I got so many good advice in my first foray in the forums, but now I need some more. At last I have my core book copy plus the group is available, so we begin in the next few days. All are experienced roleplayers, but this will be our first in EP. Players are the heads of a microcorp providing intel services in Little Shanghai. In fact they are an unaffiliated Cognite branch, used for secondary black ops, when the Hypercorp feels that its name should not be risked to be further stigmatized. Keep in mind I do not intent to keep them attached to Cognite, eventually they should take the path they choose to. Introductionary situation is like this. There is a geneticist doctor who went rogue on Cognite a couple of years before. She gathered some specialists and started operating a lab, where they started working on a new morph design. In short a slightly weaker version of the Menton but with much lower production costs which will allow them to compete with Cognite. At the campaign start the new model is on a test run and members of the plot are sleeved in 4 prototypes and got loose in the metroplex in order to survey and debug their social behavior. Problem is that one of the prototypes got entangled in a workers demonstration and got held up by the DNSPM, its Ego ID wasn't recognized, it tried to flee and got terminated by the militiamen. Eventually the event and the body got to Cognite, who analyzed the situation and discerned that there is an extremely high probability that a minor company is preparing to emerge and compete in the same field. Cognite contacts the player company and requests the location of said company lab, seize any work is done or if not possible its destruction. 1st question: Where my story conflicts with EP reality? I have read and read all relevant sources to try and avoid and misteps to that direction, but EP is a difficult setting. For example maybe Cognite would not ever worry of a competitor emerging because it legaly holds all the monopoly rights on cognitive science. Or maybe it would be an extremely easy task to locate and destroy the rogue doctor's lab since the Hypercorp has the body of the prototype. 2nd question: I imagine the players should research the Mesh on any requests for meetings with implant surgeons, geneticists or techies and maybe survey the flow of morph generation materials in the city. WOuld such info be available via researching the Mesh or should it be gained via favors/bribes in the correct Networks? 3rd question: I plan to bombard the players with favor requests. Some could be simple ones (local criminal wants a pistol and fast type) and others could lead to side quests. How often should I have them bothered? And what reqards / penalties should I provide for doing or ignoring a favor request? My take is the more famous the person requesting the favor the less the gain if you do it but the more the loss if you ignore it. And ofc the higher the favor has higher reward to do it and smaller loss if ignored. 4th (minor) question: Do fly cars need to be on fly lanes? Could the party take a flycar to travel over non lane land?