Broken Arrow Economy Guide: Income, Upkeep and Refunds
How the in-match economy works in Broken Arrow: income per minute, the upkeep curve that throttles it, the 50% sustainable-deploy rule, and getting points back by recycling units.
Income: points over time
Throughout a match you earn supply points every second — a base income of roughly 300 points per minute. You spend them to deploy units from your deck and to reinforce, resupply and repair what's already on the field.
Income is boosted by holding objective zones and by killing enemy units, and you get a partial refund for recycling units back to base. So the economy rewards aggression that trades up and punishes feeding units into bad fights.
Upkeep: why income falls as you deploy
The more army value you have deployed, the lower your income — this is upkeep. As a rule of thumb, income approaches zero once roughly half your deck's total cost is on the field at once, so there is a soft ceiling on how much army you can sustainably keep alive.
Overcommitting past that ceiling means you stop earning and can't replace losses. Treat the half-deck figure as a guideline rather than an exact threshold — see the note on the July 2026 update below.
What patch 1.1.1 changed (July 2026)
The 1.1.1 update replaced the flat income with a new dynamic income system and removed the compensation between phases, so the old fixed "income hits zero at exactly 50% deployed" rule no longer holds as a precise number. The half-deck guideline is still a useful planning anchor, but expect the real curve to vary with the match.
The same update added a hard maximum reserve call-in limit of 1,500 points, and increased the respawn timers after a unit dies — you can now see each ground unit's return time in its stats card in game. Losing an expensive unit costs you far more time than recalling it intact, which makes pulling damaged units back even stronger than before.
Sustainable deploy value (deck cost ÷ 2)
Because income hits zero at ~50% deployed, your sustainable deploy value is approximately your total deck cost divided by 2. A 10,000-point deck can comfortably keep about 5,000 points of army on the field with positive income.
Our deck analyzer shows this number for any .dek you upload, plus how many minutes it takes to field that half at base income. Build toward a deck you can actually sustain — not one stuffed with cards you can never afford to deploy together.
Refunds and recycling
Sending a unit back to base returns part of its cost as points, scaled by how much health it has left — a near-full unit refunds far more than a wreck. After a refund there's a short repurchase delay before you can re-buy that card.
Use this actively: pull damaged high-value units back to recoup points and reset, rather than throwing them into one last fight. Recycling a healthy unit you no longer need frees budget to react elsewhere.
Practical takeaways
Don't deploy your whole deck — past ~50% you're earning nothing. Hold zones for income, trade efficiently, and recycle wounded units before they die for free.
Cheaper, efficient units let you stay under the upkeep ceiling while still contesting the map. See our cost-efficiency tier list to find which units give the most value per point at your ELO.