RED CIRCUIT · WORKING TITLE · PRE-PRODUCTION
05 / Build the settlement
BUILD THE SETTLEMENT THAT KEEPS YOU ALIVE
Extraction brings the haul home. The settlement turns that return into a physical strategy instead of another menu.
The extraction doors close. Your operative is safe, the new equipment is banked, and one Recovery Charge has arrived with the district result. Back home, the next decision is not which menu to open—it is where to send the courier drone through a refuge you built.
Every account owns one private settlement with its own layout, buildings, upgrades, resources, trophies, and decoration. It is meant to look like a history, not a universal lobby skin.
Bring something home. Build the place that makes the next descent possible.
Your Place, Not the Multiplayer Lobby
The private settlement and shared multiplayer hub are separate destinations. The hub handles ordinary gathering and party formation. Friends may visit your settlement and inspect permitted services, but only the owner edits the layout or claims production.
Functional buildings and routing pieces snap to a deterministic strategic grid. Decoration is freeform and personal; it does not alter dispatch physics or infrastructure. Strategy and expression can share the same refuge without turning every chair into a stat decision.
Fire the Recovery Dispatch
Completing a district grants one Recovery Charge, stored up to three initially. Spending one launches courier drones through the physical settlement. You see the initial trajectory and first impact, then the layout takes over—there are no free player-facing test shots.
Every valid launch guarantees baseline Power. Good aim, useful building order, and a thoughtful route multiply the return and may create Overcharge. The interaction is tactile and strategic, not passive idle income and not a punishment for logging out.
Placement Is a Build of Its Own
Limited space, irregular footprints, orientation, adjacency, launch angles, Power access, and finite cable capacity all matter. Power is stored globally, but only connected buildings may spend it. Empty Power disables advanced functions without blocking expeditions or essential services.
Cables occupy a non-colliding overlay and consume reusable Conduit Capacity by length. They do not take building grid cells or block drone paths. A Hideout Core upgrade can expand capacity, charge storage, and eventually the settlement itself.
Start Simple. Build Deep.
The first playable slice is being scoped around Recovery Charge, Power, and Salvage, with no real-world resource decay. Initial facility roles include the Hideout Core, Dispatch Rail, Power Plant, Workshop, Calibration Bench, Intel Relay, and a routing reflector.
Later depth may explore coolant, data, heat, logistics, residents, factions, production, new zones, and advanced dispatch pieces. Those are possibilities, not locked first-slice promises. The foundation is deliberately simple enough to validate before it becomes elaborate.
Where the Project Stands
RED CIRCUIT is a working title in pre-production. The core game design, weapon and itemization design, and settlement foundation have been approved internally. We are scoping and validating the first playable slice.
The full game, playable slice, art, balance, networking, certification, and production plan are not complete. This microsite describes the approved direction clearly enough to invite criticism before uncertainty hardens into expensive decisions.
What We Want You to Tell Us
The useful response is not whether every idea sounds large. It is whether the whole can be understood, desired, and questioned.
- ClarityWhat could you explain accurately after one read?
- ExcitementWhich decision or system made you want to see the game move?
- ConfusionWhere did the explanation lose you?
- ComplexityWhat feels like one system too many?
- First TouchWhat would you most want to try in a playable slice?