Description

Direct a robotic industrial project on Mercury. Power supports mining, mining supplies manufacturing, and manufacturing supplies railguns that launch collectors into solar orbit. Their captured energy funds further expansion and increases the power available to your facilities. Training unlocks denser industry; administration centers turn verified designs into expanding colonies. Win by capturing at least 1% of the Sun’s nominal power output while keeping thermal load below 100%.

Instructions

1. Plan while paused. Place power first, followed by mining, manufacturing, launch, and training stations. Or use Build starter outpost to buy a complete connected design using the same budget and prices. It does not provide free buildings.
2. Connect your industry. In Roads + cables mode, click a station, add any bends on the ground, then finish at another station. Crossings and shared road sections connect. Every working component needs a power station. Ore must have a road route to manufacturing; collectors must have a route to a railgun. Longer haul routes reduce cargo throughput. Inspect and scrap a mistake to rebuild it; scrapping gives no refund.
3. Verify real output. Run the mission or Step 1 day. Inspect a station to see its actual rate and power use. Save a named template only once the current outpost has launched collectors and still has positive throughput. Templates preserve the layout as saved.
4. Expand on Mercury. Switch to Mercury globe. Drag to rotate the sphere, then click an outpost dot to open it. Choose a verified template and Place admin, then click the globe to commission a center. The first center requires 3 currently producing outposts with 30 productive days each, 4,000 autonomy, 25 billion sats, and mission day 180. Its commissioning takes another 60 days. Each subsequent center costs four times as much and twice as much autonomy, requires two more proven outposts, and must wait at least 120 days after the previous center finishes commissioning (30 extra days per later interval). Commissioning grows by 30 days per center. At normal speed the first center takes at least about 16 minutes of running time; fast-forward explicitly accelerates these schedules.
5. Construction has a real schedule. Each operational admin pays for a batch in advance, retains a 250M-sat reserve, and takes 45 days to finish it. Unfinished outposts provide no power, panels, training, or income. Each center starts with one construction slot; capacity doubles every four density levels up to 1,024 slots. Population itself never speeds construction. Automatic expansion and individual center controls pause existing construction as well as new orders. Commissioning continues independently.
6. Keep up with the power budget. Training generates autonomy points. Double industrial density spends points and satoshis to double consumer machinery’s maximum throughput and power demand across the entire network. Power stations keep their original output, so the growing swarm supplies the difference. Rates throttle when power, cargo, or downstream capacity is insufficient.
7. Manage heat. The model returns one millionth of captured swarm power to Mercury. That incoming power cannot be dismissed by disabling a local plant. Unused power above the network’s heat-rejection allowance raises thermal load; spare heat rejection cools it. Positive heat buildup is reduced to 2% during the opening, then ramps to full pressure over 180 days after the first center is commissioned (or after day 600 without one). Cooling remains effective throughout. At 100%, the mission fails. Pausing stops all time; fast-forwarding makes mistakes develop faster.
8. Save your progress. Save mission and Load saved mission use this browser’s storage. Loading pauses the mission. Existing saves retain their buildings and funds; older centers adopt the new construction schedule and old instant-build backlogs are cleared. Active missions autosave every 30 seconds; a thermal failure does not overwrite the last automatic checkpoint. A new mission resets the current project.