Manual Generator

Manual Generator is a power source that must be manually operated to produce electricity. It is the first power producer unlocked. It requires a duplicant constantly running on it in order to produce electricity. While it is a renewable power source, it reduces a colony's productivity as it produces a relatively small amount of power and prevents a duplicant from doing other jobs.

Usage

Manual Generators are mandatory at the start in order to power your first structures. They stay relevant later on in the game as they do not use up any resources, and can be used to localize power production to remote projects.

Because duplicants will end up spending a lot of time on manual generators, making sure the area has a steady Oxygen supply and ventilating Carbon Dioxide will increase your productivity. Increasing the Decor in areas with Manual Generators will also help to regulate colony Stress.

Use the battery threshold slider to optimize the trips of your duplicants. A lower threshold means duplicants will make fewer trips to the Manual Generator, but is risky as the colony might go to bed with nearly empty batteries. You can also use a combination of high and low threshold values once you have multiple manual generators to have some constantly running while others serve as backup in case of power shortage.

Mechanics

Duplicants can be told to run on the generator by allowing Operate tasks. It will train machinery and athletics over time.

Duplicants will automatically stop running on the Manual Generator once at least one battery connected to it is full. This is to prevent power loss from a duplicant creating excess power. Setting the battery threshold at 100% is especially inefficient, because the duplicant will stop running when batteries are full, then the task will immediately be added back to a duplicant's queue. Optimal behavior means finding a balance to ensure power never runs out, even at night, but the duplicants have time to perform other tasks as well. It can be acceptable if duplicants spend all their time running, as long as power never runs out, but that is situational and is a sign that your power needs are growing and a different generator type may be desired.

Keep in mind batteries lose a small amount of power over time, as well as generating more heat, meaning fewer batteries is more energy efficient but will require more frequent charging.

If no batteries are connected to the generator, duplicants will run on it as soon as a Power consumer is in use, effectively wasting Power if production is higher than consumption. It is recommended to have at least one battery unless production and consumption are almost matched.

Duplicants will play a short falling animation when exiting the Manual Generator. They will not play it if you used the "move to" command or interrupted in some other way (for example by yellow alert). Duplicants are considered to be on the bottom-left tile for purposes such as light and decor value.

Tips

If you intend to build a gym for machinery and athletics (which are very important as they majorly increase speed of work), consider putting it over access regulated door and reducing generators priority, so they will not employ specialists and interfere less with other errands.
- It is possible to get some energy from the gym while keeping dupes constantly running by placing generators behind outgoing transformer, which is regulated by the battery on the other side in the way similar to Coal Generator. There still has to be some power consumer on the generators side or dupes will not run at all.