tower management simulationJ03 Design note / infrastructure
Utilities behind the walls
Power and water now shape the tower without turning construction into a wiring puzzle. The player decides how much infrastructure is enough, where it belongs, and when rising demand calls for another plant column.
The player problem
A growing tower should not gain unlimited power and water for free. New rooms create demand peaks, plants take valuable below-grade space, risers compete with other vertical systems, and upgrades should arrive before a crisis rather than after a hidden threshold.
The implemented rule
Electrical Rooms and Water Mains supply separate streams through one-cell vertical risers. Coverage is not enough by itself: each system has capacity, a time-of-day peak, metered operating cost, and headroom the player can read before placing another demanding room.
Rising load raises the metered bill. An Overloaded plant warns while the tower can still let space; a Critical reading can block new letting at that moment. Neither state changes grades, evicts tenants, or disables the existing tower.
What shipped in this milestone
The simulation and save format now carry Electrical Rooms, Water Mains, their separate risers, plant width, capacity, time-of-day demand, strain and metered billing. The Infrastructure build category exposes both plants and risers. Per-stream overlays, inspector readings, named refusals and plant expansion make the network readable and adjustable in play. Billing now integrates each plant's load across the full quarter rather than sampling a single accounting tick, so demand timed away from that tick can no longer bill flat.
What remains
The core electrical and water loop is implemented. Capacity curves, costs, warning thresholds and the twelve-cell riser radius still need balance work and external playtesting. The interface also needs final production art and audio.
HVAC, Internet, fire-pump service, mechanical floors and broader resilience systems remain future hooks, not current promises.
Current pre-alpha gameplay and key art use AI-generated placeholders. They are temporary and will be replaced after the systems and building footprints settle and an artist is hired.