After the recent war, almost every city is full to the top with members. I would like to propose an increase to the maximum HQ size of 50% (giving 75 man HQs for normal leaders, 16 for Godfathers). This will give people longer to build up accounts ready to be auth'd etc.

Obviously once we are in the position of the cities being fuller again, I would say that HQ size be re-evaluated to see whether it should be reduced again. I honestly believe right now though, that increasing HQ size is the best way forward and would love to hear other people's opinions on this.

~DS.

Speaking as a fellow CL, I can't agree more with this idea. From a strictly player point of view, it would just make things a LOT easier for us.

After a massive war there is nobody really ready for auth. Even if you take away the advantage of BG's, it's still 11 days before somebody can be authed, and that's if they are min timing made man.

I would be in favour of this suggestion given that it is actually re-evaluated after a certain length of time. Going back around 5 years or more, we saw families with 200 members in each one, why this was reduced all the way down to 50 I don't know, it seemed kind of drastic to me.

As long as each family doesn't become too big to the point that there may as well only be one family per city, I'm all for this idea.

Maybe if it is evaluated every month along with the BG cap? Or even more often that that?

Maybe an option to make it so you can purchase a bigger HQ but only when you reach a member count of 48 or more? When you reach this figure you can then upgrade to 75, or even 100? If you then drop below 30 members, the upgrade is void and you are back down to 50 capacity.

I believe this would be a better way of managing it than having everybody able to buy 50% bigger HQ's.

I will be sponsoring this idea as something with crew space definitely needs to be sorted.

Considering HQ boosts are already too big, and are tied to HQ size and number of people.

Further considering that if you have a shortage of space, you can auth more people...

Thumbs down.

Sayyid, the game state currently does not leave us in a position to just "auth more people". That is why I suggested this as a non-permanent solution to the problems we are currently facing.

If you have any valid reasons to support your thumbs down, please provide them.

I have no idea what game state you are talking about. I see plenty of eligible individuals who could be given an HQ just by browsing the crew lists.

Also, you did nothing to address the fact that your "temporary solution" would result in {instantly +25, more likely around +50 and potentially as much as +100 total attack and defense each} more boost to each crew leader out there presently. HQ bonuses have been balanced with 50-man HQ size being assumed. This would unbalance that portion of the game.

Or perhaps give the extra space, but not the extra boost?

And would these +25 more members each not provide an added 25 people worth of income to crew leaders? I just picked the most pertinent example for me, but surely that would also present a problem.

And in any case, this all seems like a case of "I'm going to refuse to do what's within my power to solve a problem, then ask for an alternate fix because I don't want to do what I can do." There are currently 32 individuals (7 bosses, 11 capos, and 14 made men) perfectly capable of setting up HQs that do not currently possess one. That's not counting any wise guy that might be held back from made man.

Whether or not you think they're eligible means diddly squat in game, just because someone is a Made Man doesn't mean they are ready to be a leader. Given the massive loss the game's economy took, temporary auths are a very costly thing right now too, so it's not a particularly viable option.

The temp solution would result in all leaders HQs being boosted by the same amount - not sure how that would unbalance anything? And I'm sure if you were that concerned about it you could ask a coder to make HQ boosts slightly smaller to counteract the larger size.

I don't so much agree that the GF HQ's need to be bigger or need a bigger boost, they are fine the way it is.

However, the crew leader boost is because the crew leader is protecting the members of his/her family. More people in the family = more people to protect = bigger boost needed.

As has already been said, it would take 11 days for someone to min time Made Man and be eligible to be authed. That's simply too long when we have wars that wipe out 400 people, and 400 people now need new families.

Where as Philly may have 10 people that could be authed right now, another city might not have anybody that can be authed. Also, you have to think that it's not just who CAN be authed, but who SHOULD be authed. There is no point authing someone who would not be a good crewleader but is an excellent member who happens to be above Made Man.

The fact that it is a temporary change, rather than a permanent one, that will be evaluated as things change, I think doesn't make it unfair or too advantageous to anybody.

{As much as a +100 boost? I don't see where this is from? Maybe +25 yes, but not +100, that is a 150 man HQ which is honestly ridiculous. Also something to consider is KingSao's suggestion of not adding a boost.}

The boost could be negated and just not added for any members over the original 50. Or only allowing a boost for 50 loyal members, anything more than 50 just doesn't give you the boost.

A quick note on the money side of things. If the godfather or city head was to auth a new crew leader they would still be getting the added income of whatever members were under the new auth, so the income thing is not an issue in my eyes.

"The temp solution would result in all leaders HQs being boosted by the same amount - not sure how that would unbalance anything? "

For starters, not everyone on the site is a crew leader. In fact, most aren't. It alters the balance between those two groups.

I'll be honest, I see no real need for this.

There are people in philly who are leaders that are more than capable of running their own city & could make their own auths even if only temporary auths.

{Pratster just a heads up, we're meant to wait 5 days before sponsoring an idea so the public have a chance to have thier say.}

{I had no idea about the waiting, sorry. Thanks for letting me know though}

I personally didn't agree with the shrinking of the HQs and I do think that 50 was quite a small number that left us with a situation of more chiefs than Indians.

However, one reason this was done was in order to prevent the limited users all flocking to one family and leaving us with a horribly stagnant game. Sadly, players just circumvented this by authorising multiple crews into their own city and thus the users still flock to the most powerful city and periodically have to be moved along.

With that said, nothing I see now is any worse than what we have come through before. I think the fact that we have eligible candidates not being given the role suggests that this is a player made problem, rather than a coding one. There is nothing to stop any Made Man from being authorised other than player made decisions.

I have no problem with players making those sort of decisions for their own in game reasons, in fact I think it is exactly what players should be doing, but you can't then suggest a coding change because of how you're choosing to play.

{As an aside, I would like to revisit the limiting of the number of crews per city to combat the stacking of cities which is an inevitable gameplay tactic.}

I already addressed the fact that 'temporary auths' are a waste of money, and quite a large one at this point in time considering the economy.

I would quite happily suggest that Philadelphia leaders are not benefitted by 75 man HQs, as quite frankly we still have room in the city to be filled.

This whole suggestion was created because Squishy had already stated that he was going to code something in (consisting of what I believe will be admin crews, could have misinterpreted though)... I had thought that by increasing HQ size it would allow the current leaders time to prepare and auth the people they actually want to auth, rather than being forced down a path that they do not want to take whilst still allowing their individual cities to grow.

{"As much as a +100 boost? I don't see where this is from?"}

{I mean a +100 wack and defense boost is possible as a result of a +25 boost in HQ size (granted, from my understanding it is the maximum possible result, but it is still possible). Adding +25 to HQ sizes would either (1) throw off balance by that much, or (2) require a complete recode of wack and defense to avoid that. The HQ boosts are written as functions of HQ size, members and their ranks, loyalty, etc. and just saying "OK HQs can get 25 bigger" would make all of those change, with drastic effects on game balance. Sorry, I didn't have time last night to fully flesh out my meaning on that.}

Going back around 5 years or more, we saw families with 200 members in each one, why this was reduced all the way down to 50 I don't know, it seemed kind of drastic to me.

Five or so years ago there were only one auth per city, hence the larger HQ. I can't recall exactly how many members were allowed per crew, but I don't believe it was ever over or up to 150, much less 200. When the idea of captains was introduced, that's when crew sizes were reduced. The point of that was, same number of people per city, but spaced out in different crews all in the same city. It was not a drastic hq size cut, it was a very reasonable hq size cut.

To me, the size of the HQ and the number of crews per city come hand in hand. If the player base would like to expand the size of HQs then they should decrease the number of HQs per city at the same time.