Intelligence: Buying Information
You cannot read a crew member's mind or flip their loyalty. The only edge you get is information, and information costs money. This is the system behind the game's core promise: you can't control your people, you can only pay to know them.
A subject's dossier. You hire a source, then buy files on a specific person to reveal their record, profile, and secrets before they cost you.
Intelligence has two layers. Understanding the seam is the whole thing:
| Layer | What it is | You pay | Analogy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sources | Contacts you hire (a detective, an FBI mole) | A one-time hire cost plus a weekly retainer | The channel |
| Files | Dossiers you buy on a specific person | A per-pawn fee, only if you hold a source that unlocks it | The product |
So reading a member's full federal dossier is: hire the FBI Mole once ($100,000 + $25,000/week), then pay $2,000 to pull the file on that person. The source is the pipe; the file is what flows through it.
Layer 1: Sources (who you pay)
Sources are contacts you hire and keep on a weekly retainer. Each grants capabilities: the files it can pull and the countermeasures it enables. Higher-access sources cost far more but reach deeper (local records to federal databases). Each has a reliability (chance the intel is accurate) and an unlock reputation (how established you must be before they will deal with you).
| Source | Hire | Retainer / wk | Reliability | Unlocks | Also does |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beat Cop | $1,000 | $500 | 80% | Witness tips, bribe witness | Retainer lowers heat across your districts weekly |
| Bookkeeper | $3,000 | $1,200 | 85% | - | Cuts paper-trail RICO buildup 50%/wk |
| Detective | $5,000 | $2,000 | 90% | Partial RAP sheet, witness tips | Retainer slows evidence on all open cases 25% |
| City Inspector | $10,000 | $3,500 | 90% | - | Tips you off before FBI financial audits; slows financial suspicion 50% |
| Police Captain | $15,000 | $5,000 | 85% | Witness tips, bribe | District protection: stalls investigations and delays warrants in one district |
| Prosecutor | $50,000 | $10,000 | 95% | Partial + Full RAP, lawyer | Buries the financial paper trail (RICO decays 0.5/wk); 40% less legit asset seizure |
| FBI Mole | $100,000 | $25,000 | 88% | Partial + Full RAP, Psych Profile, Full Dossier, RICO file | Early raid warning; 20% less asset seizure |
| Mayor's Aide | $200,000 | $30,000 | 98% | - | Kills weak investigations; RICO decays 1.5/wk |
NOTE
Only the Detective, Prosecutor, and FBI Mole unlock dossier files. The others are countermeasures against cases and RICO, covered on the next page. The FBI Mole is the only source that reaches the full federal dossier and the RICO case file.
Layer 2: Files (what you pay for)
Files are dossiers you buy per person. A file is only available if you hold a source with the required capability. Price is per pawn, so a file on your under-boss costs the same as a file on a nobody: the value is in who you read, not the fee.
| File | Price / pawn | Needs source | What it reveals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Partial RAP Sheet | $300 | Detective+ | Arrest and conviction counts, and the most recent charge only |
| Full RAP Sheet | $800 | Prosecutor+ | Adds prison time, every charge, and violent / drug / property / murder counts |
| Psychological Profile | $1,500 | FBI Mole | Risk scores, breaking points, archetype, vulnerabilities, predicted behavior, and how to exploit them |
| Full Dossier | $2,000 | FBI Mole | Everything above plus the full life-story timeline and known associates and debts |
The ladder
The four files are a stepped upgrade path. Each tier adds to the one below:
| Step | File | Adds over the previous tier |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Partial RAP | The basic arrest record |
| 2 | Full RAP | Prison history, full charge list, crime-type counts |
| 3 | Psych Profile | The psychological read: risk, thresholds, vulnerabilities |
| 4 | Full Dossier | The life story and the web of associates |
What a Full Dossier actually contains
The Full Dossier is the file that saves empires. Each section answers a different question:
| Section | What you learn |
|---|---|
| Criminal record | Arrests, convictions, prison months, and counts by crime type |
| Charge / custody history | The timeline of bookings, charges, prison, gang initiation, addiction start |
| Risk assessment | How dangerous and how volatile this person is |
| Threshold warnings | Which trait thresholds they are close to crossing (defection, breakdown) |
| Archetype | The behavioral type they fit |
| Vulnerabilities | The levers that move them |
| Predicted behaviors | What the simulation expects them to do next |
| Recommendations | How to handle or exploit them |
| Life-story timeline | The Historian-generated past: why they joined, old feuds, secret ambitions |
| Known associates and debts | Who they are tied to, and who they owe |
This is why the information is real, not flavor: the Historian actually wrote this past at worldgen, and a member's traits actually sit where the profile says. Reading the file is how you see a betrayal coming before it costs you.
Reliability
Each source has a reliability rating (80% to 98%). Higher-access, higher-cost sources are more accurate. Cheaper contacts can be wrong, so intel from a beat cop is a lead, not gospel, while the Mayor's Aide is near-certain.
Mole detection
The question some nights is simply: is this man reporting to someone? A member's secret ties (to police, the feds, or a rival) live in their generated past and surface through the dossier's known-associates and the psychological read. A low-loyalty, high-fear member is the rat-to-police risk; the file is how you confirm it before they talk.
Where you use it
Intelligence is managed from the Investigations panel (your contacts, their retainers, and open cases) and the per-pawn dossier cover, which shows what you already own, what is for sale, the source who sells it, a redacted preview, and the price.
Related
- The cases, warrants, and RICO your contacts protect you from: Investigations & RICO
- Where the life story comes from: Historian
- What the thresholds mean: Traits
- Why information is your only real control: GOAP
Modding
Sources, their capabilities and costs, and the dossier tiers are all data (insider_types.json, capabilities.json, dossier_tiers.json). You can retune prices, add a source, or define a new file tier without code. See Economy Config.