Game documentation

Emergent Authority 0.10 · Playable campaign foundation. Current implementation choices are collected here so they can be tuned without confusing them with planned features.

Establish your agency

Register with an email address, username and password. You can log in using either the username or email. Create a player character name and agency name; Meridian is the agency’s home city. Each game begins paused at 09:00 on Day 1, with $5,000 and six persistent applicants: three random rank-one Heroes and three random Superheroes from a fixed roster. Reloading never redraws those applicants. Omegas and the Cosmic Entity are excluded from this initial draw. Each completed shift offers another previously unoffered responder.

Recruitment costs and per-shift salaries remain attached to each candidate. You may choose one or several founding responders within your budget and five initial positions. Agency expansion costs $2,500, then $4,500, and opens nine, then eighteen personnel positions. Cosmic recruitment costs $6,000. Expansion changes staffing capacity; it does not level up a character.

Accounts and independent games

One login can hold several independent games. Select a game from Your saved games; each keeps its own player, funds, roster, applicants, mission outcomes, consequences and clock. Creating another game preserves existing games. Running games continue independently while you are playing another game. Pause each game explicitly if you want it to wait.

Earlier server saves are copied into game slots, with their original saved state preserved. Older campaigns open paused so their former accelerated clocks do not unexpectedly advance. Earlier archived states can be opened as separate games without overwriting current games. The browser-import control and recovery-code interface have been removed; no browser save was deleted.

Passwords are hashed and are never displayed or logged. Account mutations require authenticated sessions, CSRF protection and game ownership. Revisions reject conflicting writes from another tab. Email delivery and password-reset email are not connected yet; no verification or recovery email is sent. Keep your password safe and contact the site owner if you cannot sign in. Connecting a verified sender and delivery service requires separate service configuration.

Character ranks and stat scales

Stellar Power is inherently above the ordinary ranks. A cosmic value of 5 is not numerically comparable with an ordinary Strength value of 5. The ten rank-one Heroes are authored once, with fixed names, backgrounds and balanced stats. They include a trauma doctor and two former special-operations professionals. Higher-tier stat values remain unassigned for the owner to supply. Approved character art and existing higher-tier identities are retained. Every character within a rank uses the same rank color.

Human mission suitability uses the authored four-stat profiles. Teams containing higher-tier characters currently use an explicitly provisional mission probability baseline, with team support, fatigue and lethal risk adjustments; no higher-tier stat value is inferred. Success is never guaranteed. The provisional baseline is a tuning assumption, not an assigned character ranking.

A possible rank-one training ceiling of 13 is recorded for future work. Training progression, leveling and skill trees are planned, not implemented. Buying agency expansion does not increase character stats.

The clock and shifts

One real minute equals one game minute. Time comes from the server, not the device clock or a background-tab timer. The saved clock continues while the browser is closed. Loading a game deterministically catches up deadlines, travel, outcomes, returns, recovery and payroll. Assignment rolls are saved once; catch-up, repeated loads and page reloads cannot reroll or duplicate rewards. Moving the device clock does not speed up a campaign. Browser animation between server updates is a visual estimate only.

Use Pause clock for planning. Explicit pause freezes all timers for that game, including travel, deadlines, rest and scheduled shifts. Resume continues from a fresh server timestamp. Closing or hiding a tab does not automatically pause.

Day shifts run 09:00–17:00; night shifts run 21:00–05:00. Payroll is charged once at shift end. No new shift begins automatically unless you schedule it. The next-shift preview respects at least eight game hours of rest, delayed team returns and the chosen shift window. Switching from an ended day shift to night work chooses the following day’s night shift, giving a full intervening rest period. Scheduling does not instantly skip time or award another payroll/recruitment cycle; waiting passes on the running game clock.

Dispatch, travel and consequences

The city map has twelve districts, HQ, incident markers, routes and moving hero portraits. Select districts, incidents, routes or responders. Fit, 160% and 220% controls provide native panning. Routes show outward travel, on-scene work and the return leg. Away teams are represented toward Meridian’s commercial transit terminal; the city map does not pretend to show their entire national or orbital journey.

Jobs arrive over time with response deadlines, requirements, rewards and explicit risks. Local offers begin when the shift opens, then recur about every 35 game minutes with at most four open at once. Long-distance offers begin after 90 minutes and continue every 180; cosmic offers begin after 180 and continue every 240, with two open offers per away category. These are centralized prototype balance choices.

Choose one to three available responders. Dispatch requires a running shift and sufficient funds for any travel fee. A team stays busy for outbound travel, mission work and the entire return journey. The outcome resolves on scene; payment and personnel availability settle on return. Long-distance travel uses commercial rail, coach, ferry or flights with substantially longer travel and work periods. Buyable private jets are planned only. No new speed powers have been assigned to characters.

The catalogue contains exactly 25 local jobs, 12 long-distance jobs and five Cosmic Entity-only jobs. Some are standalone assignments that may recur after a one-day cooldown. Others are once-only chain episodes: outcomes and missed deadlines set persistent flags that unlock or change later briefings, work durations or rewards. Consequences stay with their game. There is no automatic new-game reset after a failed job.

Availability, injury and death

Occupation, rest/recovery, injury and death prevent simultaneous assignments. Ordinary failure has a 30% chance of a mission injury; injury requires 180 game minutes of recovery after returning. Only jobs explicitly marked LETHAL can cause permanent character death, and only on a failed response, with a 2% chance per responder. Standard jobs cannot permanently kill a responder. Risk is shown before dispatch. Character death is part of the saved campaign and does not delete the account or other games.

Fatigue accumulates from missions and recovers while resting. Nightrender cannot take an outdoor assignment if any part of outbound travel, work or return overlaps daylight, defined as 06:00–18:00. Sheltered briefs explicitly describe protected approach and work. Cosmic jobs require rank-four personnel and use their separate travel and availability timers.

Mission catalogue

Browse the authored briefs below. Their presence here does not mean they are immediately offered in your game; time and chain prerequisites still apply.

Mission history

The latest 200 settled jobs stay in the active campaign. Older full records move into preserved mission history, accessible from Agency → Mission history. Outcome flags, chain progress and payment records remain with the game. Archiving a mission record does not delete it.

Implemented and planned

Implemented: email/username/password login, independent game slots, preserved older agencies, a fixed authored roster, persistent recruitment, city dispatch, away assignments, chains, server clock, explicit pause, day/night scheduling, commercial travel, return availability, fatigue, injury, rare lethal-job death and staffing expansion.

Planned: owner-assigned higher-tier values, final probability/economy tuning, training and its possible ceilings, skill trees, buyable jets and email recovery delivery. Long-term balance and physical-device performance still need extended playtesting.