Contracts & Vendors — Help

What a contract is

A vendor posts offers. Each offer asks for a brain with certain traits:

Model size (Micro → Colossus)
Dataset size
Some mastered domains
A minimum quality
Sometimes a specific module equipped

You accept an offer, train a brain toward it, then fulfill it — which sells that brain in exchange for Cu, Ru, and reputation with that vendor. The offer requirements are shown color-coded so you can see at a glance what's missing:

🟢 Green — your brain already meets this
🟠 Orange — partial match
🔴 Red — not yet

Sectors — 7 flavours of reward

There are 7 sectors. Building reputation with a sector's vendors unlocks sector bonuses themed to that sector — higher reputation, stronger bonus. In broad strokes:

Sector	What it rewards you with
Finance	Money & research — bigger Cu / Ru payouts, longer deadlines, growth of your permanent bonus. The "get paid more" sector.
Research (Science)	Research output & quality — more Ru from runs, higher quality ceilings. The "smarter brains" sector.
Media	Reach & reputation — cheaper corpus, faster reputation gain, softer penalties, extra domain capacity. The "influence" sector.
Industry	Hardware — discounts on HW, more durable gear, bonuses tied to top-end machines. The "build your rig cheaper / tougher" sector.
Health	Brain wellbeing — reduces frustration & fatigue build-up, eases the strain of running many modules. The "keep your brain calm" sector.
Governance	Contract logistics — more active contract slots, faster / repeat offer refreshes, leniency on requirements, special contracts. The "manage your contract board better" sector.
Security	Coming soon. Bonuses still in design and will land in a future update. Visible in the UI but not yet unlockable.

The exact per-tier bonus values are visible in-game in each vendor's "Next rep →" hint and in the ACTIVE BONUSES panel. They're still being balanced, so specifics may shift; the sector themes above are stable.

Classes — three progression eras

Each sector has vendors in three classes that roughly match your rig progression:

Private — entry level (Starter-rig era). Approachable contracts, small rewards. Where you learn the ropes.
Corporate — mid game (Builder-rig era). Demands match "where you are" and pays better; asks for specific domains.
Government — end game (Deep → Cluster era). The biggest models and biggest rewards — but the biggest penalties for failure too.

You unlock the next class with a vendor by maxing out your reputation with the class below it. You can always still take a lower class's contracts — you just have to meet their (easier) requirements.

Reputation — the long game

Each vendor has a five-step reputation ladder:

Unproven → Listed → Preferred → Trusted → Strategic.

Gain reputation by fulfilling that vendor's contracts. Harder contracts give more. Some special offers give a reputation bonus (see below).
Lose reputation by failing a contract (missing the deadline), cancelling one, or — for vendors you're already close with — dumping brains on the Black Market instead of honouring your commitments.
Higher reputation = stronger sector bonuses, better / juicier offers, and it opens the next vendor class.
Reputation never goes negative. A bad relationship just resets to neutral.

Requirements scale with your progress

Offers are tuned to your era, so a fresh player isn't asked for something impossible:

Private vendors follow your reputation ladder — start with the smallest brains, grow as you prove yourself.
Corporate / Government vendors ask for model / dataset sizes that match the rig era they belong to — and they ask for a sensible number of domains based on the dataset size (bigger dataset = more domains expected). Bigger model demands automatically come with a higher quality bar.

Special (module) contracts

Occasionally a Corporate or Government offer asks that your brain has one or more specific modules equipped. These are a fast-track to reputation — the reputation payoff grows with the number of modules required:

+10 % for 1 required module
+15 % for 2 required modules
+20 % for 3+ required modules

The bonus is shown on the offer. Worth chasing if you want to build a relationship quickly.

Offer refresh

Vendors restock their offers on a cooldown after you fulfill one:

Class	Refresh cooldown
Private	~1 hour
Corporate	~1 day
Government	~3 days

The cooldown reflects how demanding each class is. Governance sector bonuses can speed refreshes up. Vendors always start stocked; the cooldown only applies to restocking a slot you've already used.

Unlocking sectors

You start with Finance, Research and Governance — the sectors most useful early. The rest are locked at first.

You earn unlock tokens at progression milestones (reaching a sector reputation level, buying the Builder rig, etc.).
Spend a token to open any locked sector of your choice — so players pick their own path.
Security stays "Coming soon" until its bonuses are ready.

Per-vendor lore pages

Every vendor's in-game detail screen has a LORE ↗ link that opens the vendor's page on the website:

https://neuronidle.com/vendors/<vendor-slug>/

The slug is the vendor's name in lower-case with spaces replaced by hyphens — for example, Industrial Standards Authority → industrial-standards-authority. The full 63-vendor catalog is browsable with sector / class filters at /vendors/.

Tips

Don't just chase the highest payout — sector bonuses compound. Sinking rep into one or two sectors early pays off for the whole run.
Fulfill, don't cancel. Cancelling costs reputation you had to work for. Better to refuse the offer up-front than accept one you can't ship.
Module contracts are the rep-farm. If you already have the modules a Corporate vendor wants, those +10–20 % bonuses stack fast.
Governance rep pays for itself — more contract slots + faster refreshes means more contracts finished per day, everywhere.
If a vendor is close to their next tier ("Next rep →" line), a targeted contract or two locks in the sector bonus early.