Energy/power grids
A generation-and-distribution network that must supply enough power to every connected building or machine, with brownouts or shutdowns if demand outpaces supply. Oxygen Not Included's electrical grid (batteries, wire gauge limits, and generator placement) and Factorio's power network (steam engines, solar, and accumulators feeding a shared grid) both make electricity a spatial infrastructure puzzle layered atop the production chain. Designers use power grids to add a capacity-planning dimension distinct from raw resource production, to create failure states that ripple through a base (a power shortage can idle an entire factory), and to reward players who plan for headroom and redundancy rather than building exactly to current demand. Key decisions: whether power is a spatial network (wires that must physically connect, with distance or wire-gauge limits) or an abstracted pool, storage and buffering mechanics for handling demand spikes, brownout behavior (does the whole grid stall, or does it shed load intelligently?), and legibility of current supply-versus-demand. Pitfall: a grid failure that's opaque — the player can't tell why the base went dark — turns troubleshooting into guesswork; clear per-building and per-line diagnostics are essential once a base grows past a few machines.
- Dev effort: Medium
- Timing: Real-time
- Common in: automation, colony-sim