Solar Array: Titan Station's Decommissioned Power Plant

The Solar Array was the facility that originally powered Titan Station, the sprawling city built on the broken remains of Saturn's moon Titan. Once fusion reactors took over the station's energy supply, the Array fell out of use and was left in the care of a single watchman, Howard Phillips, under the oversight of the station intelligence ANTI. During the Necromorph outbreak that consumed the Sprawl, Isaac Clarke fought his way through the derelict facility to bring it back online and restore power to the station. Director Hans Tiedemann later seized on the reactivated Array for a different purpose, using its focused beam to sever the Government Sector from the rest of Titan Station.

Structure and operation#

The Solar Array was built as a great outer rim of collector dishes surrounding a center column. When the panels were properly aligned, the dishes reflected concentrated sunlight onto the column, which channeled the energy down to a generator that converted it into power for the station. In its working years the facility supplied the whole of Titan Station, and it remained physically connected to the station's grid even after it was retired.

The Array's replacement by fusion reactors left it a relic. By the time of the outbreak it had long since fallen out of use, and two of its three panels had drifted out of alignment, leaving the facility incapable of producing power without manual correction. Much of the structure lay open to space, and several oxygen refill stations were installed around the Array for workers moving through its exposed sections. The facility stood among the landmarks of the station's Public Sector, alongside the Titan Memorial Medical Center, the Concourse, the Cassini Towers, and the Church of Unitology, and from its heights the docked USG Ishimura could be seen hanging off the station.

The watchman and the station intelligence#

Though decommissioned, the Array was never left entirely unattended. EarthGov posted a station watchman, Howard Phillips, to the facility, where he lived and worked alone but for ANTI, the Artificial Network Transmitting Intelligence that commanded and governed the Sprawl's systems under the Station Director's orders. Phillips filled his post with the trappings of his private passions, keeping a collection of birds that ANTI authorized to be brought into the solar collector facility, along with bird posters, books, and a four stringed instrument kept on the tier above his quarters leading to the Solar Array Control pod.

Phillips' logs, the only records recovered from the facility, painted an unhappy picture of the Array's final period. The watchman logged twenty three separate transfer requests and received no replies, and he came to believe that ANTI itself was preventing him from leaving his post. Whether the intelligence had gone erratic on its own or was executing quiet orders from above was never established. As the influence of the Site 12 Marker spread through the station, Phillips' mind gave way, and he died in his quarters before the outbreak reached its height. ANTI, unaware that its watchman was dead, went on requesting his assistance long after his body had gone cold.

Reactivation during the outbreak#

When the Necromorph infestation overran Titan Station, Director Tiedemann used every system at his disposal to stop Isaac Clarke from reaching the Government Sector, and the station's power became one of his levers. Restoring power to the Sprawl meant bringing the decommissioned Solar Array back online, and Isaac made for the old facility to do exactly that.

ANTI stood in his way. The intelligence first watched Isaac silently as he moved through the base of the Array, then announced that his identification check had failed and that access required the presence of watchman Howard Phillips. Isaac located Phillips' mutilated corpse and carried it to the security scanner, passing the door with the dead man's RIG. ANTI detected the second RIG almost at once and escalated, demanding Phillips' voice imprint, activating laser trip mines in the corridors, and purging the life support while two Stalkers hunted Isaac through the darkened passages. When Isaac finally reached the intelligence's core, Tiedemann ordered ANTI to lock it down. Isaac rearranged the fuses sealing the chamber, exposed the core, and destroyed it, shutting ANTI down for good and throwing the entire station back into manual control.

The way to the Array proper was no gentler. Necromorphs had claimed the derelict structure, and a Nest had taken root in its exposed reaches. During the long elevator ascent to the collector platform, Tripods assaulted the car through its windows. Isaac pressed on through the infested facility, realigned the misaligned panels, and brought the Array back to life. Concentrated sunlight poured onto the center column once more, and power returned to Titan Station for the first time since Tiedemann had cut it.

The severing of the Sprawl#

The restored Array did not stay a lifeline for long. As Isaac, Ellie Langford, and Nolan Stross rode the tram system toward the Government Sector, Tiedemann's men delivered firing coordinates to the Array, fighting through the Necromorphs that were streaming up the station to do it. The facility's focused beam swept across the Sprawl and sliced through the connections binding the Government Sector to the civilian districts, destroying the tram tracks beneath Isaac and his companions and physically separating the Titan Shard from the rest of the station.

Cut off from his destination, Isaac refused to turn back. He returned to the docked USG Ishimura and activated the ship's gravity tethers, dragging the severed Shard back within reach while Ellie and Stross waited with the tram. The maneuver undid what the Array's beam had accomplished, and Isaac crossed into the Government Sector to face the Site 12 Marker at the heart of Tiedemann's project. The Solar Array itself, twice repurposed in a matter of hours, was left behind with the rest of the dying station, its final act of service having been turned against the very people it was built to sustain.