Icarus, also called The Mecha or just Mecha, is the silent protagonist and player character of Dyson Sphere Program. The player can upgrade Icarus's abilities, giving it enhanced stats such as faster movement speed, the ability to fly, and eventually the ability to travel enormous distances between planets and stars.
Icarus requires power to function, which it generates using its onboard Mecha Core. This can consume any fuel source (combustible, nuclear, etc.) and generates power at 100% efficiency, although the rate at which it generates power is very slow without upgrades. Wireless Power Towers and Signal Towers can also rapidly charge Icarus's battery if it stands close by.
Abilities
- Movement - The most basic ability, allowing Icarus to walk around. Upgrading Icarus's movement allows it to walk faster, achieve low-altitude flight, and ultimately fly through space.
- The Warp Drive allows Icarus to use Space Warpers and enormous amounts of power to travel at incredible speeds through space, which is essentially required to travel to other star systems.
- Gathering - Icarus can manually gather resources from a planet, albeit very slowly.
- Replicator - Icarus can use the items in its inventory to produce items and buildings, at the same speed as the corresponding production facilities. However, some recipes cannot be produced by hand. Burning Energy Shards as fuel (obtained from the Dark Fog) also temporarily increases Icarus's hand-crafting speed.
- Research - When researching new Technologies, Icarus can consume items in its inventory to progress the research. This can be toggled on and off.
- Construction drones - Icarus itself does not construct buildings and facilities, instead deploying a fleet of construction drones. They can be upgraded to increase the number of construction drones and the speed at which they work.
- Weaponry - Icarus is equipped with a medium-range laser weapon from the start of the game and has multiple slots for different types of ammunition. They can be set to be used automatically or manually.
- Ground and space squadrons - Eventually, the Dark Fog will become too much for Icarus's onboard weapons to handle. However, Icarus has a hangar for combat drones, which automatically are deployed when enemies are nearby and fight independently. Each individual fleet can be toggled on and off, and pressing 9 will put fighters into Command Mode, which causes them to focus on whatever target Icarus is manually attacking.
Power consumption
| Ability | Power consumtion rate | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moving (Walking and Hovering) | 100 kW per m/s | Total power consumption ranges between 600 kW .. 1.6 MW depending on the level of Mechanical Frame upgrade.
Hovering also activates Thruster required for staying in the air. | |
| Replicator | 240 kW | Consumption is the same regardless of replication speed. | |
| Manual research | 360 kW | ||
| Gathering | 640 kW | Consumption is the same both for veins and vegetation/rocks. Gathering from Gas Giants does not consume power. | |
| Drones | 60kW per m/s | Drones are powered remotely and spend energy during the flight.
Consumption is 360 kW / drone baseline and 1.08 MW / drone for Drone Engine level 5. | |
| Thruster | Hovering | ~1.2 MW | When moving by Hovering, also consumes energy according to the current Moving speed |
| Flying | |||
| Accelerating when Sailing in Space | up to 91.3 MW | ||
| Warp Drive | Activating | ||
| Traveling | 3.2 MW per AU/s | = 80 W per m/s = 192MW per ly/s (far less energy per metre per second than Walking).
38.4 MW for the basic warp speed, increased by 9.6 MW per each additional level of the Drive Engine upgrade. | |