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Funding Paths
The starting program determines how much guaranteed money you receive and how aggressively the game rewards grants, research, and specialist hiring.
Institutional Starter Program
A university-backed launch path with comfortable startup money and a strong yearly operating budget. Easiest to build with, but research and grant rewards are modest.
Research Consortium
A balanced path with less guaranteed funding, better institutional credibility, improved grant odds, and slightly stronger personnel.
Frontier Discovery Initiative
A lean, high-risk path. Guaranteed budgets are tight, but successful grants pay more, research output counts for more, and the site attracts stronger specialists.
How to choose
Best for learning systems, experimenting with layouts, and surviving inefficient early decisions. The tradeoff is softer research and grant rewards.
Balanced funding with better grant credibility and slightly stronger staff quality. A good default once you understand basic operations.
A leaner operating model where successful research and grants matter much more. Cashflow mistakes become serious quickly, but the upside is greater.