ADR-0014 — Conferences, presence, and minimal location

Status: ACCEPTED (v1 shape; yields/numbers owed to the sweep) · Decided: 2026-07-12
These are the actual decision records the game is built from, published unedited except for internal process notes. They describe why the game works the way it does. They are not a strategy guide, and some of them argue with each other.

Context

ADR-0010 made socialization the mandatory middle of the research→adoption value chain with no ruling on what attending is. Pip's rulings, this beat, with one ambition flagged: "Part of me wants to make a conference attendance subgame, that's how critical I think these kinds of things are going to be for the game." (Subgame parked; v1 is attendance + yields.)

Decision

  1. Conferences are scheduled world events on the seed timeline (ADR-0005 schedule entries — the geopolitics-as-content pattern, reused). Annual majors announce ~9 months ahead: plannable at plan speed, and opening theory can grow around known calendars. Smaller/exclusive gatherings unlock behind contacts or safety reputation — invitation-gated event stream.
  2. Founder attendance ≫ delegate attendance. Founder pays founder-hours + travel cash and gets the full yield: meaningful options opened, first-degree connections, SA boosts. Delegates (a staff-month + travel cash) yield less but give coverage — the 2037 "5 delegates to 10 meetings" scarcity, seeded from turn one. Travel cash deliberately bites early (spiky cash flow, ADR-0012).
  3. Conferences are accelerants and discovery venues, not the adoption roll itself. Adoption happens out in the world (ADR-0010); attendance speeds adoption of your published work, builds reputation mechanically faster (especially introductions), and mints contacts-as-receivables — the Ledger's friendly column gets its content source (DQ-9's customer).
  4. Discovery-by-presence. You discover actors, alliances, and intentions by being where they are (the units-moving-on-the-map analog); news/newsletters are the cheaper, lower-fidelity discovery channel. Presence is effectively an SA channel flavor alongside espionage/alliance/media/research.
  5. Location exists minimally in v1: HQ defaults American (park foreign legal-regime modeling); the player can substantially base teams overseas — cheaper hires, with different downstream influence/politics effects (mid/late-game payoff). Event schema carries where from day one.
  6. Ad-hoc meetings/opportunities stay instant-speed windows (ADR-0009/0012), some gated by contacts/rep. (Pip's "book a longer trip for planned meetings" instinct is week-grain thinking — at month grain the trip is a plan allocation.)

Beacons served / violated

Interaction contract

Reads/writes: seed schedule (ADR-0005 entries + 9-month announcements), founder hours (ADR-0011), cash (travel), reputation (typed, per-person — delegate yield should scale with the delegate's own reputation), SA (presence channel), Ledger receivables (contacts; DQ-9), adoption pipeline (ADR-0010 accelerant).

Rejected alternatives

Consequences / open questions