Opening the status overview at your Administration Terminal or inside Field Kit reveals four primary meters that govern town health: Population, Productivity, Happiness, and Maintenance cost, flanked by a hidden Sentinel Alert bar and up to six active Town Features. Overall settlement grade runs from C-class through S-class based on the combined strength of your Happiness percentage, citizen head count, positive town perks, and individual building classes. You never buy overall town class directly; instead, the badge climbs naturally as red starter flaws are overwritten by green traits and upgraded rooftops.
Productivity, maintenance, and the debt trap
Productivity measures gross daily economic output up to a cap of one million Units per day, while Maintenance tracks the daily overhead charged by your buildings and town traits. Subtracting Maintenance from Productivity gives your Net Output, which is the only number that determines whether your town generates surplus goods or slides into red debt. Nearly every freshly claimed town begins underwater because unimproved C-class buildings carry bloated upkeep alongside negative starter perks. Upgrading existing Agricultural and Industrial buildings to A-class and S-class slashes maintenance drag while multiplying gross output, flipping the ledger green.
Population growth, happiness, and Sentinel alert
Happiness scales citizen morale toward 100 percent through Saloons, fair dispute rulings, and fulfilled festival requests, heavily weighting your town's overall class rating and productivity efficiency. Population climbs much more slowly toward its 200-citizen ceiling: residential Dwellings raise housing capacity, while new arrivals, habitation tech upgrades, and keeping citizens off reckless lethal expeditions preserve headcount. Meanwhile, Sentinel Alert ticks upward passively each day depending on planetary hostility and town perks, triggering a full ground raid whenever the alert gauge reaches 100 percent unless dampened by Towers or defensive policies.
Reading live meters on your second screen
Atlas Field Kit Settlement mode pulls all four core meters, active positive and negative perks, Sentinel alert percentage, and building grades directly from the last save file written to your PC. Reviewing all four of your settlements side by side makes it easy to spot which town still carries a parasitic maintenance trait or which street needs more housing capacity. Field Kit never fabricates or edits meter values, perks, or town class when writing a save, so every gain in grade comes honestly from your upgrades and Administration Terminal rulings.