge? I would either be imprisoned for life, face the death penalty or be forced to hide away forever. This would require a massive overhaul of the game, because the reward for killing a police officer would have to be substantial in order to match the risk. Alternatively it would require incorporation of a prison system that wasn't merely a few seconds before you are busted out.

We then have to consider if that is really the road we want to go down. I've seen plenty of other games that incorporated features like a police force into them and they get so caught up in the options that they move away from the interaction all together. As a believer in the game being played out in the Streets, I can't really get behind anything that is going to introduce more buttons and more progression unrelated to that.

Therefore, whilst I don't question that a police force had a place in the era and the idea of a network within a city other than just the Mafia appeals to me, unless something could be suggested that allowed this to have a focus around player interaction rather than button clicking, I don't think I could get behind it.

~C~

Chuckle: Thank you for your response.
I never said button clicking was going to be put in. This is an openended topic that's free for you to mold. I'm looking for more of an interaction between people as well, so I suggested that we have people disguised as NPMs or something like that so that we'd be able to utilize people's skills in order to catch the the guy and do him in as a balance technique. Stuff like that requires communication between players and teamwork. From an RP standpoint it could add more elements and ideas for inspiring stories. But my aim for this would mostly be interaction between cities and family members.

Say we take away the whole killing a cop thing. We could still incorporate many of the other things listed. We could still have them try to intercept our drug deals and such, but maybe this is less of a police job and more of a subtle CIA job, or something. Whatever you want to name them, some other threat should be involved.

Now say we keep the option of being able to kill a cop. I'm trying to keep this less "Button" oriented and more DECISION oriented. Decisions make everything more interesting and complex. Say we kill a cop and one thing that it affects is indeed more attention. We could say, I killed a cop now the consequence is (like I said above) that now ALL the cops in that city are aware of our presence and now want to retaliate. Then it becomes important for survival of the city to be aware of that and take action against their attack. If their attack succeeds, the city is devastated in the mafia world. If it does not succeed penaties will take place; if I had to choose on what those penalties would be I would say that out activity would have to slowed down (drug runs and such) in order to cease attention. You wouldn't WANT to kill a cop, so there would be no gain from this, but the element would still be there (this could entice other members of a different city with vendettas against the one they're in to fuck with the cops just to get back at you). You could still bribe them to leave you alone, but they would still be there lurking.

Like I said this is an under developed idea, but WE as the players can develope it and ask to make it happen with no planning from the admin but coding. 

Sorry, I think it is a poor choice of words on my part. By "button clicking" I really meant "automated features". I completely agree that when players are forced to make decisions, the game becomes a lot more interesting.

Whilst I think that some of what you suggested is pretty cool and I am receptive to the idea of having police, I really dislike NPMs and having any sort of NPC that could 'destroy our family and structure from the inside out' seems wrong to me. As a player, I can accept when other players legitimately kill me, I have no issue with that. But to have an NPC topple my hard work? That's a little galling to be honest.

I would much prefer any police force to be comprised of real people, having to use their own skills to infiltrate organizations, if that was the intent. It would certainly encourage leaders to be more selective in their recruitment and think carefully about who to favour or allow to progress. However, the danger is finding the balance so that it wouldn't turn into a breeding ground for disgruntled people seeking a cheap and easy way to undo the hard work of others.

I am also all in favour of things that would cause a break in the stagnancy, but I firmly disagree that this doesn't need to come from the players - it does. I don't think it is fair to implement automated things which kill players.

I don't see an issue with tweaks that allowed drug deals to go wrong or for drug deals to be intercepted. I believe these are likely scenarios and in keeping with the fact that some families believed that narcotics was too risky and forbade their members from dealing in them.

If there was nothing to gain from killing a police officer, what would be the point of killing one? I could imagine that this would be a very last resort and would likely only come from other methods having failed, bribery, intimidation etc. At the moment, we have no scenario where this would arise, so what would have to occur to make this possible? Similarly, we would have to consider that, for example, finding yourself in jail every 10 minutes would quickly become frustrating as a player, so it would have to be a hindrance, without being counter-productive to playing the game for anyone.

As history has shown, when the Mafia have trifled with the police, they haven't won. I'm not trying to be negative with my responses, as I would love to see this made workable and I'm interested to see if we can come up with such a scenario to make this viable. However, I wouldn't want to advocate any system where NPCs triumph over players simply by being introduced. If we could come to a conclusion where players triumphed over other players - with suitable hard work in the process - then it is something I would definitely believe to be worth consideration.

Well I would say let players become police but I wouldn't want to see the game turn into some kind of crazy COPS VS MAFIA game. It would ruin the way it's played now, in my opinion because the game would turn into an over the top competitive button clicking and constant war. There would never be peace. That is, if they could see us. You could always make it to where cops can't see when mafia players are online unless they "witness" a drug deal, or a petty crime or something. Instead of PPing on other players, if they saw a mafia player they'd have the option to "investigate" and the mafia players stealth along with the cops vision could determine if they get away or not. That's just an example. But getting into this would make it a completly different game compared to what it is now.

I suppose the only way we could do it without NPC's besides that would be to make it a story element in our way of life in the game.  Kind of like the automated messages you get when you rank up early in the game. It would be easier but I don't see it as being as fun.

We could possibly replace the durden spawn as a cop spawn, idk, just as a cosmetic thing or whatever.

Thanks for the reply Aldo.

I'm not sure that would be enough of an improvement. It's not just about cosmetics, it's about integrating a key component into the game. 

True, but the mafia doesn't go to war every 2 days. But the mafia always had a fragile relationship with police, if the durden spawn was a cop spawn, it'd be a lot easier for the coders because that's just cosmetic, not a completely integrated system  that helps turn the other cogs of this game.

Well I guess if you want to look at it that way, we'd have to make a decision on what would be a better idea. Something easy for the developers, or something that could potentially enhance several aspects, and add even more to the game. In the long run hard work pays off. I'm not saying it wouldn't take a long time, with a lot of planning and debugging, but it would be doable.

It was a relationship filled with bribes so they'd stay out of the way but they did try to bust the mafia. That was mostly goverment related instead of state though. I talked about both. 

I completely agree with you, possibly replace durden spawns with cop spawns, and while doing that, planning the codes that will change the entire aspect of the game to make it revolve more around a cop/mob relationship.

Have cops or other NPCs disguise themselves as NPMs in our family and then try to destroy our family and structure from the inside out

Personally, I'd support this portion of the idea wholeheartedly. Maybe make it a compounding percentage amount? The more NPMs you have the greater the chance of devastating consequences? It would certainly make Leaders think twice about fielding the ridiculous numbers of NPMs in use today. They'd still have the choice to buy and utilize them, but they'd now carry the potential for negative consequences as well as their abundant perks. It'd help to balance a feature that is currently doing nothing beyond pumping more money into the game.

Now as to how they might destroy you, you have a couple of options: Take the family's DFPs and bump everyone down to 20 units or less; Give the leader a Life Sentence (End of account name) and disband the family; Have the financial assets of all Made Men+ frozen and seized. I dunno, just some thoughts. Although you could make the percentage chance rather small to offset the harshness of the penalties. but really, they more NPMs you employ, the greater the chance should be.

Like    /|\

           |

I really love that idea too Shedao. That's fantastic! Brilliant.

I think this would be a most interesting addition to the game. At least this, if nothing else.