Scrambles

A few times a day, word gets round that something is going down — a container off the manifest, an armoured van on the wrong street, a night nobody is watching the tills. It shows up on the Scramble page and on your dashboard.

Unlike a crackdown or a market crash, this one is not something that happens to you. It is something you can take.

How it works

• It sits there until somebody moves. Whoever goes in first starts the clock; everyone else has to get in while it runs. Nothing forces you to be online at a particular minute.
• Entering costs nothing — no energy, no cash, no rank, no waiting on anyone else. You can enter from a cell.
• You are scored on what you actually do between joining and the clock running out. Every scramble names what it is counting, and it is always something you could already do: jobs pulled, product moved, blocks taken, hands played.
• The top few split the pot in dirty cash, plus Respect.
• Every scramble tells you what it usually takes. That number is real — nothing else on the board will beat it.

The catch

Enter and place nowhere and you pick up Heat for being seen trying. It is not a large amount, but it is the reason to enter something you can actually win rather than everything on principle.

Getting in early breaks ties, so two people on the same score are separated by who moved first.

Who else is on the board

Not every name in the standings is a player. The city is full of people who want the same thing you do, and they will run hard — but they stop at what the scramble says it usually takes. Hit that number and it is yours, whoever else showed up.