Every card explains what you do with that function and why it matters during a shift. A card moves to “Available in the game” the day it ships in a published version. One person writes and codes all of it.
You can already play it. The version it shipped in is on the card when it applies.
The alert only describes part of what is happening. The witness can be asked for details before anyone is sent out, since more than one unit may turn out to be needed, but every question keeps the line busy and the other alerts do not wait.
The call does not say how many units are needed until the first one arrives and reports over the radio what has been found on the ground. This means that what was sent at the start can fall short or be too much, and both are felt.
A small fire that nobody attends becomes a blaze and ends up asking for twice the units it needed at the start. Sending too little does not solve it, but it does stop the growth, since what stops the clock is having somebody working on the ground.
Before the dispatch is confirmed, a warning says which kind of call could no longer be covered with what is left at the station. This matters because two calls can come in at once, so sending too much to the first leaves the second with nobody.
A unit on its way can be sent to a more serious call, and it sets off from the exact point where it was, not from the station. So the call left behind goes back to unstarted if what remains there is no longer enough to close it.
0.3.0A fire that is not cut off in time jumps to the building next door, so there are now two fires and each one has to be put out on its own. The second starts from scratch and inherits nothing from the work already done on the first.
An accident nobody attends can end up starting a fire, and that fire an evacuation. So leaving something small untouched does not leave it still: it turns it into something else, with other units and another price.
The clock starts when the call comes in and stops when the first unit arrives, since what is measured is how long it takes and not how the call ends. This means the time spent deciding counts just as much as the drive itself.
That a warehouse keeps chemicals, or that a block has a single staircase, stays written down to be known months later, so the district's own history draws its map of risk. It has to be looked into first: without that step it is neither written down nor shown.
A fire in a classroom, a building coming down, a birth that goes wrong, people poisoned by fumes, a gas leak or somebody trapped in a lift. Each kind asks for particular units, so working out which one it is from the call is already half the decision.
0.112.0A missing person is not a point on the map but an area to be covered end to end, so the work is not about reaching one spot quickly but about covering ground for a good long while.
0.58.0Somebody on the ledge of a building is not over quickly: it is talking to them and waiting, for a long time. This means the crew sent out wears down and has to be relieved before the call ends.
0.59.0Garages and street-level shops flood when it has been raining for half a day, not because of the downpour of the moment. So the call arrives after the storm and not during it, when nobody is expecting it any more.
0.45.0A sports hall or a station packed full, where there may not even be flames and three hundred people still have to be got out through one door. So what is needed is not height or water, but order and attention.
0.112.0An unattended fire jumps downwind rather than to the nearest building, and in the rain it takes longer to jump. So the weather decides where the fire reaches and how long it takes to cross the city.
0.42.0Nearby buildings get the sunlight that matches the time of day, and the street lamps come on at dusk. So the same street does not look the same on a morning shift as on a night one.
0.13.0The same route takes a different time at eight in the morning than in the small hours, and it also counts whether it goes along an avenue or through narrow streets, and whether it is raining. This means the nearest unit is not always the one that arrives first.
0.74.0A few times a year the power goes across the whole area, so getting around is worse on streets without traffic lights and calls come in that only happen in the dark. It lasts a few hours and then comes back.
0.47.0Each district has the people it really has, and calls are shared out according to how many live in each one. So an industrial estate asks for less work than a district of flats, even if it takes up the same space on the map.
The whole planet is built, so the city picked out on the globe is ready in under a minute. A station and territory can be held in up to three cities at once, although opening away from home is expensive.
0.88.0The ground rises and falls as it does in reality, so a slope looks like a slope and a valley like a valley. In a flat city it is barely noticed; in one on a hillside it changes the whole view.
0.106.0Summers have days well above average, with heat striking in runs rather than one at a time. The weather report gives hours of warning, so the shift can be prepared before it starts.
0.46.0A district can only be claimed if it touches one already held, so growing means choosing which way to carry on rather than jumping to the most profitable spot on the map. The more districts, the more calls come in at once.
0.2.0There are four branches, and each upgrade asks for three things at once: money, real hours on the clock and field experience, which builds up on its own and is not spent. So having money to spare is no use for finishing it sooner.
0.4.0Vehicles are unlocked by the level of the station where they will live, not by the experience of whoever is playing. This means opening a new station is starting from scratch there, however seasoned one may be at the first.
0.4.0Committing a station to fire or to ambulance decides which rooms can be built inside and which units are based there, and it cannot be changed afterwards. Left uncommitted everything is allowed, but only two units fit.
The first station in a new city is paid for four times over and asks to have been looked into first. So taking the service far away is a campaign of its own, and there it starts from scratch in level and in fleet.
0.91.0Setting up prevention at the station makes fewer calls appear around it, each time with less effect and never past forty per cent. It never leaves the district completely empty, since if it could be emptied the best move would be to empty it and no game would be left.
Vehicles go through a check every so often and have to be kept in order, so the fleet stops being a list that only grows and becomes something that is maintained.
0.62.0At the end of the shift a report is left with what happened and what arrived late, and the record gathers the moments that count: the first blaze, the worst night. Rank rises with all of that and belongs to the person, not to a station.
0.57.0A handful of goals that change every day and come out of what is being played, without having to go looking for them. So there is a reason to come in today and not only to carry on where things were left.
Having many stations stops being only a number, since the service moves up through five steps, from a district station to one covering several cities, and going up a step changes which kind of call arrives, because a large service no longer gets lift rescues as often as a small one.
0.143.0Work on this is already underway. It may still change before it ships.
Nothing here right now.
It's defined in the game's design, but building it hasn't started yet.
Nothing here right now.