SirBarnabie - ranking might not be hard for you, but try having 20 new players in your crew and ranking takes on a whole new fascade.

I concur with Squishy's little addition - ranking isn't so easy with 20 new members in a crew..... however there is but one little oversight here....

Has anyone thought of the practicality of this issue?  We all understand this is supposed to be the Mafia and rank and achievement should be earned through hard work for one's family and crew, but we all know this is not how things actually work.  There are people who play this "game" and have friends in high places who they know in their personal lives - people who they trust in real life with more things than they do in this game.  There is nothing wrong with this, but it does play a huge factor in how things actually work and we cannot simply let this little simple truth slide by without consideration for the unintended consequences. 

What I have seen for years now is a system where the people who have formed their own cliques outside of Mafia (via phone, chat, email, life, etc) often continue a cycle of promotions and ranking over and over again.  We can't deny this doesn't happen since we all have been a part of it before.  I am NOT attacking the often similarly paradoxical nature of "nepotism" in government, nor this patrons and clients system we see here.  I am however, stating that it plays a large role in how promotions are determined in this thing of ours and I believe that we need some changes to ensure that even if someone trusts their best friend in real life to be their RHM - it does not mean that everyone else in the crew has to take a backseat for a promotion for another few days when the leader might try to find another reason to promote someone else. 

And again, to reiterate previous points I have made, particularly in my description of the system I created - we can promote all of the people who have "earned" the title of Don to that rank if it is their turn in line.... but is this anywhere near realistic to the real mafia?  Shortcomings and oversights here should be addressed and I think I may have stumbled on a simplistic system that could cover all of our bases....

More food for thought for you all :)

Strong point Ezio (new friend of the cow)

I seem to have been misunderstood. Understandable as it is that people are concerned this would limit the ability for smaller crews to expand and consolidate, it would be easily possible to make this an equation which adapts depending on the crew, something I tried and admittedly failed earlier to explain,

For example, let's say the 'average' crew was taken to be 25 members (I know it isn't but for the ease of maths let's say it is), and let's say the 'average' WG -> Made Man promotion costs 1000 'points'. Using these figures as a benchmark, a crew with 50 members is twice as large as the average, and the same promotion would therefore cost 2000 points. Alternatively, I refer to my earlier efficiency argument - whereas rather than using simply numbers, the average crew efficiency could be used in place of crew members.

Whilst I accept that this may have an effect on crews populated largerly by newer members, I frankly think it's negligible in the larger scheme. In my experience as either CL, RHM or generic high ranker I've noticed that it's more often than not the newer members who are the hardest workers/most efficient members of a family - when nurtured correctly and led well. Whether your crew is populated full of jaded has beens who haven't got the zealousness to play that they once had - or bumbling newbies that don't quite know what they're doing, it's the leaders job to guide, motivate and generally lead their crew. Obviously this is a concept which would need considerable reivision to ensure it is fair across the board codewise, but I think it could be. With an adaptable equation to ensure rewards for crews are relational to their size and acitivity; then any crew who is disadvantaged is at a disadvantage because of their members or the lack of willingness from the upper structure to get their members involved. I don't particularly see this is a bad thing.

Additionally, I actually think this could be more beneficial to Crewleaders who opt to take on newer players rather than fill their HQ with older players. Again, with a few exceptions, my experience has taught me that motivating an older player to their former level of play is much harder than nurturing a new player up the ranks.

Walks over and starts looking for cheap food but gets kicked out of the office.

Noah - I don't know how you can say newer players are the hardest working when the majority of them don't ever log back in or give up after a short period. You would in effect be encouring the quick turnaround of these by leaders. I just don't see the equation adding up, the more complex these things need to be, the more useless the basic idea tends to be proven.

I like Noah's idea of having the points required for promotion being relative to crew size/efficiency. There's only one refinement that I'd like to add - and that is that there should be a time lag in between events happening and there impacting on promotion costs.

What I mean by this is that say (for ease of maths - which I'm not very good at) that a crew is 10 players large. And let's say also that a WG - MM promotion costs 1000 points. Now, let's suppose that a CL has 990 points at his disposal and also a WG that he's got in mind for a promotion.

One extremely simple way of speeding the process of waiting for those 10 extra points would be to drop a trusted member of the crew (which would lower the promo cost to 900), promoting the WG, and then re-inviting the dropped member back into the fold. Not only would time have been saved but also some 90 valuable points as well.

Similarly, were a new player looking to join the crew, it would be undesirable to invite him straight away as his inclusion would boost the promo cost up to 1100(ish) (or if we're using efficiency ratings it would boost the cost to a lesser degree).

A system like Noah's would work well and I would lend my support to it, especially if new events which would impact promotion costs had a fixed time-delay before they affected anything (say... 24 hours).