# Networks and smuggling

*The one thing nothing else models: contraband that flows **between** pawns. A gang is a supply chain.*

This is the core of the mod. Everything else — who joins, who fights, who is kept apart — exists to
serve or to break the network described here. A gang is not a mood aura; it is a **logistics graph**,
and its edges carry contraband.

## The move

The heart of it is one method, `MoveWithin(from, to)`: a gangmate who is holding a stash passes a piece
of it to a gangmate who has none. It returns `true` if something actually moved.

```
MoveWithin(from, to):
  1. both non-null, and SameGang(from, to)          -- else false
  2. if both are Spawned: from must CanReach(to,      -- the reach gate
        PathEndMode.Touch, Danger.Deadly)             -- else false
  3. a Contraband tracker must exist on the map        -- else false
  4. 'from' must have at least one concealed item       -- else false
  5. take stash[0]:
        tracker.Confiscate(from, item.def)   -- leaves the supplier's hands
        tracker.Conceal(to,   item.def)      -- arrives, hidden, in the customer's
     return true
```

A few things worth reading carefully:

- **One item per move.** It takes `stash[0]` — the first concealed item on the supplier — and moves
  exactly that. It is a redistribution, not a duplication: the item leaves `from` (`Confiscate`) and
  arrives concealed on `to` (`Conceal`). The gang's total stash is unchanged; only *who holds it*
  changes.
- **Same gang, always.** `SameGang` requires both pawns to hold the same non-zero gang id. There is no
  smuggling to a stranger — the network only moves along membership.
- **The reach gate only applies to co-located pawns.** The `CanReach` check is guarded by
  `from.Spawned && to.Spawned`. Two pawns both physically on the map must have a walkable path
  (`Touch` range, willing to cross `Deadly` danger) between them. If a member is not spawned, the
  reach check is skipped — which is what allows a gang to reach across the wall to a member who is off
  the active map.

## Why this defeats a single search

Consider a wing of four gangmates and one shiv. You search Prisoner A and find nothing — clean. You
tick a box: *cell searched, no contraband.* But the shiv was on Prisoner C the whole time, and on the
next 5000-tick network pass it will move to whoever is out. Search C tomorrow and it may already be on
A again.

From the source comment, plainly:

> A gangmate holding a stash supplies one who has none, so a search that turns up nothing on one
> prisoner has not cleaned out the wing.

A single search is a snapshot of one node in a graph that reshuffles itself. This is the whole reason
contraband-as-a-network is worth modelling: **the unit of contraband is the wing, not the pawn.** To
clean it out you have to either search faster than it moves, or — far better — break the graph.

## The automatic resupply pass

You do not call `MoveWithin` by hand; the gang component does it on the 5000-tick check. After forming
gangs for the pass, it runs one resupply round **per gang**:

```
for each gang among the eligible crew:
    holder = first member who IS hiding contraband
    needy  = first member who is NOT hiding contraband
    if holder and needy both exist:
        MoveWithin(holder, needy)
```

So on each interval, every gang that has both a haves-member and a have-not-member performs **one**
transfer, moving a single item from a holder to someone empty-handed. Over several ticks the effect is
that a gang tends to keep its members supplied and to spread a stash out — which is exactly what makes
a scattershot search miss it. (Only members who currently meet the join bar participate in this
automatic pass; the resupply loop draws from the same `crew` used for formation.)

## The cross-wall move

Because `WouldJoin` and `SameGang` care nothing about a pawn's secured status, a gang can have a
**free** member and a **held** member. If the free member is holding the stash, the network resupplies
*into* the prison — the outside man passes to the inside man. The mod's integration test builds exactly
this: a free psychopath colonist and a prisoner in one gang, the stash on the free member, and
`MoveWithin(free, prisoner)` succeeds — after which the prisoner is hiding contraband and the free
colonist is not. Your prison's contraband problem is not sealed inside your prison.

## Resupply from outside: the bent warden

`MoveWithin` only *redistributes* what a gang already has. So what happens when you finally search the
whole wing on the same day and strip every member clean — the graph has no more edges to carry? The
gang is starved. It stays starved until contraband **re-enters** from outside.

That external source is not part of Gangs; it is **Institution: Contraband's** corruption route. A
warden's honesty varies by personality (a Greedy warden has a price), and a bent warden can *smuggle
contraband in to a prisoner* — `Corruption.Smuggle(warden, prisoner, tracker)` plants a concealed item
directly. That single seeded item is then all the network needs: one holder, and the 5000-tick pass
spreads it back out across everyone who can reach.

So the two halves of the supply picture are:

| Mechanism | Owner | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| `MoveWithin` | **Gangs** | moves existing contraband *between* gangmates who can reach each other |
| `Corruption.Smuggle` | **Contraband** | injects *new* contraband from outside via a corruptible warden |

Cut both and a gang genuinely dries up. Cut only the redistribution and a bent warden re-seeds it; cut
only the warden and any stash you missed keeps circulating.

## How to break a network

- **Search the whole wing at once**, not one pawn at a time. A partial sweep is a snapshot the network
  routes around.
- **Segregate rivals into different, unreachable wings** (Classification, in Institution: Justice). The
  reach gate is the lever — a network whose members cannot walk to each other cannot pass anything.
  This is the primary counter-play; see
  [Affiliations and Segregation](Affiliations-and-Segregation.md).
- **Clean up your wardens.** If searches never seem to finish the job, you may have a Greedy warden
  re-seeding the wing. Corruption is the resupply valve; personality is the fix.

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*Part of the **Institution** suite — Core · Contraband · Justice · Gangs (this). Each mod stands alone; together they are one system.*
*AI disclosure: developed with substantial assistance from Claude (Anthropic).*