This may have been discussed before but here goes...

I'd like to hide the protection level from our profiles so that it's harder to tell where our guns stand in relation to each others defenses. At the moment, I can look through the online list and have a fair good idea who I would most likely be able to kill and who I would miss. I'd much rather look through the online list and not have a clue!

It would, in my opinion, add a lot more mystery to our characters as well as add more weight to the decision to kill someone. Right now, if person A looks at person B's profile, sees they're only 'Slightly Protected' and they know that they should hit. I'd love to remove that reletive certainty and give the decision to shoot someone more weight.

While I'm at it, I'd love to increase the fatal whackback chance as well. Anything to make the chances of success less calculable.

There's probably a valid reason for not doing this, but I can't think of one. If someone else can, please feel free to tell me why it's a bad idea.

I don't think this is a particularly bad idea, but I also don't think there will be enough support behind it. For the record though, just basing someone's defense off what their profile shows isn't accurate. There are plenty of people walking around at various different BG Tiers who have half of them not even trained. Granted you can always PP them and judge it off that either way.

Anyhow, I know that didn't help much but I certainly am interested to see what some other folks think.

You're right HenriDucard, basing solely off BG level isn't completely accurate, especially when you are judging those you think you might not be able to hit, but it becomes more accurate when assessing the lower protection levels.

For example, someone with a +100 gun will know they can hit all 'Slightly Protected' mobsters, regardless of how whether those BGs are fully trained or not. Especially outside of the targets home city. They woul know that they stand a reasonable chance against anyone with 'Protected' aside from those with 20+ fully trained BGs.

I would rather there was more uncertainty about such shots.

As you said, people can PP if they need to know. Although if I was being totally ruthless I would unlink PP defense from whack defense completely so there was no way to be sure other than taking the risk and pulling the trigger.

No arguments here mate, I definitely wouldn't mind this implemented. I think I may have even suggested this some time in the past. I also wouldn't mind the removal of Wealth status from profiles, either.

I'm against it. It gives people something to aim for. Besides regardless of protection you could potentially be 1%'d anyways.

That 1% chance is always there though Cin, everyone knows that and accepts it.

Moreover I don't think that hiding defense would stop people striving for a better gun. If anything, with the relative certainty of success removed people might be more enclined to work on their gun.

(Or at the very least be less tempted to shoot until they think they've got a damn good % chance)

I LOVE the idea of hiding Protection levels. Or at least making the situation more murky. Anything that increases the unknown during war and decreases number crunching is MUCH more realistic and sounds fantastic to me. 

One of the only issues I see with this is that it's still worthwhile to have a vague idea of someone's protection. For example, I don't like the either/or scenario of a binary Protected/Not Protected. It's good to know whether that random Wise Guy is loading up on BGs. Or whether a CL is really buying BGs like they say they are and not stockpiling credits for themselves. So something in between the 7 layers we have now and a 2 layer Yes/No?

So maybe we just simplify the tiers? Reduce the Slightly/Protected/Well Protected/Very Well Protected/Extremely Well Protected/Obscenely Well Proctected/Insanely Well Protected 7 layer system to something that lends itself to more vagaries. At least a couple of these categories seem new to me... although lots of things now are new to me. What's the rationale for adding them? More accurate information? Something to work for, as Cin mentioned?

Wouldn't mind that either, I don't think the BG Tiers have been touched in ages. 101-175 is still IWP, which is an enormous gap. I think taking out 2-3 of those tiers and mixing the Cap among the remaining wouldn't be so terrible.

I am still not a fan of hiding them. I doubt we would see many wars because of it and to be fair we are already at a fairly stale point as it is.

Speaking purely from the perspective of realism, I should be able to tell if someone is surrounded by 5 BGs or 150. The argument of "adding mystery" quite literally for the sake of adding mystery doesn't seem compelling to me.

Purely from a realism perspective you would rarely ever have a mob boss surrounded by more than a handful of BGs. The rest of the mob would have none.

Perhaps have the bodyguard level built into the information skill? Or limit the amount of times per hour one can recon and determine a BG number?

And you might see whether a man standing in the middle of the street had 10 or 100 guys (realism aside)- but you wouldn't know until you actually got there. If you were traveling to someone's home turf to try to take them out, you might have a rough idea of how many people you'd be facing- but nothing too specific.