Where the fax fits in the loop
The fax machine is the bridge between paperwork and pay. Every stamped registration form and every cracked detective case becomes money at the fax: files go to HQ, and a bonus comes back. The in-game tutorial says the rule plainly — 'Use the fax machine to transfer them. Receive a bonus for the case files' — and community footage puts plain files at $15–$30 and cracked ones at about $60.
It is also a progression device: your first faxing quest is the moment the station starts earning, and the game marks it accordingly. Later, once you hire office workers, the fax becomes automated income — one player left his clerk filing cases and collected '$60 for each one' while out on patrol.
There is a satisfying arc to it: the machine that starts as your only source of income ends as a piece of furniture your staff feed while you do police work. Few purchases in the game tell the rags-to-precinct story as neatly.
Buying one: price, shop, and placement
Tony's pawn shop sells the fax (in person or by phone order at 612-555). It arrives as part of the mandatory day-2 shopping run — players report $205–$300 total for fax, shredder, registration forms, and printer paper. Delivery goes to the station's barrier, so open it in time; the courier's trip through town can take most of a day when the traffic light is against him.
Placement is a workflow decision. The default spot is the registration desk, on or beside the shredder, within steps of the stamp pad. Veterans add a second machine later — one streamer moved a second fax next to the detective room's output 'so we can get stuff sent off really quickly' instead of walking files across the building a dozen times a day.
The placement rule generalizes: in this game, distance is a tax. Every step between 'task finished' and 'task submitted' is paid per file, per day, per employee — and the fax is where that tax is easiest to eliminate.
The error rule and rejected files
The bonus rule cuts both ways: files with errors pay nothing, and the game checks before paying. Registration mistakes — a misspelled name, an unchecked wrong photo — must be fixed with the pen or rejected before faxing; a form with an uncorrectable flaw (expired ID, wrong face) goes to the shredder, not the fax. That discipline is the distance between $30 and zero.
Employees inherit the same discipline problem: footage shows hired workers faxing fine but occasionally rejecting good files, which is why players place their most careful (highest-intelligence) workers where the faxing happens. The fax does not consume printer paper itself — printing does — but a station without forms produces nothing to fax, so the paper chain matters end to end.
The shredder deserves equal billing: it is the error rule's enforcement mechanism, and archived junk goes there too. A clean desk with a working shredder is the registration loop's exhaust pipe — clog it and the whole system backs up.
Tips, quirks, and known issues
TipPractical tips from runs: fax before the day ends (queued files and the 21:00 billing sweep interact badly with income planning), keep several paper stacks stocked for the printer that feeds your detective work, and treat the shredder as the fax's co-worker — rejects and archived junk go there, and one Prologue run even found loose cash while cleaning around the machines.
Quirks worth knowing: the machine is flavor-old ('a very old fax machine' per one player), sending is click-and-wait with no mini-game, and there is no fax consumable beyond the paper chain. No fax-specific bugs were widely reported — the pain points around it are delivery timing and form supply.
Both are manageable with one habit: order paper and forms when the shelf is half empty, not when it is bare. The players who run out are always the ones who trusted the queue more than the shelf.
The fax economy at scale
It is worth seeing how big the fax gets by late game. With two or three staff feeding files and a machine near every output point, a single day can push a dozen or more files to HQ — one streamer's clerk alone produced '$60 for each one' while the chief patrolled. The fax stops being an errand and becomes a revenue line on the day summary.
Scale also changes your relationship with HQ's bonus rule. At ten files a day, one sloppy rejection costs real money, which is why late-game stations concentrate their highest-intelligence workers at the fax points and let the chief handle only the exceptional files.
The endpoint of all this is quietly funny: a game about being a police chief, whose economic engine is a very old fax machine working overtime. The community would not have it any other way.
And the machine itself deserves the last word on its own page: it has no ink to run out, no toner to shake, no paper-jam mini-game — the community has complained about stuck civilians, broken scanners, and glitched boards, but never once about the fax. In a game built from friction, the frictionless machine became everyone's favorite coworker.
The last practical tip ties the whole page together: keep one spare stack of forms on the shelf and one spare stack of paper at the printer, and the fax will never be the reason your day went badly. Every other machine in the station can be fixed by the chief; only the fax fixes the budget.
