TheLadder/content/corporateladder/index.js

// Corporate Ladder — the default content pack for The Ladder.
//
// A modern office, the mailroom, and two people who have been there longer
// than you. Everything the engine needs to run this setting is in this file
// and the ones it imports; the engine itself knows nothing about mailrooms.

import { characters } from './characters.js';
import { events } from './events/index.js';

export const corporateLadder = {
  id: 'corporateladder',
  name: 'Corporate Ladder',
  version: '0.1.0',
  turnUnit: 'day',
  startingStage: 'mailroom',

  stages: {
    mailroom: { label: 'Mailroom', title: 'Mail Associate I' },
    dispatch: { label: 'Dispatch', title: 'Dispatch Coordinator' },
  },

  // Turn 1 is a Monday. Content can gate on the day — and, more importantly,
  // money arrives and leaves on a rhythm the player can plan around instead of
  // draining by an unexplained amount every day.
  calendar: {
    cycleLength: 7,
    cycleName: 'Week',
    unitNames: ['Monday', 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday', 'Thursday', 'Friday', 'Saturday', 'Sunday'],
  },

  // Money is tight but not hopeless. The baseline bleeds about three dollars a
  // day, so a careful player creeps forward and a careless one does not — the
  // pressure comes from what choices cost, not from an unexplained drain.
  state: {
    'money': { initial: 520, min: -5000, max: 1000000 },
    'debt': { initial: 0, min: 0, max: 1000000 },
    'reputation': { initial: 50, min: 0, max: 100 },
    'skills.negotiation': { initial: 5, min: 0, max: 100 },
    'skills.logistics': { initial: 5, min: 0, max: 100 },
    'flags.took_loan': { initial: false },
    'flags.holds_the_envelope': { initial: false },
    'flags.covered_for_trevor': { initial: false },
    'flags.promoted': { initial: false },
    'flags.recommended_trevor': { initial: false },
    // Moments the retrospective reads back. Content decides what is memorable;
    // the full turn-by-turn record lives in history regardless.
    'notable': { initial: [] },
  },

  // Nobody fears a new hire. Trevor's defaults are lower still — see
  // characters.js, where he starts two weeks ahead of you and knows it.
  relationshipStats: {
    likes_you: { label: 'Likes you', initial: 50, min: 0, max: 100 },
    fears_you: { label: 'Wary of you', initial: 10, min: 0, max: 100 },
    wants_to_help_you: { label: 'Will help you', initial: 40, min: 0, max: 100 },
  },

  // Money moves on a schedule the player can feel: paid on alternate Fridays,
  // rent out every Monday, and only small change in between.
  //
  // Keep this arithmetic honest when tuning: wages, minus two rents, minus
  // fourteen days of small change. It should come to roughly forty dollars
  // down over a fortnight — a drift, not a bleed. Rent was once raised without
  // re-deriving it, which quietly made the baseline four times steeper and
  // trapped a real playtester below zero for 30% of a 182-turn run.
  upkeep: [
    { label: 'Coffee, transit, lunch', effects: [{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: -18 }] },
    // Turn 1 is a Monday, so offset 4 is the first Friday and every 14 makes it
    // alternate Fridays. Rent lands on Mondays, starting the second week.
    // Wages depend on the job. Two entries rather than one, gated on stage:
    // the engine has no idea what a promotion is, and does not need to.
    {
      label: 'Wages',
      every: 14,
      offset: 4,
      requires: [{ path: 'stage', op: '==', value: 'mailroom' }],
      effects: [{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: 1120 }],
    },
    {
      label: 'Wages',
      every: 14,
      offset: 4,
      // A real raise, but not a different life — the coordinator job is, as
      // Marlene puts it, mostly the same work with a different phone. Net of
      // rent it comes to a few dollars a day ahead instead of behind.
      requires: [{ path: 'stage', op: '==', value: 'dispatch' }],
      effects: [{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: 1260 }],
    },
    { label: 'Rent', every: 7, offset: 7, effects: [{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: -455 }] },
    // 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.
    {
      label: 'Loan service charge',
      every: 7,
      offset: 7,
      requires: [{ path: 'debt', op: '>', value: 0 }],
      effects: [{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: -70 }],
    },
    {
      label: 'Loan service charge (arrears)',
      every: 7,
      offset: 7,
      requires: [{ path: 'debt', op: '>=', value: 1000 }],
      effects: [{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: -40 }],
    },
    {
      label: 'Loan service charge (collections)',
      every: 7,
      offset: 7,
      requires: [{ path: 'debt', op: '>=', value: 2000 }],
      effects: [{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: -70 }],
    },
  ],

  // How the interface names and formats this pack's state. The UI reads only
  // this map, so renaming a stat or reordering the header is content's job.
  display: {
    'money': { label: 'Money', format: 'money', order: 1 },
    'debt': { label: 'Debt', format: 'money', order: 2, hideWhenZero: true },
    'reputation': { label: 'Standing', format: 'meter', order: 3 },
    'skills.negotiation': { label: 'Negotiation', format: 'meter', order: 4 },
    'skills.logistics': { label: 'Logistics', format: 'meter', order: 5 },
    // 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 },
    // Flags do belong in the ledger — a flag flipping is a fact about the
    // world — but as a sentence rather than as "now true".
    'flags.took_loan': {
      label: 'The loan', hidden: true,
      whenTrue: 'You are carrying a loan now.',
      whenFalse: 'The loan is settled.',
    },
    'flags.holds_the_envelope': {
      label: 'The envelope', hidden: true,
      whenTrue: 'The envelope is in your locker.',
      whenFalse: 'The envelope is back in the system.',
    },
    'flags.covered_for_trevor': {
      label: "Trevor's Thursday", hidden: true,
      whenTrue: 'Trevor owes you a Thursday.',
      whenFalse: 'You and Trevor are square.',
    },
    'flags.promoted': {
      label: 'Promotion', hidden: true,
      whenTrue: 'You are out of the mailroom.',
      whenFalse: 'Back in the mailroom.',
    },
    'flags.recommended_trevor': {
      label: "Trevor's recommendation", hidden: true,
      whenTrue: "Trevor's name is in for the mailroom.",
      whenFalse: "Trevor's name is not in for the mailroom.",
    },
  },

  characters,
  events,
};

export default corporateLadder;