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Morning Gazette

The Morning Gazette is your daily newspaper — it is automatically generated after every tick and displayed in your dashboard. Beyond direct intelligence, it is your most important information source.

What’s in it?

The Gazette contains various categories of news:

Public Events

Cryptic Federal Heat Hints

Messages like:

“Federal authorities show increased interest in activities in the industrial sector…”

That might be you. Or a rival. Or nobody in particular. The Gazette doesn’t say directly — but if you know where you’ve been active, you can put two and two together.

Combat and Raid Reports

Who fought where? The Gazette reports on major conflicts, but partially anonymized based on Fog of War. You don’t always see who exactly was involved — sometimes only the sector and the result.

Leaderboard Updates

Personal Warnings

These messages are visible only to you. Other players can’t see them. Examples:

Reading Strategically

The Gazette is intentionally cryptic. This is not a bug, it’s a feature. Some tips for reading it correctly:

Not everything affects you — but everything could. Read every message with your own activities in mind. Did you launder in the industrial sector yesterday? Then the hint about “federal interest in the industrial sector” probably concerns you.

Compare with your own Timeline. What does the Gazette say about a sector you’re watching? Does it match what you saw there? If not, someone else is active there.

Betrayal reports are always public. When a NAP is broken, all players find out. This makes betrayal a calculable risk — you gain in the short term, but your reputation suffers.

Federal Heat hints are veiled. A message like “Growing nervousness in financial circles” could mean someone is laundering aggressively. Whether that’s you or a rival, you have to figure out yourself.

Mayor edicts are always in the Gazette. They affect all players and can change the rules for certain sectors or activities.

The Gazette as a Weapon

You’re not just a reader — you can also actively manipulate the Gazette.

With the PLANT_STORY command you can inject false stories into the next issue. This requires a journalist contact on your PAYROLL.

What does disinformation achieve?

Warning

Experienced players recognize patterns in disinformation. If the Gazette suddenly contains suspiciously specific information that benefits only one particular player, others become suspicious. Use PLANT_STORY sparingly and cleverly.

DOXX — public leak (server v1.65.0)

PLANT_STORY’s harder cousin. DOXX (TCH/INT, 45 min) doesn’t go through a journalist contact — it leaks the target’s records to the public directly. Two effects:

  1. Intel — you get a detailed intel record on the target (same payload as the SHADOW / INFILTRATE pipeline).
  2. +8 federal heat on the target — the leak is public, the feds see it, the target’s federal status climbs.

Pairs well with audit-suite plays — push the target with DOXX, then trigger AUDIT_PRESSURE or HACK_AUDIT while their federal status is already elevated. Full entry in Actions — Hacking.

Crisis Events (Phase 3)

The Gazette publishes daily after each tick. Crisis events are only triggered every 3 days (crisis_events.trigger_every_n_days: 3). Between those, the Gazette shows regular reports + auto-headlines without counter mechanics.

A crisis is a dramatic headline with deadline (3 days) and counter-actions. React in time to mitigate; ignore and the full effect hits at deadline day.

Crisis scope rotation

Crises rotate deterministically through scopes by day:

Scope Example
Leader-targeted “Prosecutor opens case against top corp” — hits net-worth leader (≥ 120% of median)
Targeted-random / High-Heat Hits randomly selected player or highest-heat player
Global “Dockworker strike” — affects all players
Sector-random “Gang war in Sector X” — hits all players with buildings in that sector

Max 3 active crises per player at once. New ones are suppressed until older ones resolve. Resolved crises are GC’d after 7 days.

Counter-Actions

Each crisis lists permitted counter-action keys from crisis_events.json:

Concrete cash costs and resource requirements are defined per crisis event in crisis_events.json (no flat tariff). The UI always shows exact costs when responding.

Costs are deducted immediately. The effect is evaluated only at deadline day — if you responded, you get the mitigated effect. If you ignored it, you take the full hit.

Fog-of-war on targeted crises

When a crisis targets only you (e.g. you’re the leader), rivals see only an anonymous headline: “A megacorp is under pressure — details to follow.” They don’t know it’s you. Similarly, you see their targeted crises only as generic notifications.

Exception: Global and sector-scoped crises are always fully public.

Auto-Reports (reactive news)

Some actions automatically generate headlines — no counter-action possible, they just document what happened:

Trigger Headline
Successful BOMB “Explosion rocks Sector X”
Successful ASSASSINATE “Street-level killing”
Successful ARSON “Inferno in Sector X”
Federal Raid “Raid at Corp X”
Indictment “Indictment against Corp X”
Player eliminated “Corp X files bankruptcy”

These reports are always public — every player sees them. If you pull off a major attack, tomorrow the whole city knows.

Strategy tips for crises