Basic Power

Lore & Background

The colony ship that deposited the crew into this alien cross-section left behind more than just their survival gear; it left behind a research codex, a structured path of knowledge that the colonists must rediscover step by step. Basic Power sits at the very base of the electrical branch, and in the in-world logic it makes intuitive sense: before you can run a water generator or a steam turbine, you need to prove you can turn a lump of wood or a puff of methane into a steady current.

The colonists treat their first working generator with a kind of superstitious reverence. In the early days, every watt is precious. A single miswired cable or a battery left drained overnight can cascade into a lighting failure, a pump stall, or a CO2 buildup that sickens a crew member. The manual toggling of power switches becomes a nightly ritual—someone is always on watch, flipping breakers, listening for the soft click that means the colony is still alive.

As the story of the colony unfolds across the game's acts, Basic Power remains the invisible backbone. Every advanced system, every agricultural dome, every atmospheric processor ultimately traces its energy lineage back to that first clunky wood-burning box humming in a corner of the initial habitat.

In Their Own Story

The generator coughed, spat a thread of orange flame, and then settled into a low, steady thrum. Mara wiped soot from her forehead and watched the little indicator light flicker green. Around her, the habitat was a tangle of exposed rock, dripping condensation, and the faint acrid smell of burned wood. She pulled the power cable across the floor—three meters of black rubber, the longest run she'd ever managed—and clipped it to the switch. Click. The overhead lamp buzzed to life, casting a warm cone of yellow over the workbench. Behind her, Jiro exhaled a breath he'd clearly been holding for twenty minutes. "It works," he said, like he was confirming a diagnosis. "It actually works." Mara didn't smile. She was already calculating how many hours of wood-burning that one battery charge would buy them, how many more logs she'd need to stack before the next shift. The colony had power. Now the hard part began: keeping it.

Reader's Guide

POWER GENERATION

Wood Generator — Tier 1. Burns solid wood fuel to produce electrical power. Simple, reliable, but requires a steady supply of logs and produces smoke and heat as byproducts.

Gas Generator — Tier 1. Consumes gaseous fuel (methane, hydrogen sulfide, etc.) to generate electricity. More fuel-efficient than the wood variant but needs a gas source nearby and vents combustion gases into the local atmosphere.

POWER STORAGE

Battery — Tier 1. Stores a fixed amount of electrical energy and discharges it when generators are offline. Essential for bridging gaps between fuel cycles and for powering devices that cannot run continuously.

POWER DISTRIBUTION

Power Switch — Tier 1. A manual toggle that opens or closes a circuit. Used to route power to specific devices, shed non-essential loads, or isolate a faulty section of wiring.

Power Cable — Tier 1. Transmits electrical current between a source (generator or battery) and a consumer. Must be laid in a continuous path; breaks in the line stop all downstream power.

TIP: In early-game play, a single Wood Generator plus one Battery and a short run of cable is often enough to keep a two-colonist habitat lit and running a basic O2 separation loop. Prioritize fuel logistics before expanding the grid.

Did You Know?

• Every power-consuming device in the colony—pumps, lights, atmospheric processors—ultimately traces its energy back to a combustion event in a generator, making fuel management the true bottleneck of early survival.
• Power switches are purely mechanical toggles with no automation in the basic tier, so a colonist must physically walk to and flip the switch, which becomes a meaningful time cost in tight early-game schedules.
• The heat and smoke produced by a Wood Generator can actually be repurposed: nearby plants benefit from the warmth, and the smoke can be vented or filtered, turning a byproduct into a small agricultural or atmospheric adv
• Because the game is a 2D cross-section, power cables must follow a continuous physical path through the environment; a single gap in the line—whether from an air pocket, a wall, or a misplaced rock—silences every device