An extraction economy must be net-positive with the starting loadout

Fact

In a gather-sell-upgrade loop, the per-trip consumables — fuel, repairs, ammunition, tolls — are paid at full price from the first minute, while yield is gated behind the upgrades those payments are supposed to fund.

If one trip with tier-zero equipment costs more than it earns, the loop runs backwards. The player converges on zero, and every mechanic that exists to rescue them (a cheap tow, a partial refill, a free respawn) keeps them alive inside the spiral rather than out of it.

The margin is easy to get wrong because the endgame numbers look healthy: the same world can pay 30x per unit dug at depth and 0.8x at the surface.

Why it matters

The symptom is not "the economy is unbalanced". It is a player, or an automated playtester, that appears stuck: barely moving, barely earning, repeating short trips. That reads as a pathing bug, an AI bug, or a level problem, and the investigation goes anywhere except the price of fuel.

It is also invisible to anyone testing from a mid-game save, which is how a designer tests once the early game feels finished.

How to apply

• Compute the tier-zero trip explicitly: expected yield per unit of effort, minus consumables at list price. Require a clear surplus — roughly 3-5x, not 1.1x — because early players are inefficient.
• Measure yield along the path actually travelled, not as a density over the whole map. A one-cell-wide shaft samples far fewer cells than the map average suggests, and travel through open space collects nothing.
• Re-check tier zero after every change to consumable pricing or costs. It is the one configuration nobody plays again after the first ten minutes.