Power & Water & Gas & & & & & & & &

← Devlog July 29, 2026 · gmp

Our predecessors implemented basic utility systems that were more of a chore than anything that added depth to the simulation.

Tower Forever 's utility system goes a lot deeper while being less annoying to deal with. Let's learn how it's been done.

Utilities

Every single kind of standalone cell and leased space will need some kind of utility hookup in order to work. Your tenants will be upset at working, living and cooking in the dark, unable to wash their hands, making raw food only because they are unable to heat anything. This is a life reserved for our ancestors and the modern tenant will want nothing to do with it.

To this end, the city provides the following services available to the tower. You can pass on a lot of the costs to your tenants but there will still be ongoing costs unless you can drop some money upfront.

  • Electricity

    Did you know? The modern world runs on this stuff and pretty much everyone needs this and they're going to be really upset if they don't have it.

    Everything in the game requires electricity, the simulation is discrete enough that every bulb is tracked for consumption.

  • Water

    The universal solvent, useful for all sorts of things. It's pretty much a necessity to have water capacity pretty much necessary to have working toilet facilities, restaurants and living spaces. If people can't get hydration and can't get rid of their waste they'll be unhappy.

  • Gas

    Used for cooking, some places have worked to phase this out in new construction. In these scenarios, watch out for increased power usage to offset it!

  • Phone

    Some people still use phones. Your high end restaurants will want 2 lines that they'll just let ring. Your retiree tenants still expect a phone line installed. Various offices will expect some lines installed as part of their lease, it's business.

  • HvAC

    The tower on its own does not control its' own temperature and will slowly try and reach equilibrium with the outside. When occupied each person produces some heat and it can get rather warm inside the tower so you'll need to build out heating and cooling capacity in order to keep your tenants happy.

  • Internet

    The city has a comprehensive fiber network with bundles on every block that were laid down over the past 10 years every time the street was torn up. How convenient!

  • Ventilation

    Some restaurants and shops have a smell! The inside of the tower can get stale and smelly real quick and you'll want to provide additional ventilation capacity lest everyone stars complaining.

  • Steam

    The city provides district steam via pressurized steam pipes that feed right into your building. Your restaurants will use it for sanitation and your high end tenants will have appliances that demand it.

  • Sewage

    You know all the things that get consumed need to go somewhere right? Going over your sewage removal capacity means wildly increased filth coming out of your bathrooms and other problems.

Networks

Each of these is provided by one or more cells forming a unit attached to the exterior wall of the building. Utility cells can only be placed in the basement and on the first floor. Each cell provides a fixed amount of capacity. Some production cells can be upgraded in place with more virtual capacity being added. There are additional special cells that are unlocked with increased tower prestige that provide far greater capacity at a lower operating cost in return for a minimum required floor area and other utility inputs.

Of course having utilities and tenants only exist on the first floor of a building is another impractical choice. For vertical movement, a conduit riser is necessary and will be used to move your transit networks across the tower.

Once you've placed the production cells and risers, you need to connect your tenants and build out a network. Not every kind of tenant will need every kind of utility and it would be prohibitively expensive and pointless to outfit every mall kiosk for steam service. However some tenants will want more and you may find out they are demanding utilities after they've moved in if you aren't paying attention. We do really make an effort to make this kind of work not super tedious in 3d to lay out a network. The "Connection Rule" is that one edge has to touch a cell that contains a network pipe or riser in order to be considered connected.

| T1| N | | T2| In this example, T1 is connected to the network due to its' proximity, while T2 is not.

Building

The Facility Tab in the Build pane shows all the placeable network components. The first row contains all the various kinds of pipes and the second row contains non-tenant public fixtures such as additional ventilation and temperature control.

Building is For convenience, dragging a square across the floor will outline that area in place and queue up work for the builders to build.