I'm designing the economy of...

About this model

I'm designing the economy of an idle game. It is one production chain: a source makes a raw flow, a series of machines refine that flow, and the refined flow is sold through contracts for cash. Cash buys capacity in the source and in each machine, and more capacity means more to sell. New machines are added one at a time as the player crosses income milestones, and each new machine should make the product worth more.

The problem I'm trying to solve: in a serial chain the oldest machine is the cap, so every new machine is a cost the player pays to get back to where they were, and the only thing worth upgrading is still the first machine. I want the opposite. Each machine should amplify the value of what passes through it, so that the newest machine is the most rewarding thing to invest in for a while, older machines and the source still matter, and the rack as a whole can take on bigger contracts the more machines it has. A machine that can't handle all of the flow should let the rest pass through unimproved rather than block it, so the chain never stalls.

Constraints: purchases follow an incremental-game cost curve (each unit costs a fixed percentage more than the last, with bonus multipliers at unit-count milestones). Contracts are the only income; each takes up to a fixed amount of product per second at a price, and unsold product earns nothing. The player has a few contract slots and a rotating market of offers with a trade-off between long steady contracts and short well-paid ones.

Build the loop and simulate a 60-minute session with a player who buys the best value-per-cash purchase they can afford every few seconds and signs the best contract available. Show me: income and product value over time; which device the player bought at each point, so I can see whether investment rotates between devices or gets stuck on one; the moment each new machine unlocks; and where the chain is bottlenecked over time. Then help me find the amplification per machine, cost growth and milestone thresholds where three machines unlock at roughly 5, 20 and 60 minutes with no stretch where nothing is worth buying.

"I'm designing the economy of..." is a public Machinations diagram shared in the Community by Jesper Bram, with 46 components.

It was created in September 2026 and last edited in September 2026.

Open the diagram in the Machinations app and press Play to watch the resources move, adjust its values to test how the system responds, or remix it to make an editable copy in My diagrams.