Ways to get by
Galatea has no classes and nothing to pick at the start. You do whatever pays, and most citizens end up doing several of these at once. Each one has a real cost — that is what makes choosing between them interesting.
Dockwork · Retail · Fabrication
Every job in the city is a slot. A villager is covering it until you want it.
Clock in at the workstation, work the shift, clock out and get paid. Entry work at the docks or on a shop floor needs no skill and no capital.
What it costs you
A shift is time. The city pays when you clock out, not when you feel you have earned it.
Construction
Claim ground and put a real building on it, room by room.
Two-click walls, floors and rooms. Doors, windows, staircases, roofs, furniture. You are quoted before you are charged, and construction then takes real time through four stages.
What it costs you
Nothing is instant and nothing is free. Materials have to physically reach the site before the build can finish.
Retail · Fabrication
Open a shop or a workshop, with its own account and its own staff.
Buy inputs, run recipes, stock the shelves, set prices, list on the Exchange. Every position you open is a real job another player can take.
What it costs you
Your shelves are empty until a delivery lands. A workshop with a full output bay stalls, honestly, until someone moves the goods.
Driving · Dockwork
The city cannot supply itself. Freight is the job with no barrier to entry.
Claim a load from the public freight board, walk it across districts, hand it over. No premises, no capital, no permit.
What it costs you
You carry one load at a time. The fee is escrowed before you accept — so the money is already there, but so is the deadline.
Civics
The city is always policed. It is better policed when a person is doing it.
Patrol, stop and search, make arrests, run the jail, work a detective's caseload. Backed by NPC officers so the beat is never empty.
What it costs you
A vetted post. You answer for what you do with it.
Underworld
Crime pays less than honest work on average, and much more sometimes. That is the whole deal.
Smuggle through Quayside, fence what you lift, launder what you earn, case a property and breach it. Heat rises with what you do and cools while you behave.
What it costs you
Dirty Credits cannot be banked, cannot pay tax or permits, and raise Heat if they are found on you. Arrest is a setback, not ruin — banked money is never seized.
Standing
There is no experience bar. Your standing is derived from what you actually hold at that moment — which means it can go down.