Water production: capacity, electricity and expansion

Build one complete working unit

Get the water-trading network from Joe Wild, then buy the equipment you need from the water supplier or Jackson. A Moisture Farm needs its own power source and a liquid container with free capacity. A Water Purifier needs a container holding water and enough power for one processing cycle. Put each in its actual slot and leave it overnight. Read the new volume or scan the resulting purity the next morning.

Current collector and purifier

Count total production

A bare collector produces 850 mL and consumes 6 kJ per working night. Performance changes output before the shared-air reduction. Divide each running collector’s output by 1 + 0.25 × (running collectors − 1). With identical unmodified machines:

Running collectors	Per machine, mL/night	Total, mL/night
1	850	850
2	680	1360
3	about 567	about 1701
4	about 486	about 1944

The third machine adds about 341 mL total, not another 850 mL. Its battery still pays the working energy cost. A full receiving bottle prevents that machine working. Quality sets its water grade: +50/+100/+150 quality reaches Base/High Quality/Pure water. If the output already meets your destination’s requirement, skip unnecessary purification.

Size purification for the actual batch

A bare purifier consumes 4 kJ when it removes material; an idle cycle removes nothing and does not draw that working charge. Its workload is contaminant volume, not a fixed number of litres of water. A larger, dirtier container may take more nights. Performance changes the removal budget, quality sets the maximum purity and efficiency changes energy use. Identical purity percentages in 1 L and 10 L do not mean identical processing time.

Record starting volume and purity, process one night, then scan again. Buy a second purifier only after identifying the nightly bottleneck. Compare the extra production with energy, container capacity and the space shown in the Power Block layout. Detailed caps and contaminant handling remain in the water-quality guide.