Quick Answer: The route planner is the single most misread system in this game, and the misreading is intuitive: a clean, efficient route gives you less range than a wandering one. Draw lots of small direction changes and you get further. Yellow and orange zones are passable; only red stops you. Torpedoes do not work on everything — the developers confirmed some objects are simply resistant — and at least one player reached the objective without firing any. And crew Energy has nothing to do with how far the boat moves, which is the wrong lever almost everyone reaches for first.
Version note: Written August 18, 2026 against Patch 1.0.1. The planner behaviour comes from named players' own accounts in the game's Steam discussions, quoted inline; the statement about torpedo-resistant objects is a developer reply on those forums. The planner's cost formula has never been published by the developers, so everything below is behaviour players have reproduced rather than documented rules.
Sonar and route planning sit inside the shift loop, which is why running out of movement feels like the game breaking rather than a plan you can redraw. (Screenshot: solarsuit.games)
The Rule Nobody Tells You
More direction changes give you more distance. That is the whole thing, and it is backwards from how every other route-planning interface works.
The player who worked it out was stuck at the last sonar shift with what looked like an unwinnable board — two torpedo events that announced new paths had opened, no visible change to the map, and not enough movement to reach the green zone going around the obstacles. He solved it himself:
"I had to make very small movements resulting in a lot more 'pips' along my route and that for some reason gave me just enough movement to reach the green zone. If I tried to get to the zone in as few direction changes as possible and minimizing those pips I would run out of movement."
He is right that this makes no sense — "Im not sure how that would make a difference considering that im still basically taking the same path" — and a second player in the thread landed in the same place independently: "definitely feels like there's something off about the maths for calculating route costs."
Practical version: stop optimising. When the planner says you cannot reach the objective, redraw the same path as a series of short segments instead of long ones before you conclude anything is wrong.
What the Zones Actually Cost You
The other half of the problem is people routing around colour they could have gone straight through. The clearest summary came from a player who had finished the game:
"You can move through yellow and orange, just not red. Every level the end can be reached without trouble."
| Zone | What it means |
|---|---|
| Green | Your objective. Reaching it ends the shift's navigation |
| Yellow | Passable |
| Orange | Passable |
| Red | The only colour that genuinely blocks you |
If you are treating orange as a wall, you are solving a much harder puzzle than the game set. That, combined with over-efficient routing, accounts for essentially every "not enough movement" report on the forums.
Torpedoes: Not the Intended Answer
Torpedoes look like the obstacle solution because the game announces that firing one has opened a path. They are one tool, and they do not work on everything.
Asked directly about objects that survive being hit, a developer answered plainly: some things are simply resistant to torpedoes, and some can be destroyed. So an obstacle absorbing a hit is not a bug, not a targeting mistake, and not a sign you need a bigger warhead.
And you may not need them at all. In the same stuck-at-the-end thread, a player reported reaching the green zone "without destroying any obstacles with torpedos" — almost to the edge of it, on route drawing alone.
Decision rule: identify first, then route, then fire only if a red obstacle is genuinely sitting on the only path you can afford. Firing at something resistant costs you the torpedo and buys nothing.
The Wrong Lever: Crew Energy
Worth stating on its own because it is the first thing people reach for.
Crew Energy does not limit how far the Ares can travel. The player stranded at the last shift assumed it did and was planning to reload an earlier save specifically to rest his crew. Another player corrected him — "Energy of crew shouldn't affect speed of boat" — and the actual cause turned out to be his routing.
Energy is a crew-management resource, spent by assignments and recovered by rest. Do not burn a shift on rest to fix a navigation problem. Detail on how the roster spends it: Beginner Guide.
Sonar Shift 6, Specifically
This is the one people search for, because it is late enough that being stuck feels fatal.
The reported symptom: you need to move the boat toward the monster, you do not have enough movement to reach the green zone, two separate torpedo events said new paths had opened, and the route map looks unchanged.
It is not a bug, and you do not need an earlier save. The player who posted it fixed it with the messy-route method alone — small movements, more pips, more range. The dead ends he checked and ruled out along the way are as useful as the fix:
- Not crew fatigue. Corrected in-thread.
- Not the torpedoes failing. Another player finished it without using any.
- Not the map failing to update. The route he needed was already available; he was pricing it wrong.
If you are on that shift right now: redraw from scratch with many short segments, cut straight through yellow and orange, and check the projected movement before committing rather than after.
Reading Contacts Before You Commit
Sonar is what tells you whether the thing ahead is another submarine or something alive — the store page frames that ambiguity as the point of the system, and it is what the route planner is meant to be fed by.
Two achievements come out of it naturally and are worth knowing so you do not go hunting: Broken Phone (45.9%) for communicating via sonar the first time, and Fire and Forget (34.5%) for your first torpedo. Neither is missable.
One contact is worth more than the rest. A submarine called the Vityaz can be found on sonar and contacted by radio, and one player used it to reach an ending on a route that skips most of the game. It has a timing requirement — the Communications Drone has to go up as soon as it becomes available — and a second player who missed that window never saw the Vityaz again. Full route: All Endings.
What Competing Guides Get Wrong Here
Worth flagging because the advice is confidently stated and produces the exact failure it claims to prevent. At least one guide currently tells you to "plot the shortest valid line to the green zone."
That is the method the player above tried first, and it is what stranded him. The shortest line minimises direction changes, which minimises your movement budget. It is the one approach that reliably runs out.