Fronts

A front is a business with your name nowhere on it. You can open one wherever you happen to be standing, and it stays in that city.

The Lab is a place you work. A front is a place that works for you: it earns whether or not you are logged in.

The one rule that matters

It stops earning when the till is full, and everything past that is lost.

Not saved, not queued — gone. Somebody who comes back every evening collects every penny a front makes. Somebody who leaves it a week collects the same as somebody who left it overnight.

That is deliberate. Owning something should be worth having; it should never be better than playing.

The money in the till is the only thing anybody can steal

Not the building. Not the upgrades. Not the people. Only what you have not collected yet.

So the best defence in the game against being robbed is coming and getting your money. Security decides how much somebody walks out with — never whether they try.

What you can improve

Four things. The premises raise everything at once. Reach is what it earns, payment channels is how much can pile up before the rest spills, security is what a robbery costs you, and counter-surveillance is how fast everybody else's information about you goes stale.

None of them ever stops being worth buying.

People

Two different things live on the same payroll.

Support staff are hired. You pay a fee and they start.

Creators are signed, and they can say no. You pay for the meeting either way, and the more people you already have, the harder the next one is to convince.

Everybody is paid by the hour, out of the takings, before anything reaches the till. That means a payroll you cannot support never puts you in debt — it just earns you less. Letting somebody go is free.

Robbing somebody else's

You can see that a place exists and who runs it. You cannot see a penny of what is in it.

Everything else is bought, and all of it goes stale:

• Sitting on the place costs nothing but time, and tells you what the building is and how well protected it is. You cannot walk into a front you have not watched.
• Getting to somebody on the payroll tells you what is actually in the till right now, and how fast it is filling. This is the one that stops you kicking in a door for nothing.
• Buying the file gives you a better way in, and tells you whether they are expecting company.

Being watched

Every time somebody looks at your place, there is a chance you notice. If you do, the place is harder to walk into for a while — and whoever it was will find out the hard way.

Whether you get a name or just a rumour depends on how much counter-surveillance you have bought. Knowing something is coming and knowing who is bringing it are two different purchases.