Both settings now carry a charge levied by standing itself, which no purchase
ends. Corporate Ladder's steps on money (1200/-60, 2400/-120, 3600/-240): a flat
charge cannot flatten a slope, since late income scales with how well the player
plays, and the flat charge needed to stop an optimiser accumulating put ordinary
archetypes below zero for 44% of a run. Stepped, the balance settles around
$4,250 and ordinary play comes out better than before it existed. The Frontier's
is flat at -4 a run, because its late game never accumulated in the first place.
Found in the first two human sessions of this work:
- A career saved before a pack gained a stat had no path for it, and conditions
compare numbers only, so every event, option and upkeep entry gated on a new
stat silently did not exist for that run. Loading now fills those in.
- 'Wrap up my career' sat immediately after the last option in tab order, so one
Tab too many and Enter read as the game ending at day 31. It goes last, and
the retrospective says plainly that it is a summary.
- A 181-turn session ran against a stale bundle and the change under test never
fired. Every logged turn now records app_version and build.
- src/version.js had reported 0.3.0 since 0.3.0, while playtesters were told to
check the status bar. A test now holds it to package.json.
- 'Put money against the book' was shown locked to a player who owed nothing,
six times. Options gated on a state the player cannot choose to enter are now
hidden rather than greyed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01RxdJFbLq1rBKsUeticGV1g
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
Cold Fork is a freight yard: 29 events across two stages, a four-day cycle, and
its own relationship and skill vocabulary. src/engine/ was not touched. Adding it
needed three changes outside the engine: one save slot per pack, app.js holding
the current pack, and turn.js no longer naming the mailroom (DECISIONS #34).
build.js now handles imports wrapped across lines. A conformance suite runs over
every registered pack. DECISIONS #35 records three calls on open questions.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01RxdJFbLq1rBKsUeticGV1g
