Gangs and Families
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An overhaul, a different system, a hybrid if you will.
I believe there should be two major gangs that have major influence over how things are ran. Mafia and Yakuza. These should be ran trusted people with good knowledge of the game, role-playing and can type well. These gangs have "sub-gangs" starting with 2 at first and expanding later if need be. Such as the Sicilian Mafia having La Costa Nostra and The Cammora as their sub-gangs (Just an example). These are smaller gangs but play a big part. You should not hear about Mafia and Yakuza being in as much crime related incidents. They are considered secret societies.
Public gangs should be a choice that you can pick when you log in to the server (Civilian/Ballas/Vagos)... we need good public gang leaders, that know the game from front to back and who can actually help new players. DMing shouldn't be endorsed but I do believe however gang wars should happen frequently between the public gangs. This will gradually teach new players, Role-playing makes the game better whilst you still get to be a ruthless gangster. These two leaders should know not to make alliances... they should constantly plan/stage out events they will have for their members. Role-played server-wide staged events should be done almost daily to keep everyone interested. Possibly having a leaders only forum to discuss these events. Public Gangs should also have 1 point they can take over and control that pops every 2 days or so. Only Public Gangs can take over this point.
I also think ALL names should be black in color, so you can't see their name by a quick glance; that's including the police. So night battles and well shaded areas may require more tactic to tell who's near you.
Economy
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Money is the root of all evil it seems, people with too much time on their hands make it rich as the one hour player is still the bum. We need a system where poopsockers actually help the non-poopsockers, but, where poopsockers still feel inclined to poopsock. A barter system of some kind.
One of my proposals...
Businesses
I know these have been tried out in the past and never really work out, though I have played a few servers over the years where they were on the right idea but it was needing work.
There should be 6 businesses within the game (2 of every business). These can be owned by gangs or buy wealthy individuals with their own entourages. Each business has a cargo space of 3,000 crates.
Once the business is purchased cargo trucks spawn out back (Cargo trucks can hold 500 crates and any other vehicle can hold 200 crates). Material crates spawn in random places (changing coords of the random places every few weeks), but still in a set area so it's not far travels from the nearest gang grabbing materials, while in the truck it scans a 100 yard or so radius and when you get close to these materials you get a message telling you are near some materials. These aren't out in the open but near doors and houses. 5 crates gained every 1 second, this allows time for other gangs to come take over the truck or blow it up, or allows you to call for help.
Each business has different crates, so you could be stealing or blowing up a truck full of materials that you don't even need (blowing up a truck with materials gives you only half of the materials). Each gang owns a storage house for stolen materials that can hold 1000 crates; these materials can be converted into any material based on a set time (Allowing people to have time to steal it if they can find it). Stolen goods storage houses have entrances that go to random storage buildings near the gangs hideout (to avoid exploiting the entrances), any player (even civilians) can rob these by placing a vehicle over the entrance for a set amount of time; alerting the gang with a marker first (if they purchased an alarm) as soon as it happens and then police (automatic /su) after 30 seconds. 3 crates every 1 second if you're robbing. (Stealing still gives you mixed materials based on how many were converted) Materials maybe be converted into anything, including job materials. Businesses can also be robbed to keep people from monopolizing the markets.
Civilians garages can not be robbed, but, they only have a storage hold of 360 crates.
Businesses lose crates when members of that business use them or someone purchases something from their store, and being robbed. Both Gang and Sub-gang leaders have complete control over how a business is handled, but the Main Gang can lock sub-gang leaders out of certain control if need be. Store inventory is based on storage inventory, anything that is bought in the store get deducted from the storage inventory.
Take-downs (Maybe or maybe not)
If the business hits under 30% storage inventory everyone in a gang will be alerted that the business is able to be taken over, but no markers are placed on the map unless you know where that business is. To take over the business you will need to kill the owner(s) inside the building or a small radius outside of the building; due to black names this can be very complicated to figure out who the owner is. Once the owner is dead, the remaining inventory can be hauled back to the winners storage, a /clear(or something) can be made on the business and it can be made to be re-bought again. When you first buy a business it don't become takeable until you meet 50% and get brought back down to 30%.
Ammu-nations, 24/7's and Car Dealerships at first each with their own specific materials I believe would be the best bet unless restaurant food is trackable and can be put under the same principle, if not creating food like things and fixing a new marker over the existing ones to create the illusion.
Points and the current systems will still stay. Arms Dealers and Mat Handlers should merge back into one... they will still be needed because they can make things cheaper then the businesses sell them for. This mainly gives something gangs can be more involved in. Yet because the Ammu-nations run off of cargo stock; you can run out of inventory quick and players will be forced to find Arms Dealers when the business owner closes the store.
Having Car Dealerships require a stock, it makes the car dealership use an inventory of vehicles based on their materials... it makes buying cars more hard to come by and one store could have "better" cars then the other, making one gang have more power then the other, making people want to rob that business for sabotage of the gangs infrastructure. A food chain so to speak.
No one gang can control the same two businesses, however a "/movebusiness" can be placed on the business that you have taken over if you think that is a better location for profit.
Another check could be put in place that removes like 1-10 crates every hour or two, so people will need to close their stores and resupply before they're able to be taken over.
If it's possible make checks on the radius that checks all new players entering the "zone" if that player leaves the zone he is counted "dead" when no new players enter the zone after the first one enters it can be reclaimed by the original owner after a minute or two, so people can't zerg businesses.
The gang who lost the business can then rebuy the business if the gang has the money.
One-sidedness can occur but with the mix of Civilians being able to take over these businesses also, I believe it could work out pretty well.
(A little more thought can be put into this but this is the jist of it)
Drop Car
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The dropcar system is really old and I think a few minor tweaks could be done to make it more of a "job". Typing /dropcar places a marker on a unmanned vehicle, by getting into the marked car with the /dropcar command on it places a automatic /su Stolen Vehicle on you and the new marker appears; each "drop zone" is random, such as the pier and the shipyard.
This will make people not want to poopsock it as much because there is a risk, but also it will give it that feel of actually stealing a car.
Jobs
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I believe the Mercenary Job is in need of a little tweaking. I believe they should be able to rob peoples pockets and trunks. They should also get a /contractlist and everything a Hitman would have minus the guns and cars and all that. /find and /autofind should be taken off the Mercenary... Instead, can be used by buying a GPS in a 24/7 (I know a GPS isn't so 80's but I believe this allows more social interaction for people who don't wanna go mercenary.) That's basically what a Mercenary is in real-life.
General
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More role-playing commands would be neat, like /knockout, /drag, /throw. (Had a good FS back in the day of really good scripts like this I'll try to find again.)
People over the 1 million dollar mark should pay higher taxes to the city. The Lottery should be brought back and a ticket should be purchased from a 24/7 and all funds removed from the players for city taxes should be used as the lottery money.
I believe things should have more risk involved with them when the police are present. As it is now, Police Intervention isn't a worry anymore like it should be. They believe that if they're doing something like a points battle they are safe. I believe point battles should have a timer on it that if it's not taken over after 15-20 minutes the police are called in and can intervene. Causing that point to "lockout" or something along those lines.
Remove lockers completely and make it about trunks and things that can be either robbed or confiscated. Who puts a M4, Shotgun, Pistols... gun barrels and stocks in a locker? That's a hella huge locker... unless they're a terrorist of course.
This is a long but miniature list of ideas that I have for SZR; I got to go now though, I'll continue to add to this.
