I was thinking about "extortion", which is a very common way for criminal organizations to earn money in real life.
And, this is my suggestion:
1) Divide Torn City into many different territories.
2) Factions compete each other to win a territory. (Of course, it means war.)
3) If a faction wins a territory, it gets a certain amount of money from the NPC shops in that territory.
For example,
- [Faction A] wins a territory where Big Al's Gun Shop is located.
- And, a player buys a gun from Big Al's Gun Shop at USD 100.
- Automatically, USD 10, which is 10%, is transferred to [Faction A]'s safe.
- [Faction B] attacks this territory and, if [Faction B] beats [Faction A], the money goest to [Faction B].
Obviously, some detailed points should be considered, such as:
- What is the proper percentage of extortion?
- What will happen if one faction is too strong and wins all the territories?
- What will be the difference between "attacking a territory" and "attacking a faction"?
And so on...
Anyway, isn't it cool?
I think this is not technically difficult to implement.
Please think about this suggestion.
PS: If someone already suggested same thing, please understand.
Really, I did not copy anything from anyone.
Couldnt the territory update be considered the same thing. I know you are talking about money and perks, but respect is basically going to be the payment method for those territories. I think I remember mention of perks for holding certain areas on the map, but dont quote me.
Would be nice but would focus the fighting around those areas, since there's so few of them.
It would certainly add an additional layer of motivation for people to fight over certain areas, assuming the monetary bonus was significant enough.Of course, seeing how how this would add to inflation, maybe the bonus could come by increased prices in the shops, with the extra money going from the consumers to the factions.
So a bottle of beer goes from $10 to $15 and that extra $5 goes to the faction but the $10 is still taken out of circulation. The would be a $5,000 bonus on one 1,000 batch of beer, which would turn into (I'm guessing) about $15,000-$20,000 extra dollars daily, which wouldn't be much at the end of the day, but there are the other items to consider.
I wont rate it either way until the idea is further developed, but it's intriguing.
I will add some more explanation. (Please understand English is not my first language and it is a little bit difficult for me to explain in detail.)
The core idea is not about money. The most important thing is to make players feel like they are real gangsters taking money from shop owners. Therefore, the reward for winning a territory should be related to actual sales or activities of NPC shops, even if it is not big enough. However, I believe there should be some ways to make the territories profitable. Big Al's Gun Shop was just an example. Any kind of activities in a faction-owned territory can be charged. (Racing on the track, investing at the bank, and even searching the dump.)
Also, I believe winning a territoy will be a good motivation to ambitous factions because the number of territories will be very limited compared to the number of factions. Something like an honorary position. Imagine. My faction owns the downtown of Torn City and the shop owners paying my faction "protection fee" - It will be exiting.
Again, in my opinion, the most important thing is imitating real world.
"The core idea is not about money. The most important thing is to make players feel like they are real gangsters taking money from shop owners. Therefore, the reward for winning a territory should be related to actual sales or activities of NPC shops, even if it is not big enough."
From this sentence, my interest level went from intrigued to 'meh'. If the reward isn't significant enough, then factions will not want to spend their resources trying to win and maintain control over these areas. If a faction is only winning let's say a million a day to control Bits and Bob's, then why would they want to use their drugs, meds, temps and boosters for such a paltry sum? The reward has to be there otherwise it's going to be an ineffective add-on.
So I cannot find the excitement in fighting for something that has little more than a role play element to it. All I can imagine is grinding for a territory just because I'm supposed to be a gangster. Real gangsters fight for territory because there's something of value to be taken.
"Any kind of activities in a faction-owned territory can be charged. (Racing on the track, investing at the bank, and even searching the dump.)"
This needs more explanation.
"Again, in my opinion, the most important thing is imitating real world."
In my opinion, the most important thing is to make it fun and rewarding. :-)