Everything you build, train and research runs on two resources. This one is about where they come from, how they're protected, and exactly how raiding pays - the long version of the loot section I kept short in the combat dispatch.
Read the top half for the basics. Read the rest if you want to know precisely what a raider can and can't take from you, and how you get a haul home.
The economy in one line
Two resources, earned while you sleep and by raiding, capped by your storage, protected by a floor so no single raid can strip you bare - and, since the map landed, throttled on the way out by how much cargo you can actually carry.
Salvage and Ore
The two resources are Salvage and Ore - names that belong in a world built out of what the collapse left behind. You spend them on everything: buildings, units, research. They each have their own storage, so you can be flush on one and tight on the other, and your storage matters per-resource rather than as one shared pool.
That split is the quiet change that makes the economy something you balance rather than one bar you top up.
Where it comes from
Two taps:
Your generators - passive income that ticks up with their level, even while you're logged off. The accrual is lazy, which is a fancy way of saying the game works out what you've banked the moment you check, so nothing is lost by stepping away. This is your baseline, and levelling generators is the steadiest way to grow.
Raiding - the active tap. A good raid pays more than a stretch of passive income, which is the whole point of pushing out instead of sitting still.
Where you build matters too now. Each base's Salvage and Ore yield leans up to a quarter either way off the biome of the tile it sits on, so a rich patch is worth settling and a poor one is worth leaving. It's a fresh knob - the exact lean is first-pass and I'll be watching it.
Even the bots earn. Their stockpiles scale with their rating, so an opponent on the map is a target worth hitting, not an empty shell - the numbers you loot read in the thousands, not the scraps they used to.
The Vault is also your shield
Here's the part most people miss until it costs them. The Vault doesn't just cap what you can hold - it sets the share a raider can't touch. I flagged this in the base dispatch and said the detail lived here, so here it is.
Your Vault protects a percentage of each resource you're holding, and that percentage climbs as you level it - from around a tenth of your stockpile at a low Vault up toward a third at the top. A raid can only take from the surplus: whatever sits above that protected share. Build no Vault at all and nothing is protected - your whole pile is surplus, and a raider helps themselves.
So the Vault is a defensive building as much as an economic one. Sit on a fat pile behind a low Vault and most of it is exposed; level the Vault and keep your spare resources moving, and a successful raid barely stings.
How loot actually works
The mechanic, properly this time. What comes home is decided in two stages: first what you're owed, then how much of it you can carry.
What you're owed:
It's the surplus, not the pile. You can only take what sits above the defender's protected floor.
It scales with the damage you did. Loot isn't a flat cut - it scales with the square of how hard you hit, so the take climbs fast as a raid turns decisive, with a ceiling on how much of that surplus any single raid can carry off (currently 60%, and I'll keep tuning it). A hard-fought win against a real base pays; a curb-stomp on an empty one barely registers.
It's decoupled from a clean win. You don't need a flawless victory. A raid that bloodies the defender takes something even if it doesn't wipe them.
Then the haul lands when your army gets home, not the instant the battle ends. The trip back is part of the raid - and since the map arrived, it's where the second stage bites.
Getting the loot home
This is the change the older version of this post promised was coming. It's here, and it turns loot from an automatic payout into something you plan for.
The gateway is the Support Bay, a structure that unlocks around HQ level 5 and trains support units instead of fighters. Two of them shape your economy.
Haulers are your cargo. Loot is now clamped to how much your surviving force can carry. Every unit hauls a little; Haulers haul a lot. Bring enough and you carry off everything you earned; bring too little and the surplus above your cargo is left on the field. Send Haulers when you're raiding a fat target - and note the word surviving: casualties cut your capacity, so a bloody win hauls less than a clean one, and a raid that loses its transports limps home light.
Reclaimers work the wreckage. Every raid leaves wreckage on the map - the wrecked units from both sides. Reclaimers dispatch out to harvest that wreckage and bank what they recover, so a costly fight isn't a total write-off. It's an active operation you send, not an automatic refund, and the pile is contested and drains as people pull from it - so it pays to be quick.
One more thing rides with the map: reaching a target costs resources up front, and the further you send an army, the more the trip costs. Distance is a defence in itself now - a base tucked out at the edge is expensive to hit - so the journey out is a cost you weigh against the haul you expect. Logistics - cargo and travel - is what throttles loot now, not your standing relative to the target.
How to play it well
Level generators first. Passive income is the floor everything else stands on.
Settle the good tiles. A base on a rich biome earns more for the same generators; a poor tile is worth walking away from.
Don't sit at the cap. Resources you can't store are income wasted - spend or raid them into something.
Build and level the Vault early. With no Vault, nothing is protected; a high one shields up to a third of your pile and turns a painful raid into a survivable one.
Pack cargo for the haul you expect. A rich target you can't carry off is loot left behind. Bring Haulers, and don't send a force so fragile it dies to its own casualties before it gets home.
Pick fat targets, not empty ones. Loot scales with the surplus you can reach and the damage you do, and the trip out now costs you. An empty base isn't worth the fuel.
Send Reclaimers after a fight. Wreckage is free economy if you get to it first - your own or someone else's.
Keep your spare surplus working. What's above your floor is what a raider eats. Turn it into buildings, units or research before someone turns it into their loot.
The honest caveat
The loot constants - the cap, how the protected floor scales, cargo and travel costs, the biome lean - are all interim, and I'll keep turning them until raiding feels worth it without being ruinous to be on the wrong end of. The cargo cap and travel cost are new enough that I expect to move them the most; tell me if hauls feel stingy or if reaching anyone costs too much. Player trading - a real market - is further out still. If raiding feels pointless or punishing, that's the dial I most want to get right.
Go bank a raid. Bring enough Haulers to carry it, then go make your own surplus boring to steal.
- The Dev
Play: play.breachlands.com