1.16: NPP engine 6: smarter politicians, governments and companies

Dev diary by the Lakeside Games team, 14 October 2026.

TL;DR

• •New: NPP engine 6. Computer-run politicians (NPPs) make better decisions in elections, government and business, with no extra money or action points. It has its own changelog and roadmap: NPP engine changelog.
• •New: engine 6 runs in worlds set to the new autonomy level V6. New singleplayer and simulation worlds start on V6. The live multiplayer world now also runs V6.
• •New: corporation autopilot. You stay CEO, and autopilot runs the routine levers each turn while you keep every manual action.
• •New: a White House Chief of Staff. The President appoints one with no Senate vote, and they set how the administration deals with the press.
• •Changed: the White House page shows the whole administration, from the President to every cabinet seat, in one table instead of a wall of cards.
• •New: a Simple view for your company's Overview that shows what needs you and the core figures at a glance. Pro keeps every figure and now marks the important ones more clearly. Your choice is remembered.
• •Changed: company revenue keeps moving onto real market prices in even steps, resuming after its pause and finishing on turn 227.
• •Changed: very large share sales and new share issues now fill over several turns instead of all at once. Prices are unchanged.
• •Changed: commodity prices stop climbing forever on shortages that building more could never close. The correction was switched on one stage per turn and has been fully live since turn 187.
• •New: new politicians start with 10 Political Influence, the same as computer-run politicians, plus a first-days guide and a checklist that leads with campaigning. Players who join a world that is already running now get a clear start.
• •Fixed: sign-up and character creation say up front when they are closed, keep your answers, and recover from a dropped connection. The cookie banner no longer covers sign-up on phones.
• •Fixed: own supply across states no longer blocks surplus sales, healthcare production no longer swings between high and low, and corporation budget increases are judged against your real daily revenue.

The story

Most of this release is about the politicians you do not control. NPPs fill the seats, run the governments and own the companies that players do not, so how well they decide shapes every world. Until now their behaviour shipped as part of whatever game release it landed in, with no record of its own. From 1.16 the NPP engine has its own version number and its own changelog, so every change to how they think is listed in one place.

Engine 6 is built on one rule: NPPs get smarter, not stronger. No change gives them more money, more action points or extra weight in elections. They use what they already had more carefully.

NPP engine 6

Everything in this section applies in worlds set to autonomy V6. New singleplayer and simulation worlds start on V6. Other existing worlds keep their chosen level. The live multiplayer world has now moved to V6.

Running for office

• •Parties run their strongest NPPs for their most senior races. Where a party is weak across a region, it puts its best people in the local races it can still win instead of lost causes.
• •Ambitious incumbents with real standing step up to an open, more senior office in their home region instead of holding the same seat forever.
• •NPP candidates hold rallies in their own race, at the same cost and with the same effect as a player rally, and at most once every four turns.
• •In countries without players, presidential primaries can draw a challenger from the party's strongest NPPs.
• •Late in an NPP-only primary, a candidate who is clearly behind withdraws rather than splitting the vote. It does not endorse anyone. Primaries with a player in them are never touched.

Governing

• •Before filing a bill, an NPP counts the likely votes and does not file one that would fail.
• •An NPP government whips its own members on the bills that serve its long-term goals. Each member still weighs its own views, and the whip never applies in a party led by a player.
• •The opposition only votes as a bloc against a government it could actually defeat. Against a large majority, opposition members vote on each bill's merits.
• •Heads of government judge ministers on the goals in their brief, keeping one who is turning things around and replacing one whose goal failed on their watch.

Money and business

• •Central banks run by an NPP respond when their currency falls or rises sharply, adjusting interest rates and, after a big fall, defending the currency with a trading band backed by their own reserves.
• •NPPs buy shares and bonds where the value is: the better the deal, the more likely they buy, and shares priced far above their worth are more likely to be sold. Overall trading volume stays about the same.
• •NPPs who run or own companies lean towards bills that help those companies, such as a subsidy or tariff for their industry, and against bills that hurt them. You can see this on an NPP's profile, and voters mark them down a little when their holdings decided the vote. A sector bill can now win over the NPPs invested in that sector.
• •NPP-run companies pick their CEOs from NPPs with a good record running companies in the same industry. A CEO who dies is now replaced instead of staying in charge.

The full list, with every version number, is on the NPP engine changelog, along with the roadmap. Still to come: measuring how much stronger V6 makes NPPs in long simulated worlds, then trimming the income they get without acting so their overall strength stays level.

Corporation autopilot

Your company's Overview has an Autopilot switch. You stay CEO and can still do anything by hand.

• •Each turn autopilot sets marketing, logistics and R&D budgets and the dividend, grows plants that sell, pauses plants stuck in a glut, and opens new plants when there is spare cash. Budgets and dividends you set by hand are reset the next turn while it is on.
• •It never borrows, picks research, retools, sells or closes plants, or buys rivals. When one of those is worth doing it lists it on the Overview, and urgent ones also arrive in your inbox.
• •A company on autopilot is not penalised for an inactive CEO. The CEO's national influence is capped at the standard rate; the higher rate for the largest listed companies needs you running it yourself.
• •Appointing an NPP caretaker switches autopilot off.

Simple and Pro company overview

A company's Overview tab now has a Simple / Pro switch in its top right corner. The same choice is in Settings, under Appearance. It is saved to your account, so it follows you to every company and every device. Pro is the default.

Simple shows three things:

• •Needs attention: anything you should act on, most urgent first, each with a button to the right tab. It covers cash below zero or running out within 48 turns, a loss, bonds in default or due within 48 turns, sectors that are suspended by an embargo, losing money or selling under 40% of their output, a weak leverage rating, and open shareholder votes. When nothing needs you, it says so.
• •At a glance: revenue, net income, net margin, growth, cash, debt with its leverage rating, share price and how much of your output sold.
• •Biggest sectors: your five largest sectors by revenue, with margin and fill.

Pro is the full view you had before, with more visual cues and no boxed headline figures:

• •Share price, revenue, net income and cash read first in their lists. Net income has a green or red edge depending on whether you made money, and cash turns amber or red when it is running short.
• •Margins have a small bar that grows right for a profit and left for a loss. Revenue has a bar showing its size against your largest sector. Quality, fill and public float have gauges.
• •Sectors losing money have a red edge on the left of their row, and the leverage rating is coloured by grade.

Company revenue moves onto real market prices

The support that kept some businesses earning close to an old revenue formula is being removed gradually. The original glide was paused at step 18 of 24. It now resumes for the remaining six steps, from turn 222 through 227. Each step moves affected businesses closer to what they would earn at real market prices.

Businesses you built yourself already earned market prices and barely change. Businesses that started with the world, that you bought, or that the computer founded move the most. Businesses selling into a shortage may earn more; plants with unused capacity or in a crowded market earn less.

If you are losing out, check each sector's page for what is holding you back, mothball idle plants, adjust your pricing, secure your inputs with supply agreements or your own plants, and build where buyers are short. Through turn 179, company revenue and income kept rising, and the share of companies making a loss moved from about 8% to 9%.

Commodity prices stop running away

Most commodities have been short for the whole life of the world, and their prices have climbed a little every turn no matter how much capacity was built. The cause was in how demand was measured: household and government buying was set as a multiple of what was produced the turn before, so new plants raised next turn's demand almost as fast as they raised supply, and the price system read the gap that could never close as a shortage getting worse.

What changes:

• •A shortage that is not getting worse no longer pushes its price up each turn. Prices still rise when a shortage deepens and fall when it eases.
• •Household and government demand are capped closer to what the world actually produces, so new capacity narrows the gap instead of chasing it.
• •Retail demand still grows with the economy, at a gentler rate.
• •A plant at a high production setting that sells into a deep shortage of its own product can produce a little more, using a little more input.
• •Timber's surplus stockpile is drawn down instead of sitting on the price for years.

The team switched these on one stage per turn from turn 182, checking company income and the share of loss-making companies before each step. Every stage has been live since turn 187.

By turn 191, the share of world demand that gets filled rose from 64% to 68%, and no commodity's price multiplier is still climbing turn after turn. Food, retail, healthcare, advertising, energy and fertilizer buyers get noticeably more of what they ask for. Oil, natural gas and chemicals are tighter, because busier factories now buy more of them.

Prices move at most 6% per turn toward their new level, so there is no sudden jump in anyone's revenue or costs. Expect commodity prices to drift down over the following weeks rather than drop at once.

Shares and markets

• •Selling shares to the market: the market buys up to 5% of a company's value each turn, counting every seller together. Sales under ₳25M per company per turn are never limited. A bigger market sell is refused with the amount you can sell now, and a sell order above the limit fills a slice each turn at the market price.
• •Issuing new shares: the market places up to 10% of a company's shares, or ₳50M worth, whichever is larger, in one turn, and the rest over the following turns.
• •Prices are unchanged. Nobody receives less for their shares, only later when a block is very large.

New players

Joining a world that has been running for days used to leave new politicians with nothing to push against: half of them never ran a Campaign, so they never gained any Political Influence. This release gives them a start.

Starting influence. New characters now start with 10 Political Influence instead of 0, the same as the computer-run politicians they compete with. Influence still fades slowly if you never campaign. Existing characters are unchanged.

Your first days. For their first three days, new characters see a panel at the top of their profile with three goals:

• •Campaign in your home region three times, straight from the panel. Campaign is the only action that raises Political Influence, and influence lifts every fundraiser and helps in races.
• •Join a party that takes members from your home region.
• •Enter a race at home that is still taking candidates, listed by how soon entry closes and how many people are running.

The panel shows whatever you chose at the tutorial welcome. If you skipped the tour, it also links to the two-minute basics.

The checklist leads with campaigning. "Make yourself known" is now a step for every player, whatever you came to do, and only a real Campaign counts for it; Run Advertisements builds favorability, which is a different thing. "Cast your first vote" stays on the list as a later step. It needs a seat, so it no longer holds back the completion reward. The reward itself is unchanged.

Signing up when the game is closed. When sign-ups or character creation are paused for maintenance, or registration is closed, the sign-up page and the character creator now say so straight away with the expected reopen time, instead of failing after you fill in the form. The login page says when new accounts are paused, and new accounts that arrive while the game is down see a page that confirms the account is saved.

Fewer lost forms. The character creator saves your answers on your device as you go. A reload, a dropped connection or a refused submit no longer loses them, and if the game does not answer you get a Try again button instead of being sent back to the login page.

Phones. The cookie banner is more compact on small screens, so the sign-up and login forms stay reachable. Its wording and choices are unchanged.

Measuring it. The privacy policy describes two new things: aggregate counts of sign-up and onboarding steps that identify nobody, and a cookie that remembers which site you arrived from (only its domain and any campaign tags in the link). Staff use them to see where new players get stuck.

The White House

The administration in one table. The White House overview now lists the President, the Vice President and every cabinet seat in one table, grouped as Executive Office, Security & Foreign, Economy, Society and Domestic. Each row shows who holds the office, their party, whether they are elected, confirmed, acting or waiting on a Senate vote, and the President's controls for that seat: nominate, appoint acting, replace a nomination or fire. Office names open the office. Senators vote on pending nominations straight from the page. The cabinet room uses the same table, and the desk of bills awaiting signature is a table too.

Quieter impeachment line. When no impeachment is open, the page shows one line with the option to file, instead of a full panel. A live case still gets the full voting panel. Governor offices get the same change.

White House Chief of Staff. A new cabinet-rank seat, from 1946 on:

• •The President appoints the Chief of Staff alone. There is no Senate vote; the appointee takes office at the next turn. The President can fire them at any time, like any secretary.
• •The Chief of Staff is not in the line of succession.
• •Their office has one policy lever, White House Operation. Message discipline lowers media polarization but makes government less transparent. Open door raises transparency and public trust but increases media polarization. Balanced has no effect.
• •Two orders: Message of the Week briefly lowers media polarization, and Cabinet Accountability Review briefly raises public trust.

Smaller changes and fixes

• •

  The Discord link on the home page pointed at an expired invite. It works again.

• •

  Companies can ship their own surplus to their out-of-state plants before local buyers, with freight costs shown separately. Partial or blocked hauls now use another of your mines, and leftover surplus still reaches ordinary buyers.

• •

  Healthcare production follows local supply, so hospitals no longer alternate between high and low output.

• •

  Budget increases are judged against your company's actual daily revenue, the same figure as the CEO statement.

• •

  Bank owners can see named depositors and their balances, largest first.

• •

  Group leaders can keep an NPP subsidiary's new investment within its main industry, and NPP CEOs keep a sector while construction is unfinished. Group pages use the active supply controls.

• •

  Market listings show whether a company is run by a player or an NPP, and the factory-built construction method has its own name.

• •

  Slate cards load their details when opened, US House projections load faster, interrupted corporation pages offer a retry, and banner ads explain that they wait for approval.

15 October follow-up: economy corrections and continued watch

The economy review continues under 1.16. The launch-governor removal was paused at step 18 of 24, then resumed: the remaining steps run from turn 222 through 227. Sectors can earn more or less as they move onto market prices. We are checking media, agriculture, pharmaceuticals and other sector margins against actual production, costs and supply, and preparing targeted fixes as findings are verified.

Hardware payroll now uses its earlier hardware-specific basis. Identifiable historical excess payroll has been credited, with reconstructed amounts labelled as estimates; unverifiable periods are excluded. Hardware factories also phase toward using 15% fewer inputs for the same output over twelve turns. In the current multiplayer world, the first reduction is turn 222 and the full reduction starts at 233. Watch the material quantities, labour charges and operating margin. Market prices and production still affect the cash bill.

Other follow-up changes shipped in 1.16:

• •Demand and prices: companies' input requirements gradually follow physical output instead of rising with selling prices. Regional demand now uses comparable country-economy figures, with an existing world moving over gradually. Recovering shortages shed their scarcity premium faster, and AI central banks consider unemployment and the output gap.
• •Production and delivery: exporters count the goods they actually place, local input availability is read correctly, and the gradual sales-revenue correction keeps paying for wanted output that freight could not haul. General-purpose mines make less excess timber, scarce high-value resources draw new mines, and construction speeds up where output is badly short.
• •Supply agreements and groups: standing agreements recur until cancelled or their term expires. Confirmed counterparty exits retire dead agreements. Eligible wholly owned groups can reserve cross-state supply using recorded freight delivery, and linked subsidiary groups are easier to browse in The Market.
• •Company management: NPP-run plants can shrink toward the market they serve; NPP operators can take over plants their former owner leaves behind. Company refounding cooldowns start at dissolution, CEO residency is enforced, and bank owners see a warning before abandoning sectors their bank needs.
• •Banking and funds: a stuck recovery payment no longer stops the entire banking turn; tiny leftover wallet fractions no longer stop credit-line servicing. Winding up a fund sells its bonds, global funds spread sovereign purchases, revoked charters do not strand fund sponsorship, and banking and advertising settlement use fewer repeated operations.
• •NPPs and countries: the live-world engine update, improved caretaker succession and company maintenance ship alongside entertainment founding where a country has no producer. An announced recession can reduce one country's capacity gradually rather than closing plants at once. Each world's autonomy setting still controls which NPP behaviours run.
• •Government and information: government contracts support bidding, cabinet allocations have their own tab, central bank money-supply information is restored, index-listing requests appear in the cabinet office, and metric and UK rules text better describe the mechanics.
• •Community and access: more weekly contests, a grouped Contests page, a suggestions forum with branded reporter cards, shared incident tickets, clearer recruitment and connection messages, and working new-tab links in the desktop app.
• •Delivery: release qualification and compiler caches reuse verified work, while the same release gates remain required.