Player wiki
Heat
One gauge, from 0 to 100, shared by your hand and your factory. It is not a punishment for cranking hard — it is a tax on the factory, which is a very different thing.
Every number on the gauge
| setting | value |
|---|---|
| Cooling while you crank | 4 |
| Extra cooling when the crank is still | 6 |
| Warning — past this, machines slow down | 75 |
| Critical — last step before the stop | 90 |
| Overheat: everything stops, seconds | 12 |
| Output during an overheat (×) | 0 |
| Worst machine penalty, % | 40 |
| Back-cranking vents, per second at reference rpm | 14 |
| Back-cranking cuts the overheat, seconds per second | 1.5 |
| Blowing into the mic, seconds per second | 1 |
| Heat ceiling in ZEN mode | 95 |
Why heat is a factory problem
Past the warning at 75, your machines start losing output, and they lose it progressively:
machine output = 1 − 0.4 × min(1, (heat − 75) ÷ (100 − 75))
So at 100 your whole factory is running at −40 % — and that is before the overheat. This is why heat matters far more once the factory is big than it did when you were the factory. An overheat stops everything for 12 seconds at ×0 output, your hand included. Hammering EXTREME can never beat a clean run: the arithmetic simply does not work out.
Keeping it down
- Stop turning. Idle cooling adds 6/s on top of the base 4/s. Doing nothing is an active cooling strategy.
- Crank backwards for 14/s at reference speed. This is the fast way down.
- Buy COOLING FINS, and take the cooling technologies. Cooling is the upgrade that lets every other upgrade run hotter.
- Blow into the mic when you are already in the overheat: 1 s per second off the clock.
ZEN mode
ZEN produces ×0.85 and caps heat at 95: it can never overheat. You trade a slice of your output for the right to stop watching the gauge. It is a real mode with its own records, not a difficulty setting — see Modes, directives and kits.