Safehouse rush needs stopping. War and territory gain is too easy this way - and too annoying otherwise not to.

[veevoir]

Hi,

A small repost of what I wrote on reddit,

I really enjoy the game, but after fun, troubled beginnings once you get a proper footing.. the strategy layer falls flat. Building tall (a separate topic on why it is not worth it) , hiring a bigger crew and all the game has to offer is superfluous because wars become a slog (multiple immediate attacks without autoresolve) and there is only one sure way to win them - go for the safehouse.

Seems that "go to safehouse, kill boss, win all their stuff" is the go to tactic in mid/late game. Or any game once you grab better gear. It needs some balancing.

My propositions:

• make the AI create safehouse in each neighborhood they get an establishment in (so first racket is safehouse). God knows there are more then enough slots in each. Make that you need to conquer all enemy safehouses (boss appears only in the last one). Conquering a safehouse gives you all enemy rackets IN that 1 neighborhood, not all of them. Makes defense of your safehouses also more interesting if player would have to adhere to that; I'm not sure AI even attacks those now (what for, the boss is not there).
  
  OR
  
  
• make safehouse attack available after enemy loses given % of their rackets (or are below a certain amount of rackets), alternatively after reaching a warscore from taking over rackets/killing goons. I believe some kind of warscore is tracked in the background now (for truce/war weariness)

PS: On the topic of multiple enemy patrols doing many attacks at once - this is not only unfair to the player (I can't hire goons into parties, only true gangsters that cost arm and leg) - it is also a foundation why going for safehouse is even stronger. I just abandon all the fights, if they take something - I'll get it back after safehouse is conquered, anyway.

PS2: Above also is a matter of different problem, building tall when it comes to security makes no sense. Security is too expensive vs what it actually can do. All levels of security, including 1, need a bit of buff.

 

[daviperny]

The only way I avoid going for the safehouse is by role playing. But it is an uneven aspect, even if the fights are hard.

I'm not sure if this is something already in the game, and I haven't just encountered it yet, but I would love the ability to ambush a boss or one of his key crew members, like the underboss. Adding patrol/surveillance gangs could be key to this in the sense that they scout for targets. And then you get a timed event to go try and pop this boss/underboss/advisor while he/she's eating, walking, getting some fun at a brothel.

It would help give the player a reason to go after places other than the safehouse at least initially. It would also be nice to see an impact in the world by say newspaper headlines or the radio announcing a mob hit. Or a raised police presence (like a series of raids if mob brutality across the city gets too high).

 

[Atreides]

Defense as a concept needs to be better across the board. Taking assets from your competitors needs to require more risk/resources than it currently does. Likewise, going to war and fighting a dozen ambush defenses has got to go. If assets swapped hands less often, we would care more about developing them. As is, a fair amount of the economic development system doesn't even get used the way I think it was intended.

 

[Aresmar]

I just have a hard rule not to take safehouses unless I have taken every asset they have outside said safehouse in that region. But yes. It 100% needs to be one safehouse per region that can only be attacked once they are at lower amounts of assets in that region and you can't kill boss til last safehouse.