Are they in the sense that if I stock piled money and then bought a bunch of staff before finals that it would take effect the next day at finals? Just wondering.

From my understanding, yes, points from staff hiring takes immediate effect. For example if you hired an assistant color guard director tonight, you would add 200 points to each caption. These additional caption points would translate into a higher game score. (Note that you won't see a huge boost in your score. Don't expect a 5 or 10 point boost in your score.)

Yes, and I believe a lot of players do it. Don't expect more than a few tenths or half a point, though, because by that point in the season any staff you add are only going to contribute a fraction of a percent of the total caption.

For example, let's say that going into Finals your Musical Ensemble and Musical GE skill values are both at 10,000. Then you purchase two ranks of Winds Arranger in your staff (+150 Mus Ens, +150 Mus GE each rank). You've added 300 more points to each caption in skill, but that's an increase of only 3% over the 10,000 you already had. And the percentages are not a direct correlation (because you increase the caption value 3% does not mean your score in that caption will rise 3%).

Thanks haha I was just wondering because I didn't see the point in not getting the biggest bang for my buck and just spending the money before I really *needed* to.

Spend your money, but spend it wisely

^Like