v1.12.0 Economy Rebalance

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -1,5 +1,61 @@
 # Changelog
 
+## v1.12.0
+
+- **The whole economy is retuned to a weeks-long curve.** A daily player now
+  reaches tiers 0-9 in the first four days, tier 10 around day 18, and the top
+  of the ladder over the following weeks. Previously the entire 14-tier ladder
+  fell inside two weeks and a Singularity was available *every single day*.
+
+  The rack ladder itself was never the problem - in isolation it was a clean
+  doubling curve. What broke it was every reward system layered on top, which
+  together multiplied progression by about 21x.
+
+- **Signal Boost no longer makes the anomaly boost permanent.** It scaled the
+  boost's *duration* as well as its payout, so at max level a 2-4x global
+  multiplier lasted longer than the interval between anomalies. Measured boost
+  uptime was 55% of session time. Signal Boost now scales the payout only, and
+  anomalies are rarer, more valuable, and give you twice as long to catch one.
+
+- **Legacy Cores plateau, and Singularity is finally worth taking.** Cores
+  stop buying output past a cap; beyond it they are fuel for the next
+  Singularity. That plateau is the point - Singularity used to be a strict
+  downgrade at every scale (it zeroes cores and returned far less than it
+  destroyed), and was only survivable because cores regrew within a day.
+  Singularity yield is now linear in cores rather than a square root, and the
+  Engine upgrade has a longer tail so the shard tree stays a long-term goal.
+
+- **Quantum Bootstrap is x3 per level, not x10.** Maxed alongside Deep Cache it
+  handed you 11,000,000 credits at every Migrate - enough to buy straight back
+  into the mid-game, so Migrate had stopped being a reset. Echo Cores now
+  grants a share of the Migrate gain instead of a flat amount.
+
+- **Incidents are twice as frequent but individually softer, and preparing is
+  now clearly worth it.** Supplies used to be break-even at best and an
+  outright loss for two of the three, so the rational play was to ignore the
+  entire prepaid economy. Drive failures and overheats now hit your *top* rack
+  tier - a random victim was both unpredictable and usually trivial.
+
+- **Overheating is a real trade-off instead of a cliff.** Venting used to
+  supply far more cooling than any fleet could generate, so an attentive player
+  could never overheat and an inattentive one was punished constantly. Venting
+  is slower now, passive Auto-Vent is much stronger, and the meltdown notice
+  tells you which rack went dark and why.
+
+- **Live Event ladders scale with your output.** Their FLOPS rungs were fixed
+  numbers, so every seasonal event's FLOPS ladder cleared in a fraction of a
+  second. Targets are now expressed in seconds of your own production and
+  snapshotted when you join.
+
+- **Minigames pay far fewer wafers.** The whole permanent upgrade tree used to
+  be reachable in about two and a half hours of minigames.
+
+- **Reward magnitudes are now admin-tunable.** The root cause of most of the
+  above was that rate curves were tunable while payout sizes were hardcoded
+  constants calibrated for the early game. 21 new tunables cover them.
+
+Existing saves are unaffected in balance terms - no progress is rewritten.
+
 ## v1.11.0
 
 - **Things can now go wrong.** Every few hours something breaks: ransomware

README.md

@@ -29,6 +29,15 @@ global leaderboards, and a badge case of achievements that unlock on their own
 as you play. A daily login streak sits in the header. See
 [Social & Retention](#social--retention) below.
 
+As of v1.12, the economy is retuned to a weeks-long curve: tiers 0-9 in the
+first few days, tier 10 as a wall around day 18, and the top of the ladder over
+the weeks after. Legacy Cores plateau at a cap, which is what makes Singularity
+worth taking; anomaly boosts no longer run permanently; incidents are more
+frequent but softer and preparing for them now pays; overheating is a genuine
+trade-off; and Live Event ladders scale with your output instead of using fixed
+targets. Reward magnitudes that used to be hardcoded are admin-tunable. Existing
+saves keep their progress - nothing is rewritten.
+
 ## Architecture
 
 - `shared/` - a package used by both server and client (via a `@shared` Vite

client/src/RackStack.jsx

@@ -339,7 +339,7 @@ export default function RackStack({ user }) {
     lastTickAtRef.current = now;
     setState(next);
 
-    if (serverState.server.overheated) setModal({ type: 'meltdown' });
+    if (serverState.server.overheated) setModal({ type: 'meltdown', tierIndex: serverState.server.overheated?.tierIndex });
 
     // v1.11: one-shot outage notices, same lifecycle as `overheated` above.
     // Toast, not modal - these are information, not a reward (the v1.10 rule:
@@ -526,7 +526,7 @@ export default function RackStack({ user }) {
       if (stateRes.offlineGain > 1) {
         setModal({ type: 'welcome', amount: stateRes.offlineGain });
       } else if (initial.server.overheated) {
-        setModal({ type: 'meltdown' });
+        setModal({ type: 'meltdown', tierIndex: initial.server.overheated?.tierIndex });
       }
       // Live Events (v1.4): GET /api/state already carries this player's
       // claimable event identity - seed activeEvent from it directly so the
@@ -566,7 +566,7 @@ export default function RackStack({ user }) {
       lastTickAtRef.current = now;
       stateRef.current = next;
       setState(next);
-      if (next.server.overheated) setModal({ type: 'meltdown' });
+      if (next.server.overheated) setModal({ type: 'meltdown', tierIndex: next.server.overheated?.tierIndex });
     }, TICK_MS);
     return () => clearInterval(iv);
   }, [loaded]);
@@ -1093,8 +1093,8 @@ export default function RackStack({ user }) {
   const runForOverclock = { ...state.run, heat: heatPct };
 
   const ctx = goalCtx(state, config.data, now);
-  const gain = migrateGain(state.run.lifetimeRun, eff.legacyGainMult);
-  const singularityGain = Math.floor(Math.sqrt(state.meta.legacyCores || 0));
+  const gain = migrateGain(state.run.lifetimeRun, eff.legacyGainMult, config.data);
+  const singularityGain = Math.floor((state.meta.legacyCores || 0) * config.data.prestige.shardsPerCore);
 
   // Single source of truth with the tour's auto-start effect above.
   const { gridUnlocked, overclockUnlocked, singularityUnlocked, coldStorageUnlocked } = buildTourCtx(state, now);

client/src/game/components/modals/MessageModal.jsx

@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 import { AlertTriangle } from 'lucide-react';
+import { TIER_DEFS } from '@shared/gameData.js';
 import { amber, violet, danger, textDim, textMain } from '../../theme.js';
 import { fmt } from '../../helpers.js';
 
@@ -38,14 +39,24 @@ export default function MessageModal({ modal, onClose }) {
           <button onClick={onClose} className="w-full rounded-lg py-2 text-sm font-semibold" style={{ background: violet, color: '#0E141B' }}>Nice</button>
         </>
       );
-    case 'meltdown':
+    // The pre-v1.12 copy here described PRE-v1.11 behaviour ("the lane is
+    // frozen ... no nodes were lost"), which stopped being true when the
+    // overheat penalty moved to the Racks lane. Name the actual victim.
+    case 'meltdown': {
+      const downed = typeof modal.tierIndex === 'number' ? TIER_DEFS[modal.tierIndex] : null;
       return (
         <>
           <h2 className="text-lg font-bold mb-2 flex items-center gap-2" style={{ color: danger }}><AlertTriangle size={18} /> Overheated!</h2>
-          <p className="text-sm mb-4" style={{ color: textDim }}>Your Overclock Bay hit 100% heat and the lane is frozen for a short cooldown - no nodes were lost. Keep an eye on the heat gauge and vent regularly, or invest in Thermal Regulators / Auto-Vent upgrades to avoid the lockout.</p>
+          <p className="text-sm mb-4" style={{ color: textDim }}>
+            {downed
+              ? `Your Overclock Bay hit 100% heat and took your ${downed.name} offline while it cools. Overclocking is what multiplies your racks, so running it hot risks the very thing it amplifies.`
+              : 'Your Overclock Bay hit 100% heat and the lane is frozen while it cools.'}
+            {' '}Vent before the gauge fills, or invest in Thermal Regulators / Auto-Vent to raise the fleet you can run unattended.
+          </p>
           <button onClick={onClose} className="w-full rounded-lg py-2 text-sm font-semibold" style={{ background: danger, color: textMain }}>Understood</button>
         </>
       );
+    }
     case 'singularityDone':
       return (
         <>