Lately this thread has served as something of a cautionary tale for me because I don’t need another game into which I could easily and obsessively sink hundreds of hours. I saw Satisfactory was on sale on Steam and said, “Not today, Satan.”
Then I was browsing my library on my Steam Deck last night and there’s Satisfactory staring right up at me. WTF? Forgot that I got it as a gift that I asked for about a year ago.
Time to go sink another hundred hours into Rimworld to compensate.
Satiscractory is the classic boiling frog scenario.
Just saw that Satiscractory won the Golden Joystick for PC Game of the Year.
It sounds like a great example that immersion can take many forms.
I’m not a fan of first person shooters (I play RDR/RDR2 in third person view). The first person perspective of Satisfactory is often frustrating to me, but I understand the reason behind it.
The immersion of it, though, is undeniable.
Here, accidentally, Steve Jobs describes perfectly what it’s like to play Satisfactory.
I have a grid. Every part of my production effort is now connected to every other part of my production effort. I am generating power in 3 different locations, but now I can check on my entire grid from anywhere, so I know how much juice I have to play with when adding new production lines.
I have (finally) automated manufacture of the last item required to complete the Phase 3 order to go up the space elevator. I “only” need 100, but its feed comes from 2nd and 3rd generation manufactured parts, which makes it a beast just to squeeze out 1 per minute.
One odd thing about this as a video game is that it’s ok - in fact, often beneficial - to walk away and let it play by itself for a while. With the things I’m making now, it often takes a long time before supply chain issues will manifest themselves so just letting it go for a bit can both prove up your production lines and add to the total produced.
I have been tempted to leave it running over night, but that feels a bit like cheating.
This is a crazy thing.
The Phase 4 big order involves items made from aluminum. Aluminum requires a three-step process just to get to Aluminum Ingots.
Bauxite & Water to produce Alumina Solution & Silica
Alumina Solution & Coal to produce Aluminum Scrap & Water
Aluminum Scrap & Silica to produce Aluminum Ingots
There’s potential for re-use of both Water and Silica in this progression, but the numbers are complicated so this shit is going to take some sciencing.
Aluminum production is frying my brain. Apparently only about 5% of players complete Phase 3 and a lot of those quit when presented with the logistics required to make the aluminum shit needed for Phase 4.
I can see it. Bauxite where I am based is way up on top of the highest cliffs and surrounded by stubborn beasties and uranium nodes that will kill you in seconds of blundering up to one.
Then you need water, coal, copper and quartz in order to turn the bauxite into aluminum parts, and they are all nowhere near the bauxite.
The Phase 4 machines all cannibalize production of other machines and parts in addition to the aluminum content. I think my first job should be to build out my infrastructure and improve my production at base.
I have talked about the blueprint designer, but I have yet to get serious with it. You can build entire “factories in a box” inside it (see below). This means that I can take down my existing production lines and replace them with one click.
My current production effort is as if Frankenstein’s monster went on Nickelodeon and got covered in spaghetti. It’s nowhere near fit for purpose if I plan to press on.
I use blueprints. I plan it out. I line everything up.
And it still ends up looking like something the cat threw up.