Economy & Money Laundering

In CORP//LLM everything revolves around money — but not every dollar is worth the same. You need to understand how Dirty Cash and Clean Cash work to build your empire.

Economy Overview Screen

The Economy screen is your financial dashboard. It tells you at a glance whether you’re profitable, where the money is coming from, what it’s going out on, and how long your liquidity holds at the current pace.

Eight tabs in three groups:

• Overview — consolidated KPI + cashflow + daily-balance view
• Clean Flow · Dirty Flow · Audit-Risk — deep-dive views per domain
• Buildings · Subsidiaries · Vehicles · Storage — asset tables

KPI Cards

Four metric cards across the top. Each shows an icon, the main number, and a vs-previous-day indicator (↑+$X green when moving favourably, ↓-$X red otherwise). Expense cards invert the positivity — more cost = red.

• Net Worth — total corporation value with sparkline history
• Daily Income — sum of all income, with a legal $X · dirty $Y sub-split and mini-bar breakdown of individual items
• Daily Expenses — sum of all expenses, with a fixed $X · action $Y sub-split (fixed costs vs action-driven) and mini-bar breakdown
• Audit Risk — average risk across your shell companies, with a gradient meter (green→amber→red). Hover exposes the formula + current Federal Heat + threshold values. When risk crosses the WARN threshold, a red Launder Dirty button appears that jumps straight to the Subs tab.

Clean/Dirty Split + Runway

A second row of three narrow cards sits below the KPIs:

• Clean Cash — your usable, spendable capital (with vs-previous-day delta)
• Dirty Cash — unwashed capital; displays “No criminal proceeds active” at $0
• Liquidity Runway — when net is negative: “X.X days of Clean Cash at current pace”. Amber below 14 days, red below 7 with an alert border. When cashflow is positive: “Cashflow positive”.

Cash-Flow Pipeline

An animated flow diagram with Bézier curves and flowing particles (green = clean, amber = dirty):

1. Revenue — top 3 income sources with category icons
2. Department — your active shell companies as chips. With zero shell companies this stage is hidden entirely and Revenue flows straight into Audit
3. Audit — current audit risk + Federal Heat. Color changes with heat: green (< 30), amber (30–59), red (≥ 60). Mini heat bar below.
4. Clean/Dirty Cash — Y-fork to the clean and unwashed buckets. The dirty connector pulses red when Dirty Cash > 0.

Hover any stage for a detail tooltip (income sources, sub names, warning status, amounts).

Daily Balance

Income and expenses per category as horizontal bars. Grouped by subsystem (Passive = buildings / rent / salaries, Active = EXTORT proceeds / RECRUIT costs / etc.) with collapse-expand headers when two or more buckets are active.

Building Upkeep: buildings you own carry a daily upkeep cost proportional to their income (a maintenance line — the owned-building counterpart to Rent on leased buildings). Buying buildings still pays off, but income no longer compounds for free: net income from a growing property empire scales sub-linearly, so an early lead doesn’t lock the game.

Per row:

• Dirty chip “D” on non-legal categories (amber accent)
• Mini-sparkline (44 × 14 px) next to the amount — shows the last up-to-7 cycles of that specific category. Climbing line = trend up, descending = down, flat = stable. Under 2 data points renders a muted dash. You can see at a glance when Firewall costs are creeping or Cybercrime has plateaued — without opening any tab.
• Warning badges on expense rows: 25–50 % of total income = yellow HIGH warning, over 50 % = red CRITICAL warning.
• Click-to-expand shows per-target breakdown (e.g. “Extortion ×5 → $2,473” across the five targeted buildings). Every detail row is clickable: rows carrying a target building jump to the map with that building pre-selected; rows carrying an action id jump to Planning with the action pre-filled.

The net balance at the bottom now correctly sums Legal + Dirty Income minus Fixed + Action costs. Earlier versions silently dropped the action-driven cashflow, so the net was systematically off.

Asset Distribution

Donut chart with two modes, toggled via buttons:

• Assets (default): Clean Cash · Dirty Cash · Buildings · Subsidiaries · Drones · Runners
• Revenue: Share of today’s income by category

Forecast + Peer Comparison

Below the daily balance sits the 7-day forecast: projected Clean Cash after 7 cycles. No longer a simple linear extrapolation — bottom-up from your current roster: deterministic passive income + fixed costs + 5-day rolling average for action-driven lines. A small info icon reveals the assumptions on hover: “Passive income / day”, “Fixed expenses / day”, “Dirty income avg (5 days)”, “Action cost avg (5 days)”, “Net / day”. The Runway card uses the same smoothed net.

The Peer Comparison checkbox in the tab bar fetches anonymised session statistics (median + top-25 percentile) and annotates the KPI labels with tiny med $X chips — so you see whether you’re above or below your session’s average, with identities never revealed.

Deep-Dive Tabs

Alongside the overview:

• Clean Flow — legal income sources and fixed costs only. Flow-cards per category with sub-breakdown. Below that, a history chart with two lines: Legal Income vs Fixed Costs across available cycles.
• Dirty Flow — dirty-income categories, action-cost categories, plus a Launder-Queue widget listing your shell companies, their current risk score, and pending Dirty Cash. History chart shows Dirty Income vs Action Costs.
• Audit-Risk — the risk formula fully broken down (avg sub-risk × f(Federal Heat), dirty ratio, thresholds) plus a what-if simulator: dragging the slider simulates laundering Dirty Cash, the preview shows live how the dirty ratio and audit risk would drop.

Asset Tabs

Buildings, Subsidiaries, Vehicles, and Storage provide detail tables for your assets — layout unchanged from classic view.

Protection Racket Mechanic (EXTORT · COLLECT · RAID · BURGLE)

Since v1.11.0 the four cash actions are structurally reworked — no flat payouts anymore, everything anchored to concrete building values.

EXTORT + COLLECT: Establish and Harvest

EXTORT is the setup, COLLECT the harvest. Both actions attach to a shared per-building state — who is currently paying whom, for how long.

EXTORT — Install the racket:

• Target: neutral building (never your own, never one you’re already extorting)
• Shakedown on success: rent × 25 % immediately into Dirty Cash
• State installed: ExpiresAt = today + clamp(3 + rent/1000, 3, 14) days
• Bigger shops pay longer (Med-Station with $6k rent → 9 days, mini-kiosk → 3-day minimum)

COLLECT — Harvest the tribute:

• Target: only buildings you currently extort (state extorted_by_me)
• Tribute on success: rent × 20 % into Dirty Cash
• Resets the “last visit” timer

Expiry:

• Duration runs out → shop stops paying, you must EXTORT again
• Missed-collect decay: 3 days without a COLLECT visit → shop loses fear and cancels the payments

Turf-War — when a rival attempts EXTORT on your building:

• Roll: d100 + attacker STR + attacker CHA vs. building defense + 50
• Attacker wins → takes over the building, collects their shakedown
• Attacker loses → Heat +3, no cash, your state untouched
• Silent — no notification, you only notice via the missing entry

RAID + BURGLE: One-shot Loot

Both actions are one-shots — no state install, just brutal extraction:

The anchor here is the building’s income_base — high-earning shops have more cash on hand.

Sample comparison on a Med-Station (rent $6,086, income $7,631)

Runner skill determines whether the action succeeds (success-roll via STR/CHA/CON), not how much it pays out. That keeps tooltips deterministic and builds a clear stat-allocation decision.

Strategic Consequences

• Breadth vs depth: EXTORT many neutrals = more tribute streams, but you have to commit a runner per target every 3 days for COLLECT or watch them decay
• Premium targets pay longer + more (Duration 10–14 days) and justify the runner investment
• Rats / kiosks barely worth it (3-day duration, mini-yield) — useful only as training / filler actions
• Turf-war defence: you don’t actively defend claims, the building does that through its defense_value — but high-defense buildings (clinics, banks) are also harder to conquer in the first place. Two sides of the same coin.

Dirty Cash vs. Clean Cash

All illegal income lands as Dirty Cash in your account. The problem: many important expenses only accept Clean Cash:

• Buying real estate
• Paying high salaries
• Bribing institutions
• Campaign donations
• Public apologies

Dirty Cash works for the black market, weapon purchases, and small street-level bribes. But to truly grow, you need a way to launder your money.

The PLI Model

Money laundering in CORP//LLM follows the real-world three-stage model: Placement, Layering, and Integration.

1. Placement — Getting the money to a Shell Company

Dirty Cash must be physically transported to one of your shell companies. Several transport methods are available:

The more you transport at once, the greater the temptation — but also the risk of interception.

2. Layering — Shell Companies wash the money

Shell companies are front businesses that run Dirty Cash through their books. There are three tiers:

(Source: game_params.json subsidiaries)

Subsidiary tier upgrade (server v1.64.0): plan UPGRADE_FRONT (Verwaltung category, INT-driven, 45 min) to lift the lowest-tier active subsidiary by one step: Micro → Standard → Shell. Cost: (next_tier.Setup - current_tier.Setup) × 0.7 Clean Cash. Auto-picks the lowest-tier sub — repeated calls escalate the whole roster. Refreshes Cap + DailyFee from params on success so the next tick picks up the bigger throughput.

Synergy modifiers: Effective cap is adjusted at runtime:

• Manager-Heat penalty: Heat > 30 reduces effective cap (synergy modifier in laundering.go)
• Sector-Wealth modifier: cap × max(0.1, sector_wealth/50) — wealthy sectors have higher caps
• Owner-Wash bonus: +20% cap if player owns front building with matching tags
• Synergia match: drug-trade income → pharmacy front etc. — up to +60%
• Crisis multiplier: active crisis events can temporarily reduce 25–30% wash output (port strike, raid wave, …)

3. Integration — Clean money

Once the money has passed through the layering process and the next Big Tick occurs, it officially becomes Clean Cash. From now on you can use it for all legal expenses.

Audit Risk

More shell companies mean more laundering capacity — but also a higher audit risk. Authorities take notice.

• Laundering more than $150,000 per day automatically triggers federal_heat
• Every additional shell company increases the probability of an audit

Balance capacity with caution.

Buildings

Renting or Buying

You can rent buildings (daily fee in Clean Cash) or buy them (one-time payment: 30–50× the daily rent).

Ownership brings tangible advantages:

Building tier (server v1.61.0): every owned building has a Tier 0–3. Plan UPGRADE_BUILDING (Immobilien category, INT-driven, 120 min) to lift it. Each tier on a front-company adds +50% laundering throughput on top of the base +20% bonus — Tier 3 ≈ 3× Tier 0. Cost: BuyPrice × 0.5 × (next_tier+1) × 0.7 Clean Cash per upgrade. Can’t upgrade rented buildings.

Prices are dynamic and depend on the sector’s wealth and local heat. In hot areas you pay more.

Sabotage

Enemies can sabotage your buildings causing a 1–3 day lockout:

• Arson (ARSON): Requires incendiary devices ($3,000)
• Bomb (BOMB): Requires explosives ($8,000)

Rebuilding costs 40% of purchase price and takes 2 cycles.

Production Loop (Pharma · Alkohol · Waffen)

Drugs/booze/weapons make money two ways: directly (raw batch consumption via SUPPLY_ILLEGAL bumps the §7.5 income multiplier) and structurally (the chain itself is a four-action pipeline that ties up runners + sectors + buildings).

PRODUCE_DRUGS / BREW_ALCOHOL  →  TRANSPORT_GOODS  →  SUPPLY_ILLEGAL
       (at lab)                  (lab → front)       (at front)

Storage caps (per slot):

• Pharma-Lab / Chem-Refinery: 3 batches (5 for Chem-Refinery on its alcohol slot — dual-purpose)
• Frontbetrieb (bar / restaurant / club / gym): 2 batches
• Warehouse (Automated Warehouse / Cold Storage / Container Yard / Underground Freight Depot): 10 batches

Supply-multiplier cascade (SPEC §7.5): an active supply flag boosts the Frontbetrieb’s income that day. Pharma ×2.2, Alkohol ×1.5, Waffen ×1.5. Decays one tier per day without re-supply: day 0 fresh → day 1 half-decayed → day 2 flag flips false. Compound stacking when multiple slots are active (pharma + alkohol → 2.2 × 1.5 multiplier on the front’s daily income).

Building acquisition

Bots and human players acquire labs via BUY_BUILDING (clean cash up-front) or RENT_BUILDING (daily rent + 2× upfront fee). Both actions accept an optional template-name hint via the action’s target field (e.g. target="Chem-Refinery") — the server prefers the named template from the rentable catalog if it exists, otherwise falls back to a random pick.

Same-spot acquisition is deduped server-side (v1.97.5): once you own a building at a node, repeat BUY/RENT from that exact runner position is a no-op (no cash deducted, no slot allocated). Move to a different node first.

Why this loop matters

Without it, your only cash levers are EXTORT yields and rent — both bounded by the buildings you control. The production chain plugs into the existing portfolio: every Frontbetrieb you already extort can carry one or two active supply slots, each adding 50–120 % to its daily take. Chem-Refinery is the most efficient acquisition: cheapest (buy_slum $120k, rent_slum $3000) and dual-purpose (pharma + alkohol). Pharma-Lab is the legal alternative (lower heat, higher entry price).

Bot engagement note: corpllm-server v1.97.x (May 2026) closes a five-version chain of bugs where the production loop was technically implemented but no bot actually ran it end-to-end. From v1.97.5 onwards a 30-day standard sweep regularly shows non-zero transportGoodsCalls + supplyIllegalCalls per economist / hacker / econhacker bot. If you’re playing a session where bots had ≥30 days, expect ≈30 % of their Frontbetrieb income to come from active supply multipliers.

Drones & Cybercrime Income

Drone Hubs provide passive cybercrime income:

Cybercrime income = active_drones × $800 + (active_hoods − 1) × $300

• Each drone: $800/day (cybercrime.income_per_drone_per_day)
• Each additional hood (after the first): $300/day synergy (cybercrime.income_per_hood_per_day) — so: 10 hoods + 2 drones = $1,600 + $2,700 = $4,300/day

Opponents can siphon cash via HACK_REROUTE (15% up to $3,000/day) or generate audit risk via TRACE_HACK. Defense: Firewall ($6,000 setup + $400/day) cuts hack probability by 50%.

Portfolio Risk (Portfolio Exposure)

Asset count drives two brakes:

• Audit Risk: Beyond 3 assets every additional asset generates +0.02 audit risk/day (portfolio_exposure.threshold_assets: 3)
• Federal Heat: Beyond 7 assets (federal_heat_asset_threshold: 6 + 1 boundary) every excess asset generates +0.5 federal heat/day

Hacker bonus: the hacker strategy gets 3 additional free assets (hacker_free_assets: 3) — a 6/9 defense against audit pressure.

Think carefully about which assets to hold — beyond 8–10 assets without hacker bonus, the system actively pushes back.

Season End

At the end of every season, all buildings are automatically liquidated — you receive 80% of the purchase price back. Nobody takes their property into the next round.

Arming Up (Dirty Cash)

Weapons, armor and consumables are bought at the Black Market in dirty cash — from $1,500 for a melee weapon up to $25,000 for heavy military hardware. It’s a pure dirty-cash sink: a betrayal plus arrest confiscates a runner’s worn loadout for good, so committing heavy kit stays a real risk. Spare gear sits in your corp Armory and a separate consumable store, whose capacities both grow with the warehouses you own. See Runners → Loadout & Equipment.

Action Costs

Some actions require upfront costs that are deducted before execution:

If the player cannot afford the costs, the action is skipped.

Additionally, some actions have gameplay-specific costs:

• BRIBE: $1,000 × multiplier (crit success = $1,500)
• FALSE_ATTRIBUTION: $4,000 (mixed clean/dirty)
• RECRUIT: Free (recruiting costs nothing)

Sector Economy

Each sector has its own economic state, computed from wealth-flow (immigration + emigration) and the labor market (supply / demand):

Gameplay impact:

• Booming → Recession: notification to all players who own buildings in the sector. Income multiplier drops, new EXTORT targets become rarer (fewer cash-rich owners).
• Stagnating: wage costs for STAFF in your buildings drop (supply pressure). Recruitment pool denser.
• Recession: wealth inflow dries up, owners are cash-poor — lower protection rackets, lower RAID loots.

The trend is live-visible in the sector detail panel (7-day sparkline: inflow vs. outflow + net).

Sector Health

Parallel to the economy, the game tracks each sector’s demographic stability from birth and death data:

Health and economy tier are independent: a sector can be Thriving (demographically) and Recession (economically) at the same time — that signals a “money brain drain” state where population grows but the wealthy are fleeing.