[zenith]

The final version of the old gang combat code made strong players attacking weak players worthless. A level 30 hitting a level 15 would gain absolutely 0 respect since what good was it to just slap down someone weaker. So there was protection for the weak because it wasn't worth the stronger gang's energy to battle them.

The main drawback though was a smaller gang had an advantage over a large gang if everyone was the same strength. Reason being the smaller gang had more targets to leach respect from.

In the end the old code was removed because of gang deletion and the small-gang advantage. Nobody liked seeing that their gang of 15 was deleted by a gang of 3 while they slept.

With no gang or slot deletion under consideration anymore that part is not a factor. So let's put that part to rest.

The smaller gang advantage however is a factor. A large gang can obliterate a hideout to end a war to counter this, but doesn't seem to be the perfect solution. The only solution with the old code was for the large gang to declare war on multiple weaker gangs to farm respect while they were getting worked over by the small gang. I guess number of targets is the most important aspect here, since the more targets a gang has the more susceptible they are to this tactic.

Requiring battles to be between gangs with close to the same amount of member slots filled could be an option, but this in turn could make the same gangs declare on each other all the time. If gangs are required to have the same amount of players and attacking weaker players is worthless in terms of points gained, these battles probably will become rare after the initial novelty wears off.