Running on cells

Development update. Everything here is in the current test build, 0.1.370. Details will change.

The Strider's own menu

Walk up to the rover and right click at it, from anywhere around it, not only at its hatches. Its menu shows the battery, how far it will go and what it is carrying, and from there you can open its cargo cases, open its cell charger, or take a charged cell from your pack and put it straight into its battery. The number keys work as well as the mouse. E still gets you in.

The rover's menu over its side on the meadow: SMV-1 Strider, the battery, its range with what the cells in its charger would add, the load and solar charging; then 1 Storage (the cases on the deck, slots and kilograms), 2 Cell charger (the cells charged), 3 Put a cell in the battery (a cell from your pack). — The rover's menu: its battery and load, its cases, its charger and a cell from your pack.

Slow, steady, and every hill counts

The rover now keeps to a slow, steady speed limit, and it keeps to it downhill too: its motors hold it back on the way down and put charge into the battery as they do. Climbing costs more, and so does everything in its cases and its charger, so a loaded rover on a hilly route goes less far than an empty one on the flat. The range on its screen counts what it carries.

Parked in daylight, its solar wing now rises on two masts, clear of the deck, before it turns to follow the sun. When someone takes the wheel it lies flat and comes back down.

The six-wheeled rover side-on on the meadow, parked, its solar wing raised on its masts above the deck's cases and turned to the sun; the prompt reads E Interact and Right click Truck. — Parked in the sun, the wing raised on its masts and turned to the light.

When the battery runs low

Under a tenth of its charge, a red lamp flashes on the dash, a soft chime sounds and you are told to stop somewhere in the sun and let the wing charge it. The screen flashes red with what is left.

If you keep going, the charged cells in its charger are its last reserve: run flat, it takes one at a time, each giving a little more charge, and leaves it flat for the charger to fill again later. When those are gone it crawls.

Inside the rover's cab with the battery low: a red lamp on the dash lights the wheel and the cab's side, and the dash screen shows 9 percent with a red band, battery low, stop in the sun to charge. — Getting in with the battery low: the red lamp on the dash and the warning on the screen.

The visor is the interface

Everything on your screen comes from your visor: the compass, the objective, the minimap, the labels on things and the read-outs. Take it off and they go with it. On foot the round minimap is now always there, in first person too; at the wheel it shows when you step the view out, and the dash keeps its square map.

Health, stamina, water and food now sit together in one panel at the bottom left, on a dark backing that stays readable against bright ground.

First person beside the rover's door: health, stamina, water and food in one panel at the bottom left, the round minimap at the bottom right, the compass at the top and the current task at the top left. — Health, stamina, water and food at the bottom left, the minimap at the bottom right.

Drills that run on cells

The rock drill and the Mk II now run on a power cell from your pack, about ten minutes of drilling to a cell. When it runs flat it goes back into your pack as a flat cell, ready for the rover's charger, and the drill takes the next. With no charged cell left, a drill still works, only slowly, so stone and ore are never out of reach.