# Institution: Gangs

*Gangs as **contraband economies** — not mood. The social capstone of the **Institution** suite of
RimWorld 1.6 mods.*

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## What Gangs is

Gangs turns the loose, disposed pawns in your colony — colonists, prisoners, slaves — into a
**network** that moves contraband. When disposition and circumstance line up, pawns who already share
a bond band together, and a member who holds a stash quietly resupplies a member who has none. A
search that turns up nothing on one prisoner has therefore *not* cleaned out the wing: the wing is a
supply chain, and you only searched one link.

That is the entire point, and it is a deliberately narrow one. Gangs does not do mood. It does not do
a "gang leader buff." It does the one thing nothing else in the ecosystem does — it makes contraband
**flow between pawns**, and then hands you the tools to cut the flow.

## The gap it fills (and the one it doesn't)

If you run **Prisoner Realism**, its *Ringleader* system already models a dominant prisoner spreading
unrest and mood contagion through a wing. That system is good, and Gangs does not touch it. Ringleader
owns *influence and mood*.

Gangs owns the thing Ringleader has no equivalent for: **the network as a supply chain.** Contraband
physically changes hands along social lines. A stash on one pawn is a stash available to the whole
gang. The two systems are complementary — run both. Ringleader tells you *who stirs the pot*; Gangs
tells you *how the shivs get around*.

## Why it needs the whole suite

Gangs is the module built **last**, because it needs every other Institution mod already in place. It
is not a standalone feature; it is the suite working together, and it is honest about that in its
dependencies:

| It asks... | ...and the answer comes from |
|---|---|
| *Who is disposed enough to join?* | **Institution: Core** — the propensity engine that scores each pawn's Nature and Nurture |
| *What do they move?* | **Institution: Contraband** — concealment, stashes, search, and the bent-warden supply route |
| *Where does a fight get booked, and how are rivals kept apart?* | **Institution: Justice** — the crime/deterrence loop, and Classification's segregation |

Remove any one of those and Gangs has nothing to stand on. It is the place where Core's spectrum,
Contraband's stashes, and Justice's policing all cash out at once.

## A healthy colony grows few gangs — or none

This is the thesis, and it is enforced in the numbers, not just the flavour. Membership is gated at a
Nature × Nurture score of **0.9 or higher** — a high bar on purpose. A disposed pawn who is
**well-kept and well-policed** does not band up: their nurture multiplier stays low, and deterrence
pulls it lower still. It takes a foul streak (nature) *and* a badly-run situation (nurture) at the
same time.

So a gang problem is a **symptom**. It is the game telling you that a wing is mistreated, under-policed,
or both. The fix is never "fight the gang system" — it is to run a better prison. Feed them, give them
recreation, keep deterrence high, segregate rivals, and the networks starve on their own.

> A gang is a symptom of a badly-run colony, not furniture.

## The pages

- **[Joining](Joining.md)** — why the join bar (Nature × Nurture ≥ 0.9) is high, why good treatment and
  deterrence keep pawns *out*, and how membership is re-checked for every kind of pawn.
- **[Networks and Smuggling](Networks-and-Smuggling.md)** — how a holder resupplies a needy gangmate,
  the *same-gang-and-can-reach* rule, why this defeats a single search, and how a bent warden refills a
  starved network from outside.
- **[Rivalry and Fights](Rivalry-and-Fights.md)** — how a gang fight is booked as a crime through
  Justice, why inside-the-wire and out-on-the-street are the same offence, and how it feeds deterrence.
- **[Affiliations and Segregation](Affiliations-and-Segregation.md)** — shared faction, faith, or
  friendship plus *same room* as the formation rule, why rival factions become rival gangs, and how
  Classification's segregation is the counter-play that starves a network which cannot reach itself.

## The suite

Part of the **Institution** suite of RimWorld 1.6 mods:

- **Institution: Core** — the propensity engine (Nature × Nurture), criminal records, secured context.
- **Institution: Contraband** — concealment, improvised shivs, tunnels, warden search and corruption.
- **Institution: Justice** — Classification, Deterrence, Discipline, Parole, Regime.
- **Institution: Gangs** — this mod: joining, networks/smuggling, rivalry/fights.

Sibling projects: **Foul Play** (the vessel/substance framework and the "Piss Nuke") and **Ward** (a
ward/treatment prison mode).

Each mod stands alone as an install; together they form one system.

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*Part of the **Institution** suite — Core · Contraband · Justice · Gangs (this). Each mod stands alone; together they are one system.*