DetectiveRoutine

Detective Routine

Be a detective on the city's payroll, not just a stranger with a lockpick. Join an Enforcer Division, keep your shifts, write your reports, collect your pay, and get the paperwork that lets you go where a private eye can't.

Recommended

I strongly recommend playing this mod together with:

• SOD Life and Living by Venomaus: its economy rebalance makes a detective's salary actually matter.
• DialogUIRework by Piepieonline: the mod adds quite a few lines to conversations, and they go neatly into its tabs.
• Optional: Cruncher Correction by PixelJunkies fixes the same problem in the game's own government database, where typing a name with an F opens your case board. This mod's own typing fields (Forensics, the Warrant Requests search) already block game keys while you type and don't need it.

Optional:

• Loops & Whorls (my fingerprint mod) or PartialPrints by Macawesome75: you get a fingerprint lab to send prints to (see below). Install one of the two, not both.
• Creature Discomforts (my mod about the detective's body): you can doze off over your reports (see "Your colleagues").

Joining the force

Apply at the front desk in the City Hall lobby. A few hours later you are assigned to one of the city's Enforcer Divisions: the fullest one that still has a free desk. A welcome letter from your captain tells you where to report and when your shifts are. You can resign at the same desk.

Until you join, the game plays as usual.

Once you're in:

• You can go anywhere in your division's premises, like any other employee.
• You have your own account on the division's crunchers, so you can read your mail there even if you have no home.
• You get your own desk, with its cruncher and drawers, and a name placard on it. Your photo goes up on the employee board.
• You are listed in the Gov Database and in your division's Employee Database.
• You may enter the Echelons (the floors for the rich) while on shift, and at any time in a building where you have an open assignment or had a murder call-out in the last day. The apartments up there are still private.

Divisions

In a newly generated city the size of each division follows the city's population and the office's desks: a bigger city means more rank-and-file enforcers, but every office keeps one free cubicle for you. An ordinary office keeps the game's 2 enforcers besides the captain; a large one can take more. No two divisions share a name. Both only take effect when a city is generated: a city you already have keeps its staff.

Transfers

Tell your captain "I'd like a transfer to another division.", in person or on the phone. You'll be told to put it in writing, and a transfer request appears in Reports Due. Its To button cycles through the other divisions that have a free desk; the request shows where that office is and how many desks are free. Write it up (about an hour) or discard it. A written request is decided after Transfer.ReviewDays (2) days: if the division still has a free desk, you move there with a new desk, placard and photo, a goodbye vmail from your old captain and a welcome letter from the new one. Your shifts, pay, reports, strikes and pending warrant requests come with you. One request at a time, and not while you're on probation.

Shifts

Day shifts, Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 (configurable). Sign in at a cruncher in your division when your shift starts; you get a reminder an hour before. Up to an hour late counts as late. After that, the shift is missed.

In hospital. If you get knocked out and wake up in a hospital bed, your captain takes you off the roster for the next 16 hours, about a day's work: knocked out in the morning, you lose that day's shift; in the evening, the next day's. Shifts you haven't signed in for in that window (extra shifts too) are cancelled. A cancelled shift is no strike, no pay, isn't a missed shift and needs no report. It doesn't spoil the weekly bonus either: for each cancelled shift you need one worked shift fewer, but at least one.

The hospital bill. While you're on the force, the bedside choices in hospital include "Bill it to ." (with your division's name): you recover exactly as if you had paid, and the division pays the fee; do it twice within 14 days and your captain starts writing about it (Hospital.DivisionPays, Hospital.GrumbleAfter).

Call-outs. When a murder victim is found outside your shift, your captain calls you out by vmail: be at the scene within 3 hours. Walking in or talking to the enforcer on the door both count. Make it in time and it's an emergency shift, paid at one and a half times the usual once you file the crime scene write-up. Miss it and you just miss the money; it's not a strike. If the body turns up during your shift, it's just work: no extra pay, but getting to the scene counts as signing in, so you won't be marked late for going straight there. If your shift ends in less than 3 hours, it's a proper call-out after all, since you'll be working past it. If your shift starts before you're due at the scene, the captain calls you in early instead: getting to the scene signs you in for that shift, the crime scene write-up is your shift report, and the hours before the shift are paid on top at the call-out rate.

Rest. Work 16 hours in a row (shifts and call-outs together, breaks under 2 hours don't count) and your captain sends you home: in person if they're around, by vmail otherwise, and if a colleague spots you first, the captain hears about it from the