Relay Heat

Relay Network

• Bays
  • Mint
  • Refinery
    • Transmutation
  • Cooling
  • Recovery
• Salvage
• Relay Heat
• Relay Research
• Bay Upgrades
• Network Store

Heat builds up in each Relay Network Bay while it runs, and a hot Bay produces less. Every producing Bay (Mint, Refinery and Recovery) has its own heat. A hot Mint does not heat up your Refinery.

What heat does

Heat is shown as a percentage of the Bay's capacity:

Heat	Effect
Up to 70%	Full speed
70% to 100%	Output eases down, to a fifth of normal at 100%
100% to 115%	Only reachable while Overclocked. Output is capped low until the Bay cools back down

There is no forced shutdown. A Bay always keeps running, just slower when it is hot.

Operating modes

Each producing Bay runs in one mode at a time, shared by all its Modules:

Mode	Output	Heat	Cools down on its own
Off	None	None	Fastest
Underclocked	Reduced	Low	Fast
Normal	Baseline	Baseline	Slowly
Overclocked	Boosted	Highest (the Mint heats up fastest)	Not at all

Overclocking lasts 20 minutes, then the Bay drops back to Normal. After that the Bay has a cooldown of 10 minutes before it can Overclock again; the Overclock Cooldown Reducer upgrade shortens it. Overclocked Bays also burn fuel faster.

Cooling Bays only run Off or Normal and make no heat.

Keeping heat down

• Module levels. Each added Module adds a little less heat than the one before, and levelling a Module lowers the heat it makes.
• Cooling Bay. Burns Cryo Gel and sends cooling supply to Bays above 50% heat.
• DX Coolant. Apply 1 to 5 units to a hot Bay: heat drops at once, and the Bay heats up much more slowly for a while afterwards. Larger applications are more efficient. It cannot be used on Cooling Bays or Bays that are Off, and only once per Overclock session. You can apply it in the same step as starting an Overclock.
• Local Heat Resistance upgrade: less heat on one Bay, and cooling goes further on it.
• Thermal Research: nodes such as Thermal Reserve, Passive Dissipation and Thermal Buffer reduce heat across the whole Network.

DX Coolant

DX Coolant is a consumable item for instant heat control. Get it from the Network Store, Exquisite Trunks, some Achievements and the daily Refined leaderboard rewards. It is different from Cryo Gel, which fuels Cooling Bays over time.

Changelog

Release date	Update	Changes
June 8, 2026	v2026.06.08	Fixed a timing bug where relay heat numbers could jump to a different value the moment you make any action, or snap to a corrected number when you next acted. Heat now reads consistently whether the game was active or backgrounded. This fixes both the Interlock Harmony asymmetry issue and cooling allocation timing so projected heat and output estimates stay stable and accurate even if an overclock or coolant changes while you were away.
May 27, 2026	v2026.05.27	The Refinery heat bar will now show the bay cooling once its basket runs out or its output buffer fills.
May 25, 2026	v2026.05.25	Relay heat redesign. (TheDepartedOne) Bays no longer shut down or sit in a forced recovery. A hot bay just runs slower and keeps ticking the whole time. For more details, read the related blog post.
May 25, 2026	The Relay Heat Update	We changed how heat works on your Relay bays. Here is the short version. No more shutdowns The biggest change: bays do not shut down anymore. Before, if a bay got too hot it would trip and sit in a long forced cooldown, making nothing the whole time. That is gone. A hot bay now just runs slower, and it never fully stops. Hot just means slower Heat works on a smooth slider now. While a bay is cool it runs at full speed. As it heats up it gradually makes less, down to a minimum it will not drop below. So even a maxed-out hot bay keeps producing, it is just working at a lower rate. Your heat can settle anywhere You might see a bay heat up and then just stop at some number, sitting there without moving. That is normal, not a bug. A hotter bay makes less, and making less also makes less heat, so as it climbs it reaches the point where the heat coming in and the heat going out balance each other. The number levels off and holds there. It is simply where that bay settles for its current size and mode. Underclock it or drop a coolant and it settles lower, build it up or overclock and it settles higher. Big bays are worth it Stacking modules used to cook your bay (kind of a hidden mechanic, targeted mostly Mint, but also Refinery on a lower scale). Now each extra module in either bay adds a little less heat than the one before it, and leveling a module up makes it run cooler. So large, high-level bays stay reasonable instead of melting, and going big is actually a good idea now. A new heat bar Every bay now shows a heat bar, right above its output. The color tells you where you stand at a glance: Green: nice and cool, full speed Yellow: warming up, output starting to dip Red: at the cap, output at the minimum Purple: overclocking, pushing past the normal cap Output is shown as current and max, so you can see exactly how much your heat is slowing things down right now. After overclocking session heat dissipates naturally based on the current dissipation rate of Normal mode (-1%/min by default). Modes, quick recap Each bay runs in one mode: Off: nothing runs, and heat cools off the fastest Underclocked: cooler and steady, a bit less output, great for set and forget Normal: the baseline Overclocked: a big output push, but it heats up fast, so use it for a burst and it cools back down on its own afterward A normal bay tops out at 100 percent heat (no more nonsensical 120%). Overclocking lets you push above that, up to 115 percent, for extra output while it lasts. Research changes Thermal Reserve changed to decrease the output penalty while throttled. Interlock Harmony still does the same thing, but the amount was retuned to the new, smaller heat numbers, and the fact that overclocking is possible without worrying about shutdown while socializing. One heads up Heat pool of all your bays is reset to 0% retroactively, at the time you last did anything with Relay Network. Open up your Relay and see how your setup runs now.
May 23, 2026	v2026.05.23	Heat changes. (TheReturnedOne) A full bay now cools from full pool to zero in about 15 minutes when switched off, and forced recovery finishes in about 30 minutes. You can now apply DX Coolant to a bay that is in forced recovery to shave time off its recovery pool. Interlock Harmony fraction was increased (roughly a +4%/min cooling effect). Overflow Cutoff now correctly works as if the bay is off, dissipating heat as well.
May 21, 2026	Welcome to the Relay Network	TL;DR Heat is the new throttle. Bays generate heat while they run. You manage it with bay modes and DX Coolant. 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: Off: no heat, no output. Underclocked: half output, much less heat. Normal: baseline. Overclocked: double output, much more heat, plus a cooldown after. Three network-wide thresholds: Unstable. A warning. Nothing breaks. Critical. Things are about to go wrong. Shutdown. 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. DX Coolant 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 Bay Telemetry 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. The research tree Bay Telemetry reveals all the heat readouts, time-to-shutdown projections, and mode comparison rows. Bay upgrades Local Heat Resistance (10 tiers): up to 15 percent less heat on that bay. Overclock Cooldown Reducer (5 tiers): down from 10 minutes to 5. Modules: crafting, leveling, pausing Leveling improves your heat budget in both families. Mint modules earn an outright heat discount at every fifth level. Refinery modules do generate more heat at higher levels, but throughput scales faster than heat, so the heat you pay per BC refined drops as you level up.

Guide: Relay heat and cooling

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