Satisfactory 1.0

The Game Room
21

I don’t have a lot of experience - I only did one prior goaround with the game, on 0.8, and I didn’t get much past steel. That said… I’m trying to build at least somewhat nicely from the start this time. My strategy:

  1. I learned that if you place 2m foundations bound to world grid anywhere and then extend that building out, it will synch up with other buildings anywhere on the world that are started the same way. So I try to put everything on foundations built this way.

  2. if you put thin foundations over mining spots you can even put miners on foundations.

  3. I go to a resource node and put foundations on the resource, then a miner. From there I split the output and use up all the resource to produce something relatively simple. So when I needed Rotors I found a pair of iron nodes and foundationed over the whole area, then built miners > refiners > constructors > assemblers that make what I need. Any extra parts are shipped away to storage.

  4. My current plan is to keep doing this, building modular factories at each resource rich area, and then shipping moderately assembled parts (for my very early game stage, mind you) to a central location where I can grab them for crafting or divert some of the material from storage to more complex assemblers.

As of now, I have coal power, I have a base built over a big three way ravine (I plan to build my main base up top and use the ravine’s entrances to route resources in from external locations), and my next step is to start producing steel.

Steel will lead to Mk 2 miners and require me to either redo my existing factories, or maybe just mess with the inputs. If four iron nodes feed a factory now, maybe I don’t need to rebuikd the factory, just have it fed by fewer miners and route the extra metal to a new factory.

22

It’s about time to revamp/relocate my main base. I’ve been set up at the northwest desert, which has easy access to pretty much everything (even have a pure bauxite node on the cliffs above the base), but it’s boring. My current plan is to set up my megabase above the waterfall next to the grassy plains, bringing all the materials from Babale’s modular factories (never thought of doing it with just a node as possible) in by train.

Which requires a train system. Which requires feeding material into dimensional depots to build a train system. But that’s just concrete (already done), iron plates (already done), and steel beams and pipes (not done, but both automated and ready). Fortunately, the trains won’t have to go too far. Other than uranium, there’s good number of pure resource nodes nearby.

I’m about to ramp up my oil power. Currently, I’m only running two double-clocked fuel generators as extra overhead power, but I can turn one oil node into 8000 MW with a bit of sulfur and coal. That’ll almost quadruple my steady energy output and free up some coal for steel/aluminum and should hold until nuclear power comes online, which is it’s own whole crazy ball of wax.

23

Glad to be of inspiration.

So I got steel production up and running (just pipes and beams for now), at a satellite facility at the very edge of the map, and researched tier 2 mines.

So far I had 2 Normal coal nodes powering 8 coal power plants over by a big lake. I upgraded them both to mk 2 mines and built a second set of coal plants. That should secure all the power I need for the forseeable future.

I also started connecting my bases with roads (2 tile wide networks of foundations, using ramps to get elevation and overlapping foundations to turn). That makes running power lines and conveyor belts much neater, and has let me set up a truck transport route for completed steel pipes and beams. This is temporary, I think - the steel factory is going to get much bigger soon (I have a second pure coal node nearby as well as some more iron nodes) and I will want to start consuming some of the steel parts onsite (I actually have a limestone node right there as well, so I’ll want to make encase steel beams onsite).

Once I’m done with tiers 3 and 4 and am ready to start making spaceship parts in earnest, I will need those parts to be at the same location as a lot of the aprts I make elsewhere, though. At that point, trucking may not cut it, and I’ll want to build a conveyor bus instead.

I now have the opportunity to basically double my production at all existing nodes, and by doing coal first I can easily afford to do so.

It also happens that a few of my biggest existing factories are either making reinforced steel plates as an end product, or as a component to a final product. I have a lot of machinery dedciated to screw making, is my point. And I just unlocked my first hard drive - and happened to get Stiched Plating. That’s a Reinforced Iron Plate alternate recipe, that uses copper wire instead of screws to reinforce plates.

So I’m thinking of doing a major revamp of my manufacturing facilities. My original plan was just to split the ore line off to a second wing at each factory, but instead I might go with a more drastic change. So far I’ve been trying to do load balancing, but with Mk3 belts unlocked, it might be time for redoing things with manifolds.

24

I saw a really cool concept for a way to combine inputs for higher tier factories (up to 4, though mine are only 2 so far).

All your inputs come in to the factory floor on a bus stacked 5 high using the stackable conveyor supports. You only need 4 inputs, but the lowest one is 1 level up do that you can freely walk under the belt.

Machines go on both sides of the belt bus. At each machine’s input, there’s a splitter (only on that resource’s level of the bus) that connects to an elevator that brings the input down to ground level, where it’s connected to the machine.

Everything looks so neat and tidy with this setup. And it seems really easy to expand as my tech improved.

25

My coal power plant is built by a lake that’s in a sort of crater. The lake is fed by a short river segment that is fed by a waterfall from the cliffs above and cascades into the lake at the end.

I have a factory built on the bank of the river and stretching over it. (This factory makes frames, using reinforced plates, and there’s an unused copper node nearby. Maybe this will be the first factory I remake.)

It occurs to me that if I move my water pumps to the top of the cliff, then pipe the water down, I should never have any issues with pumping the water high enough ever again.

26

I’ve just hit aluminum, and am gonna get a hazmat suit so I can go get some of those sweet radioactive hard drives.

Aluminum can be optimized, but I’m not sure it’s worth the fiddling to do so.

27

Much further along than I am, then.

I completed the tier 3 and 4 uploads, but have not done Phase 2 yet. I assembled Phase 1’s project parts in a manually loaded assembler.

I got as far as demolishing my waterfall base and redoing the mining and smelting setup before I had to call it for now. I think I’ll use the first floor for logistics and do all my construction up above (aside from copper wire - I did that right out of the smelters, since it’s the only thing I’ll need copper here for).

If my math is right, I’ll be able to run 7 or 8 assemblers making frames with a few reinforced plates left over for other stuff.

Meanwhile, my second hard drive included Steel Rotor, which lets me make rotors from steel pipes and copper wire, instead of iron rods and screws. And I have unused copper at my steel factory!

My understanding is that screws are considered very annoying by the community, because recipes use them in such high volume that you can’t run an effective manifold with them. Your manifold length (how many machines can be fed off the same input) is determined by your belt throughput, and screws effectively knock you down a tier because they clog belts when compared to whatever else might be in the recipe that needs screws.

It’s true that even right now, none of my factories that make use of screws are even remotely efficient.

With those two recipes not needing screws, my understanding is that I’m gonna have a much easier time. They’re supposed to be the two most ‘meta’ recipes to get early (along with Iron Pipes, which lets you make pipes out of iron instead of steel. Here’s hoping!). And I didn’t even need to use the Reroll function - I got them on my first two rolls!

28

Yep. Screws are used for reinforced plates, rotors, and heavy modular frames (so twice in the HMF supply). With alternate recipes like stitched iron plates and iron wire, you can make each of the first two from just a single iron resource. Hell, with a few more, you can make HMFs from just iron and coal, completely skipping steel as well. I think iron pipes is my favorite alternate so far.

Meanwhile, on “The Factory Must Grow”, I’m in the process of building out the train station. My current plan is to bring each train in to a different station entirely, thus avoiding signals and all that stress. The first foundation loop and train station is done, just need to build the tracks and then add stops for pickups.

29

I only have a single train track now (bringing rubber and plastic back to my primary factory). I find laying track to be the most annoying part of the game: the tracks bend in weird ways, and I can’t figure out how to make them go normally. Eventually I’ll set up a second track for aluminum, but after that, I’m really close to drones technology, and I’ll probably just rely on drones in order to avoid the frustration of noodly railroads.

Meanwhile, tweaking the aluminum factory so it doesn’t shut down every ten minutes from a surfeit of water or alumina solution is proving to be a giant pain in the ass. I think I’m going to abandon my efforts to figure it out myself, and just rely on the advice from a guide.

30

I am now up to 3 factories:

At my home base, I make basic parts, reinforced plates, and rotors (both of those last two parts are made on lines that are obsolete and need repalcing, they’re my started factories and run by mk 1 miners).

At the lake with a bunch of coal by it, I have my big power plant as well as a modular frame factory. Frames are taken by tractor up a winding concrete road and back to my starter base.

I tore down the steel factory pretty much completely and have restarted it. I have 480 coal to bring in, which is more than my belts can handle, so for now I am designing it as two manifold lines, but eventually I will combine them when I have faster belts.

I’ve got steel pipe production up and running, and an auxiliary building set up to make copper wire on site. Next I will run in the second coal node and set up steel beams as well. Then I’ll fix the shipping route back to the main base, and set up assembly of spaceship parts so I can finally move on to Phase 3.

31

Excellent!

I’m still pretty sloppy.

I’ve got a main factory that’s four stories of open-air spaghetti (bottom story: basic parts; second story: assemblers; third story: mix of assemblers and manufacturers; fourth story: manufacturers and a train station). Mixed in there are my space elevator, my hub, my miscellaneous buildings, my storage, and whatever else I feel like putting there.

I’ve got two different factories building steel pipes and beams, and long conveyors bringing them to my base.

I’ve got my oil factory, for power and plastic and rubber.

Near the oil, I’ve finally got my aluminum factory not shutting down every ten minutes. It has a bunch of buildings sitting idle, and I need to figure it out.

I’ve just started building, near my main factory, an advanced factory, full of manufacturers to build tier 7 and 8 items. I’m trying to make this one prettier, with walls and catwalks and a central aisle with conveyor belts and everything; but this kind of design doesn’t come naturally to me.

This is getting close to the point where I lost interest in the game before. We’ll see if I can push on through to nuclear and beyond.

32

It’s taking me longer and longer to get things going. Getting two factories building radio control units took me nearly two hours–getting the factory all set up, setting up the feeder pieces from other manufacturers, bringing in the aluminum along a new rail line, increasing quartz distribution, plus all the other little maintenance pieces.

That may be a sign that I should rebuild my basic factory. Or that I should rush drones so that distribution becomes easier.

33

I played a bunch last night and got a ton done.

My steel mill is fully operational. The main building is 4 floors tall currently. First floor takes in 240 coal and iron ore per minute and makes steel. Second floor makes almost all of that into pipes, with the leftovers making steel beams.

Next door is a 5 story tower into which flows 180 copper per minute. It’s refined on the first floor and made into wire in machines on the next 4 floors. From the top floor, wire is fed by two belts to the main factory’s third and fourth floors.

The fourth floor makes stators out of steel pipes and copper wire while the fifth floor makes rotors out of the same materials (yay for alternate recepies!).

Next, I need to bring more coal and iron in to greatly increase steel beam production (I will need to run a bit of a longer belt to bring the extra coal in, but I have tons of iron and don’t want to build an entirely separate factory). Then I need to bring in concrete (I already have limestone lines coming in, just need to set up constructors) and make encased steel beams too.

And once THAT is all done, I can truck all the materials to the main base, where I can assemble spaceship parts.

But having finished the factory, I was a bit tired of building, so I decided to do a bit of exploring. I hooked up a Caterium node and started researching that tree, and found a SAM node that I tapped as well. And that allowed me to finally set up dimensional storage.

For now, I just have 5 containers in my main storage facility that I am feeding with Plates, Reinforced Plates, Iron Rods, Concrete, and Cable. But once I get some Quickwire production going, I will want to set up smart splitters to create overflow for my storage. I want to start running all my machines 24/7 and sinking the surplus!

But I am also starting to hit mynpower limit. With the steel factory operational, I’ve started getting occassional blackouts. If I upgrade my main base to Mk 2 miners and get the belts runnung, I’m going to exponentially increase power consumption.

Luckily, there is plenty of coal available near my power plant, still. I might need to tap one more node before going up a tier.

With how much steel I’m going to need, I hope the next tier gives me something superior to coal, so I can use these nodes for even more steel. But that’s a longer term problem.

Oh, I also wanted to do some Quartz research, but holy crap, Quartz is all incredibly far away.

34

I’m starting to fill out the lower-tier factories for the main one and cleaning up some old stuff. I built a spreadsheet of the T1-4 items and whether they’ll go to a dimensional depot for building, on to the main factory, or both. For example, at this point, I don’t use iron plates for anything but building, so into the depot it goes. Circuit boards aren’t used in any buildings, so to the factory they go. Reinforced plates are both, so they get a splitter into a depot, rest goes to the factory.

I lucked out and found iron really close to the quartz I targeted, so I’m making oscillators right there instead.

I also ran around and covered the map with radar towers, so now I know where EVERYTHING is. A bit overwhelming at the moment, but it’s easier to plan out where I want to build satellite factories.

The next tier opens up a massive world for power, starting with oil. It’s the last power generation you really need to finish the game. You’ll also be able to cut coal out of most of your production cycle with a couple alternate recipes.

Refactoring your starter factory is almost always a good idea, though it’s distasteful - you’re not making any PROGRESS, so I just refuse and go do other things. As it stands, probably 95% of mine is just not running; everything is backed up and not used in meaningful quantities anymore. But it’s ugly and confusing and takes up a ton of extra space and I don’t like it. So I’ll force myself to fix it when I run a train that direction to carry in the motors, heavy frames, quartz, and other stuff I’m already making. But that’s weeks out. Because I don’t wanna.

35

What I saw that I really want to emulate is a setup where items are constantly produced and flow into factories as needed; any overflow goes into storage (dimensional storage if it’s for construction); and once that overflows too, it gets mashed for tickets.

Man, I can’t wait! Gives me an incentive to stop screwing around and actually make spaceship parts.

So far I’m almost entirely working with nodes I found in my last playthrough, so I haven’t done too much exploration and don’t have too many hard drives. The two I got early on I got REALLY lucky with.

I should really go on a big exploration expedition soon. Maybe I’ll take some portable miners to get a big load of quartz.

I finally have the zipline, so maybe I’ll run power to the quartz to give me a quick way back and forth.

36

I ended up putting a stack of portable miners into my dimensional portal. I recommend the investment. More than once I’ve gotten to a really good node, and realized I didn’t have the ingredients for portable miners with me.

Yeah, that’s how I feel about it. Especially since I’ve just been piling floor atop floor, and smushing my storage right up next to it. The breakdown is gonna be brutal–but I think that once I rebuild everything, including the storage, it’ll be worth it.

I’ve looked at some blueprint suggestions people have, but their suggestions are all super-fancy. My only blueprints are very basic: setting up three constructors in a row, or three refiners with the pipes and conveyor belts already arranged. What do y’all use blueprints for, and are there ones I should really look at having?

37

Oh yeah, I know that struggle. I’ve been dumping down equipment workshops and making them onsite, but a dimensional portal sounds even better. I assume I manually put them in a storage box that flows into the dimensional portal?

I like the idea of stackable factories, where you can switch them around back and forth to snake a conveyor up a tower past as many constructors as you want.

38

There’s a SAM upgrade that allows you to pop stuff into dimensional storage directly from inventory, and I love it. Every time I return to my base I refill my inventory with the stuff I need, but I also grab a couple extra stacks and always have something feeding into DS. It saves my inventory space, and also helps me remember to keep a spare set of everything. That’s how I handled the portable miners.

I still haven’t set up conveyor belt-fed DS. Doing that will be part of my factory rebuild, which I see turning into five or more different buildings:

  1. An iron-based factory to get plates, rods, and screws in bulk;
  2. A copper-based factory to get wire, sheets, and cable in bulk;
  3. A stone-based factory to get quartz and concrete in bulk;
  4. A storage warehouse with dimensional storage facilities, and plenty of input and output belts;
  5. An advanced-part factory for the heavy lifting.

It’s gonna take several hours to do all this. I hope it’s fun.

39

I like to use that when I’m out exploring. I just upload slugs, remains, spheres, sloops, and hard drives - just the stuff that takes up inventory space but serves no purpose unless I’m at base.

Speaking of sloops, the overclocking you can use them for (double production in exchange for a massive power usage increase) has several fun uses. If you’re trying to unlock things from the AWESOME Shop, a constructor making animal proteins, and then DNA capsules, gives you four times to value into the sink. It doubles power shard production from slugs, too. My best use, though, is elevator parts. Throw a set of somersloops in the manufacturer, and you’re done in half the time, for half the cost. Power usage is pretty significant, however. Somersloops increase the power draw by 4x, and multiply with shard overclocking as well - something like 13x the power required (also produces parts five times faster).

I don’t use any blueprints (yet), though that’s probably to my detriment. Only thing I can think of is a smelter box to connect to a miner. Just plop it down, connect a couple power lines and a couple conveyors, and go on to the actual factory.

40

I’m finally reworking my factory. Two MK2 Iron mines give me 480 iron, which is enough to power:

  • 8 iron rods
  • 8 cast screws
  • 8 iron plates
  • with 100 left over

I built a 4-story factory (it looks like an orange Borg), with smelters on the bottom, and 8 constructors on each level. The constructor blueprint saved me a ton of time, and it looks pretty nice on the inside.