Make standing cost money to keep, in both settings

Each pack declares a lifestyle tier, bought on the second rung and charged for
every cycle after: Corporate Ladder's car and address, the Frontier's bay and
the room over the Ellis place. Falling behind what the job expects costs
standing, in steps that steepen as standing rises. A Dispatch coordinator
keeping up fully nets -21 a week and earns the difference out of the days. No
engine change; the only interface change is a tier display format.

Sized by measurement, not feel (DECISIONS #36): a -2/week penalty is invisible
against Dispatch's standing gains, and a player who chases standing every turn
beats any flat penalty — 99 standing while buying nothing, and $2,245 richer
than one who kept up. Hence the top step.

Two defects fixed on the way. The conformance suite excluded debt from the
economic baseline by matching /debt|owed|loan/i on path names, which would have
counted every lifestyle tier into it; packs now declare tuning.baselineExcludes.
And 'the promotion leaves a player better off' pooled end balances across
archetypes that do not spend alike, so it measured the mix — it is now derived
from the upkeep arithmetic.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01RxdJFbLq1rBKsUeticGV1g
This commit is contained in:
JesseMarkowitz
2026-09-12 21:53:03 -04:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent 7f20be83e8
commit 5d645e6452
12 changed files with 507 additions and 15 deletions
+8 -5
View File
@@ -114,10 +114,12 @@ Open questions, in the order they are likely to matter:
evidence that was not enough the last two times. It needs a session before its
numbers are believed.
- **Money stops mattering late, and it should not.** A careful player ends
around $8,300 over 200 turns. The direction is set: standing should cost
money to keep — a better car, a better place to live, better clothes — so
expenses climb as the player rises. Not built yet.
- **Standing now costs money to keep, and nobody has played it.** Each setting
has a `lifestyle` tier bought on the second rung and charged for every cycle
after — and a standing penalty, steepening as standing rises, for lagging
behind what the job expects. A Dispatch coordinator keeping up fully runs at
-$21 a week and has to earn the difference. It is measured (DECISIONS #36)
and, like everything else here, unplayed.
- **Dispatch is eleven events against the mailroom's nineteen.** It passes the
variety guard, but it has had far less play than the mailroom. Waits on more
playtesting.
@@ -126,7 +128,8 @@ Open questions, in the order they are likely to matter:
Waits until the Frontier has been played.
Settled, and not open: Corporate Ladder's negotiation gate stays as it is, and
the feedback widget stays as it is (DECISIONS #35).
the feedback widget stays as it is (DECISIONS #35). Money mattering late is
built rather than open (DECISIONS #36).
## Layout