I had to share this. It’s nuts.
So today I found out that Micah killed the camp’s dog. Double-fuck Micah.
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I have started a new game of Satiscractory [insert Dave Chappelle meme here].
I did pick a different starting point; this time I am in the Dune Desert which is on the opposite side of the map to where I was last time, so I will be able to explore parts of the world that I missed last time around (I never made it over here). As it sounds, it’s a desert. That doesn’t mean it is not without topographical challenges, because the sand banks rise and fall easily 30 feet, so creating a flat space for building is not straightforward.
Water and - more importantly at the start - vegetation for biomass are sparse. I found a spot with a small lake, plenty of plants and trees, with the early game resources of iron, copper and limestone nearby. I plonked down my Hub and started churning out iron rods and plates, screws, wire and concrete.
Last time, I had everything being manufactured and stored at a central location, with all the composite parts drawing on that central storage. That works through the mid-game, but once you get to the late game parts, the logistics becomes insane and overcrowding makes scaling up production impossible.
This time around, my goal is to be as modular as possible. So when I set up production of a part that needs, say, iron plates and screws, I create an entirely new front-to-back production line instead of taking the plates and screws from my existing production. This means that scaling up is not an issue as I can keep the production of basic parts (needed for building machines) at a reasonable level because every new item gets its own supply.
As far as the Dune Desert goes, apart from the relative scarcity of water/plants [Stefàn voice] this place has everything. It is plastered with resources nodes like acne on a teenager, and even the native collectibles like power slugs, Mercer Spheres and the relatively rare Somersloops are just lying around. Over the other side of the map, they were all hidden deep in caves or high atop rock pillars. I even stumbled across some “SAM” (strange alien material) which is needed for late game parts but, importantly for now, cloud storage.
Where I am at in the game is Phase 2, which means I have unlocked steel production, truck transportation and coal power. Last play through I pushed forward to the end, rushing to complete the production targets to unlock the next level, but not this time. As I unlock new items, I am taking my time to build it right and take down the early production lines to build back better.
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Second time around is so much better. Setting aside the relative difficulty (or lack thereof) of the biome in which I started, the knowledge gained first time, especially knowing what’s coming, is invaluable.
I pushed ahead to do things like unlock the cloud storage. With that deployed, my dispersed manufacturing plan is working fantastically well. I even “lost” one factory for a while, but the uploader was still delivering the parts I needed to the cloud, so it was of little consequence and I eventually stumbled across it again.
This way, I have avoided the ugly tractor paths that I had to make last time, and then demolish to run trains. Also, my base - which is a giant slab of cement in the middle of the desert - is quite sparsely used. At this stage, I am barely making parts from parts and those I am are being made in self-contained production lines offsite. So no overcrowding or spaghetti mess.
I have just uploaded the Phase 2 parts order, and Phase 3 brings with it oil production and trains. This is what I have been really looking forward to. My plan is to use trains to collect and distribute the parts being made all over the map so that my home base - where the Space Elevator sits - will be used really only to store/upload/sink the complicated multistage parts.
What I have not improved on is my aesthetic building skills. I am far more able to build logistically sane production lines, but they are still just machines on foundations and mostly without any sub-floor for running belts. The way I am playing this time, they simply aren’t needed.
As I am able to buy more of the cosmetic pieces from the shop I will have a crack at beautifying my small factories. This will be something to do in concert with adding train stations, I think. For now, it’s time to unlock the oil processing tier and get to making fuel and plastics.
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Dispersed production = messy room
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It should look better once I turn them into buildings.
ETA: Train lines carry power, which means I will be able to take down all those power towers once I roll out the train network.
Here’s my latest effort: a do-over of my modular frames factory. I’ve doubled the production - which is not an issue at this time but will become necessary later - and actually added some rudimentary architectural features.
The overhead beams serve to run power without those unsightly poles everywhere, and could be the basis of a roof structure at some point. I’m going to wait until I add a train station before I think about that as I don’t know what height it’s going to be relative to the factory - I might be putting the platform directly on top!
The miner suppling the raw material is partially enclosed in glass and feeds in underneath the factory floor. The underside is accessible through the gate in the side of the stairs.
Inside it is a work of logistical art. I mean, look at it: this is some da Vinci shit!
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Until now, I have avoided serious logistical problems. I have been able to pick spots close to the two or three resources I need and/or use an alternate recipe to get around resource availability problems. I did have to move the oil I found over a long distance, but I wrapped an elevated path around the mountains and just piped it to where I needed it to be.
But I have reached a shit or get off the pot moment with my dispersed production model. I am entering the parts from parts from parts stage of the game, using the 4-input manufacturer machines. I had a moment when thinking about how to set up a production line, and I thought “I’ll just bus the stuff to my base and build it there.”
Nope! That’s what I did last time and that’s not what I am doing here. So now I have to really plan the train network that I have been pricking on about during this play through. I need a network that can deliver anything from anywhere to anywhere else, and also bring the finished space elevator parts back to the base for upload or sinking.
This is going to take a lot of time to set up, but I’m in no hurry.
One thing I have been doing this time with Satiscractory, is use the online planning tools.
When all I had to consider was how to port a resource or part through my existing spaghetti mess to the new production line I just built on a floating platform in the sky, “planning” was easy. Do I have Item X nearby? Yes? OK, we’ve got some beltin’ to do.
But building parts from parts from parts, when you are starting with raw materials, is a feat of planning (and math) that takes too damn long for each new line. The online tools let you play around with volumes and alternative recipes.
For example, I am about to build a factory to make Heavy Modular Frames. These take existing Modular Frames and bolt on some steel pipe. That sounds simple, and that last part is, relatively speaking. But there are two recipes for the heavy frames, multiple ways to make steel pipe, multiple ways to make modular frames and multiple ways to make the parts that go into making the modular frames.
Luckily, there’s a dude on YT who has a series evaluating the recipes as to the complexity, power usage and resource demands, and this - combined with the calculator tools - is saving me a ton of time on the production planning.
Heavy Modular Frames factory complete.
I know it will look to the outside like every other factory I’ve built, but the beauty of this one is in the internal layout and logistics. It’s near symmetrical, the only non-symmetrical element being that one side starts with a bank of 8 smelters and the other needs only 7.
It all starts on the left, where the miner is in the middle, sitting on the iron node feeding ore into both sets of smelters. You can’t see it, because it’s almost entirely enclosed, but the main production platform dovetails perfectly into the miner’s built-in catwalks.
The framing around the miner acts like a central plinth on which the entire factory stands, aided by the connection to the rocks either side and pillars towards the front where natural support is missing. I had to keep the space clear underneath the factory as this is the driving route to more resources (down to the right from this perspective).
After that it’s 15 smelters, 6 constructors, 5 assemblers and, lastly, the 4-input manufacturer which is spitting out 2.5 frames per minute. The frames are sent into storage and uploaded to the cloud, with the excess once the storage container fills being sent to a sink.
I used a number of alternate recipes here which meant that, apart from iron, the only other material needed is concrete. That is coming in from the mini-factory top right, where a miner on a limestone node and 4 constructors are pushing out the necessary volume of concrete. The minor sits higher here, so I have enclosed it - leaving two large glassed-in floor-to-ceiling windows and placed a viewing platform on top. The concrete comes over on an elevated belt running inside a metal framed gantry.
In case anyone is interested, this is what the design looks like on Satisfactory Calculator.
You put in your available resources, available alternate recipes and desired output, and it lays out the production line, showing you any other resources you might need to complete the task. It doesn’t start out laid out as neatly as above, that was me dragging around the pieces to make a coherent factory design.
So basically I’m using CAD now.
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Second play-through, still making basic errors. My motor factory was stalling because not enough screws were getting fed into the machines making rotors which are required to make motors. I had split the iron ingots off the smelter line but I had faster belts feeding one side of the factory than what was feeding the screws constructors. So the faster side was bogarting the ingots which was rectified by matching the belt speeds.
Also, I’m making TurboFuel, which is something I didn’t do first time playing. It’s what you get when you combine regular fuel with coal and sulphur, creating a far more combustible - and therefore efficient - fuel. I am using the TurboFuel to generate power but, checking in on my grid, the power was fluctuating wildly.
I needed to be feeding the factory with coal from a Mk 2 miner that was overclocked to the max. In error, I’d put down a Mk 1 miner, which was producing half the volume of a Mk 2, so my TurboFuel factory was getting starved of coal and under-producing the fuel, meaning that generators were running erratically due to the lack of fuel.
Easy fix, right? Like the iron belts above. I upgraded the miner to a Mk 2 and wandered off to do other shit, giving the coal time to catch up to the fuel facrory. Checking on the grid later, the fluctuations were reduced but still there. WTF? As I discovered, when I upgraded the miner it reset to the standard rate, not the overclocked rate I had on the Mk 1.
So many little details in this game can fuck you up.
If you’re interested, this is what a TurboFuel generating plant looks like, understanding that mine is far less pretty.
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Today’s project has been a makeover of my original base. Upgraded miners and overclocking give me access to exponentially more raw material, so I have rebuilt from the ground up the production of basic iron and copper parts.
I have extended the road on which the coal truck runs up through the base, with the truck passing either side of the island, which houses the copper miner. I need to asphalt the road and apply markings to make it look more like a road and loading dock area.
I still need to rework where the space elevator is situated. It needs to sit high and proud, IMHO, but it also needs to tie in to the oft-promised train network that I haven’t built yet. I would be nice to have the parts to fulfill orders from orbit come in by train and load directly into the elevator, so I’m going to wait until I know at what level the trains will be running.
I have been in Phase 3 for well over a week now, and I have yet to even try to start making two of the three parts orders required to complete it. This play through is all about hardening the infrastructure for the onslaught that is to come, so that means rebuilding early production efforts, expanding power generation and - at some point - building the damn trains!
I need to make Computers. I need to make Crystal Oscillators to make Computers, but the resources for Crystal Oscillators are either (a) spread far and wide; or (2) in one location but a long way away from my base. To make Crystal Oscillators from disparate resources I need to put down a train system, but the signaling required for a train system requires Computers. So that just leaves me option (ii).
The location that has all the resources clumped together is a great spot - it’s flat and open with the resource nodes easily accessible - apart from the distance involved and the fact it’s overrun with alpha beasties. Even as heavily armed as I am these days, I sustained a lot of damage taking them out despite my high perch, and then I was wiped out by the Terminator of evil spider-thingies that can fucking leap 100ft in the air to get you.
I think this is still the best call for making the oscillators, even though all those beasties will have respawned by the time I get back there. It’s easier to control resource supplies when they’re being belted in from nearby, and the beasties do not respawn once you have established some industry in that spot.
To make the oscillators, I need Quartz, Iron and Copper (the latter being optional with alternate recipes). The other component needed to make Computers is Circuit Boards, which I can make with Quartz and Copper. So I can make both items in this one location and upload them to the cloud for day-to-day construction usage, while overproducing both for inclusion in more complex items later on. This way I can delay the need for a train line out there, but I will need to run power a long way across country.
At first I thought that was a microscope thin section of granite under cross-polarized light.
I got a semi there for a second.
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Crystal Oscillators are insane! I need 15 manufacturers to make 15 of the fucking things per minute. Getting the three feeds into that many machines is going to be challenge.
I don’t think I had 15 manufacturers in total in my last play through. At the same time, last time I was barely making enough of anything to scrape by - 10 each of Oscillators and Computers is an absolute bonanza!
As I said before, these planning tools are a Godsend for dispersed manufacturing. This plan not only tells me what resources I need and how many machines I need to make each thing and where that production needs to go; it also tells me how to disperse the production within my dispersed production.
To wit: all I need from iron is Reinforced Iron Plates at a rate of 37.5 per minute. That takes 450 “lumps” of iron ore per minute to make, so there is absolutely no need to transport any of that any further than it needs to go. Especially not 450 screws per minute! So I will make the RIPs at the iron nodes, the copper cable and copper sheets at the copper nodes and belt those three items to the quartz nodes where I will be making the necessary crystals and silica, and where there is an expanse of flat grass to obliterate with concrete and machines.
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Reinforced Iron Plates factory built. There are two sunken miners producing the ore, and then an array of smelters up the middle, a cluster of constructors making the plates and screws and the run of assemblers on the right making the finished RIPs.
This place is a fucking nightmare. There are boss-level nasties everywhere, so stray a little bit away from an area you have cleared and the next thing you hear is scurrying. After that, it’s a pretty swift death by evil spider-thingy.
That area over the cliff at the far end of my factory is what looks like a nice archipelago on the map, but is in fact an evil, toxic swamp full of radiation, poison gas and nasties. The enemy AI in this game is pretty good: they will hunt you and follow you if you run away. They will also use the terrain to get to you, so if you give one the slip by jet packing up a cliff, rest assured that the little fucker will forever now be trying to find how to get to you.
Not shown in the picture is a “skyway” that I have built over the outcroppings and through the trees to get to the quartz nodes. They are in a pretty benign spot, but the copper nodes are overrun with irradiated hogs, toxic leaping stingers and near-indestructible spitters. I died. A lot. Which means they all come back.
Maybe this dispersed production plan isn’t such a good idea after all.
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