This shit is ridiculous, and I haven’t even built enough yet to use half my production.
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Finished. I should now have more than enough power - over 100GW - to finish the game and so I do not have to fuck with the nucular.
How this works is I have a row of refineries turning crude oil into Heavy Oil Residue. That is then fed into a row of blenders to combine it with water to create regular fuel, which is fed into another row of blenders to be combined with coal, sulphur and nitrogen to create the Rocket Fuel. The additional processing of the fuel quintuples is output.
That’s a big refinery gain.
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Does it shoot sparks and drip water everywhere?
Where do you get your dilithium crystals?
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From the Ferengi, of course.
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Fuel-related stuff, no. For obvious reasons.
Other machines that make parts from metal and brawn do create sparks, and the Particle Accelerator arcs like a motherfucker.
It takes a long time for that many generators to get fueled and start running smoothly. Final tally for my entire grid is now 109GW.
Playing Satisfactory has moments where it’s like you’re in an ultra-low stakes version of “The Martian”. Last night, while shaving, I had an epiphany about where to place my aluminum factory. I looked at myself in the mirror and said, in my best Mark Watney, “I know what I’m gonna do.” Playing Satisfactory means that you’re never really not playing Satisfactory.
To wit, my main train loop runs down the east coast of the map, over a beach which has a good supply of coal plus a copper node; the two other ingredients needed to make the basic aluminium parts. Aluminium also needs water which, obviously, is pretty plentiful near a beach.
I’m going to ship bauxite to this beach via train, make the parts and then ship them out to where they need to be. One of the big “cheats” for flat space on which to build a factory is to build it over water. There are no rocks to get in the way and you don’t have to bother with pretend foundations. My new rocket fuel power station is built entirely over water.
I completed my aluminium plant and am now reaping the rewards of my efforts to pre-build the rail infrastructure. To wit, the next thing I need to do is to start to make the parts that make the parts for the Phase 4 space elevator order. The first of those is Fused Modular Frames, which takes Heavy Modular Frames and upgrades them with Aluminium Casings and (for reasons) nitrogen.
When I built my Heavy Modular Frames factory, I overcooked the production in anticipation of needing extra for just this purpose. As it turns out - also by design - my rail line goes right past this factory, which (by happy accident) is about halfway between my aluminium factory and where I am extracting nitrogen. All it takes to make the Fused version of the frames is to put the Heavy version into a machine with the Aluminium Casings and nitrogen and voilà!
So all I had to do to make this, on paper, complicated late-game component was to build a station next to the Heavy Frames factory to bring in the Casings, run a pipeline to bring in the nitrogen and put down two machines (I have the capacity to run two machines making this part, which will come in handy later). It took less than an hour to get this whole thing up and running.
In the process, which has me more than halfway complete in this second play through, I learned something new about trains. You set the timetable for each train individually, and then it runs by itself (if you’ve done your signaling right, trains should all play nice with each other on the network). This scheduling includes how long the train stops, where and for what purpose. So you can have a train buzz around like a bee, loading and unloading different freight cars at different stations as you wish.
My Fused Modular Frames “factory” needs a relatively low volume of Aluminium Casings, so the freight platform’s storage bin was still mostly full from the last visit when the train came back with a fresh load, meaning that train was not able to fully unload before heading back to the aluminium factory. This meant that it would end up running back and forth loading and unloading only a fraction of its capacity. Not a problem when I only have two trains running and they are never on the same piece of track, but this unnecessary traffic could become a problem as I add more trains.
The train stops have a logic setting such that you can set it to make a full load/unload or stay for a set amount of time, whichever comes first. This was the problem, because the time limit would always trigger first and the train would leave still mostly full. Now, I could figure out how long it would take to offload a full freight car and set that as the wait time, but that is a janky workaround that assumes the unload is triggered before it leaves and/or that it left the aluminium factory with a full load, which may not always be the case.
I don’t know why, but I randomly clicked on the word “or” in the logic statement…and it changed to “and”. This is what playing Satisfactory is like; there’s no hand-holding, no instruction manual and certainly nothing to indicate that this was something to interact with. But with the and option selected, my train now waits until the freight car is fully unloaded and 15 seconds (for safety) has passed.
So now the train sits at the station, waiting patiently for the storage bin on the freight platform to empty sufficiently so that it can unload its full cargo and leave empty. If for some reason it shows up with a short load, it will wait only long enough for there to be room to offload that lesser amount, thus ensuring that the Fused Frames factory is always fully stocked without unnecessary round trips.
You have no idea how happy that made me, although the number of words spent on explaining it might give you an inkling. When my rail system starts to get truly busy, tricks like this are really going to help me, especially as much of the cargo is going to be low volume parts.
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As for pics, I don’t have a good pic of the aluminium factory yet, so here’s a wider view of my rocket fuel power plant.
There are so many generators that the game can’t render the ones at the extreme left. Just know that the inside of my signature concrete framing is full of machines.
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Photo update: Aluminium Factory
Fused Modular Frame Factory (essentially the two machines on top with the rail connections):
And last but not least, the new Heat Sink Factory:
This last one is half of a factory that will build Cooling Units, for which the Heat Sink is a component. I caught myself again leaning towards cannibalizing existing production but, instead, I am making all the elements on site from raw materials.
The Heat Sink needs aluminium - which requires bauxite and coal - and copper. I am mining copper on site, the bauxite comes into the overhead rail station and the coal is coming in on a belt running under the rail line. The coal was too far and the ground too undulating to belt across the ground but too close to build dedicated stations, so I used the rail link in a different way. The rail line conveniently ran straight over the top of the coal node, so I just plopped down the miner and used a belt lift to bring up the coal, from there it runs along roof mounts to get to the factory.
I love how this tracks the rail line along the river. You can’t see it here, but I have made slats for the pretend supports where the base crosses the river, to allow for the pretend water flow.
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Here’s the finished Cooling System factory. The back half is the copper and bauxite elements and the front half is all the iron elements. It all comes together in the four blenders across the front, with the production being saved/uploaded/sunk, and poised to be exported when that becomes necessary (via a station to be built later).
I am fully entrenched now in having all my logistics above ground; overhead, in fact. It helps massively with troubleshooting and makes the factories seem “active”.
Just to the right of this factory is one of my first builds this play through, and it utilizes a combination of underfloor and overhead logistics. I now hate it and want to break it down. It is cramped, has terrible logistics and, as a result, the feeds to machines are patchy. It makes only parts for cloud upload, so production glitches aren’t a problem away from this factory, but it really needs to be killed with fire.
I had to take down my modest little Fused Modular Frame factory. Those parts will be used to make other parts and I decided to make those other parts at the same place. It made sense for the train logistics. So I took it down and started the rebuild by putting in a four platform station for all the ins and outs. And it didn’t fucking work.
I figured I’d run the supply trains while building my new, expanded factory, so I slapped down a train to go get Aluminium Casings. It left, but it never came back. I went to find it, and it was sat at the aluminium factory, claiming that it had no path back.
There must be something wrong with the signaling. So I checked and rechecked and still no joy. The entrance into this station was pretty close to another junction, so I moved the entrance but still no joy. This was stretching into hours of frustration as I deleted and rebuilt whole sections of the station, the rails and signaling. I spent a while Googling the issue which was no help.
I decided to try to get a train to go to another platform in the station; that worked. OK, let’s try another; that worked. Then the last; that worked. So only the Aluminium Casing platform wasn’t working, but the signaling is all the same so what gives?!!!
Oh…you have got to be fucking kidding me. Each platform requires a header station and that item has a specific orientation. It must be pointing in the direction of travel otherwise a self-driving train cannot access it. Could I have been so stupid as to put it down backwards? Yes, yes I could.
Lesson learned, but fml.
Here’s what it looks like now. I have yet to do any of the niceties, but it’s making Fused Modular Frames (again) and, now, Radio Control Units too.
I am not cheating on my dispersed production model with these items. I am now at the point of the game where these complex parts are used almost exclusively for making other parts. So having a dedicated production line so as to be stocked up with building materials is not a thing going forward.
I am going to be using parts to make parts, and I am ensuring that I am making enough of each to satisfy any limited building demands and that the parts-per-minute numbers will support production of later items. So this station has two input platforms and two output platforms.
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So this is how this new production line for late-game parts rolls:
- Heavy Modular Frames are being made the old fashioned way, with metal and brawn. As some are needed for making machines, I deliberately overcooked the production volume so that I would have spare to use making other parts.
- Fused Modular Frames are made by combining Heavy Modular Frames with Aluminium Casings and Nitrogen. These, too, are needed for making some rarely used machines; I am making easily more than I need so that I have plenty left over for making parts later. The Aluminium Casings are brought in by train and the Nitrogen via a pipeline slung under the rail loop.
- Radio Control Units are made by combining Computers, Crystal Oscillators and Aluminium Casings. I already have the latter coming in here, so all I needed was another train bringing in Computers and Crystal Oscillators, which are being over-produced at another location. These are used in some rare machines and for making other parts.
- Pressure Conversion Cubes are made by combining Fused Modular Frames with Radio Control Units. I have both on site and can make more than enough for my uses in a single machine. These cubes are used to make other parts only.
- Nuclear Pasta is made by combining Pressure Conversion Cubes with Copper Powder. As luck would have it, I have the highest quality of Copper node right here; lucky because it takes 1,200pm Copper Ingots to make the 200pm Copper Powder I need. Nuclear Pasta is used to make other parts only.
So at this one location, with a couple of railway stations and a relatively small number of machines, I am making 5 extremely complex parts. I am doing so without cannibalizing any other production (which was the bane of the late game last time through).
At the same time, I have train platforms ready to export the items that are needed to make other items. Anything needed for building is being uploaded to the cloud, so the remaining production is all for making later stage parts.
The leap in logistics from where I was this time in the last game is exponential. I just put down 2 Particle Accelerators to make the Nuclear Pasta, and I am still barely making a dent in my power grid while having absolutely no concerns of other manufacturing drying up because of what I did here.
Here it is:
The original Heavy Modular Frame factory is tucked away underneath. The row of machines in front of the station platforms is all that is needed to make the Fused Modular Frames, Radio Control Units and Pressure Conversion Cubes.
The row of machines off to the right is all for making Copper Powder, feeding the two looping Particle Accelerators. 1200 copper ingots per minute are required to make 1 Nuclear Pasta. Yep, just one.
My next project is (I think) the last part that I will have to make from scratch. It’s a Deusie. The Supercomputer is basically a Frankenstein’s monster of all the electronics that are makeable in the world. This means they use a wide array raw materials.
Having said that, my train loop makes this easier because I don’t have to find everything available in one location. I can ship in solid resources in volume at speed with trains, so anywhere near oil will do.
All the nearby oil is being used, so I am going to have to expand my rail network out to a new area…
I just figured out that pretty much everything being used to make Supercomputers is, bizarrely, used to make the various types of ammunition I use. A couple of small tweaks to my production targets will save me a huge amount of bother making ammo.
The only thing I don’t have from the above is Black Powder made from Coal and Sulphur, which is easily made and transported. This is why, sometimes, it’s best to let plans marinade for a bit, because you never know when a light bulb is going to come on.
I initially read this without knowing which thread it was on.
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