Institutions & Contacts

The city has 8 institutions in three tiers. You build contacts, push them through the Loyalty track to BRIBED → PAYROLL and use their effects. Some institutions are fully implemented, others exist as slots without active effects — marked honestly here.

Institution Overview

Source: engine/internal/fixture/mapper.go:institutionDefs.

Contact Lifecycle

A contact has three states (ContactState):

1. DISCOVERED — revealed via SCOUT, ChainReferral or OrganicEncounter. No effects. Visible in roster.
2. BRIBED — one-time bribe raises loyalty. No daily effects. Above 50 loyalty + HIGH rank = justice reduction (see below).
3. PAYROLL — daily drain (DailyPayrollCost), but the institution’s active effects apply.

Loyalty decay (SPEC_government_institutions D-01): PAYROLL contacts lose loyalty over time — without maintenance their relationship drifts and eventually the contact stops responding. Counter with MAINTAIN_CONTACT (server v1.66.0, Verwaltung category, CHA-driven, 30 min, $500, 12 h cooldown): auto-picks your lowest-loyalty active PAYROLL contact and bumps loyalty by +10 (clamped 0..100). Contacts have no NodeID — you can’t pick which one, but repeated calls cycle through the whole roster automatically.

Active Effects (PAYROLL contacts)

From engine/internal/government/institutional_effects.go:

CorpSec → reduce sector heat

sector_heat -= loyalty / 20    # daily

Loyalty 60 → −3 sector heat/day. Linear scale.

Compliance Bureau → reduce audit risk

audit_risk -= loyalty × 0.005   # daily

Loyalty 60 → −0.30 audit risk/day. Important: a HIGH Compliance Bureau contact is your only source for the exact Federal Heat value — see Heat.

Black Market → +% building income

for each active building with manager:
  income_base × (1 + loyalty × 0.001)   # +0.1% per loyalty point

Loyalty 80 → +8% income on all managed buildings. Stacks with owner bonus (+15%) and manager bonus (+15%).

Arbitration Tribunal (HIGH-rank, PAYROLL) → Justice

• Sentence reduction: −1 day per arrest (judge_reduction_days: 1)
• Bribed Judge (BRIBED state, rank ≥ 2): inmate hoods receive hood_heat × 0.95 daily (bribed_judge_heat_decay) — judge “manages the paperwork”
• Bribe-Release: judge can release hoods for cash (severity-tiered $2k/$8k/$20k, federal blocked)
• Parole Hearing: escalated motion ($3,500 + d20 ≥ 7)

District Administration (HIGH-rank, PAYROLL) → Mayor

• Sentence reduction: −1 day per arrest (mayor_reduction_days: 1)

Stack example: Arbitration HIGH + District HIGH = −2 days per sentence (min 1 day).

HIGH-rank contacts in general → Federal Heat drain

Every HIGH-rank institution PAYROLL slot contributes to the federal drain (criminal_justice.go applyHighContactFedHeatDrain):

federal_heat -= min(1.25, 0.5 × n_high_payroll_contacts)

Cap at −1.25/day (= 3 HIGH contacts). More HIGH slots give no further drain.

Unimplemented Institutions

FOB / Fiscal Oversight Bureau and MedCore Division exist in the institution catalog with contact slots but no institution-specific effect code in the current engine. You can build contacts — daily PAYROLL drain runs, HIGH rank counts for federal drain — but no institution-specific bonuses.

FCA / Federal Compliance Authority is in the catalog but MaxContacts: 0 — you can’t recruit contacts here. Pure lore entity (its auditors are routed via the Audit-NPC system, not contacts).

Note: Pre-1.18 wiki versions referenced election systems (District Admin), MedCore healing bonuses, CRU/fire-department mechanics, and tier-based LOW/MID/HIGH effects. These are not implemented in the current server and have been removed here.

Contact Drama Arcs

Three organic mechanics for contact acquisition beyond direct action (engine/internal/action/contact_drama.go):

1. ORGANIC_ENCOUNTER (passive)

On every RAID, ATTACK, SCOUT, INFILTRATE, or SABOTAGE action, the server checks:

chance = sector_heat × 0.2 %       # 20% at sector_heat = 100
cap: max 1 encounter per player per day

On success: a LOW/MID-rank contact is automatically revealed — free, no SCOUT.

2. CHAIN_REFERRAL

A long-term PAYROLL contact introduces a new one.

Gates:

• Origin must be ≥ 30 days on PAYROLL (ChainPayrollGateDays)
• Origin loyalty ≥ 20
• origin.ChainUsed must be false (1× per contact lifetime)
• Player below max-contacts cap

Mechanics:

• Success probability = origin.Loyalty / 100
• On success: new contact in same institution, rank ≥ origin rank. Origin loses 15 loyalty.
• On fail: origin loses 5 loyalty.
• origin.ChainUsed always set to true (success or fail).

3. POACH_BID + COUNTER_BID (2-day bid war)

You can poach a rival’s contact — but they see it and can counter-bid.

Day 0 (attacker POACH_BID):

• Cash deducted immediately
• Bid must be ≥ 1.5× contact cost (PoachMinMultiplierOfCost)
• Federal Heat +1 (PoachHeatCost)
• Victim sees anonymous notification

Day 1 (victim COUNTER_BID):

• Victim can counter at any amount (cash deducted)

Day 2 EOD (resolution):

• Highest bid wins
• Loser refund: 90% of bid (10% broker fee)
• On success: contact transfers to attacker, keeping loyalty/rank
• Cooldown: 5 days per contact after resolution

Heat-scaling Bribe Costs

Pushing federal heat makes bribes more expensive:

Source: diplomacy.bribe.federal_heat_multipliers.

Standard bribe cost range: $1,000 – $2,500 (diplomacy.bribe.cost_range). With a 2× multiplier a bribe can cost up to $5,000.

Dishonored penalty: Players marked DISHONORED pay an additional ×1.5.

Strategy

• Early CorpSec + Compliance: Tier-1, cheap, immediate effect — push sector heat and audit risk daily.
• Black Market HIGH = income multiplier: With loyalty 100 = +10% on all managed buildings.
• Arbitration HIGH is your justice insurance: Bribe-release + sentence reduction + heat decay on three fronts.
• 3 HIGH contacts is the federal-drain max: −1.25/day cap. More HIGH slots = wasted, use for other effects.
• CHAIN_REFERRAL costs 30 days patience: Worth it because success probability scales linearly with loyalty.
• POACH_BID is theft-with-risk: You lose your bid if the defender counters — only worthwhile if you’re sure you’ll outbid them.