Where you are allowed to build, what a power deficit actually does, and why a tightly packed base dies in rows.
Where you may build
A new building must stand within 480 pixels of one of your construction yards or build hubs, on level, walkable ground — not on a ramp, not on rock, not across a cliff edge. On top of that comes a minimum distance of 100 pixels to any ore: without it a field could be walled in, and your own harvesters would never reach their load. The build radius is therefore the real boundary of your base, and the build hub is how you push it forward — it is cheaper than a second yard and opens the same circle somewhere new. The Blight plays by a different rule: for it the biofield replaces the build radius entirely.
Power is a dial, not a switch
If you consume more than you produce, no single building shuts down — everything slows instead: production, construction and the missile silo’s charge run at 40 % of their pace. Defence is the exception, and there it is not a dial: on a deficit the structures fall silent entirely, so that you can see what ails a tower. Only the base defence — the machine-gun nest with its faction counterparts, and the bunker — keeps working off the grid, so a base is never wholly defenceless. The Collective and the Blight have no power grid at all: for them everything always runs at full speed.
| Building | Power |
|---|---|
| Power Plant | +100 |
| Command Center | +50 |
| Fusion Reactor | +250 |
| Experimental Works | -80 |
| Radar | -75 |
| Technology Center | -60 |
| Vehicle Factory | -50 |
| Mech Factory | -50 |
| Workshop | -50 |
| Helipad | -40 |
| Siege Tower | -35 |
| Barracks | -30 |
| Gun Turret | -30 |
What a building requires
Most buildings require other buildings: the vehicle factory wants a barracks, the experimental works a tech center and a workshop. Since 29 August there is a second kind of requirement — the experimental works additionally demands a RESEARCH, namely your faction's heaviest vehicle. The road to the experimental units no longer bypasses the tank line. The button does not vanish: it stays visible and locked, names the missing research, and a click starts it — exactly as with a locked unit.
| Faction | Building | requires the research |
|---|---|---|
| The Steel Union | Experimental Works | Schwere Wannenfertigung |
| The Scrap Legion | Experimental Works | Overdrive-Baulos |
| The Aegis Order | Experimental Works | Kataphrakten-Baulos |
| The Collective | Experimental Works | Moloch-Bauplan |
| The Blight | Experimental Works | Walzenzucht |
Switched off is not gone
Every building can be taken off the grid by hand. It then neither feeds power in nor draws any — the usual way to bridge a deficit without tearing anything down. As a prerequisite it still counts: the build bar keeps everything that depends on it, and switching off your barracks does not remove the vehicle factory from the menu. It no longer works, though — nobody comes out of an unpowered barracks, and its tab stays visible but locked and names the reason instead of simply vanishing.
Building tight has a price
Buildings may stand edge to edge; only a tiny buffer remains between two squares. In exchange, a destroyed building takes its neighbours with it: it deals up to 30 % of its own maximum hit points to everything closer than 24 pixels, falling off linearly with distance. Packed tightly enough, that becomes a chain in which one hit costs half a base. A sale does not trigger it, nor does a construction site — only real destruction. The Aegis Order adds one more thing: its fusion reactor explodes when lost, dealing 250 damage within 110 pixels, no matter who owns what it hits.
| Edge distance | Damage to neighbour |
|---|---|
| 0 px | 30.0 % |
| 6 px | 22.5 % |
| 12 px | 15.0 % |
| 18 px | 7.5 % |
| 24 px | 0.0 % |
Building, queue, exit
Only a few orders may wait per construction yard at a time; building more in parallel needs another yard, not more money. Money slows you differently: if the treasury runs short, construction does not abort but merely gets slower and picks up again as soon as something comes in. In front of every production building — refinery and workshop included — lies a keep-out zone where nothing may be built: that is where finished units drive out, and a blocked exit is a traffic jam you cannot see. Selling returns 50 % of the build cost and causes no collapse damage; only your last construction yard cannot be sold, or your own defeat could be forced at the press of a button.
Upkeep
Damaged vehicles and mechs dock at the workshop and are made whole there for resources; if the money runs short they heal as far as it is paid for. You can set a threshold at which a battered unit drives back on its own — harvesters do so anyway at 75 % of their hit points. From a certain experience level a vehicle also repairs itself, but only out of combat and only up to a cap; the Mammoth alone keeps healing in the middle of a firefight. Buildings you repair where they stand, likewise for a share of their build cost. And when the economy stalls although the harvesters are running, the store is usually full: a silo adds 1000 of space and is the cheapest building that gets mining going again.
| Route | per second | Share of build cost | up to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Workshop | 5 % | 50 % | 100 % |
| Repairing a building | 3 % | 50 % | 100 % |
| Vehicle or mech from level 8 | 1 % | — | 25 % |
| Vehicle or mech from level 18 | 1 % | — | 50 % |
| Mammoth from level 5 | 1 % | — | 50 % |
| Collective unit | 0.4 % | — | 100 % |