KN-86 Economy Model

../../../tools/economy-sim.lsp, the career simulators that own every number in this model.

Method: Czerkawski, Game Economy Design ch. 1-2, per the gameplay-engineer skill. Decisions recorded at the lowest fidelity that holds. Every number is a balancing variable living in the simulators; this doc names the knobs and the shape.

The fixed rules (Josh)

1. Contracts pay credits; credits buy capability and deck upgrades.
2. Reputation gates which offers appear.
3. Cartridge ownership makes capability jobs eligible; board filters toggle by capability.
4. Missions resolve as small mysteries; success locks facts into DOSSIER; generation reads them back.

The acquisition loop (progressive disclosure; Josh, 2026-07-16)

The catalog is the Verbs/Capabilities/Keys map (Josh’s workbook, 2026-07-02): Tier-2 verbs and equipment across the 17-cart library, plus first-party programs, some of which ship locked. The operator starts with a limited kit, and items enter the shop through play:

1. Start limited. Each cart ships a minimal working verb set; a subset of the 13 first-party programs is active from boot.
2. Teach by need. The board offers a mission that is nearly impossible without a capability the operator lacks. A fair long way around exists (roguelike First Law), so the mission is a lesson, never a wall.
3. Expose. On debrief, the missing verb, program, or equipment appears with a price. The struggle is the advertisement.
4. Buy. Credits convert a felt gap into capability (rule 1 in action).

Four acquisition channels, kept distinct: bought (core verbs, equipment, locked programs, program tiers, rig stats), discovered (:discoverable CONS composites like REWRITE / SHADOW / LAUNDER; never sold, or the discovery joy dies), granted (the starter kit and baseline programs), disclosed (capability a cartridge exposes when a gate value crosses a threshold; see Gate values). Exposure pacing means spend paces with progression, and the disclosed channel costs no credits.

The elements, classified

Element	Class	Role
Credits	currency	the wallet; the only thing spent
Reputation	standing (not spendable)	the resume; gates offers; achievement pays here
DOSSIER facts	resource	investigation output; generation reads them; never bought, spent, or consumed
Tools, program tiers, rig upgrades, consumables	goods	what credits buy

Method rulings this inherits: spending power routes to credits and achievement routes to standing (a score cashed for pocket money reads as absurd); the main currency uses large base units so tiny nudges (bare-deck bounties) and large payouts coexist.

The pooled wallet has a short list of sanctioned writers: mission resolution (the payout on completion), the bare-deck bounty award (the credit trickle in the activity table below), and the future shop debit (the buy step of the acquisition loop). Every one of them goes through the runtime’s evented wallet setters (deck.c), which publish UDS_CREDIT_CHANGED / UDS_REPUTATION_CHANGED so the mission board, CIPHER, and the status surfaces see the balance move; the balance floors at 0 and no other code path mutates the wallet directly (GWP-718).

The table above is the whole economy. Deck-wide state is wider than the economy, and one category sits outside it.

Gate values (outside the element classes)

A gate value is deck-wide state that decides what a cartridge makes visible. No part of the economy prices it, pays it, or spends it, so it is not a fifth element class (Josh, 2026-07-29: “i’m not a super huge fan of adding a 5th item to the economy, i understand knowledge_index is supposed to gate functionality. but if we can then progressively disclose/expose functionality in cartridges, gated solely by this value”). The four classes above cover what the operator earns, holds, and spends; a gate value never enters that circulation. ADR-0061 is the authority.

knowledge_index is the one sanctioned gate value, named in Josh’s premise for The Vault as a real Universal Deck State stat that other cartridges read. Reputation also gates and stays an element: the operator earns it from mission outcomes and the board reads it as a threat-tier ceiling (reputation_tier_for in mission_board.c). knowledge_index is earned by study inside one cartridge and read as capability disclosure inside others, so folding the two together would make an hour in the archive raise the mission board’s threat ceiling.

Monotonic, and why that is safe

knowledge_index has a faucet and no sink. The faucet is research work in The Vault: bounties completed, entries cross-referenced, profiles synthesized. The value rises and never falls.

Every element in the table above needs a paired sink because an unbounded faucet inflates the economy. A gate value escapes that rule by being firewalled from the wallet. Its only sanctioned read is disclosure: a product tier, a supply option, or a knowledge domain becomes visible once the value crosses a threshold. It never multiplies a payout, never lowers a contract’s threat level, and never discounts a price, so no amount of reading in the archive can move a credit balance. Nothing inflates, and nothing needs draining.

The sink a monotonic stat would otherwise need is amnesia, and taking back a capability the operator has already seen breaks progressive disclosure. The Vault’s re-anchoring may still add a retention mechanic in which mission knowledge is wiped at mission end unless the cart is present (recorded in ../../future-concepts.md §13); that is per-cart run state, separate from this deck-wide stat.

Read-side rules

1. Capabilities appear; payouts do not multiply. A threshold crossing exposes a verb, a tier, an option, or a listing. Payout bonuses, threat reductions, and price discounts are off-limits, because those write into the currency the gate value is firewalled from.
2. Thresholds are per-cart authoring data. SynthFence’s product tiers belong to SynthFence. The career simulators in tools/ model credits and reputation only, and carry no gate-value knob.
3. A gate value never gates a first-party program. ADR-0042’s enrich-never-gate rule holds: programs are always present, and a cart enriches their data without gating access.
4. One gate value is sanctioned. A second one is its own decision, taken on its own merits.

Activity -> intensity -> reward

Activity	Intensity signal	Reward
Bare-deck bounties	seconds, no risk	credit trickle (retention nudge)
Single-phase contract	threat level	credits by threat + rep by threat
Multi-phase campaign	threat x phase count	phase payouts + completion bonus + rep
Recon / casing	time spent before commitment	DOSSIER facts (de-risk or unlock follow-on work)
Failure	quit early vs fail late	costs rep; late failure costs more than early abandon

Deterministic rewards (posted payouts) build the habit; a rare non-deterministic kicker (an opportunity contract, an over-tier payout) breaks the grind. Rate is a knob.

Faucet / sink pairs

Faucet	Paired sink (framed as a bought service)
Contract payouts	tools and consumable gear (bought repeatedly)
Campaign scores	program tiers and rig upgrades (the progression ladder)
Bounty trickle	small fees (retries, re-seeds)
Career-long surplus	one long-horizon capstone purchase (the synthetic identity, already in the fiction; owning it is also what unlocks changing the deck’s operator, per the ADR-0057 amendment)

A recurring service drain is wanted (something continually needed, offered forever). Candidates: consumable panic gear, access tolls, the platform skim already in the fiction. Pick from play, not from this doc.

The journey

• First session: generous and legible. The operator ends session one having bought something.
• Mid game: choice opens. Save for a program tier or churn tools; pick which capability to deepen (which cartridges the operator owns shapes which jobs exist, rule 3).
• Late game: things a newcomer cannot reach: top-tier offers gated by reputation, work gated by DOSSIER facts only a veteran’s world contains, and the capstone purchase.

Balancing variables (the knobs; numbers live in the sim)

base_payout_per_threat, multi_phase_bonus, bounty_session_yield, catalog_classes (class, count, price band, exposure-stage band; taxonomy in catalog-taxonomy.md), consumable_price, rep_gain_per_threat, rep_loss_fail / rep_loss_abandon, rep_gate_curve (rep -> max threat offered), broke_relief (low-balance payout boost; no rich-side penalty, saving is the point), opportunity_rate, capstone_price.

Feel targets (set by Josh, 2026-07-16)

• T1: first purchase by end of session 1.
• T2: first program upgrade at ~4 hours.
• T3: top reputation gate opens around ~500 hours (the platform grows toward 17 carts; the ladder is a career-length climb).
• T4: capstone at ~1000 hours or similar.

Current knob values hit all four in both simulators (tools/economy_sim.py and the KEC Lisp port tools/economy-sim.lsp; same knobs, different PRNG, milestones agree within noise).

Undesigned

1. The teaching-mission generator. Progressive disclosure needs the board to read the operator’s kit and shape the occasional contract around the missing capability.
2. The last stretch. Catalog purchases span the first ~600 hours (both sims); the remaining ~350 before the capstone drain only through consumables.