Technical Standards

It is recommended to use color coding in order to improve the maintainability and modularity of your base.

Possible Gas Colour Coding

Following the guide by user "THE kilroy" on Steam using some of the standard colours from Gas Canisters we get the following:

Mixture	Description	Colour	Reason
Unspecified	Unspecified	Yellow	Default colour
	Oxygen	White	Canister Colour
	Carbon Dioxide	Black	Chemistry model colour
(H2)	Hydrogen	Red	Canister Colour
	Nitrogen	Green	Canister Colour
(X)	Pollutant	Grey	Canister Colour
	Water	Blue	Canister Colour, water being blue
	Nitrous Oxide	Brown	Only remaining spray paint colour
Unspecified	High Temperature	Purple	So danger is visible
/	Fuel	Orange	Canister Colour
/	Nitro Fuel	Orange	Canister Colour
/	Breathable Air	Khaki-Beige	Only remaining neutral spray paint colour
//	Hydroponic Air	Pink	Colour of some flowers, and green is taken.

Filter Based Gas Colour Coding

The following colour coding uses the colours from the filters for specific gases (if available), some colours from the default canister colours in the game, and some colours previously used in other colour coding schema. Note that Hydroponic Air and Breathable Air does not need to be the specific gases listed in the mixture here, depending on your character and preferred plant mixture.

Mixture	Description	Colour	Reason
	Water	Blue	Filter Colour
H2	Volatiles	Red	Filter Colour, Canister Colour
X	Pollutant	Yellow	Filter Colour
	Oxygen	White	Filter Colour
	Nitrous Oxide	Green	Filter Colour, Canister Colour
	Nitrogen	Black	Filter Colour
	Carbon Dioxide	Grey	Filter Colour, Canister Colour
H2/	Fuel	Orange	Canister Colour
Unspecified	High Temperature	Purple	So danger is visible, being in line with other colour coding.
	Hydroponic Air	Pink	In line with other colour coding, one of the few remaining colours
	Breathable Air	Khaki	In line with other colour coding.
Unspecified	"Dirty" Gas	Brown	"Dirty" gas mixture before being filtered, unknown contents

Simple Gas/Liquid and Temperature Colour Coding

Pure Gas or Liquid	Description	Colour	Reason
	Oxygen	White	Canister/Filter Colour
	Carbon Dioxide	Grey	Canister/Filter Colour
	Hydrogen	Red	Canister/Filter Colour
	Nitrogen	Black	Filter Colour
	Pollutant	Yellow	Canister/Filter Colour
	Nitrous Oxide	Green	Canister/Filter Colour
	Water	Blue	Canister/Filter Colour
50px	Dirty Water	Brown	"Dirty" Colour

Gas or Liquid Mixture	Description	Colour	Reason
+	Breathable Air	Blue	Contrast to pollutant and toxic/unbreathable gas mixture, air atmosphere is blue
+=	Fuel	Orange	Canister Colour
+	Nitro Fuel	Khaki	"Military Grade" Fuel
Unspecified	Any unspecified mixture before being filtered, unknown or toxic contents	Yellow	Default Colour, same as toxic pollutant, contrast to breathable air mixture
Exhaust, Dirty Water or Hydroponic Air	Any recyclable mixture	Brown	Colour of dirt/soil

Additional pipe stripes colours	Description	Colour	Reason
High Temperature	High Temperature Mixture or Pre-ignited Fuel	Pink	Visible Contrast Colour (More hot, "reddish" version of pink/purple)
Low Temperature	Low Temperature Mixture or Coolant	Purple	Visible Contrast Colour (More cold, "blueish" version of pink/purple)

Electrical Systems

For the electrical systems there is little need to have standardized specific colour coding. However, since one generally go from power generators to batteries to power consumers we can recommend a starting point. Remember that you can colour a full stack at once, and that when combining cables the receiving stack retains the colour. This means you can keep a single cable of each of the colours you need and just combine partial stacks to get the amount you need of each colour.

The important part of colour coding your electrical networks is when you have several networks that shouldn't be combined to avoid exceeding their power rating. E.g. having two Heavy Cable networks each using more than 50 000 Watts. As long as they are kept separated they will work fine, but once they combine their total usage will be over the limit for the heavy cable. Make one of those networks blue and the other yellow, and make sure you don't connect differently coloured networks.

Cable Network Type	Colour	Reason
Power Generation to Batteries	Orange	Power often comes from the sun or combustion generation
Batteries to Power Consumers	Black	Some real world wiring use black for single line phase conductors
General "High Voltage"	Purple	To mark as "dangerous" in line with gas colour coding.

Alternative Scheme

Cable Network Type	Colour	Reason
Power Generation to Batteries	Red	Default (Raw) cable colour, 100kW fuse colour
Batteries to Transformers	Brown	Phase conductor colour
Transformers to Consumers High Voltage	Orange	50kW fuse colour
Transformers to Consumers Low Voltage	Yellow	5kW fuse colour
Data Network	Green	1kW fuse colour