The Find The Needle power shortage machines stopped case is almost always the grid: a belt delivering material to a machine does not guarantee that machine has electricity, and a Generator that runs dry on hay looks exactly like a broken machine. Check the power grid before you touch the material route.

Find The Needle power shortage machines stopped: check the grid first

  1. Look at the machine's electricity indicator. That is the fastest way to separate a power problem from a material problem.
  2. Confirm that hay is still reaching the generators. One recorded run lost power because the generator feed had depended on overflow, and rerouting hay toward the furnaces restored the spare power.
  3. Check whether the network was switched off. If several machines stopped at the same moment right after you interacted with a pole, the whole network may be off. Press E on the power pole and follow the pole's restore prompt.
  4. Watch for the low-power notification. Demo V8 added a network notification effect that appears when power drops below the required level, so an under-powered line is marked on screen.

If the collection side slows down at the same time, confirm generator fuel delivery before buying more generating capacity. The wiring pattern and the pole upgrades are in the power grid setup.

Three causes that look like a machine fault

  • The Generator ran out of hay. It eats the same hay you sell, so a starved Generator shows up as a factory-wide failure rather than a Generator failure.
  • The network was switched off with E. Check the pole's current state before you rebuild anything.
  • The machine was never connected to a pole. A machine adjacent to a pole is not the same as a machine connected to the network.

In all three cases the material route is fine, which is why the first move is the grid. If the machines do have power and still sit idle, the fault is upstream of them — the production line checklist walks that case in order.