Hi. I used to play Syndicate a looong time ago and now decided to give it another go.
I have quite a few questions about the macro mode and money:

1. What do the tax levels / research funding mean? Is this going into your treasury every day? Every week/month? How is game time related to real time (I know it's faster in missions). So far I was only able to see my money dropping due to research, but never increasing.

2. Are there any running costs? Manual and some FAQs say that fielding less agents costs you less money. How is that? Do I pay every time I send the agent out? Does the pay correlate to the length of the mission? Any running costs for global/map mode?

3. Does in-game time matter at all on global scale? (besides the money and research)
I see map changing colours, but does my competition progress? What if I just sit there after the 1st mission waiting until everything gets researched at minimal funding? Will the difficulty / equipment level of enemies grow with time or it's purely down to every map?

4. When suppressing rebellions - is the difficulty/equipment level always the same?

5. Items 3 and 4 can be combined into a simple exploit: set your initial territory to 100% tax. When it's rebelling, choose the most expensive research, set it to lowest funding available, go on the mission, persuade the colonel, wait 10+ (depending on funding) days until research is complete - conplete the mission. Any downsides to that approach (besides fun factor :) )?

6. Is research funding the cost for entire research project or cost per day/week/month? I had $200K, researched something with $8800 funding and was left with $20K after the mission.

7. Any numeric parameters for agent mods/encumberment (arms), etc? Or just "next level is better than the previous"?

Maybe, I want too much from this simple game, but I'm quite used playing Heroes3, so it shows :)

Its been a while since I've played, so I'll answer the best I can.

1 - The tax levels can be raised in each area to gain additional income at the cost of pissing off the local populace and having to re-do the mission once they rebel against you. Funding is used for gaining new weapons and gear, if you pick up a new item during a mission, the first you can find being an Uzi, it will be listed in your research page in place of "automatic weapons". That way you know what your getting when you research a gun, otherwise you won't know what your next auto weapon you'll earn will be (unless your familiar with the game). Research funding can be increased to reduce the time spent on research... I think, in the long run its the same price though. I can't remember the rate your income comes in at... I think its daily, but initially research will cost more than your income rate until you manage to grab a few areas.

2 - Only running costs is research costs and the price to buy ammo, including after any failed missions. Agents die permanently so there's the loss of the costs for bio-parts to remember.

3 - Ingame time does effect the global time, I'm pretty sure that mission time is accelerated compared to global. I think that nothing changes while you are in any screens outside of mission play, its only after a mission is finished that changes are made to the world (rebellions started etc, rival syndicates take over different areas). The game does get harder as you progress but I'm pretty sure its map based.

4 - Missions is exactly the same as before.

5 - Nope, you pretty much hit the nail on the head with how that works :)

6 - Honestly haven't got a clue, I always thought the funding research was its daily cost.
After a little thought I think the thing is: you make several payments a day. The progress bar has several increments during each day and that you pay as each increment is completed.

7 - Don't know that either, I also go with the "next level is better" thing.