netfishing/docs/BALANCE.md

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Balance and content notes

Balance is authored data and should change deliberately. This document records the policy; exact current values remain authoritative in .tres resources and typed scripts.

Fish

  • Stable fish IDs and catalog numbers must not be changed for display cleanup.
  • Species availability may constrain water type, time, weather, bait, and other authored context.
  • Location pools control selection weight; the global catalog remains comprehensive.
  • Freshwater/saltwater habitat is validated by the host in addition to pool membership.
  • Value, rarity, quality, and weight ranges should be reviewed together because they affect economy and catch difficulty.

Economy and progression

  • Sales and purchases are host-authoritative and must mutate inventory and wallet exactly once.
  • Reserved assets are rejected atomically; mixed valid/reserved batches must not partially succeed.
  • Item effects, shop prices, cooler capacity, fishing upgrades, jobs, and experience are separate balance axes. Avoid changing several in an unrelated presentation pass.

Recording a balance change

Include in the change description:

  1. affected stable IDs and resource paths;
  2. old and new values;
  3. intended player-facing outcome;
  4. interactions with quality, availability, and economy;
  5. deterministic validation performed;
  6. whether existing saves remain semantically valid.

Do not bump the save schema or network protocol simply because an authored number changed. Bump a format only when its serialized contract changes.