Power and Machines
Power is a ladder. Each generator asks a different question of the ore you feed it, so the pile you sorted for one tier isn't the pile the next one wants. Everything here is wired together with Power Conduit.
Making power
Five generators. The later ones do make the earlier ones obsolete, and that's the point.
How Power Works
Generators make it, conduit carries it, banks and batteries store it, and machines and ships spend it.
Generator
Burns ore and coal for power. The first generator you'll build, and the only one that asks about Combustion.
Wind Rotor
Makes power from where you put it, not from what you feed it. Solar asks you to store for the night; wind asks you to store for the weather.
Solar Array
No fuel, ever again. But only while the sun is up, and it's exactly as good as the four panels it's built from.
Geothermal Tap
Power out of standing next to the lava. The best steady rate in the game, at the end of the longest walk.
Reactor
The last generator you build. It runs for minutes on a single fuel rod, and how hard depends on that rod's Energy.
Storing and moving power
Power Conduit
Wire, placed in the world. It runs along surfaces and carries power between machines.
Battery
Carried charge: fill it at a base, empty it into a ship. How much it holds comes from the ore it was wound with.
Dense Cell
A battery wound tight, with a circuit to manage it. It holds 2.6 times as much in the same box.
Battery Dock
A battery, docked. It empties the cell into whatever needs power and fills it again when a generator has some to spare.
Power Rack
Three battery docks in one, drained in turn, so a trip back to recharge is rarer.
Power Bank
Storage and nothing else: a battery the size of a shed. Every generator on the grid fills it.
Charging Pad
Stand on it and whatever you're wearing fills up: suits, pack cells, the jetpack.
Fuel Rod
Reactor fuel: two ingots sealed in a sheet. It runs as long and as hard as its ore's Energy allows.
Solar Panel
Glass over a conductive backing. Four of them make a Solar Array, and the array is exactly as good as they are.
Climate machines
What turns a sealed room into somewhere you can live.
Ducts
Moving items from one box to another without building a computer to do it.
How Ducts Work
Three pieces and no logic: a pipe, a Loader that empties a box into it, and Ports where things may enter. Items find their own way.
Wooden Duct
Slow, and available before you own any metal at all.
Glass Duct
The same speed as wood, and you can watch things go by.
Reinforced Duct
Wood bound with metal: nearly twice as quick.
Metal Duct
The quickest, and how quick depends on the ore: a harder metal takes a smoother bore.
Loader
Bolted to a container, it empties that container into the duct run.
Port
Marks where things may enter a container, and optionally what.