Firstly, Do Not confuse me with Gator. I am John Wayne.
A cheaper one would give you severe desync. The servers are real demanding so you need a powerful one. Power = $$$ and i'm confident that Olympus just rolls the money over to the next month so they can keep their servers running in the future months to come incase things get dry. However if Ebzekro still played and donates thousands of dollars to individuals is a different story.
Thank you Hades for responding, I was really only looking forward to your post. I can see how we only have one developer, Poseidon. He does a fantastic job and he is active, interested and spends time with the community. You can tell he appreciates what he's built here for other players -who essentially do nothing- to enjoy.
You addressed alot of the questions Hades but I still think you need to assign/announce some responsibilities that the staff have to deal with. Alot of players don't even know who the staff are or what they do, other than cycle through chief of police for short periods of time.
As Moob said, there are staff who are active and interested in what goes on around here and then there are staff that whenever you speak to them, it feels like your wasting their time or that they have better things to do. If they have better things to do than their "internet job" then maybe they should not take on a role that requires managing a community of online players 24 hours a day. If you limiting your staff to 10 people then you should make the most out of those ten, instead your working off a skeleton crew.
As for the robbing of new players, I personally only stay in red zone areas, if someone wants to try and run drugs then they will surely see me and whoever's in my heli. Lately with the low server pop the larger gangs, including myself, we've had to resort to fighting cops (because no one cares about losing cop gear right?), whether its kavala HQ or feds or prison breaks. People like being in gun fights, not talking to their wives in Athira.
If someone asks a question about the game on sidechat, I usually give them an answer. I enjoy playing here, I get RDM'd ,blown up, or the frozen screen glitch that lost us millions in heli's. I never ask for comp(unless its Moob) and I will never report a player no matter how much money I lose. This is a game and it's for fun, I shouldn't need to hunt players down and ruin their game time because I expect the same in return when I break rules against them.
There are legal runs that are for new players. Low dollar return but no risk. Cops should be responding to these calls and the APD has doubled compared to prewipe and removal of server #3.