Constructing your first mobile aerial platform marks the moment your factory empire evolves from a single starter base into a vast intercontinental network. Developed by City From Naught Inc. and published alongside LoongGate, Brave New Wonders casts players as a Pioneer exploring a post-apocalyptic far future where floating islands are held aloft by Levitanium. The Brave New Wonders airship serves as both a flying production deck and an automated global freighter, allowing you to bridge distant continents across the wider archipelago, including Europe, Asia, and Africa. Operating the Brave New Wonders airship requires careful logistics planning, steady fuel processing, and automated signal management to ensure safe transit through hostile skies.
Without conveyor belts to bridge oceans, mastering this flying Wonder is the only way to progress beyond the opening Americas biome. Instead of physical belts, the game relies entirely on intelligent worker robots called automatons that obey plain-text instructions written in any natural language, which an in-game AI model translates into editable behaviour graphs. This comprehensive guide walks you through every stage of airship construction, automation logic, defensive outfitting, and cross-continental logistics.
Unlocking the Wonder: The Sky Pillar Excavation
Before taking to the skies, you must complete the campaign milestone at the ancient Sky Pillar. This massive ruin acts as the technological gate between the early game and intercontinental expansion. Reaching the site requires pushing past fallen tree blockades using dynamite produced in a weapon factory, which combines gunpowder (produced in a smelter using coal) with thermoplates.
Excavating the Sky Pillar requires solving an automated temperature regulation puzzle. Players must set parameters for a target temperature range and command a mover automaton to deliver two different items that can either raise or lower the internal temperature to maintain it within that required band. In addition to regulating temperature, progressing the Sky Pillar demands manufacturing and delivering a massive quantity of industrial resources.
Because the Sky Pillar is situated directly within a red danger zone, hostile old-world machines will attack as soon as structures are erected in the vicinity. Players should establish automated defenses prior to construction by setting up clusters of gun turrets, stocking nearby warehouses with ammunition, and deploying mover automatons programmed to resupply turrets whenever low-ammo signals are detected.
Once excavation completes, explore the Sky Pillar and retrieve the Old World Core. Completing this milestone unlocks the ability to construct your first Wonder: a massive airship that doubles as an airborne fleet of factories. In Brave New Wonders, Wonders are megastructures roughly the size of a city district. Completing a Wonder does not end the campaign; instead, it triggers an Innovation Surge that awards permanent bonuses and expands your operational capabilities across the world.
Fuel Infrastructure and Dock Construction
Constructing the Brave New Wonders airship requires building dedicated supply chains for its components across your existing factory alongside new production lines in the Americas. Delivering the bulk structural materials completes the platform, but launching the vessel requires an ongoing supply of processed aviation fuel. The game also provides a quick deposit button, allowing you to instantly deposit required construction materials directly from your nearby Monowheel vehicle.
Gas processing forms the foundation of aerial logistics. Using a mining automaton on a natural gas geyser feeds raw gas directly into production facilities and power networks.
| Resource | Refining Ratio | Primary Application |
|---|---|---|
| Raw Natural Gas | Direct Geyser Extract | Power plant fuel (12 MW output) & processor input |
To supply propellant, you can manufacture airship fuel and deliver it to the dock before loading it into storage or on-board fuel tanks, or ship raw components such as methane and metal to the dock and build a natural gas processor directly on deck.
Gas processing and industrial facilities demand significant electricity. Burning raw natural gas in specialized power plants generates 12 MW of power per facility, which can be overloaded up to 200% to triple production speed when needed. Setting up two to three dedicated power plants near your natural gas geyser provides sufficient capacity to power the entire refinery and dock area.
Airship Inventory, Capacity, and Deck Outfitting
The Brave New Wonders airship functions as a mobile factory platform rather than a simple floating chest. You can place production buildings, power connectors, and defensive turrets directly onto the wooden deck. However, managing the physical inventory stored within the vessel requires understanding how the stockpile system operates.
Stockpile buildings placed aboard the vessel share a single collective inventory cap of 500 items. Building two or three separate stockpiles on the deck does not increase your maximum storage; every stockpile interfaces with the same shared pool.
Community reports indicate a useful structural workaround: buildings placed on the deck cost raw resources to erect, but dismantling them later returns the construction materials in full. Placing high-tier assemblers or weapon factories on the deck effectively stores additional materials without consuming any of the 500-slot stockpile threshold.
Before departing the Americas for the frozen reaches of Europe, pack your personal Monowheel inventory and ship storage with critical bootstrapping supplies:
- 100 units of Airship Fuel inside the dedicated engine buffer, plus 100 reserve fuel in the stockpile.
- At least 100 rounds of Ammunition Mark 1 to supply on-deck defense turrets.
- 50 Thermoplates and 40 Simple Kits in your Monowheel backpack to instantly construct an airship hub on arrival.
- All available spare automatons and compute cores produced by your automaton factories.
- A heavy stockpile of metal plates, refined crystals, and crystal compounds for base foundation building.
Automating Resupply and Intercontinental Hauler Routes
Manual logistics quickly become inefficient once your operations span multiple biomes. Automating your Brave New Wonders airship ensures that every time the vessel docks, local mover automatons instantly replenish fuel and ammunition while offloading imported cargo.
The airship dock and on-board stockpiles communicate using the game's color-coded signal system. By assigning conditional parameters to the dock hub, you prevent the vessel from lifting off without sufficient supplies.
Follow these steps to establish an automated resupply loop:
- Configure the airship dock stockpile to emit a blue signal when internal fuel falls below 100 units.
- Set the dock to emit a red signal when Ammunition Mark 1 falls below 50 units.
- Program the dock to emit a green signal only when both conditions are satisfied, acting as an operational "go" command.
- Program a mover automaton on the mainland with the instruction:
If dock signals blue, deliver airship fuel from warehouse to dock. If dock signals red, deliver ammunition from warehouse to dock. - Mirror the signal thresholds inside the airship's internal stockpile so on-board mover bots transfer fuel into the ship's engine corridor.
To turn the vessel into a self-driving intercontinental freighter, switch the airship's operational profile to the Hauler behavior preset. You can configure custom payload triggers directly through the plain-text behavior editor.
For example, when exporting blue science research packs from Europe back to the Americas, enter: When inventory contains 0 blue science, move to Europe. When inventory contains at least 250 blue science, move to America. The ship will automatically idle at the station until the threshold is met, fly the route independently, and dock without player intervention.
Defending Transit Routes and Landing in Europe
Hostile old-world machines roam both the wilderness and the open skyways. Whenever your Brave New Wonders airship travels between continents, roaming airborne drones launch coordinated attacks against the vessel. Leaving the deck undefended can result in destroyed stockpiles or lost cargo.
Place a defensive perimeter of Gun Turrets along the outer perimeter of your airship deck. Grouping turrets in clusters of three ensures sufficient overlapping fire to eliminate incoming drone swarms before they reach the hull.
To automate turret reloading aboard the ship:
- Program each gun turret to emit a red signal when its internal ammunition reaches zero.
- Set an on-board mover automaton to monitor the turret cluster.
- Use the prompt:
When any turret signals red, deliver ammunition from stockpile to that turret. - Research the Construction Site node in the technology tree beforehand so that any structure destroyed during combat leaves a holographic rebuild site behind.
Upon arriving at the snowy continent of Europe, your first discovery will be that you cannot recall the vessel from land until you construct an airship hub on the landing dock. Snow-covered terrain prevents building placement, requiring you to establish your initial base strictly within cleared rock formations.
Immediately drop three gun turrets facing the northern enemy path, establish local ammunition smelting from nearby metal nodes, and connect 4 MW of power to unlock the first regional security gate. Exploring Europe leads to the giant ancient android Hixie—requiring 24 MW to power—who unlocks the advanced factory to craft compute cores, as well as the Grand Archives Wonder.
Advanced Logistics: Expanding Your Airship Fleet
Relying on a single transport ship eventually creates a severe bottleneck once advanced research lines come online. Establishing your factory in Europe unlocks the Grand Archives wonder, which processes archive threads. Combining archive threads with helium extracted from local geysers produces blue Electromagnetism research packs.
Because automated haulers continuously transit between docks, players can easily become stranded on an outpost island while their only ship carries cargo across the ocean. To maintain personal mobility, prioritize researching the fleet expansion node in the technology tree to increase your Brave New Wonders airship limit by one.
Building a second airship allows you to dedicate one hull entirely to automated bulk freight—such as moving archive threads or refined compute cores—while keeping a second, heavily armed gunship under manual control for exploring new destinations like Asia or Africa. Africa introduces distinct biomes requiring drill pumps, greenhouses, and agriculture systems, while Asia features challenging terrain dominated by active lava flows.
For additional patch details, community discussions, and gameplay updates, consult the official Steam store page for developer announcements and release notes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I increase my Brave New Wonders airship cargo capacity?
The physical stockpile building on the airship has a hardcoded, shared inventory cap of 500 items that cannot be expanded simply by building additional stockpiles. However, player experience shows that you can bypass this limitation by placing production buildings on the deck. Constructing assemblers or refineries banks materials in their placement costs, which are fully refunded when you dismantle them upon arrival at your destination.
What happens if a Brave New Wonders airship runs out of fuel mid-flight?
Airships consume dedicated fuel canisters to travel between continental dock nodes. If a ship launches without adequate propellant, it will slow down or halt its journey until supplies are restored. To prevent stranding your transport network, always establish automated dock signals requiring at least 100 fuel units before a green launch signal is broadcast.
Can I build production lines on the deck of the airship?
Yes, the deck functions as building space. You can place smelters, power conduits, warehouses, and assemblers directly on the wooden hull. While early voyages primarily use the deck for turret defenses and fuel buffers, late-game setups can process raw resources mid-transit.
How do I control multiple airships across different continents?
After unlocking the fleet expansion upgrade in the technology tree, you can construct additional airships at any functional dock. Individual vessels can be set to distinct roles: assign one ship a custom Hauler routine for automated cargo runs, and retain manual piloting on another for discovering new biomes.