Expansion of Coded Income Systems
Because flash makes the world go 'round

Of the five coded systems for income generation (crates, markets, leases, selling to NPCs, and job salary) only one is available to corporate players. This also creates an imbalance in terms of uneven support for various trades and archetypes, poor support for independent plot and content creation, and a general lack of reward for players investing more than the minimum effort -- because there simply isn't enough chyen in the system.

I think there's some benefit to examining if the systems already coded and present could be expanded in access to more players, and allow for greater player control in their own prosperity.

Heaven knows all topside needs is more entertainers and tailors trying to get their grift on.

This would be less of an issue if the (perceived) impact of getting caught consorting with mixers was not nearly so harsh. But as it stands, many corporate players either don't seem to want to interact with mixers (I.E. bringing flash topside) or are scared of fallout and ruining their character's careers for doing so.

Topside life needs a swift kick directly in the ass towards committing more crimes, fucking over more people and in general, not being the go-to hugbox part of the game.

If cash is the incentive to get people to do that? Awesome.

Corporate life costs more, and that's ok, but maybe salary adjustment isn't a bad thing? I will sacrifice a weeks pay in some cases just to hire someone to fuck with someone else.

I think the economy is fuckin bizarre in some instances but what can ya do?

Side-gigs are dependant on the flash entering the system from coded means, and right now those opportunities are being strangled in the crib in my opinion due to the lack of chyen supply available. I don't think the solution is just to pay corporate players more, because that simply encourages what already is present, which is passive non-engagement at a minimum level of effort to earn that automatic income. I really think rewarding, through systematic means, player activity and job-specialization, would have considerable positive knock-on effects for the player-driven economy and player-driven plots.

...Would it be possible to split reimbursements from weekly pay? If you could withdraw reimbursement as soon as it's approved, that would push it a little towards 'automated pay' that's a little more accessible.

Leases are a whole other Pandora's Box, but their implementation topside now is a mess and could definitely afford a review.

Well, you have corpsec teams who's job it is to do plot things whenever corporate plot time rolls around.

You also have corpsec teams who deal with the occasional drunk/confused/high mixer on-site.

Where's the corpsec teams scaling the sides of buildings with grappling hooks, cutting open windows, inserting malware drives onto internal networks or gas-grenading and kidnapping key personnel of their rivals?

We want mixers doing crimes topside more, and topsiders doing crimes with mixers more, but yet the hall and the corpsec players both stomp on mixers, and my logical assumption here is that because they're absolutely overwhelmed with joy at the prospects of doing -anything- in their day to day jobs.

Meanwhile, we have the less glamorous but equally important jobs- your biotech workers, your media stars and producers, your pilots and er.. giftshop attendants. (sorry NT!) What is the daily grind for these people like? Show up, say some things on key about all the cool non-interactive made up stuff they're working on, and then they idle in bars and apartments all day. And why shouldn't they? Gamewide, we don't tend to enforce people requiring to be at their jobs and rp making widgets, because that's not actually fun for players or staff, right? But aside from dumping points into artistry, vehicle skills or some other such trade that's in no way related to their job, what else should they be doing? I think this is a huge missed opportunity. (Again, I realize they get 'do stuff at work with your title' plots, but those plots, in my experience, are not frequent.)

My point with this all is, that if we want people doing crime topside then 1) We need the corpsec teams to not be as focused on internal issues and 2) We might need to cut back on the overall response of the WJF or have a discussion about disguises or other such crime-enabling skills and items being allowed topside.

low UE* lol

This gives players opportunities with minimal risk to go out and RP the heck out of their profession--or find sneaky ways of being on top suspiciously more frequently than expected. 😁

The topic of corpie pay comes out every few months, and I definitely fall in the camp that would be interested in at least seeing the waters tested of bumping it across the board at least somewhat, maybe even just 20%. Yeah, maybe juniors gotta ride the lev more than they want to be seen doing and should get mugged now and then, but it has always felt silly that mixers with even middling ambition and contacts can easily rival most PC corpies with income if they try. Yes, there are other built-in corpie benefits (job benefits, class-wide benefits), but if we want the class gap to feel genuine, and generate some actual disparity and animosity, make the wage gap -real-. Prices topside should bump up commensurately. The point isn't that corpies can now buy everything, but that they have more to throw at each other and mixers for Sneaky Mean Drek.

Yeah, I get that the Mix people need to make decent money for the most part because they clone out more frequently, but it's not -that- expensive or hard to keep in clones, in fact it should honestly probably be a little harder, there should probably be more gravity to dying, but that's a whole other thread.

Especially at senior positions the pay should be bonkers. Like, PCs who have played the topside dance extremely well for a very long time and not only stayed up there but become Super Master Senior Alpha CorpSec Murder Lord, yeah, they should have a place on Blue and get to decide WHICH Ferrari to drive to work today, why not? I think that would create more PC ambition, and let the kinds of characters who would do so flex hard (making it sweeter when they're finally drug down).

I haven't had a ton of experience with the Requisition system personally, though if the role(s) isn't filled or is filled by someone who barely players it can be frustrating.

I really like the idea of bonuses / some kind of PC-to-PC driven system that gives different corpies reasons to act out in whatever ways, take risks (not saying they don't know, just but more is good). And the idea for PC oversight of such a system is fantastic too!

There could also be a kind of backup to it, where a player could file paper nominating themselves (or someone else?) at their payment/HR terminal, and it could be reviewed by staff on the backend if no PCs have handled it after a while.

"Good Afternoon, corporate citizens! We would like to recognize Jane Smarty, Junior Corpsec Agent, as our Employee of the Week. Our thanks go out to Jane Smarty's exemplary effort this week. Please report to the employment terminal to claim your bonus."

We're talking about PC-to-PC solutions. We can't talk about how we prefer non-staff solutions (players), but not be interested in those solutions because players sometimes quit playing. That's a flaw in every part of the game. Let's pour an Ebola Cola out for every Immy Greeter that spent 3 hours showing some baka how SHI works only to watch them @quit into a puddle, that's the game we're playing, IDK what to say.

We hope for the best, implement for the worst, and see how it plays out.

Maybe NPC bosses just need to be more generous topside. I seen people do some amazing shit in the past and all anyone ever got was maybe a promotion (Disclaimer: this was 2 years ago). Why be stingy at that level of play? Give homeboy a free car or a fat bonus.

Topside's honestly fine if the plots are poppin' and that's been happening nonstop since I got back.

To crime/action: I'm wishy washy. More risktaking is a good thing, but you also have to recognize that Topside is heavily surveilled and controlled. It's -meant- to be hard to do something openly criminal.

We want automation for some things, but what keeps coming circle is back to GM support. Ideas that require GM oversight for whatever reason tend to be up to severe scrutiny (the only reason I suggested looking more at automation if you want to see your idea move) maybe it is lack of GM time, support GM numbers, whatever, but we all accept that they are volunteers with a lot to do.

The only solutions I scan come up with are GM oversight.

Senior members of a corporation really aren't THAT high in the spectrum, but that doesn't mean they should be written off. You work towards the job you want, right? Well if you've made it to senior you should be chomping at the bit for the next spot. Perhaps that is the level where your leadership as both a character/employee and a player are tested with tasks, weekly objectives, oversight, etc.

For example , Skywatche NPC boss calls Senior Corpsec Traxel Gravens into the office. He hands him a folder with a tasking to be done within a weeks time; Compile a go to on NPC/PC, run a training exercise, execute target (bland plot but you get the idea) He gives Traxel Gravens 100k budget for the operation.

Mr. Gravens can do many things with this money. He can spend it wisely on gear for himself and his team.

He can use it to secure a good mix side informant who could lead them to their target or betray them. He could dive it up amongst each team member. Hell he could pocket all of it and take off to Vegas. The point being player to player leads to so much and makes more sense, but that's just my opinion on it.

I think we're trying to discuss alternatives to more boring, mindless and/or exploitable forms of automated income.

Let's just assume for a moment that we try and do a 1:1 with mix jobs, but put a topside spin on them.

Automated Options:

1) Mail room: Each day, your office mail room is overworked, and you're offered tip money for delivering letters and packages around in your corporate HQ.

2) Stealing mail: You're able to steal mail from rival corps and sell it to your corp, but if you do so, you'll never be allowed to deliver mail again.

3) Rich & Lazy: Some CEO/Media Star/Retiree from blue is wandering around on gold, looking for random bits and bobs and wants to throw flash at people to run and grab it from stores topside for some profit.

4) Dipping: Needs no analogue.

5) Requisitions: People in your corporation security team need resupplies of ammunition, protek they keep mysteriously losing, and some nice, but not amazing weapons.

6) Party-goers: People in the clubs around on gold and green want candy like no tomorrow, and you should be able to turn a nice profit selling it to them so they don't have to take time off their party schedule.

Now, for some of this, I think you could probably recycle some existing code and port it over (provided it's actually portable), and some of these things would have to be added via coders and builders.

Now, mind you, you're correct in saying that you don't need to sit on puppet queues to pop to do these things in red, however, these things -do- need regular oversight and interventions by staff. But what about theme? Are the Letter Cutter Boyz going to spring up, and constantly raid rival corporations of their precious mail and packages? Seems unlikely. Is someone who holds a management position with a corporation going to want to be seen delivering mail, coffee, lana and heavily used protek just to make that sweet chyen?

I think the biggest difference here is that with what Grizzly and I are proposing, that it's really maximized for the amount of impact it'll have in the game, versus the amount of staff time needed to manage and upkeep. Each corp filling a puppet request out once a month to crease rivals or do other such super on-point themely things is a very minimal lift. It also might go far enough as to create some rivalries between corporations- after all, who want's to lose all that chrome and all those sweet goodies they're allowed to sit on basically uncontested in the game right now? Just some food for thought.

Corporate citizens live and die for their status. Money is important but while an industrious Mixer can earn more in a week, they don't have the safety of CorpSec and Judges, meaning they die much more frequently and face bigger losses. Mixers don't have corporations paying their rent, chrome, gear, and weapons either.

The automated income cap is the same for everyone. Even if we add more automated income topside it wouldn't work because of two reasons. First being, it's unthemely. You're a corporate citizens. You should be able to display your status as one without having to go to a courier office or do side gigs for extra cash. People who do this haven't got a solid grasp of game theme. Second being, it breaks the balance of Mix hustle vs. generous corporate funding and internal welfare systems that allow for a lot of quick enrichment scheme (yes, this includes embezzlement too).

Somebody said they should give away things as a reward for good performance over the month. Sorry but this doesn't make sense. Corporate citizens are barely a speck in the map of the organization chart of any mega corporation. There are thousands of other people, some of which are more qualified, veiling for your people. The game will not reward you with happy thoughts, only with a good story. So giving away free cars or bundles of cash is not only unthemely but it's also unbalanced because the same goodies will never be available to Mixers in their themely versions for creating good RP.

The solution is simple, either go back to Red or learn the theme, and begin focusing on more aspects of the game such as creating good stories and not hoarding money. Everybody loses it in the end.

While this may have been true at one time, this 'generous corporate funding and internal welfare system' doesn't appear to exist today with anything like the leeway you seem to be illustrating. Far from there being room for players to embezzle anything, these budgets are frequently being exhausted by maintaining minimum support and equipment. I don't know if the GM stance towards requisitions and reimbursements changed at some point, but I've been provided the budgetary details for more than one CorpSec department and it's hardly exorbitant. Divided equally amongst the active players in that department the total income allotted to any given player was still less than I made on average in the Mix, and had the substantial disadvantage of being largely gear -- which is great for the person wearing it, but does nothing to spurn the player-driven topside economy.

You seem to be saying it's not themely for corporate players to make flash through certain avenues, which I rather think is simply inertia of how things have been in the past, rather than any actual representation of what a 'cyberpunk' economy would look like. If anything a highly unregulated hyper-free-market economy so typical of the setting would be completely at odds with the extremely managed system that exists currently.

I think the mantra of 'don't worry about flash, you'll lose it all anyway' rings a bit false knowing that the most successful and most historically plot-driving players have very often been incredibly rich in the bargain, and some of them became rich and stayed that way until they eventually sun-setted their characters or otherwise moved on. I know that some of the small plots I've driven myself have been entirely enabled by the fact that I like, cleared a hundred kay in one day on occasion and averaged many times what a lot of other players made. I certainly never felt like 'this flash is really just a hollow pursuit when I could be RPing and telling stories'.

While it's absolutely true that players can drive plots and RP while being dead-broke, it sure is just a lot easier to be able to throw flash around as required.

It is 500% easier with trunk fulls of money. It's also not a firm grasp on the game to say "lol ur doing it wrong just embezzle". We know how to embezzle.

Maybe bump topside pay raises and purchase prices exponentially, so suddenly you have reason to throw all that big flash down at mixers?

Corpies have access to huge amounts of flash. They just need to figure out how to tap into it. This mostly involves proactively DOING, themely things that fit your role and corporation's agenda. Then, for the cherry on top you abuse the systems in place in smart, reasonable ways for a nice little bonus.

But do keep in mind that corpies are structured to act more like a Johnson and less like a mixer on the grind. Also, you have to play with the politics and present things in a way that gets you want you want and has the corp footing the bill. Wile still living within the limits corpies have to openly abide by.

I have seen several PCs do very well with this. You can too. But I'm not sure I'd want to see more options added that revolve around side hustles and mixer like activities. Everything a corpie does should be influenced by his corp. You can have goals but you need to find ways to align them with your corp's agenda in most cases of just be ready to deal with it out of pocket (and maybe find ways to use that corporate agenda to better line your pockets).

Either way I don't personally see this lack of flash and hustle that others seem to see. I see that the hustle is different from your typical mixer methods and that the big flash has gates that you need to navigate to gain access.

Personally I think automated work encourages the idle/static kind of players to sit on their ass, run some automated work, horde their flash and never quite do anything with it. So I'd prefer to see people get money through actually working for their corp, and not the bare minimum overall. I know it's hard to encourage plots with how staff time is limited, but player-plots are always possible, and I know the issue is that there's not enough money to encourage those plots, so I'd be all for corpies earning a bit more on their wage. It always bugged me how little they actually make a week in comparison to mixer with automated work.

While I'm certainly aware of other mechanisms available (and players/characters who have taken advantage of them, though I think it's fair to say more than a few of the most notable were doing things that are probably no longer possible), GM-remitted flash from whatever avenue is not really on the scale I'm arguing for there being an issue, my perception has been very much that this ultimately makes up for a tiny minority of the total chyen flowing around. Though this is just my perception, so it does prompt the question of whether GM-remitted plot-related chyen is entering and circulating in the player-driven economy in significant and consistent quantities?

@Ryuzaki4Days

As there have been a few people with the same opinion, I'll ask: In what way would you see a mechanism, like for instance the players markets on Red, as automated income, but would see weekly salaries as not? I'm not sure if the term coded is being parsed for automatic, but I'm actually arguing for less automatic sources of income, and more avenues for active players to make dynamically make flash through systems. I'm sure everyone would just like more plots to do, but I'm also sure GMs are often running as many as they can handle (at least currently) and that again, I don't think there's really much actual flash, in a total percent sense, entering the economy from these sources -- but again I could be wrong.

I think ultimately the position I'm trying to argue is not that like, I personally can't make flash, but rather that, from my perspective in aggregate there's really only a very controlled remittance of liquid currency into the wider topside player economy beyond the baseline of weekly fixed salaries, and I think it's limiting the potential of a larger economic ecosystem in terms of trades, crafting, and plots.

Perhaps I'm wrong and that everyone is just keeping their fat bank accounts and payouts very quiet indeed, but I'm pretty confident in saying nearly all of the talented and effective players I know topside could be making more flash in the Mix -- sometimes vastly more -- and driving commensurately more plots and fuelling more of the secondary economy, and it just doesn't seem to me like there's a great reason for that disparity. Personally I don't think the answer is just play corporate players more as a flat salary, but I do think more avenues to make flash beyond GM-remittances might be.

When I refer to automated income, I refer to things such as crate running, selling to gangers, scavengers, automated salaries from employment etc all bundled into one. Automated income from job salaries makes sense as a corporate, and they are incredibly low (unfortunately). I was actually parsing coded as automatic, and bunching it together, yes.

With that said;

Do I agree that Corpies should be running crates? Fuck no, you're too important for that mixer job, too self-entitled to be doing that kinda whack. Do I think Corpies should be slanging candy to clubbers? Nah, imagine being caught doing petty hustles as a corpie like that, it's gonna make you look bad.

Stock markets have been discussed for years, and they've always been shot down by a senior member of staff, because they're nothing but a chance based farming tool. You wanna do that, go gamble on Kashflo.

It's been mentioned a dozen times in this thread there are ways for Corpies to access mundo flash, go embezzle it. But I am 100% against automation, because then the MOO becomes more grindy/farmy, it encourages idlers who don't get involved in things, and well, several other reasons. Even with the income cap.

That's all I really have to say on the matter, I ain't played a Corpie in a long time now, and even when I did, I had absolutely no issues getting cash to do things.

Unless I'm missing something, but unless there's some mechanism I'm not aware of all of the ways in which corporate players can fund RP are effectively just direct GM-remittances -- like reimbursements and requisitions has a menu front-end, but it's ultimately no functionally different than puppeting and asking for the same.

Not to be critical, but driving plots through these mechanisms is a dubious gamble a lot of the time, it's practically a cliche that GM interfacing with players is often borderline hostile IC, and all of the most successful players I've ever known (and I've had the privilege to know a few exceptional ones) have made most of their flash through non-GM controlled mechanisms, and my perception was that plots tended to be a net-losses on average, even if they were a lot of fun and worth the cost -- they just weren't really paying the bills a lot of the time, and certainly not funding a secondary ecosystem alone.

If you go and do and pay flash to do something that drives RP, is themely, is applicable to your corporation's agenda and fits your role, you will be compensated at the least. You do not need to wait for an NPC to walk up and give you an assignment. Be proactive.

And if you are unsure, then yes, talk to your boss. Submit a puppet request. But the goals of these puppets are for the player and character to get a feel for what they can and should be doing. So that you are equipped to be proactive and go do cool things without hand holding.

Also, a corporate job is way different than a mix job. A mix job is just a way to pay the rent in many cases. The level of loyalty required is often pretty low. And it probably isn't the center of your life.

A corporate job IS your life. And if you try and treat it like a side gig or as nothing more than a means to collect flash for your own agenda, you might find yourself having trouble. A skilled corporate PC will find ways to spin things so that their own aims at least appear to be aligned with their corps.

Remember. This is a Cyberpunk game. When you sign on with a corp like NLM, you are sacrificing a lot of freedom in exchange for flash and safety. You are going to be monitored. You are expected to rep the corp. Anyone looking at you on the street should feel that your corp is central to your life. Not like that mix job you barely even do.

At that moment, I decided to get off my ass and do this 'go RP and make flash' thing that everyone on the forums was talking about. I was doing extremely well for myself, and at that point, I didn't even KNOW about 90% of the ways that people make money that seem to just get completely passed around as free data now. A few years ago, you didn't talk about casually handing big ticket items over to one day immies and collecting huge stacks from grunt work openly. However, to be fair, this was also the time at which (I think) farming was at it's peak. It was just mostly kept under wraps.. (in my limited knowledge)

The thing is, we have these giant fountains of chyen that exist in shadows that are supposed to be getting spread around the dome for work for everyone, and I don't see that much going topside now as opposed to then, and I honestly don't know if that's because the current crop of rank and file corpies are too-risk adverse or too caught up in furiously ERPing to chase after it, OR if it's simply not being offered topside in lieu of making the flash and jobs go like crazy in red.

Before we go slapping more chyen fountains into the game, perhaps we need to have a review and theme discussion with people who hold very highly-regarded roles within the game, and have access to chyen pumps. An audit, if you will. -IF- what we have now is not being allocated and moved around well, then that's really an IC issue, and not an issue of needing more cash money topside. Like I said before, I'm personally of the mindset that the PLAYERS topside need to discard that risk adversity and get to committing more crime. But I discussed that more detail previously in this thread.

Generally was a lot of sitting around, collecting paychecks, bar-RP and complaining that there was nothing happening, heh.

I've seen it said time and time again to characters that if you can't handle the mix, then you need to go topside. -That- is a systemic problem. Not to state the obvious, but if you're playing a full-on PVP game and you're not plotting, scheming and twirling your mustache like an evil villain daily topside, then you just aren't playing the game correctly. And as Mobius has stated, you really should be aligning your personal goals to that of your corporation ICly.. I.E. that plotting and scheming to fuck your fellow players over as hard and as often as you can should be directed at all of your rivals. Sure, there's some level of corporate solidarity, you're not an animal mixer, after all, but you absolutely should be defending fellow, rival corporates on SIC against mixers, while plotting their demise off SIC.

Although there's some issues with engagement in the Mix as well, I definitely found the player-driven economy was much healthier there, and there was more avenues for player-driven plots, hence some of my suggestions for mechanical parity as one possible solution.

If I've got Xo5 sitting in the closet and shiny new Mk23-S because I'm the consummate conspiring CorpSec player, that really does nothing to bolster the economic situation of the setting itself, and it's rewarding one very narrow field of play-styles and players to the exclusion of I think what could be a ton of additional untapped potential in fleshing out the atmosphere and engagement of topside life.

I agree -- and yet, it isn't, which I think is very telling. I think the same mantra of 'get out and take risks and tell stories' with no change in the mechanisms to encourage, guide, and reward that sentiment has persisted for a long time, and I think giving players themselves more means to enact that on their own terms might start to change that, but I'm only really confident there's a problem, I can only speculate on solutions.

I do notice there's been historically a lot of resistance to independent player agency, with player wealth being carefully controlled. Is that beneficial to the game world as a whole? I'm not sure, but I think it's worth questioning -- but I also think player-driven economics and player-driven plots should be the ideal, rather than a side-show to GM managed gameplay, so I may simply have a different conceptual view of what makes for satisfying interactions.

Idea is a corporations have a "productivity" metric of some sort that is determined by GMs when certain plots are completed for the corp. Then a corp has a certain amount of "pay stock" for its topside employees in withmore. Depending on your position in the corporation you get more or less of that "paystock" which is determined by the highest level of PC management in withmore and can be passed down through lower management levels. Deciding who gets how much can depend on performance bribes blackmail ect. Then at the end of the month as well as normal salary the employees get a bonus based on how productive there company was and how much of the "paystock" they have.