Machines and power

How a network works

Everything joined face to face is one network: cables, switches that are on, and the devices themselves. Power is worked out several times a second for each network. Generators make what they can, machines ask for what they need, and batteries take up any spare or make up any shortfall. A machine only asks for power while it has work to do, so an idle drill draws nothing. If there is too little power, every machine on the network runs at the share it gets, so a smelter may heat more slowly rather than stop.

A network's cables carry only so much: the weakest cable in the network sets the limit. A cable carries 12 watts for each unit of conductivity its metal has. Copper carries about 700 watts, iron about 120 watts, and wood or stone do not carry power at all.

Generators

Device	Made from	Makes	Fuel and notes
Generator	16 metal and 8 heatproof material (stone, clay, brick or metal)	300 W	Burns petrol (180 seconds a barrel) or diesel (450 seconds a barrel). It burns fuel only while something can use the power or a battery has room. A crate touching it feeds it a barrel.
Solar Panel	4 glass and 4 metal	Up to 90 W	Makes power by daylight, with nothing but glass above it. At night it makes none.
Wind Turbine	8 metal and 8 wood	70 W at sea level, up to 175 W high up	Gusts up and down. Stands higher than the sea and it makes more.
Reactor	40 metal and 24 heatproof material	2,400 W	Runs on uranium or thorium only. A unit of fuel lasts 900 seconds for each unit of its radioactivity.

Storage and switches

Device	Made from	What it does
Battery	12 metal	Stores up to 60 kilojoules, more in a reactive metal (lithium nearly doubles it). It moves up to 500 W in or out.
Switch	2 metal	Right click to turn it off. When it is off it stops joining the network on either side.
Cable	Metal ingots, one ingot a length	Carries power. The metal sets how much. See the building pieces page.

Machines

Machine	Made from	Power while working	What it does
Powered Drill	20 metal and 4 stone	180 W	Bores straight down one block at a time, up to 80 metres, as a pickaxe of its own metal would. A steel drill cuts rock an iron one cannot. It stops at liquid, at ground too hard for it, when its output is full, or when it strikes oil. What it digs goes into a crate beside it, or into its own nine slots.
Electric Smelter	24 heatproof material and 8 metal	400 W	A furnace heated by power instead of fuel. It heats up to 1,800 °C as far as its walls can stand, while it has something to smelt.
Pump	12 metal	90 W	Lifts a block of the liquid below it out of its spout each second. Over an oil bore it draws oil up into a crate as barrels of crude oil. See the fluids page.
Refinery	24 metal and 8 heatproof material	250 W	Turns a barrel of crude oil into a barrel of fuel: kerosene (6 seconds, for rockets), petrol (4 seconds) or diesel (10 seconds). You choose which in its screen.
Conveyor	1 metal and 2 fibre	8 W	Carries whatever lies on it, at 1.6 metres a second, in the way it faces. See the fluids, conveyors and sorting page.

Screens and what you can read

Right click a device to open it. A generator shows its fuel slot. A smelter shows its ore and output. A drill shows its nine slots. Every device shows what it is doing, how many watts it makes or uses, and its own gauge (fuel left, charge, depth bored, heat, blocks lifted). It also shows its whole network: how much is made, how much is wanted, what the weakest cable carries, and what the batteries hold.

Aim at a device and its label names what it is, such as "Iron Generator", with what it is doing. Aim at a cable and it says what it carries.

Lights

Electric lights are placed as models. A wired light draws its power from the network it is joined to. Some lights switch on only after dark.

Tips

• Start with a Generator and a crate of barrels: it runs as long as the fuel lasts.
• Put a battery on a solar or wind network to keep machines running at night.
• Use copper cable for long runs: it carries far more than iron.
• A powered drill over a crate is a free miner: it bores 80 metres and fills the crate as it goes.

For the liquid side of the factory, see fluids, conveyors and sorting. For the pieces that carry power, see building pieces and shapes.

← Back to the wiki · Last updated 25 October 2026. Mantlenaut is in alpha, so things change.