Battery
Loses charge over time.
Power runoff: 1 kJ/cycle
The Battery is a building which can be connected to power circuits to store excess energy for later use. Batteries will charge, using power from the circuit, whenever production exceeds consumption, and discharge, providing power, when the reverse is true. A battery containing charge will lose 1 kJ/cycle to power runoff, and produce 1.25 kDTU/s of heat.
Regular Batteries can be built as soon as enough Metal Ore is available, and are key to efficiently powering early-game Research. However, both upgraded batteries are available from early-game research and the regular Battery has no real advantages over them, making it one of the first structures most colonies will completely replace.
- The Jumbo Battery has four times the capacity at the cost of double size and runoff, essentially being a 2x improvement in both energy density and energy rentention compared to the base Battery.
- The Smart Battery is an improvement on the base Battery in every way other than size - the two have the same charge density, but the smart battery has substantial reductions in heat production and power runoff in addition to its signature Automation Wire functions.
This leaves the only two factors in favour of the regular Battery as size and cost - but the instant multiple batteries are added to a single larger circuit, both of these also favour the Jumbo or Smart Batteries, which are both better in every respect than two single Batteries connected to the same circuit.
