In GangCity, everything revolves around marginal advantages: a few extra percent of success chance or income can be the difference between a failed job and a fat payday. Those advantages are called buffs — temporary or structural bonuses that affect your success chance, income or cooldowns. Buffs come from several sources at once and stack together, up to a set maximum per type.
Every city grants its own permanent bonus for as long as you stay there:
So travel with a purpose: if you mainly want to earn money from crimes, Chicago is a strong base of operations; if you mostly go burgling, Philadelphia pays off. See also traveling.
Fresh gangsters get a helping hand: during your first 7 days, or until you reach the rank of Soldier, you automatically get -15% cooldown on crimes. This lets you repeat actions faster in your early days and build up your rank without long interruptions.
If you are married, that brings an economic advantage: as long as your partner is online, you earn +2% extra crime income. As soon as your partner goes offline, the bonus temporarily lapses — so it pays to be active together.
Members of a family can activate a temporary buff for the whole family through donations to the family. Such a buff automatically applies to every member's actions for as long as it is active.
There are also buffs with a fixed duration, which you can obtain in several ways:
Buffs from different sources stack together: a city bonus, a marriage bonus and a temporary buff on the same aspect reinforce each other. Every buff type does have a set cap, so the effect never grows without limit. Your active buffs are shown wherever they apply, for example during a crime or a robbery.
The boosts you buy with honor points — such as Discretion or Connections — also work through this same bonus system. So keep an eye on which sources you already have running before spending money or honor points on an extra buff that just hits the cap anyway.