Anyone else playing Satisfactory?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

4 hours ago, Gargamel said:

the _only_ artsy thing

Heh - I feel better now. 

I'm starting on my Rail Yard Monstrosity this weekend.  Currently a flying wasteland of foundations awaiting me unlocking plastic. 

Plan is nine 4-car train stations under one roof to supply a mega mid-tier factory and logistics hub above the (temporary) floating platform.  Then to try to make the base look like it grew out of the desert with some kind of plan. 

I'll post it when I get somewhere near complete 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Ruh roh, Raggy... 

I've reached the point where paving over the world one square at a time has become grindy. 

My mega train station is presently 6 different stations with 5 working routes spanning the entire Dune desert.  I still have not set up oil power (using the desert oil for plastic and training away petcoke for power /disposal at a lake. 

Have not set up the factory above - but ran out of found computers to make the signals work so I have a hand fed manufacturer making some... 

And I'm burnt. 

Structure looks like a...  I don't know - it's not good.  The coolest part is the working massive station - but setting up the factory system hides and buries it inside the building.  Don't even have glass floors unlocked. 

Tier 5 and 6.  Man it's hard to do it the way I want to... 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Who knew that work was a nice relief from the pressures of gaming? 

[Spacescifi]

22 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Who knew that work was a nice relief from the pressures of gaming? 

The more things change the more they stay the same.

The year 2050: Many of us are gone or off to wherever or whatever we do after this thing we call life is over. Yet people still play video games. However cheat codes no longer are available for some games. Instead people that want to avoid grinding in games just use an AI bot or program to assist them to do the grindy repetitive part of games that they don't want to do.

 

Yes... I do predict AI to make difficult games easier will be the future... or at least on an unprecedented scale.

[Gargamel]

On 9/30/2024 at 6:46 AM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I've reached the point where paving over the world one square at a time has become grindy. 

Use zoop and Dimensional depots.   Makes paving over the planet much easier.  

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

On 10/3/2024 at 10:48 AM, Gargamel said:

Use zoop and Dimensional depots.   Makes paving over the planet much easier.  

Zoop yep - DimenDepots?  Too advanced for this game.  Just unlocked Phase 4: Aluminum... but not touching that until after I build my TurboFuel Monstrosity.  First effort at that.  Made feasible by my overkill rail network.  Going vertical: putting the 20 fuel generators above the 14 refineries.  Should be a smoky mess when I get it powered up.  Keep running out of materials tho - requiring long train rides back to get stuff.  (Oil is far from base).

That's actually been the most satisfying part of this; I like my train network for the first time.  Two massive multi-train depots distant enough to not mess with frame rates.  One for intermediate buildables (Electronics, Heavy Frames & Motors & who knows what, next) the other for Project Parts.  Feeding it all is 11 or 12 other stations at raw materials processing (copper, Iron, Steel, hydrocarbons, crystal, caterium, etc. etc.) - all of which is set up so I can keep adding new train stations at raw material sources as I get deeper into the game and start depleting my ability to keep up with production.  The train stations are cool - and I've a ton of trains running about the map - and they all play nice with each other.

I have not made ANYTHING pretty...  well except for a few 'fiddly' facades.  I get those to where I like them, but the rest of the factory?  Floating foundations and incomplete walls galore.

[Gargamel]

8 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

oing vertical: putting the 20 fuel generators above the 14 refineries

Take a look at how much Fuel you'll get from a single oil node at max extraction rate.   Then design your power station from that.

It's a heckuva lot of work, tedious work, but that will cover your needs for the next few phases and tiers.  

Trade Secrets in spoiler, some people want to know, some don't:

Spoiler

I have 3 oil nodes that I'm taking 600 oil from each.   The first one made Heavy Oil residue and Polymer resin (which I converted to plastic, rubber, and a trickle of fabric).  Then I took the fuel and used the early alternate Heavy turbo fuel to make Turbo fuel.   That powered 40 some power generators.    I used that power to bootstrap the other two nodes using another alternate and the blenders to signifcantly boost the TFuel output, running ~160 generators.   It's a big building, and a lot of clicking, but I'm on the verge of entering the final phase, and I'm just now considering putting up a nuclear power plant.   Especially with oil nodes, look to maximize the output as early as you can, or at least do the math, and lay the footprint for the expansion of the factory without much trouble. 

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

6 hours ago, Gargamel said:

Trade Secrets

My biggest problem is the alts.  I hardly use them because I don't get really good ones.  I just unlocked Heavy Flex Frames - best Alt in a while.  I have no hydrocarbon alts that I didn’t buy from the Sulphur tree 

Might have to go on another drop pod adventure... 

Edit - I will say that when I get an Alt it's AFTER building out a whole factory doing it Vanilla. 

I have one iron FrankenFactory where later on I sent copper sheets and wire because of the production improvements for the Alts - but mostly it's wet concrete or water steel or pfft 

[Gargamel]

Make the effort to go on adventures.

Go exploring and collect all the spheres, sloops, slugs, and drives that you can.   Unlock the Production amplifier as soon as you can, and set up a tiny factory that sloops your slugs,  end up with a lot of shards that way.    But the art and design is so amazing in this game, it's worth going for multiple strolls early, exploring the world and picking up artifacts.

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

On 10/30/2024 at 3:47 PM, Gargamel said:

go on adventures

...oh I had one.

 

...

Plotted a path to a good node of bauxite to get started on Alu-min-eyum.  Had several pods along the path.

Problem is - they're in the forest south of the Dune Desert.  And ALL irradiated.

Need aluminum to get Hazmat suit.

Keep going:  bauxite = aluminum; just get that up and running and get a hazmat suit and come back for the pods.

BAUXITE site is irradiated.

(there's ways around this, given the distance one can build).

Decided to go back to base and build a rail track out to the site.

Spider.  Big one.

Run.

He has a friend.

Irradiated, gas spitting spiders.

Agroed 4 of them at once - and I'm still only using the long xeno-zapper.

Lots of booshes.  Cannot see spiders.

Did not work out well.

...

So... now I'm building a rail line allllll the way across the map to the easy access bauxite near all the oil on the Gold Coast.

And maybe a gun.  Or two.

Edited November 3 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[MechBFP]

I went with nuclear power and in my opinion it is more fun to than setting up a tedious turbo fuel setup. 
3 uranium fuel rods per minute, turns into 4 plutonium fuel rods per minute with alt recipes, which turns into 20 (then slooped to 40) Ficsonium Fuel rods per minute. That setup produces 237.5GW of power.

Note that the Ficsonium fuel rods aren’t worth it from a practical purpose, you either need to sloop them to get the extra dark matter residue (and slooping them has a rather ridiculous power cost which almost nullifies the benefit of using the rods), or you need absolutely massive amounts of SAM.  However I did them anyway just cause I wanted to have a fully automated solution with no waste.

As a side note I was able to get to nuclear quite easily by simply building generators from heavy oil from plastic/rubber factories and only needed to use one oil node to setup a regular fuel generator farm to be able to have enough power to get to that point. 

Edited November 3 by MechBFP

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

3 hours ago, MechBFP said:

just cause I wanted to have a fully automated solution with no waste

There are folks like you that are a whole different level of player than I am.  I'm a 'thank God for Smart Splitters and Awesome Sinks" guy. 

Mind you... I try to be you.  I break out a spreadsheet and everything.  Then before I have it all figured out I just go build stuff.  It's the same way with the anesthetics.  I get a facade and a plan for the building - which looks good from exactly one angle. 

Case in point - I had an idea for a cool, offset stacked factory using the 8m angled walls.  Got my proof of concept wall built and the rest of the thing is just floating in space. 

On the other hand - I still really like my rail network - which now takes 3.5 minutes of real time to get from the space elevator to the Gold Coast bauxite farm. 

Maybe someday I will optimize production... But damnit at least the trains run! 

[Gargamel]

Heck no.    I try for as much waste as possible.      
I might have my aluminum factory making 2 product lines at 1500 / min each.    And it runs constantly, even if demand isn’t using that much.     Any excess is dumped right into a sink.     Everything that can overflow does.    Tickets are sweet sweet nectar.   
 

Hell, the first phase 5 item I started making is Pasta, and I’m making 10 of those a minute (at stupid ridiculous cost of 6000 copper ingots a minute).   So filled up the elevator in 30 minutes or so, but it’s still churning out pasta, getting those tickets for me.    

But I futz around so much, and go exploring, and with the recent update respawning most of the sloops and spheres, I’ll have the golden nut statue before finishing phase 5 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

On 11/6/2024 at 6:54 AM, Gargamel said:

6000 copper ingots

So I spent two days somewhat flabbergasted by the numbers you're suggesting. 

Aside from coal nodes for power - I've got 2 nodes mined for iron and 2 nodes mined for copper (uh, make that 3 since 1 is dedicated to the aluminum plant)... Aside from that all other production comes from single node sources.  One caterium, one quartz, etc. 

I thought, 'there is just no way I'm gonna need all that stuff'.  Until I got supercomputers and radio control units going.  1 manufacturer, each. 

Backwards planning how to increase the throughput to triple SC and RCU production? 

Yeah. 

 

I'm gonna need more trains. 

[Gargamel]

Yeah, I went around buildng a factory here, factory there.    No real plan... just saying I wanted to produce say 30 circuit boards a min.    Nothing unreasonable I thought... and then... I need how much copper to make caterium wire?

Geez ok...    How about 10 Nuclear pasta a minute.      Not that much... oh geez... 6000 copper for that?      Turns out that wasn't that hard.   half of it came from nodes in around the factory location.  

Now I'm just setting up high capacity Iron, Steel, Copper, Caterium and concrete factories, so I don't need to harvest that many local resources.  

But I think my next big project will be a nuclear facility.   I have 71 GW Capacity (including 20GW boost), which is fine for now with 38GW consumption, but a max consumption of 76 GW is a little bothersome.   If everything turns on....

 

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

On 11/12/2024 at 5:42 PM, Gargamel said:

next big project will be a nuclear facility

I see that on my horizon.  Just unlocked the advanced aluminum.  Will probably spend a bunch of time getting that and my current runs optimized first. 

 

Amazing to think that I'm actually considering this.  Usually quit after getting to Aluminum.  I credit my overbuilt rail network!

 

[Gargamel]

Ficsmas is looming.    Looking forward to this.   
 

Bit yet again I’ve been distracted by going exploring again, gathering all the sloops that respawned after the hot patch bug last week.     

And oh yeah, I got the golden nut the other day, and already have ramped up another 250 tickets.     Why?    Cause.   

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Noodled about the other day laying in a new train line to the NW NitroGas node, bringing over sulfur for future use and setting up blenders to produce cubes and cooling systems.  Required a drone port b/c of how I set up my hubs and 2 drone ports to extract the products to send it to the next stage of manufacturing. 

Simple enough process... Except I kept running out of key ingredients - like concrete, steel plates, iron plates, copper, batteries radio control units, computers and etc and etc.  

Mind you... Not all at once.   Sequentially. 

I'd run out of something - take the long train ride back to where I made stuff, another long train ride back to the site - run out of a different something, necessitating another long train ride... Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat. 

Wondered why I kept making so many stupid mistakes. 

 

It was 3am 

 

 

Yeah.  That's Satishfaktry

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

On 11/12/2024 at 5:42 PM, Gargamel said:

Nuclear pasta

Getting ready to start on that.  I finally have a working Aluminum and Battery factory running off a single baux node.   Shrug - guess I'm a minimalist! 

I will say that 'adventures' are a lot less hairy with the hazmat suit, appropriate filters, inhalers and homing rifle rounds. 

In retrospect, going after jumping radioactive gas spiders with a xenozapper and a handful of nuts was, in fact, suicidal. 

 

(Also - let say that I love the design choice that spiders hate everything.)

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

So...  Hard to quite put into words - but I am kinda frustrated with the Satisfactory community.  Problem is, you never get close to the answer you are looking for.

Spoiler

There is no real community per se.  It's mostly major YouTubers or wanna be YouTubers or the Reddit or Steam pages (each with their own issues /flavor).    

Case in point.  Look up advice or content on anything from Aluminum to Nuclear and you get the same ONE answer.  The Uber-Alt super-efficient use every node on the map gigantic 'solution'.   The only variable is whether it's an 'art' factory or flat cover-the-ocean build.  Either way, the suggestions are inevitably 'use the best alts and over build the whole thing.   This is, btw, the same whether you are asked to watch a 15 minutes to one hour video or scan the pages. 

Never once is there a good "single node vanilla recipe" build.   I'd like to see a "let's get started and expand later" post / video.

 

Anyway - got me to thinking about how good this community is and has been.  We've been really fortunate with this place! 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

On 10/3/2024 at 10:48 AM, Gargamel said:

Dimensional depots

Okay - thank you for NOT spoilering this for me.

I just unlocked Dimensional Depots for the first time.

Spoiler

Slapping my head over multiple long trips to the factories to get BASIC building materials!

This is part of the game I enjoy - figuring stuff out.  And I just figured out how to make my life easier.

... which, now necessitates another "Adventure".

Grin!

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

So - my minimalist strategy seems to be fine.  I'm nearing completion of Phase 4 Space Elevator items having built exactly ONE producer of each part. 

I'd read that Nuclear Pasta via Particle Accelerators took a LOT of power and decided to build a new fuel farm (HOR + Rubber & diluted fuel) = 30 generators.  Not a small project.  Needing to keep returning to base for stuff, I got bored and built out a single normal node of Copper that could produce 100 Copper Powder p/m - which is exactly what I need for one Particle Accelerator. 

Seeing that I had excess power I built my first one. 

That thing is now my favorite thing in all of Satisfactory. 

The startup sound is epic!

I'm back at the fuel farm getting close to completion and... It looks like a side quest b/c the time it's taken to build out has allowed the single PA to churn Nuclear Pasta almost to full.  (Mind you - this side quest also includes building DD capacity and fixing a bottleneck or two. 

...all of which is to say that my experience is vastly different from what gets shown in media about the game. 

[HebaruSan]

Meanwhile I have returned to my low-tech (no space elevator) playthrough after some time away.

After several long-range adventures armed only with rebar gun, parachute, blade runners, and gas mask (I really enjoy the gameplay at this tech level), I accumulated a supply of mob drops. So much so that I replaced the ad hoc generators I was putting up at each site with a central power station featuring 16 biofuel generators in a 4-storey tower (not yet aesthetically complete), automatically fed solid biofuel made from my alien protein hoard. At full utilization (my current machines use more like 20%), that supply should last at least 11 hours, during which I expect to be able to more than replenish my supply of alien guts.

The most exciting find in my travels was another small stack of steel pipes, which allowed me to make nobelisks to blow open the entrance to the quartz cave near my base. So quartz will be my next project now that I have the power for it.

Once that's done, I suspect I'll have to bite the bullet and build a space elevator at long last. I should probably also set up an AWESOME sink somewhere to grind out some tickets for visual items, but I'm not sure whether I want to draw down my currently depletable power reserve for that.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

8 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

currently depletable power reserve

I did a variant of this back when I was slow playing the first phase - but it was a combo of guts leaves and wood making solid biofuel - which carried me through oil and coal (yep, I built out backwards). 

 

Thing is that once I had oil and coal hooked up the biofuel generator farm stopped working.  Even when I was over utilizing electricity and the breaker would trip - I'd discover zero biofuel had been consumed.  I figured it would act like backup power (chewing biofuel when I needed power in excess of the renewable sources) - but apparently once you hook up a renewable source the game stops drawing any power from biogenerators ever. 

 

Is this a known bug or a feature 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

FICSMAS

Um... yeah.  Just got a "Totally Normal Gift"

That was fun.