Energy

The original Chimera had a simple food and water system that served as proxies for energy and coolant. I never explicitly mentioned this.

What I'm working on now for the next update is a more grown up system where energy and coolant will be mentioned explicitly, and can be affected more subtly by more factors in the eventual game, and provide more nuanced feedback on status.

Everything you do in the game will affect your energy, it won't deplete just as a factor of time, though time will play a part. Being still will consume the least energy, unless you put yourself into standby mode, in which case energy will drop to a trickle. Putting yourself in standby mode will serve a purpose, but I've not worked out what that is yet.

Moving will use energy. Moving while carrying objects will use up more, proportional to your load.

Eventually, you'll be able to use a jetpack, or perhaps jump, and this will use more energy.

Then some rooms will have different environmental characteristics, from zero to high gravity, and these again will affect energy consumption.

You will of course be able to boost your energy capacity through upgrades.

Energy management then, will become a much more pressing and immediate concern than it was in the original. You will need to charge regularly, and you will need to conserve energy to solve some puzzles successfully.

There will be a numeric or bar indicator of current energy and coolant "load", but the heartbeat of the original will provide a more direct and visceral audio cue.

Your character will be programmable, and this will allow you to temporarily override the deployment of energy and/or coolant to overcome certain puzzles. In a high radiation area, you will need to circulate coolant much more rapidly before you enter the area. You will therefore be able to increase the coolant rate, do the puzzle and then restore your original coolant rate. This will reduce your radiation impact.

You will be able to alter your speed by driving more (or less) energy, up to the load capacity of your suit motors and hydraulics. So for some rooms, you might want to be able to move incredibly quickly, and you'll be able to override your default speed to, for example, walk 10 times faster than normal, if your motors and hydraulics can take it. Note, this will of course consume energy 10 times faster, but that will depend on the efficiency curve of your motor and hydraulics components. For your normal setup, driving more power beyond a certain threshold will offer diminishing returns, but might sometimes be warranted.