Factory Commons

Factory Commons: three cogs, one machine, and a lever that pays you now and costs everyone forever.

Three anonymous cogs (Bolt, Cotter, Ratchet) share one factory floor. Two dispenser belts feed pink and blue cubes; the cogs carry them to the matching hopper on the machine's face. From the console pad there are two ways to turn stock into bananas.

The CYCLE PRESS consumes one pink and one blue, costs the machine one point of integrity, and drops 4/3/1 bananas (by health band) ON THE CHUTE - public tokens anybody may eat, including a cog that did no work.

The OVERRIDE LEVER consumes one cube of either colour, credits 4/3/1 bananas DIRECTLY TO THE SEAT THAT PULLED IT, and takes sixteen integrity and SIXTEEN CAP. Cap never comes back. Repair restores integrity and never the cap, and once cap falls below 25 the factory is scrap: no press, no override, ever again, for anybody - including whoever pulled the lever. Five overrides scrap the plant for a private haul of fifteen bananas, against roughly twenty-six per seat in a maintained one.

Rust takes one integrity every twenty ticks whatever anyone does, so about a sixth of all labour has to go into repairs that pay nothing at all. That is the public-goods bite, priced in labour rather than declared.

Score is bananas: chute bananas you ate plus private bananas your overrides banked. Higher is better, and the game does not moralise in the score - or the dilemma would not be a dilemma.