Overview
Every in-game economy has three components: faucets (where resources enter), transformers (where resources change form), and sinks (where resources exit). Most game economies fail because the faucet-to-sink ratio drifts over time: early game has tight faucets and meaningful sinks, mid-game has growing faucets but the same sinks, and late game has open faucets and no sinks — producing inflation that makes every resource decision trivial.
The Resource Economy Framework builds the complete resource lifecycle with three properties: (1) faucet-sink balance calibrated per tier so the net resource gain per hour stays within a target band — never zero (player feels stuck) and never unbounded (resources become meaningless), (2) transformation chains that create intermediate scarcity — the player must decide whether to spend Resource A now or transform it into Resource B for later, and (3) inflation detection thresholds that trigger automatic sink adjustments when the circulating supply exceeds the target range.
What you get: - Resource inventory with faucet, transformer, and sink per resource - Faucet-sink balance sheet with net gain per hour per tier - Transformation chain map with conversion rates and opportunity costs - Inflation detection thresholds with automatic correction mechanisms - Scarcity schedule (when each resource should be scarce vs. abundant) - Economy stress test scenarios (what breaks under edge-case player behavior)
Built for: game economists, systems designers, and live-ops teams who need economies that stay balanced across months of play — not just the first week.