Introduction

In the last few wars, thinking things over, I've noticed something. Dedicated shooters nowadays, especially those that pick wack answers, are able to train up a gun that can hit someone—anyone, in fact—who doesn't have bodyguards in less than a month. This is partly from MIAs, partly from Durdens, and mostly from hard work. On the other hand, those who have a massive amount of bodyguards (say 100) take four, five, even six months to build the account to shoot on your own. This leads to an interesting dynamic where someone (or a small group) with a lot of bodyguards without (comparably) many notches on their gun can stomp a huge number of people who put in a lot of time on their own account but just haven't gotten their turn with the demotion-stick yet.

This is where I mix things up. You all are probably thinking I'm going to complain it's way too hard to shoot down that 100 bodyguard account. I'm not. This proposal is not designed to make it easier to take down that 100 bodyguard account. Someone who has 100+ bgs should not be an easy shot no matter how you cut it.

The thing I'm concerned about right now is how ridiculously easy it is to shoot someone who doesn't have bodyguards. I don't jail as much as most people, but my experience was that it took me about 300 hours of actual online effort (recorded as "hours played") to build a Don account. It took me about 75 hours to build a gun that could shoot another Don account, and I could have made it a lot less by not concentrating on ranking and just showing up for durden spawns and MIAs. Cue: gasps of horror from HSLs at me revealing I can shoot things. I could hit Dons (if they had no bgs) by the time I was a capo.

Why I Consider This A Problem

Hypothetical Number One
I absolutely hate a player — let's call him Steve. Steve has no bodyguards and is a Don who worked for roughly 300 hours to build his account to that rank. I spend 75 hours' worth of time to rank up and kill him in a rogue act of violence, and laugh about how much time he wasted compared to me. Poor Steve, all he ever did was build an account hoping that his own natural defense could ward off jerks.

Hypothetical Number Two
You've got me, as a fresh account that just got the bg cap worth of bodyguards at the start of my account — let's call that 230 of them. I'm also building my gun like a madman. Someone else sees this as a threat to them, because they know I train a mean gun and that things will get out of control if I'm allowed to do it for too long while sitting with a flock of bgs. They decide to wipe out the city I'm in before it can be a problem, and they get around to it by the time I'm capo. They're not about to level every city I join and get bgs in the moment I join. That would just be silly. Problem: They're about to open up a world of hurt on themselves.


The sides:
My city: A bunch of guys I'd love to have as backup - let's say 10 people with big enough guns to tear through anything "Not Protected" but none of them have bgs because everyone pitched in for me.
Their city: Let's say their city has 50 people, 3 of them have bgs (my gun won't hit them) of their own and will kill + wound a bg in a shot. Let's say these guys will hit me if I get down to ~100 bgs. 10 more people in the city will kill bgs in one hit, but don't have bgs. Another 10 people in the city will either wound a bg or kill one, if there's a wounded unprotected bg on my pile. We'll affectionately call the rest of the city (28 people) "grinders" that are high ranked (many hours played) and tribute a lot but will do nothing but pro-shoot in a war.

What Happens
War Plan A:
Other city shoots everyone but me in my city, and then moves on to bodyguards in round two. If I'm not online already, I'll get both a phone call and twitter "highest kill" message after round one and sign on.

Response A:
Frustrated that the other side is keeping pro up after bg shooting, I respond by shooting grinders. The other side kills (for easy math: 18 bgs each round = 13 bgs plus three wounds outright, another 5 kills and 5 wounds from the less-trained guns). It will take them over seven hours at that rate to kill enough of my bgs to put me in range - assuming all people shoot every hour on the hour (which is too fast because I'll be flying and throwing off their timers). I kill one grinder straight up before bg shots begin (wave one murdered my city - remember?) then after that I kill eight grinders and die.

In other words: my 75 hour old capo account using about a week's worth of a city's earnings just dropped nine people who probably had 150+ hours each. Ouch. Very ouch.

Response B:
I play it cool and hold my shot, knowing that bgs are coming for me next round, even though they're protected now. I beat one of the other side's proer to one bg shooter per hour, because I have sheet number of races on my side: I'm able to plan who's shooting when based on my personal. I lose 18 bgs the first wave, 17 the second, 16 the third, and so on. Their magic number is 130 bgs killed: it takes them nine or ten rounds to do it, depending on how lucky I am in hitting their better guns vs. people who wound.

In other words: my 75 hour old capo account using about a week's worth of a city's earnings just dropped nine hitters who had the same number of hours as I, or more, each. Ouch. Very ouch.

War Plan B:
The other side decides they want to try to bg wack me to pieces before they start, recognizing that there's no way around things getting really ugly for them using War Plan A. 50/50 chance that things get leaked while they're planning (telling 23 people, including your less-trustworthy hitters, that you're going to war and not having a leak is a total crap shoot). If that happens, you'll end up with a messier version of War Plan A where some backup in my city survives wave one because they took pros.

If you make it past that stage, 50/50 someone notices that the locals are lit up like a firecracker and bg shots are being taken — as happened, for instance, when this plan was used against the late godfather Gwarble. If we find out, this devolves into an even messier version of War Plan A where my city scrambles a response on some of your unprotected bg shooters. See: Aurora's response to ScipitaRourke bg shooting; Roman surviving the Gwarble war (with lower damage for the attacking city because they didn't even try more bg waves after the first, and because a truce resulted).

Summary: tl;dr Version of the Above

People building guns are able to do a disproportionate amount of damage, on a per-hour basis, to anyone who doesn't have bgs. (1) If someone has a lot of bgs but even just a very few kills, then they're going to do a ridiculously disproportionate amount of damage to any attacking city even if they're just standing alone. (2) If someone is a jerk who wants to go rogue to stir problems up, all they have to do is pick anyone who doesn't have bgs and put in a couple weeks' effort.

Proposed Solution

(1) Increase the rank boost to defense: make it require (rank # * 10) more kills to shoot any given person who has no bgs.
(2) Decrease the effectiveness of all bgs by 20%.

Result: depending on what rules of thumb people use in calling shots, someone labeled IWP will require roughly the same or slightly less kills to take down in a war (depending also on how deep into IWP-territory they are). For instance, if we assume it takes ~1100 kills to shoot through 200 bgs worth of protection on a Don right now, it would take maybe ~1000 after this change. If we assume it takes perhaps 600 to shoot through a Don with 100 bgs currently, it would take roughly the same amount after this change. IWPs are still going to be ridiculously hard to just up and shoot without bg wackers.

Where this difference will be most felt: everyone who does not have bgs will be much harder to hit. Instead of training a gun to hit the vast majority of players by the time a dedicated hitter reaches Capo, they will be more like Consig when this happens. This will serve to align the "highest shot someone can hit" with their own rank.


Collateral Effects And Solutions
This will muck a bit with the math for hitting IAs as guns are just beginning. More random fails will happen at max ranges, though my back-of-the-envelope calculation says the major effect will be people who aren't yet maxed who are trying to finish the last few shots without ranges. This could either be deemed acceptable, or gangster accounts labeled "inactive" could be given -20 defense to bring them back at current levels of defense. MIAs and CAs would need defense tweaks as well.

I like it, a lot. If the PC were up right now, I'd be sponsoring this.

Great idea, really well thought out, and I can't really see any cons. Apart from people whining and bitching for no apparent reason. Let them bitch and whine I say, this idea is awesome.

I do think that the IA's should stay at the current level though, to not make it hard for someone to hit them, for instance on max ranges, like you said. This would be a tad unfair in my opinion.

I agree with pretty much everything though. It is definitely unfair for someone with 75 hours play time to be able to take out someone with 300.

I can't stress how much of a good idea this is, and I hope the admins looks closely at it and actually consider it.

Nicely written.  Highlights issues I'll admit to not thinking through previously (hours of work aspect).  I would really like to hear the admin's response to this suggestion.  It seems top notch to me. 

Once again, i will support whats said above, and excellent change, if it was to come to fruition. I think anything that can help tip the balance in favour of the unprotected of this world, who do put the hours in, is a big plus in my book.

Were ia's are concerned i think it should be more a mixed bag, random if you like, some with higher defense than others, some with none defense at least that way it mixes things up, especially for the none maxed.

I always love anything that would bring more of a, "i wounder if i can hit", excellent suggestion as always.

Personally I agree, This teamed with my previous HQ BG idea, would be very beneficial to the game.

In results ,I think chicago could be straighten--up but it should be consider,,,fair ness----and not ready for a godfather

I totally suport this one, would add the previous HQ BG idea made by Ter bloodline quite interesting

I couldn't agree more with this. It's alwasy been true that Defence is more useful long term then Attack, and i'm cool with that. but i think that this would bring it more in line. With my mediocre gun, i shouldn't be able to cause 18 times the amount of work i put in to be lost by the other city.

Hey everybody!!!! someone said something smart here. would it be a possible balence with the gun tapering? perhaps some variation of this could be used in conjunction witha variation of the gun tapering to even thing out?

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Great bump, I'd never read this before.

However, doesn't the crew fortifications addition cover a lot of this ground?

I thought they only worked if in home city?

I don't think a change is needed, if you know how a war is going to go & know that you will take these 8 - 10 losses you have to decide if the war is worth the cost or get backup from another city.

I think this is in need of a bump.

While this is a brilliant thread, written expertly by someone who knew what they were talking about, it is dated. As Grin said, fortifications cover a lot of this. However, it could be noted that when outside of the fort, perhaps there should be some sort, even a minor one, of defense boost given to those of higher ranks who lack BGs. As for a decrease in effectiveness of BGs, that's something I don't agree with. BGs degrade and having to pay for the upkeep should be enough to balance out any reason to lower their effectiveness.

love the idea it is great if we do it this way so it will make less rogue to see in our society.

I don't think it'll make there be less rogues... I think they'll just change their targets. It'll mess up their main goal slightly: highest damage. However, if they work at it, they can still shoot who they want... it'll just prevent the not-so-good-gun rogues' jobs harder.

As that really isn't the main point Spike, it's just that.

Hopefully other PC's give their opinion.

Like it or not rogues are a part of this game, always have been and always will be. The odd rogue now and again can be entertaining and even be necessary at times. This idea didn't get one sponsor from the previous player commission so the chances of it now getting 5 from the current members is very unlikely.

And I guess it can just be left to what Flash has said... Rogues are a part of the game. Just gotta deal with it really, and do one's best to stay safe... and with fortifications, it's even easier than it used to be.