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

content/corporateladder/index.js

@@ -45,6 +45,10 @@ export const corporateLadder = {
     'reputation': { initial: 50, min: 0, max: 100 },
     'skills.negotiation': { initial: 5, min: 0, max: 100 },
     'skills.logistics': { initial: 5, min: 0, max: 100 },
+    // What standing costs to keep. Nothing forces a player to climb this, but
+    // Dispatch charges standing for staying at the bottom of it — see the
+    // "Looking the part" entries in upkeep, and DECISIONS #36.
+    'lifestyle': { initial: 0, min: 0, max: 2 },
     'flags.took_loan': { initial: false },
     'flags.holds_the_envelope': { initial: false },
     'flags.covered_for_trevor': { initial: false },
@@ -96,6 +100,76 @@ export const corporateLadder = {
       effects: [{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: 1260 }],
     },
     { label: 'Rent', every: 7, offset: 7, effects: [{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: -455 }] },
+    // What the job expects of you, and what meeting that expectation costs.
+    // Dispatch nets +49 a week; a coordinator with the car is +19, and one
+    // with the car and the address is -21 and has to earn the difference out
+    // of the days themselves. That is the answer to "money stops mattering
+    // late": it stops mattering only if standing is free to keep.
+    {
+      label: 'Car payment and parking',
+      every: 7,
+      offset: 7,
+      requires: [{ path: 'lifestyle', op: '>=', value: 1 }],
+      effects: [{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: -30 }],
+    },
+    {
+      label: 'The better address',
+      every: 7,
+      offset: 7,
+      requires: [{ path: 'lifestyle', op: '>=', value: 2 }],
+      effects: [{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: -40 }],
+    },
+    // The pressure that makes the spending a choice rather than a vanity. Both
+    // are gated on Dispatch: the mailroom pays too little for this to be
+    // anything but a trap, and "later in a career" is the point.
+    {
+      label: 'Looking the part',
+      every: 7,
+      offset: 7,
+      requires: [
+        { path: 'stage', op: '==', value: 'dispatch' },
+        { path: 'lifestyle', op: '<', value: 1 },
+      ],
+      effects: [{ path: 'reputation', op: 'add', value: -4 }],
+    },
+    {
+      // Standing above sixty-five is a thing you are seen to be, and being seen
+      // to be it runs on a better address than a coordinator's first one.
+      //
+      // Sized by measurement, not by feel. At -2 a week this was invisible:
+      // Dispatch hands out standing several points at a time, so a coordinator
+      // who bought nothing still finished pinned at 100 and the charge may as
+      // well not have existed. At -6, with the entry above, a non-buyer settles
+      // in the low seventies while somebody keeping up finishes at 100 — the
+      // ceiling is real and money is what lifts it.
+      label: 'Looking the part',
+      every: 7,
+      offset: 7,
+      requires: [
+        { path: 'stage', op: '==', value: 'dispatch' },
+        { path: 'reputation', op: '>=', value: 65 },
+        { path: 'lifestyle', op: '<', value: 2 },
+      ],
+      effects: [{ path: 'reputation', op: 'add', value: -6 }],
+    },
+    {
+      // The top step, and the one that makes the whole thing a choice rather
+      // than a tax on carelessness. Without it, a player who spends every turn
+      // chasing standing simply out-earns the charge: measured, they held 99
+      // while never buying anything, and finished $2,245 richer than a player
+      // who kept up — so the lifestyle was a pure loss to anybody paying
+      // attention. With it they plateau in the low eighties. What money buys
+      // up here is the last fifteen points, which cannot be worked for.
+      label: 'Looking the part',
+      every: 7,
+      offset: 7,
+      requires: [
+        { path: 'stage', op: '==', value: 'dispatch' },
+        { path: 'reputation', op: '>=', value: 80 },
+        { path: 'lifestyle', op: '<', value: 2 },
+      ],
+      effects: [{ path: 'reputation', op: 'add', value: -14 }],
+    },
     // The service charge steps up with the size of the debt, so the spiral
     // tightens instead of flattening out. A step function in data costs the
     // engine nothing; a percentage would have needed a multiply operation.
@@ -132,6 +206,9 @@ export const corporateLadder = {
       mailroom: [-45, 5],
       dispatch: [5, 125],
     },
+    // Upkeep gated on these is excluded from that baseline: both are states a
+    // player opts into, and the baseline is the floor underneath everybody.
+    baselineExcludes: ['debt', 'lifestyle'],
   },
 
   // How the interface names and formats this pack's state. The UI reads only
@@ -142,6 +219,12 @@ export const corporateLadder = {
     'reputation': { label: 'Standing', format: 'meter', order: 3 },
     'skills.negotiation': { label: 'Negotiation', format: 'meter', order: 4 },
     'skills.logistics': { label: 'Logistics', format: 'meter', order: 5 },
+    // Hidden until it is bought: a mailroom associate has no lifestyle to
+    // speak of, and a row reading "The bus" from day one is noise.
+    'lifestyle': {
+      label: 'Lifestyle', format: 'tier', order: 6, hideWhenZero: true,
+      labels: ['The bus', 'A car', 'The address'],
+    },
     // Kept out of the header, and out of the ledger too: `notable` is the
     // retrospective's own list, and "Notable — changed" tells nobody anything.
     'notable': { hidden: true, inLedger: false },