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STREET GUIDE/SOCIAL & COMBAT

Kill Operations & the Safe House

How planned hits work — and how the safe house blocks direct attacks.

The kill operation is the player-versus-player route to permadeath in Crime City. It is slow, expensive, loud in bullets — and final unless the victim still has their one VIP-code revival.

Anatomy of a hit

  1. Hire detectives. Pick an active target whose level is no more than three below yours, then put a crew of detectives on them. Crews charge by your level — the bigger your name, the bigger the invoice — and the price climbs steeply with crew size, so a full manhunt is a serious investment. You can have only one unexecuted operation at a time. More detectives search faster and find more often, but no hunt is ever guaranteed: a search that comes back empty is money spent. Hiring also commits you to the street: while the operation is live you cannot enter the safe house and you cannot start a Training & University session, so the people who find out you are hunting them have somewhere to send an answer.
  2. Wait for intel. The operation opens with a waiting window, and the size of your crew is what shortens it — a lone detective can be at it the better part of a day, a full crew brings the address back within the hour. If and when they deliver, the clock starts.
  3. The shadow window. You have 2 real hours to pull the trigger before the trail goes cold and the operation is wasted.
  4. Execute. Commit bullets and a personal message for the obituary if you're feeling theatrical. Optionally pay 1,000 $CRIME from your in-game balance to keep your name off it. The roll decides who walks away — unless they are in the safe house, in which case your crew finds the door barricaded, the contract is void on the spot, and not one bullet is spent. You will not know that is coming: nothing before that moment tells you where they are.

The roll — and the backfire

Your odds ride on bullets committed, your Kill skill, and all four effective stats — including bonuses from Weapons, Armor, Gadgets, and Accessories — against the target's loadout and bodyguards, who screen their principal and can die doing it. No hit is ever certain, however much you spend on it.

Meanwhile the target shoots back. Every player carries a backfire stance — return half, equal, or double the attacker's bullets — and it is armed from your first day, set to equal: match the shooter round for round. Nobody has to find the setting to be dangerous, so plan every hit as though the target is loaded. A backfire can wound you into the hospital, or kill you outright: walk into a defended target and it's your name on the dead page. Both dying is also on the table.

OutcomeWhat follows
Target killedPermadeath: if the attacker survives, they loot most of the victim’s pocket cash and $CRIME, claim any kill bounties, and take the kill credit. Murder still draws heat — expect a real chance of jail.
Target survivesEvery attempt reaches them — a near-miss can wound them into the hospital, and even a clean whiff pings their inbox. They see your name unless you paid to stay anonymous. Your bullets are spent either way, and failed hits can land you in jail.
Attacker killedThe backfire ended you instead. The defender takes the credit — and your pockets.
The after-action report
However the roll lands, the full account stays on screen until you close it: bullets spent, return fire taken, what came off the body, bounties paid, Kill skill earned, which bodyguards fell and whether the murder squad picked you up. The same report is mailed to you (Intel filter in your inbox) and kept on the History tab of the Operations page — open any past shot to read it back.
Killing anonymously
At execution you can spend 1,000 $CRIME from your in-game balance to keep your name off the hit — the victim only ever sees "someone." It buys an attempt, not a guarantee: if the target's gang runs an active Informant Network, the network still gets a chance to unmask you, and a bigger network catches more. And if their backfire kills you, the body gives you up regardless — anonymity only shields a shooter who walks away. The fee is burned whether or not it holds.
Kill protection
New players under protection can’t be targeted at all, and a dead player who buys their way back with a VIP revival returns with a 15-minute grace window. Those are the only two shields in the game — everyone else is always reachable.

The safe house

When you know someone's hunting you, disappear. The safe house (on the Operations page) blocks direct beatings, sabotage, and kill operations for a period you choose — from 15 minutes up to 12 real hours (2 game days). It does not prevent someone from placing a bounty on you. The price scales with your level and the duration; while inside, ordinary gameplay actions are blocked — though chat, mail and honour (from your dashboard) still go out. It's a place to let a shadow window expire.

Nobody can see you in there. Detectives can still be hired against you and their clock still runs — but an address is only ever delivered while you are outside. Stay in for a hunter's whole search window and the crew never finds you; all they are told is that the trail went cold, the same words a search that never found anything gets. And if someone pulls the trigger while you are inside, their crew reaches a barricaded door: the contract dies there, no bullets are fired, and you are never told it happened. Nothing about a hit against you reaches you except an active Informant Network's warning that detectives were hired.

The catch is that this is protection, not evasion. The clock never stops for you: a search you sit out is a search that was running the whole time, so the moment you step outside you are findable again — and any crew still inside its window can deliver that day.

The other catch is that it is for the hunted, not the hunter. You cannot go in while your own operation is running — detectives on the street, or a shadow window open — and the same rule keeps you out of the gym. Call the operation off (and forfeit the hire fee) if you would rather hide than shoot.

Leaving early is allowed; re-entering has a 2-hour cooldown — exactly one shadow window — so you can't strobe in and out of reach while a hunter's operation is live.

The aftermath

The dead learn who killed them — unless the killer stayed anonymous. When an eligible bystander is available, the kill also creates a tradeable witness statement in the city's records: a beating never produces one, only a kill does, and the statement names the shooter no matter what they paid for anonymity. Kill points feed both personal and gang standings, but the city keeps its body count quiet while the round is live — the season's deadliest names are only published once the round closes.

Dying is not quite the end of the story: see Seasons & Permadeath for the heir, the estate, and the one road back.

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SabotageBounties