[X] Shutterbug's. Laine assures you that you shouldn't ask why it's named that. Regardless, it used to be a fairly artsy area, before Downzone started declining as hard as it has. Now, it's a hotbed of crime and corruption; augs have even been spotted in the area. It's a very dangerous area, even you can tell that, but there are plenty of assets ripe for subversion if you can wedge yourself in there.
I think Shutterbug appeals to our core strengths in the most visceral way: it's a zone largely geared towards murking dudes and taking their stuff. As the past couple of updates have shown, we're pretty decent at the whole murking dudes and taking their stuff thing. Plus like...it's a way to effect other zones without rolling in and fucking up the internal ecosystem. People are already paying attention to us, handling us with some measure of wariness. This will make them take us seriously and potentially bring more, and better established, players to the table to talk.
Plus, like, it's a crime-ridden cesspit basically nextdoor to our area. If left alone it's a pretty dire threat to the stability of what we've built. Pacifying it is ultimately worth it in the long run.
[X] You want to establish a cybertech department. Laine will focus his research on picking up any surgical and implant assets which might be useful to start up an implant clinic, as well as useful patents, designs and caches of resources that are still available.
Our dudes are SO BORED. Like, holy shit people, I assumed we'd be able to make up the ground pretty fast after acquiring them but that was a bit of a strategic fuckup on my part at least because all the options for getting cybernetics shit came with pretty hefty price tags. So, like, let's stop fucking around and get a move on it before what assets we do have turn in their two weeks notices.
Also augs draw heavily on both cybernetic and biotech fields. Our biotech division is plenty muscly as it is. Focus on our weaker spot and shore up our development. We've already invested a lot in amping up our security force, we can afford to focus on other things.
[X] Broker out a deal with the Grocers. They fold their operations into Copperfield to shore it up, we underwrite some of the costs and become major investors, the likelihood of people starving or the Grocers eating a bullet goes down dramatically.
We're sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel funds-wise for this quarter iirc and I'm not convinced that we can provide the proper attention and infrastructure a business like AgriSystems needs to survive and thrive. That said, all the reasons for protecting it still hold true: it still supplies a lot of crucial supplementary nutrition to the district, it improves morale, and it employs hundreds of people right outside our door. So we can't exactly cut it loose either.
Seeing as this is the cyberpunk future I'm proposing a deal with one time enemies, especially since we've already started cutting deals with a few of their affiliates. Even though they were almost certainly involved in the attack it's time to let bygones (of, like, two weeks ago) be bygones. They clearly want it badly enough right? So let's work with that.
By getting the Grocers to go legit we can give them the opportunity to centralize the food supplying operations for our home turf under one more efficient and very profitable banner. We open the possibility for healing to occur in the community since, as it was pointed out, a lot of these gangers have friends and family here too. We give the community an opportunity to move forward, together.
And we heavily incentivize that they take it and not asset strip the place by a. being major investors and having the legal muscle to rip them to gory bits if they fuck us over and b. having a paramilitary army parked right next-door that they can step outside and see on patrol absolutely every day. And they know from pretty painful experience that Vector has pretty few compunctions about throwing her weight around if its strategically warranted. They know that she's not really the type to just lick her wounds and cut her losses, that she's pretty clearly here to stay. So they know that even if they make a push for seizing control and by some miracle they rebuff our standing forces with their sick-ass cyberpunk masks, all they have to look forward to is a very, very, irritated military enhancile with a vibrosword.
It means we don't get pure control over Copperfield but, like, that's okay I think. We have the Grocers on a leash. They know that we need the area to be secure. Everyone has the ability to walk away with something in their pocket and, most importantly, peace on the streets.
