Sunday, August 8th, 2010
Issue: 40   Editor: HowlingMadMika


Re-doing Bootlegger; Crews GPEnergy
As stated in last week’s article, this week I’m covering the crews. Crews are a main feature of bootleggers, some crews only last a few days where others are able to survive for many years, having multiple ‘generations’ of players who continue the legacy of those before them.

Quite often we hear people say the crews are in need of being updated. Main argument is that the current crew system doesn’t meet the management standards most crews want and that there are too few benefits for crews.

My suggestion would be as followed, first introducing a more complete crew structure with boss, underboss, right hand man and recruiter positions. All of them with different access levels to the crew management.
  • Crew boss obviously has access to every management function
  • Underboss, can do everything but change crew name and color and can’t kick people who hold a council position
  • RHM, can accept members, upgrade guns and protection and manage the crew forum
  • Recruiters only get the right to accept people into the crew


Something else that needs a change is the crew bank, now it’s just a way to pay the crewtax and to buy guns and protection packages, there is no way to take money out of the bank (other than to buy protection packages, upgrade and instantly sell them) and that needs to change. I see two good options, either that the boss, underboss and RHM have the ability to take money out of the bank or that the crew boss can give every crewmember an ‘access-level’ to the crewbank. Access-levels would range from ‘none’ – ‘low’ – ‘medium’ – ‘high’. At none a member can’t take money out of the crewbank, low medium and high would all have a maximum amount they can take out per day, say $50,000, $100,000 and $200,000 a day. These maxes can be set by the crew boss. RHM and higher always have unrestricted access. All transactions will of course be listed in the crew management, same thing as the federal bank shows.

Next stop is the train station, some crews own them but they hardly give anything, a small amount of money and the occasional free pass when a crewmember travels with too much booze. I think there is more potential for the train stations.
A much heard complaint is that crews have little defensive capabilities against underground shooters. Something that would give crews a good advantage, and protection against attacks, is that crew members can see a list on the train station page that shows all online (including idle) players who are in the state of their train station and can instantly shoot them without search times but at a cost, say $5,000,000 plus a fee based on the targets rank, maybe excluding state and nation dons.
This would also make train stations a valued asset so it would be a good thing to add a option in escrow to transfer train stations.

Most of the ideas I’ve mentioned have been suggested a few dozen times, I just stated my opinion about how the crew feature could be updated. Again, comments are welcome. Next week, the establishments.