Signals Guide for Brave New Wonders

Colored signals are how Brave New Wonders coordinates a factory without conveyor belts. Buildings pulse colours; automatons wait, proceed, retreat, or switch jobs based on the contracts you wrote into plain-text behaviours. This guide explains signal dialect design, logistics patterns (including red ammo and fuel routes), temperature-style examples from gameplay thinking, and how to debug mismatched colours before you blame the parser.

Read Text Commands for how to phrase waits, and Automation for scaling those contracts across cells. Use the Tools Hub when you want planners or helpers beside a live factory.

Signals as the anti-belt layer

In belt games you split, merge, and circuit-condition a bus. Here you publish a colour legend and teach every Mover the same dialect:

• A producer finishes a batch and pulses a colour the hauler trusts
• A buffer hits a high threshold and tells Miners to slow or pause
• A defense post warns logistics to retreat during a raid
• An airship or Wonder dock opens a logistics window on a reserved colour

Signals do not replace clear verbs and named endpoints. They gate timing. Vague text plus vague colours still fails — only faster.

Video guide

Publish a colour legend per blueprint family

Pick a legend and write it into behaviour names and blueprint titles. A workable starter dialect:

• Green — batch ready / proceed to pickup
• Yellow — buffer high / slow or pause input
• Red — hazard, ammo priority, or retreat to safe storage
• Blue — airship, Wonder, or cross-cell transfer window
• Optional other colours — biome-specific or temperature-adjacent alerts once the core four are stable

Document the legend in one place. When Blueprints paste two cells that disagree on green, you invent “AI bugs” that are really dialect clashes. Keep Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa pastes on the same family dialect unless you intentionally version a variant (Islands).

Writing waits that match the hardware

In the behaviour editor, “wait for the green signal” only works if:

1. The emitting building actually pulses green for that meaning.
2. The receiving automaton references the same colour word.
3. The graph contains a real wait node — open it after every non-trivial parse (Text Commands).
4. Idle parking does not block the deposit tile the signal was meant to free.

After parse, inspect edges. Missing waits look like busy-loop hauling. Extra waits look like a dead factory. Manual graph edits are first-class; then rewrite the text so future clones stay understandable.

RED patterns: ammo, fuel, and hazard priority

Red is the colour players overload. Split meanings carefully or you will freeze research packs while everyone “helps” the turret line.

Ammo / combat resupply. Dedicate red (or a clearly named red variant behaviour) to Movers that carry ammunition or combat crafts toward turret umbrellas. Gate with a defense building pulse so peacetime haulers ignore it (Defense).

Fuel / fusion priority. Some factories use red for urgent fusion-cell or fuel top-ups when power dips. If you do, never also use the same red pulse for “retreat now” without a second condition. Priority fuel and panic retreat are different jobs.

Hazard retreat. Old machines, dynamite lanes, and relic fights need a retreat colour that sends haulers to bunker storage. Swap or gate behaviours when the island state changes instead of stuffing full combat AI into every logistics brain.

A clean pattern: green for peaceful pickup, yellow for buffer control, red only for one urgent family per cell, blue for Wonder docks. Rank which signal-aware presets deserve cloning on the Tier List Hub.

Temperature and environmental signal examples

Gameplay often asks you to react to heat, pressure, or other building states that behave like soft temperature gauges. Practical patterns players use:

• A processor runs hot or stressed and pulses a colour that pauses inbound sand or ore until it cools.
• A water or irrigation-related building signals low reserve so secondary crafts wait (Resources).
• A fusion or power building signals deficit; only fuel Movers wake on that colour.
• A storage near a desert-facing pad signals high heat-adjacent risk and shortens routes under turret cover.

You do not need exotic vocabulary in the command text. You need one building that emits, one colour that means wait or go, and behaviours that agree. Name the emitter (GlassTemp_A, FusionAlarm) so pastes remain readable on Africa’s desert shift.

Logistics recipes that stay readable

Ore and crystal. Separate pads; green means batch ready; yellow stops Miners when buffers choke (Resources).

Sand to glass. Glass buildings pulse demand; sand Movers wait rather than busy-loop. Under-staffed sand legs are still a staffing problem — signals cannot invent Movers.

Research packs. Hub pulses receive-ready; specialist courier ignores red ammo traffic unless you intentionally dual-role.

Airship Wonder window. Blue opens when the dock can accept a module or cargo pulse. Prepare liftable cells before the Sky Pillar push (Wonders).

Defense ring. Red from alarm posts pulls haulers inside safe umbrellas; do not let patrol paths cross deposit tiles (Defense).

Debugging mismatched colours

Work the checklist in order:

1. Legend drift. Did a pasted cell bring a different green meaning? Align dialects or version the blueprint.
2. Emitter silent. Building never pulses — wrong threshold, unpowered post, or signal hardware missing from the footprint.
3. Receiver wording. Behaviour says green; graph waits on another colour after a sloppy parse. Fix the graph, then the text.
4. Clone leftovers. Wartime red still active in peacetime clones. Delete clones, fix source, re-clone (Blueprints).
5. Sync storms. Identical clones wake on one pulse and knot at a corner. Stagger idle points or split the signal into batch slices.
6. Cross-cell bleed. Two yards share a colour in overlapping vision without sharing meaning. Reserve colours per family or rename roles.

If mines are full and furnaces idle, suspect signals before redesigning recipes. Starvation with full nodes is usually a missing wait or an old deposit binding (Automation).

Scaling signals with blueprints

Blueprint only after the colour contract survives three clean cycles. Include emitters and receivers in the footprint. Leave margins for turret arcs and automaton pathing. After paste:

• Verify colours still match behaviour text
• Run one automaton before cloning a fleet
• Bump version names when the dialect changes (SignalGlass_v2)
• Strip Americas-only emitter names before island hops (Islands)

Signals travel with the factory only if you saved them on purpose.

Practice drills

1. Add a single green wait to a preset haul; confirm both ends share meaning.
2. Force a yellow buffer-high and watch Miners pause.
3. Pulse red from a defense post; confirm only the intended Movers retreat.
4. Break an emitter on purpose; confirm your failure clause or manual intervention plan.
5. Paste the cell twice; fix any colour dialect clash before staffing twins.

These drills teach more than another adjective list and prepare you for patch notes on Updates.

Controls, tools, and hubs

Faster selection while tuning emitters helps — see Controls. Keep performance expectations realistic with System Requirements. Store planners on the Tools Hub, roster framing on the Players Hub, and official links on the Links Hub. The Guides Hub lists sibling deep dives including Getting Started.

Related guides

• Text Commands — phrase waits and inspect graphs
• Automation — cells that honor signal contracts at scale
• Blueprints — paste emitters with the layout
• Resources — which chains need demand and pause colours
• Defense — red hazard and ammo coordination
• Wonders — blue logistics windows for airship travel

Master signals early. In Brave New Wonders, coloured light is the splitter, the circuit condition, and the raid siren — if every building and every automaton agrees on what each colour means.