Economy Config & Tuning

Almost all balance is data. Prices, restock rates, heat gains, the Director, laundering, and betrayal tuning are config values you can change and hot reload. This page maps the systems to their knobs. For the gameplay meaning of each number, follow the links to the systems pages.

IMPORTANT

Game-specific tuning lives in the mod's own config files, loaded with the mod. Keep your tuning in your mod, not in framework-level config.

Drug economy

The primary balance knobs for the drug trade.

{
  "drugAddict": {
    "cashIncrementInterval": 20,
    "cashIncrementAmount": 50.0,
    "maxCash": 500.0,
    "crackDrainAmount": 5.0
  },
  "drugTrafficker": {
    "cocaineRestockInterval": 15,
    "bufferMultiplier": 10
  },
  "pricing": {
    "traffickingCocaineSaleAmount": 200.0,
    "traffickingCocainePrice": 1000.0,
    "retailCrackSaleAmount": 50.0,
    "retailCrackPrice": 500.0,
    "wholesaleCocaineSaleAmount": 200.0,
    "wholesaleCocainePrice": 1400.0
  }
}

Key	Controls	System
drugAddict.cashIncrement*	How fast addicts accumulate money to spend	Economy
drugTrafficker.cocaineRestockInterval	How often suppliers restock	Economy
drugTrafficker.bufferMultiplier	Supplier max inventory headroom	Economy
pricing.*	Buy, retail, and wholesale amounts and prices	Economy

Purchase size and dynamic supply

How much each crew member buys per trip is the desiredState value on their buy goal, not a price key. Suppliers read it and scale stock automatically:

restock = member count x purchase size, max inventory = member count x purchase size x bufferMultiplier

Change the buy goal's target and the whole supply chain adapts. See Economy.

Heat

{
  "decayIntervalTicks": 300,
  "decayRates": {
    "residential": 0.05,
    "commercial": 0.04,
    "industrial": 0.025,
    "drug_trade": 0.02
  },
  "eventHeatGain": {
    "HAND_OFF_DRUGS": 8,
    "APPREHEND_SUSPECT": 5,
    "INTIMIDATE_WITNESS": 4,
    "CONFIRM_BRIBE": 3,
    "INVESTIGATE_SCENE": 2
  },
  "gangAvoidanceThreshold": 70
}

Key	Controls	System
eventHeatGain.*	Heat added per crime	Heat
decayRates.*	How fast each section type cools	Heat
gangAvoidanceThreshold	Heat level crew start avoiding	Heat

The Director

{
  "director": {
    "enabled": true,
    "tickInterval": 100,
    "threatWeights": {
      "cashWeight": 0.4,
      "activityWeight": 0.3,
      "pressureBuildup": 0.3,
      "jitterFactor": 0.1
    },
    "cashNormalize": 3000,
    "eventThreshold": 0.25,
    "globalCooldownTicks": 300,
    "perTypeCooldownTicks": {
      "rival_gang_attack": 900,
      "fbi_raid": 1800,
      "police_sweep": 600
    }
  }
}

Key	Controls	System
threatWeights.*	The four inputs to the threat score	Director
eventThreshold	How high the score must go to fire	Director
cashNormalize	How much small money matters	Director
globalCooldownTicks / perTypeCooldownTicks	Spacing between events	Director

Adding a new Director event is a data entry in the events file (type, squad size, roles, weight, time-of-day multiplier, cooldown, spawn mode). Feature flags toggle whole event classes; see the Director feature flags.

Traits

Trait impacts, thresholds, and decay are defined in a trait-impact ruleset so you can retune who becomes what:

What you can change	Effect
Action and goal impacts	How much each action moves each trait. See Traits.
Thresholds	The cutoffs that unlock behaviors. See threshold events.
Decay	How fast situational traits return to baseline.
Contextual modifiers	Situation multipliers on trait changes.

Betrayal

Betrayal tuning lives in its own config file loaded with the mod:

Knob	Controls	System
Contagion base and bands	How far an unpunished rat drops crew loyalty	Betrayal
Deterrence ripple	How much visible punishment raises loyalty	Betrayal
Flavor thresholds	Vengeful vs done vs greedy defection	Betrayal

Laundering

Knob	Controls	System
Member cut rate	Share that goes to the member's wallet	Economy
Launder efficiency	Share that survives as clean cash	Economy
Burn fee	What is lost to washing	Economy
Heat exposure	Heat added per launder	Economy

Adding content (new drugs, labs, weapons)

New product types, production buildings, and weapons are data, not new systems. Most additions are a field plus a few config entries, which is why the game can grow its inventory without an engine change.

A new lab (for example, a meth lab)

The game already ships a Drug Lab and a small Crack Lab as building purposes. A meth lab is just another purpose entry with its own batch size, cost, and risk:

{
  "purposeId": "meth_lab",
  "displayName": "Meth Lab",
  "symbol": "🧪",
  "description": "Production facility. Cooks a batch of product each cycle, runs hot.",
  "allowedBuildingTags": ["industrial", "abandoned"],
  "weeklyUpkeep": 900,
  "productionBatchAmount": 120,
  "productionBatchIntervalTicks": 240,
  "heatExposure": 1.0,
  "evidencePerWeek": 18,
  "setupCost": 28000,
  "marketValueModifier": -0.006
}

Drop that into the purposes data and it appears as a conversion option. No code. See Real Estate & Assets for what every field means.

A new drug

A new product type is a handful of data edits, not a rewrite:

Step	What you add
1	A product field on the entities that carry it (the same way Cocaine is a property)
2	Pricing entries (buy, retail, wholesale amounts and prices) in the economy config
3	A way to get it: a lab purpose that produces it, or a supplier that sells it
4	Optionally, buy and sell goals so crew trade it, mirroring the cocaine goals

The systems that move money, raise heat, and build cases do not care which product it is, so a new drug rides all of them for free.

A new weapon

Weapons are data and art. A new one is a sprite plus an entry, and it slots into the existing combat scoring through its weapon-quality value. See Asset Studio for importing the art and Combat for how weapon quality factors in.

Tuning workflow

Step	Action
1	Edit the config value in your mod
2	Reload in-game (hot reload)
3	Observe behavior
4	Repeat

Change one value at a time so you can tell what moved the result.