hoatv2211 Economy Source Sink Model
Overview
Make economy assumptions explicit by balancing normalized sources and sinks per currency, player segment, and time horizon.
When to use
Use for progression economies, reward calendars, crafting costs, vendor pricing, inflation reviews, currency conversions, and monetization-adjacent design analysis.
When NOT to use
Do not use to change live prices, grant currency, purchase items, or claim player behavior without telemetry or playtest evidence.
Required inputs and context discovery
Collect currency and item definitions, source and sink events, rates, caps, exchange rules, player segments, session cadence, progression targets, telemetry window, and uncertainty ranges.
Safety and risk level
Read-only modeling. Real-money pricing, regulated loot systems, or live economy changes require legal, product, and human review outside this skill.
Workflow
- Normalize currencies, items, sources, sinks, and conversion edges. Completion criterion: every flow has a unit, direction, frequency, and owning system.
- Define representative player segments and time horizons. Completion criterion: assumptions and evidence sources are explicit for each segment.
- Calculate net flow, stock accumulation, affordability, and sink coverage. Completion criterion: observed inputs are separate from forecast values and uncertainty.
- Identify inflation, starvation, dead-currency, and exploit risks. Completion criterion: each risk cites the flows or conversion loop that causes it.
- Propose bounded tuning experiments and telemetry needs. Completion criterion: no live value changes occur and every proposal has a measurable outcome.
Evidence and output contract
Produce economy-source-sink-model.json with definitions, segments, normalized flows, net values, affordability, risks, assumptions, sensitivity ranges, and proposed experiments.
Handoff contract
Record model version, input sources, uncertain assumptions, high-risk loops, proposed owners, telemetry gaps, and approval needs for any live change.
Pitfalls and anti-rationalization
- Forecasts are not observed telemetry.
- Total sources and sinks hide segment-specific starvation.
- Conversion loops can duplicate value even when each edge looks safe.
- A balanced spreadsheet does not prove the economy is fun.
Verification checklist
- Every flow has a unit and direction.
- Segments and time horizons are explicit.
- Forecasts and observations are separated.
- Conversion loops are reviewed.
- Live changes remain outside this read-only model.
References and scripts
Use the bundled scripts/economy_model.py for deterministic normalized-flow checks. Connect real telemetry only through project-approved sanitized exports.