New Player Wave: an interactive tutorial and a clearer corporation

We read every message in the new player help channel and shipped fixes for the questions that come up again and again. The theme: the game was making you ask a human what the screen should have told you.

An interactive tutorial

New characters now get a guided, hands on walkthrough. It highlights the real button to click, sends you to the right page, and moves on when you actually do the thing (join a party, run a campaign action, file for a race). At the start you pick a track: Politics only, or the Complete econ plus politics tour. You can skip anytime and replay it from your profile. It also points you at a party and the community Discord early, because the players who thrive build allies and a money base first.

Your corporation, made legible

• •See where your money goes. The Financials tab now has an income waterfall: gross revenue down through maintenance, growth, marketing, logistics, R&D, and CEO pay, ending at net income, each as a share of revenue. No more "100% sold but my profit does not match my margin."
• •Growth and your market cap. Raising growth spends cash, which lowers book value in the short term, so your market cap can dip even in a good turn. The valuation card now says so, with the exact growth spend for the turn.
• •Fund company button. Getting personal cash into your corporation used to be a scavenger hunt. Public corporations now have a clear "Fund company" action in the CEO Office that buys newly issued shares (a 15% premium that the company keeps). Private corporations keep their direct injection.
• •Marketing, R&D, and Logistics now show their state. The CEO Office budget screens show your current Market Strength pool, your R&D innovation chance and its 6 turn cadence, and your logistics sector cap with the current sprawl penalty. The numbers you were guessing at are now on screen.
• •Share buyback escrow is visible. If your corporation buys back stock in escrow mode, that money is held to fund future sell backs, not lost. It now shows up on your balance sheet so it never looks like it vanished.

Politics and economy, made legible

• •Self funding warning. Writing yourself a campaign check raises Infamy and bleeds favorability every turn. There is now a confirm step that tells you the exact Infamy cost before you commit, so you do not learn it the hard way.
• •Party strength cap trajectory. A slowly rising cap used to look stuck. It now shows that it climbs a little every turn toward its ceiling, so you know it is working.
• •Tariffs on your inputs. If your margins are getting eaten by tariffs even though you only sell at home, the sector cost breakdown now names the imported input causing it.

Quality of life

• •The turn number is in the header. Next to the in game date, on every page.

Fixes

• •Private corporation share sales now reach buyers. Owners could list part of a private company, but prospective buyers could never see the listing, so the sale never completed. Buyers can now see open listings and submit an offer.
• •Display currency no longer reverts. Setting your display currency to your local currency now sticks for imperial characters instead of snapping back to the anchor.