Electricity
Charge is what keeps a ship awake: the wheels that turn it, the antennas that carry your commands to it, and the instruments that make it worth flying. It is the only resource a ship can make more of, and the only one that weighs nothing.
What makes power
Two things aboard a ship produce charge, and only two.
Solar panels are the ones you build for it. There are three, and each is a folded stack of cells that swings out of its housing when you deploy it. The figure on a panel's info card is what it makes with the sun full on it.
| Panel | Makes | Sold by |
|---|---|---|
| SP-1 Solar Panel | 0.03 u/s | Solar Power |
| SP-3 Solar Array | 0.09 u/s | Solar Arrays |
| SP-6 Twin Array | 0.24 u/s | Solar Arrays |
A running engine makes charge as a side effect, from 0.01 u/s on the Lander Engine to 0.06 u/s on the Heavy Engine. That covers an ascent and nothing after it: the moment the engine shuts down, so does the supply. Anything meant to sit in orbit for a while needs a panel.
What holds it
Charge lives in batteries, and in the small reserve every command part carries built in. A battery does nothing else: it holds units and hands them out.
| Part | Holds | Sold by |
|---|---|---|
| B-400 Battery Bank | 400 u | Power Banks |
| B-90 Battery | 90 u | Batteries |
| PB-20 Battery | 20 u | Batteries |
| Crew Capsule | 15 u | Crew Capsules |
| Command Pod | 10 u | Rocketry |
| Passenger Cabin | 10 u | Passenger Cabins |
| Sat Controller | 5 u | Probe Control |
A battery in flight wears its own gauge: a lit slot on its casing that empties as the charge goes, amber under a quarter and red under a tenth. You can read a satellite's state off the ship itself without opening anything.
The flight readout at the top left carries an ELECTRICITY row: the level, then the load as current over maximum, then in brackets which way it is going. A row reading 5.0 / 5.0 with (-0.07/d) beside it is a full ship spending charge rather than making it. The header folds the whole list away to a strip of level pips if you want the corner back.
What spends it
Almost nothing spends charge quickly, and that is the trap: a ship parked in orbit drains for days while you are not watching.
| What draws | How much | When |
|---|---|---|
| Command Pod | 0.86 u/day | All the time |
| Crew Capsule | 1.3 u/day | All the time |
| Passenger Cabin | 0.86 u/day | All the time |
| Sat Controller | 0.43 u/day | All the time |
| Each passenger in a cabin | 1.73 u/day | While the seat is filled |
| Command Pod's wheels | 0.02 u/s | Only while you turn |
| Crew Capsule's wheels | 0.03 u/s | Only while you turn |
| Sat Controller's wheels | 0.05 u/s | Only while you turn |
| Thermometer | 0.2 u | Once per reading |
| Barometer | 0.3 u | Once per reading |
| Antennas | 345.6 u/day to 0.1 u/s | While switched on and out |
The antennas are the heavy draw, and they are the reason a probe needs a panel rather than a bigger battery. The smallest of them, the CW-1 Whip, spends a PB-20 Battery's whole 20 u in 83 minutes on its own. See Parts: Comms for what each one takes.
Two things save you charge you were not spending on purpose. An antenna that is switched off draws nothing, and a dish still folded in its housing draws nothing either. A panel works the same way in reverse: while it is stowed it makes nothing at all.
It reaches every part
Charge runs along every joint on the ship, whatever the joint was built to carry. Fuel is fussy about which attachment points it passes through; electricity is not. A battery bolted to the flank of a booster feeds an instrument at the nose, a pod's reserve pays for a reading taken by a sensor three parts away, and a panel anywhere charges everything.
That means you never have to plan the wiring. Put the battery where the ship balances and the panel where it will not be in the way. See the Electricity entry for the resource itself.
Sunlight, and the dark side
A panel's output follows how much sun actually reaches the ship. In full sunlight it makes its rated figure. Behind a world, in that world's shadow, it makes nothing, and it climbs back as the ship comes round into the light. Every world but the sun casts a shadow, and it is the shadow the ship is really in that counts, not the one you would guess from the map.
Which way a panel faces never matters. A wing pointing at the ground charges exactly as fast as one pointing at the sun. You do not aim panels in this game; you only get them out of their housings and into the light.
This keeps running while you are away. A ship you left in orbit goes on charging on its sunlit half and draining in eclipse on the shared world's clock, so you can come back to a satellite that has been quietly running down for a week. Size the battery for the dark half of the orbit and the panel for the lit half.
Running flat
A flat ship is not lost. It is deaf and stiff.
The reaction wheels stop first: with no charge to turn them they make no torque, so the ship will not answer the turn buttons however hard you hold them. Instruments refuse to read, because a reading is paid for all at once and a ship that cannot cover it takes no measurement and files nothing. Nobody aboard comes to any harm. Charge back up and everything works again.