Quick answer
There is no official upgrade list, but successful runs agree on an order: registration furniture and the detective room first (income), then the locker room and hires, the briefing room ($1,250), armory ($950), garage ($1,450), and holding cells ($1,890), then the level-2 station (~$1,350) and the level-3 station (~$4,500, reputation level 8 required). All prices are player-observed, not official.
What upgrades actually do
The official description keeps it general: 'Many upgrade options can expand the Police Station's possibilities and reach.' In practice upgrades do three things — add rooms that unlock systems (detective room, briefing room, garage, holding cells), add capacity (lockers, more cells, a second detective room), and add resilience (the circuit room's power upgrades that keep employees working through outages).
Because every upgrade consumes the same limited budget, the game is really about sequence. Community runs that stall almost always bought prestige rooms before income rooms; runs that snowball buy income first and comfort later. The order below reflects that logic, with the player-observed prices attached so you can budget each phase before you start it.
A useful mental model from the footage: every room is either a faucet or a bucket. Faucets (detective room, briefing room, speed gun) put money in; buckets (comfort rooms, walls, vehicles) hold what you have. Buy faucets until the water is loud, then start on buckets.
Phase 1 — income first (days 1–5)
The first 'upgrades' are barely rooms at all: the pawn-shop starter kit (fax, shredder, forms — $205–$300) and the detective room's furniture set (desk, evidence board, scanner; $1,540 with supplies in one run). These turn paperwork into cash flow and double per-case payouts when you crack files yourself — nothing else in the game has a comparable return on that money.
Right behind them: the level-1 station build-out via the renovation company (369-777), which players price at roughly $550–$650 per early room, and the locker room (~$400–$425) with two lockers (~$225 each) for your first hires. By the end of this phase you should have staff faxing and filing while you investigate — the moment income stops depending on your own hands, the snowball starts.
Resist the two classic phase-1 temptations: buying the patrol car fantasy before the desk economy works, and hiring a big staff before there is work to delegate. Both feel like progress; both just move money from your account to Tony's till.
Phase 2 — the dispatch engine (mid game)
The briefing room ($1,250) is the keystone mid-game purchase: it converts your officers into a second income stream and comes with a forced staffing quest (two more lockers, two hires). Follow it with the armory (~$950) so teams can gear up from a wall of guns and cuffs, and the garage (~$1,450) so vehicles boost mission success and speed.
Holding cells ($1,890) belong in this phase too — Ron's call frames them as the station-side booking loop that turns arrests into batched prison payouts. Players running this exact order report the mid-game funding itself through speeding-ticket sessions ($1,700–$2,500 per outing) without stalling, which is the clearest sign the sequence is right.
Phase 2 is also where the game's timers start to matter: missions have clocks, prisoners have queues, and the day has 21:00 bills. The rooms in this phase are what turn those pressures from threats into routines.
Phase 3 — level 2, level 3, and the endgame station
The station-level purchases gate the top tier: level 2 at about $1,350 unlocks the next ring of rooms — players list a second detective room ($2,400), registration level 2 (~$2,500), a break room ($600), and power infrastructure (a basic transformer around $850, a circuit-room upgrade around $1,300, throughput modules $1,500 at Tony's). The circuit room matters more than it sounds: outages stop your employees cold.
Level 3 is the endgame gate: about $4,500 plus a reputation level 8 requirement, adding the garage wing, a brick wall, and the final tier of room upgrades. One detailed run tallied its remaining level-2 shopping at '$2,400 + $1,780 + $4,500 = $8,680' — plan income accordingly, and keep a wage cushion because the 21:00 bills do not care about your renovation plans.
After level 3, the objectives keep going — players report reputation level 9 and 10 goals — so treat the 'final' station as a checkpoint, not a finish line. The economy you built in phases 1 and 2 is what keeps running after the credits you imagined.
The vehicles: your biggest single purchases
Not every upgrade is a room. The prison transport van (about $700 through the furniture catalog, ordered via 968-7000) automates prisoner delivery at roughly $105 per prisoner — convenient, but players who deliver personally earn far more per head. The first true police cruiser costs $20,750 through the dealership (phone 248-648) and is comfortably a late-game purchase.
Vehicle economics matter: a new cruiser is faster than the damaged starter car (which caps around 50 mph), and garage-dispatch missions are quicker and safer with vehicles. But a $20,750 cruiser does not make money by itself — buy it after the station pays for itself, not before, and only once the level-3 bill is funded.
The community shorthand is worth stealing: vehicles are 'quality of life for a rich precinct.' Nobody in the footage ever regretted buying them late; several regretted buying them early.
A compact priority list you can follow
Condensing every run reviewed: forms/fax/shredder → detective furniture → level-1 rooms → locker room + two hires → briefing room → armory → holding cells → garage → level-2 station → second detective room → circuit/power upgrades → level-3 station → cruiser. Adjust for play style, but never buy a room that does not feed income or missions in this game's economy.
One caveat worth repeating: every price on this page is player-observed from footage, and prices shifted between the Prologue, demo, and full game. Treat the numbers as planning estimates and confirm in your own build — the order, not the digits, is the durable advice.
