Machines

Machines turn raw stock into sellable product: purifiers clean water, finishers cut chemicals, printers build weapons, bays hide what inspections are looking for. Each one has an input grid, an output grid, a power draw and a module bay that changes what it is worth. The count on every machine card is not decoration — a machine that cannot cover its own power draw overnight is a loss that only shows up in the morning ledger.

Machines are the capital half of the shop. A machine that is idle is worse than a machine that was never bought, because the credits are gone and the floor space is not. The three numbers worth tracking for any of them are input supply, power draw and output capacity — a chain stalls at whichever of those runs out first, and the stall is usually invisible until the morning ledger.

Upgrades change the shape of a machine rather than only its speed: module bays decide what a printer can make, a filter stage decides what a purifier can clean, and a bay decides what an inspection can see. The pages below describe what each machine is for before describing what it costs.