Runners

Your Operatives

Runners — also called Hoods in slang — are the backbone of your organization. They execute your orders, scout areas, raid rivals, and manage your buildings. Without runners, nothing happens.

You can control a maximum of 100 runners, organized into up to 10 teams of 10 members each.

Attributes

Each runner has six core attributes that determine their strengths:

Dynamic States

Beyond fixed attributes, each runner has four status values that change constantly:

Loyalty is the most critical value. A runner with high heat and low LOY is a ticking time bomb — they might testify against you if arrested.

Heat cooldown — SEND_TO_SAFEHOUSE: A runner whose heat is climbing toward arrest territory can be pulled off the street with SEND_TO_SAFEHOUSE (STL-driven, 30 min, 3-day default lockout). The runner goes inactive for the duration, but the safehouse-multiplier kicks in on the entry day so the heat decay is much faster than on-street decay. Last-resort tool for hot runners that can’t risk another action without getting arrested. Full entry in Actions — Personnel Management.

Attribute progression (server v1.63.0+): STR/INT/STL/TCH/CHA/CON were fixed at hood creation through v1.62.x. The new TRAIN_HOOD action (Verwaltung, $500 clean, full-day 480 min, 24 h cooldown) bumps the runner’s highest current attribute by +1 (or +2 on crit-success), capped at 80. Specialist arc — strong gets stronger, weak stays cheap. Random-roll generation can still produce attributes above 80 at hire time; training only raises post-hire growth to the soft 80 ceiling.

HP system rework (planned, #589): the current single-HP-pool model gets a multi-phase replacement — body parts + targeted damage + permanent injuries + cyberware swaps + humanity score. Spec draft in docs/HP_AND_CYBERWARE.md; cyberware sourcing + Ripperdoc-NPC system in docs/CYBERWARE.md. Until those phases land, HP behaves as documented above.

Recruitment

You find new runners via a 2-day cycle:

Day 1: Send a recruiter to a venue (building with recruits tag) — a bar, harbor, university, or fight club. The RECRUIT action targets the building itself. Different venues attract different runner types:

Day 2: You receive 0 to 3 candidates to choose from. Review their attributes and decide who to hire.

Recruit Cost (standard)

Regular recruitment costs $600 in clean cash (economy.recruit_cost: 600). There is no separate “emergency” path — if your pool is empty, your only options are waiting for the next day or starting venue scouting.

Teams

Runners are organized into teams. Each team has a team leader whose CHA value determines how many runners they can effectively coordinate (delegation capacity). Maximum 10 teams with up to 10 members each.

The advantage of teams: you can issue team-wide orders instead of controlling each runner individually. “Team Alpha: patrol Sector 7” is one command — all members execute it.

Important: Runners without a team assignment are inactive — they cannot execute daily orders but still cost salary.

Team management in the Runner screen:

• Create teams: Inline input field in the Roster tab (enter name, press Enter or click button)
• Assign runners: Via Drag & Drop — drag runner chips from the “Unassigned” section into a team, or between teams
• Remove runners: Click the ✕ next to the runner’s name in the team
• Appoint leader: Click the ★ star next to the runner’s name — the current leader has a golden star
• Dissolve team: “Dissolve” button in the team header (all members become unassigned)

Each team displays: member counter (e.g. “3/10”), coordination bonus and delegation capacity of the leader.

Team Roster Table

Within each team, members are displayed as a full table — identical to the Roster view with portrait, name, HP, heat, loyalty and all six attributes as mini-bars. This gives you full oversight of each member’s capabilities even in the team view.

Manager Role

Hoods can be assigned to a building as manager (assign_manager action):

• Managers count toward the 100-hood limit (MaxHoodsPerPlayer = 100) — they’re hoods with IsManager: true, not a separate entity
• A building without a manager produces no income — managers are essential
• Manager bonus: +15% income (economy.manager_income_bonus: 0.15)
• Manager salary: 1.5× standard (formula 200 + avgAttr×3 + numSkills×100, then × 1.5)
• Recall via recall_manager action — afterwards the hood can run regular actions again

If manager heat > 30, the synergy modifier kicks in additionally: sector wash cap drops — managers with low heat keep your laundering pipeline clean.

Portraits

Every runner has a unique 3D portrait — an automatically generated profile image based on the runner’s name and role. The portrait is rendered in real-time from Synty character models using Babylon.js.

How Portraits Work

• Deterministic: The server assigns a PortraitSpec to each runner at creation (model, attachments, skin tone, gender). Same session seed + runner index always produces the same portrait.
• Attribute-based: The dominant attribute determines the model pool. STR runners look like soldiers or mercenaries. STL runners wear ninja outfits or hacker gear. CHA runners have business looks.
• Attachments: Depending on the seed, a runner gets 0 to 2 accessories — hairstyles, headsets, cybernetics, piercings, or earrings. Gender-matched.
• Frame Cache: Once rendered, portraits are cached as image data. When reopening a detail panel or scrolling through the roster, the portrait is instantly displayed from cache without re-rendering.

Status Effects

The portrait visually reflects the runner’s condition:

Detail Portrait

When you open a runner in the detail panel, you see a large 280px portrait — a high-resolution bust shot of the character. The portrait is cached after first render and displayed instantly thereafter.

No WebGL?

If your browser does not support WebGL, you see a colored circle with the role abbreviation (EN, GH, AN, TC, FX) instead. Less pretty, but functional.

Player Character

In addition to the auto-generated runner portraits, you have your own player character — your personal in-game profile.

Customization

In Hub → Settings you’ll find the character editor with a live 3D preview:

Camera Controls

The 3D preview supports full camera control:

• Scroll = Zoom (down to face level)
• Left-drag = Orbit (rotate camera around character)
• Right-drag = Pan (move camera)
• Face button = Animated camera fly-in to face
• Reset button = Back to full-body view

Profile Picture

A 128×128 head portrait is automatically rendered from your character and saved as your profile picture. It appears:

• In the Hub header (small avatar icon, top right)
• In the Profile tab (large portrait next to your name)
• The profile picture updates automatically whenever you change your character

Your character and profile picture are saved server-side and available across all devices.

Manager Role

You can station a runner as a manager in a building. This is mandatory — a building without a manager generates $0.

Manager Tab in the Runner Screen

The Runner screen has a dedicated Manager tab that shows all current managers with their assigned buildings:

Assigning a Manager

To assign a manager, click “Assign Manager” in the Manager tab. An inline runner picker opens showing all available runners (active, not already a manager). Click a runner to station them as manager.

Important: A runner assigned as manager automatically leaves their current team.

Heat Warning

Managers of illegal operations (drug lab, weapons cache, fence shop) passively accumulate heat just from working there. Rotate your managers regularly to distribute heat.

Workforce Trends (Sparklines)

In the Runner and Economy screens you see 7-day sparklines per player that aggregate your entire workforce across every sector where you own buildings (sector axis — covers ALL workers in your sectors, including rivals’). The data comes from the server-side pipeline (WorkforceXxxHistory in the fixture) and is rolled up deterministically from per-sector daily snapshots:

Interpretation:

• Rising heat sparkline → sector heating up, RAID/EXTORT becoming risky. Heat decay is slower than heat generation, so de-escalate in time (DONATE, bribe-arrest avoidance).
• Falling wealth sparkline + rising quit rate in churn trend → sector losing wealthy residents AND workers walking off. Classic decline indicator.
• Negative-net wealth-flow over multiple days → recession early-warning signal. Countermeasures: SUBSIDY for sector buildings, keep recruitment pool active.

Sparklines are silent-day-aware — days with no activity are skipped instead of drawn as zero lines, so the trend isn’t distorted by quiet weekends.