Radar Towers and Fuses

One shift the coordinates panel simply stops working. There is no dramatic failure, no explosion - just a communication error where a working readout used to be. The dish is fine, the terminal is fine, and the signal loop still runs. Only coordinates is dead.

That error is almost always a tower problem, not a console problem. The panel is reporting the state of a link, and the link has been severed somewhere out in the terrain.

Each radar tower is protected by a fuse, and the fuse is a wear item rather than a permanent part. Every time a tower takes a lightning strike, the fuse dies. A storm is therefore not weather - it is a maintenance event, and it may cost you several towers in one night.

This is the reason a spare fuse belongs in your kit alongside media and tools. Carrying one turns a lost shift into a ten-minute repair.

You do not have to search blind. With the link down, the compass points toward the coordinate radar installation - the tower that needs attention. Follow the needle rather than the map, because the point of the failure is that your positional tools are degraded.

The same mechanic governs the radar tower beside the base, so the fix is not limited to distant installations. A base-side tower that takes a strike behaves identically.

At the tower, replace the blown fuse. With a fresh fuse seated, the link comes back and the coordinates panel resumes normal operation - no reset ritual, no console command. The repair is entirely physical.

Two habits follow from this. First, check fuses after any storm before you start scanning, because a dead link will quietly invalidate work you thought you had done. Second, keep the spare count honest: one fuse is a repair, two is a policy.