Sunday, August 22nd, 2010
Issue: 42   Editor: SeanFailKnox


Re-doing Bootlegger; Rank, Money and Death GPNRG
For now the last article in the ‘Re-doing Bootleggers’ series. I actually wrote most of this article a few months ago when I was still alive on Midway, just never submitted it back then. Today I’m going to suggest a feature that will make being rich and/or high ranked a bit more hazardous, so I doubt everyone will like this, but I think it would make BL a bit more fun.

During round 5 we have seen that high ranked people and people with a lot of money where always at risk of being killed simply for being a possible threat to others. The problem was that a lot of people who shot used illegal scripts to find the targets. In order to render scripts useless the ‘hide specific don rank’ was introduced and after the reset the wealth status would only include what money the person had on hand. Although recently its already been proven that there still are scripts out there that can still give valuable information, The Syndicate posting a list of all accounts that were hiding their true don rank.

Personally I think that people of high ranks and/or with a lot of money should be at risk and with these new features the risk is reduced dramatically. In turn this might create inflation as people can bank billions while no-one needs to know they have that much money. Although this isn’t this big of a problem as money holders are still being found, legal or illegal. So, I was thinking on how could you render the usage of scripts useless but still be able to find and thus shoot high ranked and rich people.

My idea would be as followed:

First thing that needs to be done is to make sure that scripts stays useless. Public information as shown on your profile would remain as it is now, you can choose to hide your specific don rank and your wealth status only shows cash on hand.

Assuming that scripting has become useless the risk of being high ranked or rich has to be re-introduced. For this I suggest the ability to search players based on real rank and real wealth status by using the detectives on the kill page. The kill page already shows a ‘menu’ for selecting a specific mission, the ability to search for rank or for wealth could be added as a new way of using detectives. Instead of finding the location of your target, the detective will find the real rank or wealth of your target. Searches would work the same as now, call the detective after an hour and you get something like “I believe that your target might be multi-millionaire” and when you call after 8 hours than you will get a message like “I’m very sure that your target is excessively rich”. The more expensive detective you’re using the better the results, so with the cheapest detective you will hardly ever get the real wealth/rank but using the most expensive for say 8 hours you will get the true rank/wealth about your target. Do note, that you still need to find names you’re suspicious about yourself, it’s not a thing where you simply hire a detective and get a list of players.

Obviously I don’t think that anyone should be able to search on rank and wealth status, but only once you reach a certain rank, for example GF to search on rank and wealth status.
Also, to balance things out again people should have the ability to partially ‘hide’ themselves from the detectives that search on ranks or wealth status. This is where establishments can come in handy again.

My suggestion would be to introduce the following establishment buildings:
A: Private bank structure
B: Private intelligence structure

Private bank establishment
This would be something that’s between the current federal bank and the Swiss bank. The building would become available when a player reaches a certain rank, for example GF, and it will take some time and money to build, say $10,000,000 and 3 days construction time.

Money you have in the private bank will not show in your wealth when searched on by the detectives. Money on the personal bank receives 2% interest a day and has to be manually renewed every day (can only be done from the state where your establishment is), management for the private bank will be on the federal bank page in the state of your establishment. Furthermore it will have a 15% withdraw fee, and unlike the Swiss bank when you’re killed the money will be gone.

However, you can’t just bank unlimited on a Private Bank, you can only bank say 500% of the real wealth status you hold. This would mean that someone who is Incredibly Rich would be able to bank $500,000,000 on the private bank. And, if by the time the interest timer is back at zero the person has more money in his private bank then allowed by his wealth status, the excess money will be gone. So that means that if you have banked 500 million and when you want to renew your balance after 24 hours but only have 28million left on the federal bank and cash combined, you will lose 350million. As long as the timer on the bank is not at zero your cash will remain in the private bank and you can withdraw to raise your wealth status so that the money won’t disappear when the time is up.

Private intelligence structure
After building the private intelligence structure you have the ability to hire ‘agents’ in up to 3 states (you can choose those yourself) whose purpose it is to spread lies about your true rank and wealth status, thus making it harder for detectives to find your true rank/wealth. End result will be that while you’re in one these 3 states detectives searching on rank or wealth will not be able to get your true wealth/rank. So instead of the detective saying you’re Legendary don it will say that you’re don (same as on your profile), when searching on wealth the detective will report anything in between your real wealth status and what your profile shows.

An establishment like this should be made available when someone reaches the rank of GF. Furthermore it will have some construction costs and build time, say $3,000,000 and 3 days construction time. Besides the costs for construction you will also have to pay to hire the agents, say $20,000 per state per day, so with 3 states you pay $60,000 per day. You can hire agents for up to 1 week at the time so you don’t need to hire daily, just once a week.

This was my last article on possible feature suggestions, hope that everyone liked the ideas and as always, comments are welcome.