Editing Welcome to the Relay Network (section)

=== Heat, Coolant, Overclock ===

This is the new timing layer. Every bay has a heat percent. It ticks up while the bay runs.

There are four bay modes:

* <strong>Off:</strong> no heat, no output.
* <strong>Underclocked:</strong> half output, much less heat.
* <strong>Normal:</strong> baseline.
* <strong>Overclocked:</strong> double output, much more heat, plus a cooldown after.

Three network-wide thresholds:

* <strong>Unstable.</strong> A warning. Nothing breaks.
* <strong>Critical.</strong> Things are about to go wrong.
* <strong>Shutdown.</strong> The hottest bay gets forced Off and cannot run again until it cools all the way back to zero.

Heat dissipates passively when you switch to a cooler mode. <strong>DX Coolant</strong> gives you an instant temperature drop plus a temporary reduction in heat rate. The size of the drop scales with how many coolants you apply at once, one to five. Only one coolant application is allowed per overclock session, so you cannot stack them indefinitely.

Heat is what keeps very large legacy migrators in check. A 600-plus-module Mint bay will be forced to operate Underclocked most of the time, landing roughly at half of legacy output. Smaller bays barely feel heat at all.

One small note: most of the heat readouts on the bay card are gated behind the <strong>Bay Telemetry</strong> research node. Until you unlock it, you see only mode, module count, and stored totals. Once unlocked, the rates, time-to-shutdown projections, and mode comparison rows all appear.