Player wiki
The crank
The crank is a gearbox, not a button. Your hand speed is multiplied by the gear ratio to give a machine rpm, and it is that machine rpm — not your arm — that decides everything.
How energy is made
The starting gear ratio is ×7.5, and every level of GEARBOX adds 0.5 to it. The energy leaving your hand each second is:
e/s = 1.2 × crank power × (machine rpm ÷ 600) × zone multiplier × (1 + 0.5 × quality)
Quality is how steady you are. It is a rolling average of jerk with a 0.9 s time constant, and it falls to zero at 5000 deg/s². A smooth hand is worth up to 50 % more output than a jerky one at the same speed. Your speed itself is smoothed over 0.2 s, so a stutter does not instantly cost you the zone. Below 30 machine rpm the crank counts as stopped.
The seven zones
The rpm below is the machine rpm; the second column is what your hand has to do at the starting ratio. The last column is how long that zone takes to fill the heat gauge from empty against base cooling — which is the honest way to say whether a zone is a place you can live in.
| zone | machine rpm | your hand (rev/s) | output | heat/s | e/s entering | burns after |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IDLE | 0 – 150 | 0 – 0.33 | ×0 | 0 | 0 | never |
| STARTUP | 150 – 300 | 0.33 – 0.67 | ×0.4 | 0.2 | 0.12 | never |
| EFFICIENT | 300 – 500 | 0.67 – 1.11 | ×1 | 0.6 | 0.6 | never |
| PERFECT | 500 – 900 | 1.11 – 2 | ×1.5 | 1 | 1.5 | never |
| OVERDRIVE | 900 – 1100 | 2 – 2.44 | ×2.5 | 9 | 4.5 | 20 s |
| DANGER | 1100 – 1300 | 2.44 – 2.89 | ×3.2 | 20 | 7.04 | 6.3 s |
| EXTREME | ≥ 1300 | ≥ 2.89 | ×4 | 40 | 10.4 | 2.8 s |
What overdrive really does
Turning fast does two things at once, and the second is the one people miss.
- It multiplies your hand: OVERDRIVE pays ×2.5, DANGER ×3.2, EXTREME ×4.
- It speeds up the whole factory: your machines gain 50 % for as long as you stay in OVERDRIVE, DANGER or EXTREME. Your hand multiplies the automation instead of competing with it.
That is why a short, deliberate burst into the red during a good event is worth far more than the same burst on a quiet minute. But look at the burn column above before you commit: EXTREME fills the gauge in 2.8 seconds, and an overheat sets everything to ×0 — see Heat. Staying in PERFECT also trickles 0.2 research point per second, regardless of what your dial says.
The reverse vent
Cranking backwards produces nothing. It opens the vent instead, and it is the most useful thing you can do with a hot factory:
- cooling gains 14/s at reference speed, scaled by how fast you turn;
- a seized machine unseizes: the overheat countdown drops by 1.5 s per second of reverse cranking at reference speed.
Blowing into the microphone adds 1 second of recovery per second, but only while you are actually in an overheat. Once you have FLYWHEEL, the crank keeps 90 % of its speed per frame when you let go — you can lift your hand for a moment without dropping a zone.