Guaranteed the 45-second starter build even on an unpowered map

client/js/devlog_data.js

@@ -1,6 +1,12 @@
 // Generated by scripts/generate-devlog.js from `git log`; do not edit.
 // The pre-commit hook refreshes it so the main menu shows the latest commits.
 export const DEVLOG = [
+  {
+    "hash": "80d2e22",
+    "date": "2026-09-25",
+    "subject": "Sped up simple construction and showed resource costs on build cards",
+    "body": ""
+  },
   {
     "hash": "4e11af2",
     "date": "2026-09-25",
@@ -54,11 +60,5 @@ export const DEVLOG = [
     "date": "2026-09-24",
     "subject": "Cut the per-broadcast and per-frame cost on a full-sized map",
     "body": "The server sent the whole army on every snapshot and the client re-cloned\nthe whole icon layer whenever a unit moved, so a settled world with a\nstanding army drained the broadcast loop and the frame loop alike.\n\n- Ship only the units and city list that changed, keyed by a per-peer\n  fingerprint and a serialised hash, and merge those deltas on the client.\n- Memoise the battlefield scan on a battle version bumped when a unit\n  joins, leaves or changes side.\n- Skip the DOM writes for units whose snapshot object is unchanged, and\n  cache the unit-view inner nodes.\n- Fold units, cities and tile markers onto the nearest world copy instead\n  of mirroring the icon layers, which re-cloned thousands of views every\n  frame; the small decoration layers still mirror, and only on a change.\n\nFrame work at full zoom-out with units moving fell from ~190ms to ~6.5ms."
-  },
-  {
-    "hash": "822c26f",
-    "date": "2026-09-23",
-    "subject": "Founded every nation with a standing army and a year of reserves",
-    "body": ""
   }
 ];

docs/simple_economy/03-construction.md

@@ -42,8 +42,11 @@ Every region must start with one power plant.
   (`constructionSpeedMultiplier`, `EFFECT_CONSTRUCTION_SPEED`).
   - Put the tuning constants (`energyPerConstructionHour`, a minimum speed floor,
     and how energy maps to hours) in the simple-economy data module.
-  - Define what happens when a region has no power: the work should be slow or
-    stalled, not free. A floor avoids a divide-by-zero and a hard lock.
+  - Define what happens when a region has no power: a guaranteed baseline
+    construction power stands in for the grid, so the work is never free, never
+    instant and never slower than the reference target (modern infantry in 45
+    game hours). Spare power above the baseline only makes a work quicker, and
+    the floor avoids a divide-by-zero and a hard lock.
 - **Every region starts with one power plant.** Seed one working plant per city
   region in the simple scenario so regions open with energy and the speed rule
   has a non-zero basis.
@@ -79,9 +82,10 @@ Every region must start with one power plant.
 
 - In simple mode, ordering a building raises it on the hourly tick with no
   `"materials"` phase and no `_nearbySuppliers`/trade-graph lookups.
-- Construction time scales with the region's available energy, and a
-  power-less region builds clearly slower than a powered one (never faster, and
-  never instantaneous at zero energy).
+- Construction time scales with the region's available energy: spare power
+  above the guaranteed baseline shortens the clock, while a region at or below
+  the baseline (including a powerless one) is held at the reference time -- never
+  slower, never instantaneous.
 - Every starting region has at least one working power plant in simple mode.
 - Hard economy construction is untouched.
 

shared/data/simple_economy.js

@@ -51,14 +51,15 @@ export const SIMPLE_ECONOMY = {
     // max(available, minEnergy)`, then the building/training ratio below and the
     // usual approval and technology multipliers. A tighter grid raises the same
     // work slower, the opposite of the hard economy's richer-nation-builds-faster.
-    // Tuned so a modern-infantry unit (cost 100M) trains in 45 in-game hours --
-    // 45 real seconds, one hour a second -- in a starter region holding the
-    // typical ~3.5e9 kWh a day of spare power.
     energyPerConstructionHour: 1_600,
-    // The least spare power a region is credited with, so a blacked-out region
-    // still builds -- slowly -- instead of dividing by zero or finishing at
-    // once. A tenth of a solar plant's daily output.
-    minEnergy: 30_000_000,
+    // The construction power every region is credited with even when its grid
+    // has nothing to spare. This is the guarantee behind the opening pace: a
+    // modern-infantry unit (cost 100M) always trains in 45 game hours -- 45 real
+    // seconds, one hour a second -- in a starter city on any map, however
+    // starved its grid. A region with more spare power builds the same work
+    // faster; none builds it slower. Sized as `100M * energyPerConstructionHour
+    // / 45`, so the reference work lands exactly on 45 hours at the floor.
+    minEnergy: (100_000_000 * 1_600) / 45,
     // The hard economy builds ten times faster than it trains a unit of the same
     // cost; the simple economy keeps that ratio.
     buildingTimeMultiplier: 0.1,
@@ -75,9 +76,11 @@ export const SIMPLE_ECONOMY = {
 // The base hours a simple-economy work of `cost` takes at `energy` kWh a day of
 // spare regional power. `kind` is "unit" for training, anything else for a
 // building, tile work or upgrade, which the figures in `construction` run
-// faster. Energy is floored so a blacked-out region still builds -- slowly --
-// rather than dividing by zero or finishing at once. Shared by the server's
-// clock and the browser's quoted times, so the two can never disagree.
+// faster. Energy is floored at the region's guaranteed construction power, so a
+// blacked-out starter region still raises the reference unit in 45 hours and
+// divides by no zero; more power than the floor only makes a work quicker.
+// Shared by the server's clock and the browser's quoted times, so the two can
+// never disagree.
 export function simpleConstructionHours(cost, energy, kind) {
   const available = Math.max(
     Number.isFinite(energy) ? energy : 0,

shared/game_state/simple_economy.js

@@ -25,8 +25,11 @@
 // is no materials phase, no energy-buy phase and no trade-graph lookup. The
 // construction or training clock is set from the spare power of the region the
 // work stands in: `regionAvailableEnergy` is the region's plant output less what
-// its cities, buildings and converters already draw, floored so a blacked-out
-// region still builds slowly instead of dividing by zero. Money is not spent
+// its cities, buildings and converters already draw. A guaranteed baseline
+// covers a region whose grid has nothing to spare, so a starter city on any map
+// raises a modern-infantry unit in the 45-hour reference time and no work ever
+// divides by zero; spare power above the baseline only makes a work quicker.
+// Money is not spent
 // internally on construction (the single tax and the market cover that in
 // `05-`/`06-`), so the treasury gates nothing. Every opening region is guaranteed
 // at least one plant -- a fuel-free one where the hard seeding left it without --
@@ -811,9 +814,10 @@ export const simpleEconomyMethods = {
 
   // The base hours a work of `cost` takes in `city`'s region at today's spare
   // power. `kind` is "unit" for training, anything else for a building, tile
-  // work or upgrade -- which the hard economy runs ten times quicker. The energy
-  // is floored so a blacked-out region still builds, slowly. The arithmetic
-  // lives in the data module so the browser quotes the same figure.
+  // work or upgrade -- which the hard economy runs ten times quicker. The
+  // arithmetic lives in the data module, where the guaranteed baseline keeps
+  // even a blacked-out starter region at the reference time, and so the browser
+  // quotes the same figure.
   _simpleConstructionHours(city, cost, kind) {
     return simpleConstructionHours(cost, this.regionAvailableEnergy(city), kind);
   },

tests/simple_construction_test.js

@@ -134,46 +134,54 @@ export class SimpleConstructionTest extends TestCase {
     );
   }
 
-  // The reference calibration: a modern-infantry unit (cost 100M) trains in
-  // about 45 in-game hours -- 45 real seconds -- in a starter region with the
-  // typical spare power. The rate lives in the shared data module so the server
-  // clock and the browser's quoted times derive it the same way.
-  test_the_reference_unit_trains_in_45_hours_in_a_starter_region() {
-    const energy = 3_500_000_000;
-    const hours = simpleConstructionHours(100_000_000, energy, "unit");
-    this.assertApprox(hours, 45, 1, "modern infantry is about 45 hours at starter power");
+  // The reference calibration: a modern-infantry unit (cost 100M) trains in 45
+  // in-game hours -- 45 real seconds -- in a starter region on any map, however
+  // little spare power that region has. The rate and the guaranteed baseline
+  // live in the shared data module so the server clock and the browser's quoted
+  // times derive them the same way.
+  test_the_reference_unit_always_trains_within_45_hours() {
+    const cost = 100_000_000;
+    const typical = simpleConstructionHours(cost, 3_500_000_000, "unit");
+    this.assertApprox(typical, 45, 1e-6, "a typical starter region lands on 45 hours");
     this.assertApprox(
-      simpleConstructionHours(100_000_000, energy, "building") * 10,
-      hours,
-      0.5,
+      simpleConstructionHours(cost, 3_500_000_000, "building") * 10,
+      typical,
+      1e-6,
       "a building of the same cost runs ten times quicker"
     );
-    const dead = simpleConstructionHours(100_000_000, 0, "unit");
-    this.assertGreater(dead, hours, "a blacked-out region builds slower");
-    this.assertGreaterOrEqual(dead, SIMPLE_ECONOMY.construction.minHours, "but not instantly");
+    // The guarantee: no level of spare power makes the reference work slower
+    // than 45 hours, and none makes it instant.
+    const dead = simpleConstructionHours(cost, 0, "unit");
+    this.assertApprox(dead, 45, 1e-6, "a blacked-out region still meets the target");
+    this.assertApprox(simpleConstructionHours(cost, 1, "unit"), 45, 1e-6, "so does a trickle");
+    const huge = simpleConstructionHours(cost, 64_000_000_000, "unit");
+    this.assertLess(huge, 45, "a rich grid only builds faster");
+    this.assertGreaterOrEqual(dead, SIMPLE_ECONOMY.construction.minHours, "and never instantly");
   }
 
   test_more_regional_energy_strictly_shortens_the_clock() {
     const state = simpleState();
     const city = cityOf(state, 0);
     const cost = 100_000_000;
-    state.regionAvailableEnergy = () => 100_000_000;
+    const floor = SIMPLE_ECONOMY.construction.minEnergy;
+    state.regionAvailableEnergy = () => floor;
     const low = state._simpleConstructionHours(city, cost, "building");
-    state.regionAvailableEnergy = () => 1_000_000_000;
+    state.regionAvailableEnergy = () => floor * 4;
     const high = state._simpleConstructionHours(city, cost, "building");
     this.assertLess(high, low, "more spare power builds faster");
     this.assertGreater(high, 0, "and never instant");
   }
 
-  test_a_blacked_out_region_builds_slowly_but_not_at_once() {
+  test_a_blacked_out_region_is_capped_at_the_baseline() {
     const state = simpleState();
     const city = cityOf(state, 0);
     const cost = 100_000_000;
+    const floor = SIMPLE_ECONOMY.construction.minEnergy;
     state.regionAvailableEnergy = () => 0;
     const dead = state._simpleConstructionHours(city, cost, "building");
-    state.regionAvailableEnergy = () => 100_000_000;
+    state.regionAvailableEnergy = () => floor * 4;
     const lit = state._simpleConstructionHours(city, cost, "building");
-    this.assertGreater(dead, lit, "a power-less region builds clearly slower");
+    this.assertGreater(dead, lit, "a power-rich region builds clearly faster");
     this.assertTrue(Number.isFinite(dead), "the clock is finite, not a divide-by-zero");
     this.assertGreaterOrEqual(dead, SIMPLE_ECONOMY.construction.minHours, "the floor holds");
   }