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',
  // One sentence for the setting picker. The interface reads it and knows
  // nothing else about what this pack is.
  blurb:
    'A modern office and a mailroom, two people who have been here longer ' +
    'than you, and a laminated org chart with your name not on it.',
  version: '0.1.0',
  turnUnit: 'day',
  startingStage: 'mailroom',
  // What the interface calls the panel of people. The UI used to hardcode
  // "The mailroom" here, which was the one place it named a setting.
  peopleHeading: 'The 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 },
    // 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 },
    '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. Per week that is 560 - 455 - 126 = -21, so
  // about 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. The range is asserted from `tuning` below.
  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 }] },
    // 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 charge that never stops, and the only one with no purchase that ends
    // it. Everything above is a ladder with a top: buy both tiers, reach 100
    // standing, and every charge switches off. A real 96-turn session arrived
    // there at turn 84 with nothing left to spend on and a balance that only
    // climbed.
    //
    // It steps on money rather than being flat, and that is the whole design.
    // A flat charge cannot flatten a slope: late income comes from choices and
    // scales with how well the player is playing, so a charge big enough to
    // stop an optimiser accumulating (-360 a week, measured) put ordinary
    // archetypes below zero for 44% of a run and ended them $1,385 in debt.
    // Stepping on money lands it on whoever has it. Measured: the balance
    // settles around $4,250 and stops climbing (-3 a week), while ordinary play
    // gets *better* than before it existed — 13% of a run below zero against
    // 17%, and a tier-2 run ending +$175 rather than -$25.
    {
      label: 'What the standing costs',
      every: 7,
      offset: 7,
      requires: [
        { path: 'stage', op: '==', value: 'dispatch' },
        { path: 'reputation', op: '>=', value: 85 },
        { path: 'money', op: '>=', value: 1200 },
      ],
      effects: [{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: -60 }],
    },
    {
      label: 'What the standing costs',
      every: 7,
      offset: 7,
      requires: [
        { path: 'stage', op: '==', value: 'dispatch' },
        { path: 'reputation', op: '>=', value: 85 },
        { path: 'money', op: '>=', value: 2400 },
      ],
      effects: [{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: -120 }],
    },
    {
      label: 'What the standing costs',
      every: 7,
      offset: 7,
      requires: [
        { path: 'stage', op: '==', value: 'dispatch' },
        { path: 'reputation', op: '>=', value: 85 },
        { path: 'money', op: '>=', value: 3600 },
      ],
      effects: [{ path: 'money', op: 'add', value: -240 }],
    },
    // 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 }],
    },
  ],

  // What the conformance suite holds this pack to. The numbers a setting must
  // hit are the setting's business, so they are declared here rather than
  // written into a test that names this pack. See DECISIONS.md #31.
  tuning: {
    // Net movement of `money` from upkeep alone, per calendar cycle — here a
    // week — at each stage, with no debt outstanding.
    baselinePerCycle: {
      mailroom: [-45, 5],
      dispatch: [5, 125],
    },
    // Upkeep gated on these is excluded from that baseline: a debt taken on, a
    // lifestyle bought, a standing earned. The baseline is the floor underneath
    // everybody — what a player faces having none of the three.
    baselineExcludes: ['debt', 'lifestyle', 'reputation'],
  },

  // 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 },
    // 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 },
    // 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;