Documentation

Balancing Constants

Central symbolic constants for ENERGY yield, action costs, grace windows, and economic tuning.

Section #12Updated 20/05/2026

Balancing Constants

This page is the canonical docs-level tuning surface. Contract, client, and landing implementations should import or mirror these values from one central constants module rather than scattering literals.

Implementation surfaces:

  • Solidity: EnergyConstants.sol
  • Client UI: economyConstants.ts
  • Docs and landing language: this page

ENERGY baseline

  • SLOTS_PER_TILE = 18
  • ENERGY_PER_EMPTY_SLOT_PER_DAY = 1 ENERGY
  • BASE_TILE_ENERGY_PER_DAY = 18 ENERGY
  • NEW_TILE_TAX_GRACE_PERIOD = 24 hours

Every live sector has 18 resource slots. An unused slot emits 1 ENERGY per day, so a completely empty tile emits 18 ENERGY per day.

ENERGY is abundant by design. It is a global SuperToken and action fuel, streamed from tile instances to owners based on uncommitted sector capacity. It is not a resource-tax token.

Slot conversion

  • occupiedSlotCount = sum(slotCost(resourceTier))
  • energyPerDay = (SLOTS_PER_TILE - occupiedSlotCount) * ENERGY_PER_EMPTY_SLOT_PER_DAY

Resource registrations convert general sector potential into specific output. The occupied slots no longer emit ENERGY.

Reference slot costs:

  • Common / Atoms: 1 slot
  • Uncommon / Hardware: 3 slots
  • Rare / Software/Data: 9 slots
  • Legendary / Frontier Compute: 15 slots

ENERGY action costs

  • BARGE_MOVEMENT_COST = 50 ENERGY flat per move

Movement is intentionally simple: moving a barge/army from tile A to tile B burns 50 ENERGY. Shields are out of scope for now.

A slot-day is the amount of ENERGY produced by one empty slot in one day. With the current baseline, 1 slot-day = 1 ENERGY.

Tax and acquisition constants

  • Empty and developed tiles are taxable after NEW_TILE_TAX_GRACE_PERIOD.
  • ENERGY cannot pay resource taxes, army maintenance, civic obligations, or tile acquisition claims.
  • Patent Harberger holding tax is paid in ENERGY.
  • Taxes and maintenance must be paid with resources.
  • Credits/USDC remain the settlement rails for auctions, trade, and payout surfaces.

Design invariant

If a player keeps a tile empty, they receive maximum ENERGY and maximum flexibility, but they still owe resource-denominated obligations after the grace period. If they mine, they sacrifice ENERGY yield to produce tax-paying resources and trade goods.

This prevents empty-tile farming from becoming a permanent tax loophole while preserving empty land as a meaningful short-term bootstrap and mobility strategy.