survival kit has no power

[Jimbotswana]

I've been successfully playing a survival game for several hours and the survival kit in the pod suddenly stopped working. I haven't scavenged anything from the pod but I now can't process stone, refill power, O2 , H2 or health.

Control panel tells me that it has 100% power but the "refill screen" is black and my suit is now out of power.

What can I do to fix this?

[Candarian]

get in a seat hit Y or P
sounds as if u turned the grid off

[Jimbotswana]

I tried sitting in the pod seat.... neither Y or P did anything. Screen just reads "OFFLINE". Any other way of turning the grid back on?

[Candarian]

u played for several hours?
are u sure u didnt just run out of power?

[Pembroke]

Check that the surival kit itself is not turned off. Control panel, survival kit, and there at the top the "on" vs. "off" setting. If the screen of the survival kit says "offline" then that means either it doesn't get power or it's turned off.

Check your power generation, too. If you've batteries are they on and set to either "auto" or "discharge". If they're set to "recharge" then they won't give any power out.

[woodsguide]

first thing to do.. ive found is add about 4-6 solar panels to the pod... this will give you regenerating power supply for life support and basic kit works

reciepe calls for bulletproof glass, which you cant make til later, but you can make it functional with everything else... just not 100% ...thats why i throw down 6 panels ;o)

[Buzzard]

Always check the status of your batteries. When you run out of power, nothing will work, even the Survival Kit.
No power, no life...

[Jimbotswana]

Originally posted by Pembroke:

Check that the surival kit itself is not turned off. Control panel, survival kit, and there at the top the "on" vs. "off" setting. If the screen of the survival kit says "offline" then that means either it doesn't get power or it's turned off.

Check your power generation, too. If you've batteries are they on and set to either "auto" or "discharge". If they're set to "recharge" then they won't give any power out.

Control panel shows all items are on except the beacon. Charge mode for the battery is "auto"; should I change this to discharge?

[Smokey]

Sounds like your battery is dead 🤨

[seronis]

Honestly never use any setting other than auto. If you -NEED- to change from auto this also means you arent actually producing enough power to cover your usage. Moving from auto only changes what has priority to recieve power with your inadequate production.

Leave on auto. If its not charging you need to prioritize more power production and NOT focus on how to tweak battery settings.

[Buzzard]

Auto, for batteries, is NOT always the best thing. When a battery is charging, from ANY/ALL sources, it's only about 80% efficient, so there's always some loss. Not a big deal with a massively wind/solar powered base. There'd just be that extra draw when they're charging... which is pretty much constantly.

Batteries are done just a little strange, in that they'll provide AND charge at the same time. Again, not such a big deal with lots of excess wind power about. The problem comes in with fuel use, in that they'll flat out WASTE that ~20% constantly, cutting overall fuel lifetime.

On a pure battery setup, when docking at a base, it'd be faster/better to set the vehicle's batteries to Recharge, which will draw power from all sources to quickly top up those batteries and then stop doing anything. When undock time comes, set the batteries back to Auto.

[GenerallyThrawn]

Originally posted by woods:

first thing to do.. ive found is add about 4-6 solar panels to the pod... this will give you regenerating power supply for life support and basic kit works

reciepe calls for bulletproof glass, which you cant make til later, but you can make it functional with everything else... just not 100% ...thats why i throw down 6 panels ;o)

i can usually run a basic assembler and a basic refinery with 2 panels at peak effectiveness

[Jimbotswana]

I'm getting conflicting advice here. Anyway, the pod's battery is dead and there seems to be no way to revive it. How is the pod battery normally able to recharge itself anyway, with no power attached to the pod?

I'll start another game. How does everyone process stone in the early days? Get some wind power going and attach a survival kit to it?

Any other advice?

[GenerallyThrawn]

Originally posted by Jimbotswana:

I'm getting conflicting advice here. Anyway, the pod's battery is dead and there seems to be no way to revive it. How is the pod battery normally able to recharge itself anyway, with no power attached to the pod?

I'll start another game. How does everyone process stone in the early days? Get some wind power going and attach a survival kit to it?

Any other advice?

What i generally do, is pick a good spot for a base ( a flat-ish area). After that, i'll fill my character's inventory with stone, bring it to the respawn ship/rover, then process as much of it as i can. While it processes, i'll mark the area with current gps coordinates, set to always show, then scout for resources. If I'm on Earth, i'll bring a hydrogen tank with me to extend my range. Same goes for Mars. I'll then look for the ore indicators (dark-ish spots on the terrain) Then mark deposits with the GPS (equip the drill to activate your suit's ore detector)

As far as base goes, it depends on what planet i'm on. Earth, i make an open staging area. Mars, I'll make a sealed base that will eventually have an airlock and air pressure, Once the base structure is complete, i'll build a minimum of 2 solar panels. (A wind turbine should be added too if your putting your survival kit on the base) Unless the base has no external atmosphere, which is when i double the initial number of solar panels.

Hope this helps, and let me know if anything needs to be clarified.

[Buzzard]

At the start, there's a slight race against time to get some sort of power going before the drop pod's battery gives out.

Some folks will add some solar to the pod (better than nothing) and work from that for a while.
Others will find a spot to start with some sort of base and use the pod (and parts it's built from, if necessary) to make sort of base, temp or otherwise.
There's also those who will go about modifying the pod to be a rover (wheels use less power than flight) which can make the little bit of power from solar panels go further. This rover can then be used to find the better place to set up a base.

No matter which way you go about it, there's a clock ticking on that battery. It's not necessarily ticking down fast, but it is ticking. That Survival Kit has several levels of power drain. It'll idle about online for a really low drain. Refining stone to ingots and making components will require the 'Kit's maximum power draw. The battery has enough charge for quite a bit of working before it runs dry. Try to have something else working before that happens.

Devices not in use CAN be turned off to save power. Of course, the 'Kit is also your respawn point if something unfortunate should happen. The O2 gen and other power users... aren't quite as vital to be online all the time.


As for the base, unless you're on the Earth's moon, put up some windmills, ~8 blocks or so off the ground, and the same 8 blocks of clearance to the sides of the windmill (that's the windmill's sides, as you CAN place them on the sides of buildings just fine, and even upside down) for maximum output potential. Windmills will work 24/7, just so long as there's some sort of atmosphere, breathable or not.


Fun fact: The small-grid Survival Kit takes the same number of Medical Components as the large-grid version. This, combined with a few more plates, const. components, etc. will have your base up and fully functional a little faster than trying to run everything through the small version.

[N0ma13]

Battery shows remaining power in Kw/h. If that's 0, it's dead.

New drop prio: Wind turbine, basic assembler, basic refinery, battery, survival kit.
Use the pod to build the base where you can, the medical components are movable.