Dammit Mandrake!
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2018
Any of you crack heads playing Satisfactory? I know you're out there. Anyway I wanted to talk about it a bit and while trying to find a thread for it, I instead found a post I made.
Oh Dammit, you're so cute. Look at those complaints and concerns. How little you knew back then. Stuck on phase two and saying you "hit a wall." Ha!
So, let's talk Satisfactory. And I'll introduce some of you to this game by responding to myself and addressing concerns that a lot of new players like me had or still have. For those of you that already know the game well, tell me about it. What do you like? What do you hate? How do you feel about the development process and Coffee Stain's way of going about an early access release? Also tranny shit!
For reference, I've gotten significantly better at this game. I've accomplished the endgame goals several times and over the course of a couple thousand hours have gained proficiency or mastery over the game and its systems. Needless to say, I really like Satisfactory. It has been a real pleasure to play and learn and it has improved my ability to think, reason and organize in ways that have helped me in my professional life. And I am still learning new stuff all the time.
Without knowing it at the time, I answered my own question. I've gone back to look at this save file and the entirety of my initial complaints boil down to two mistakes:
- My factories utilized a (poor) technique known as "daisy-chaining". This is pretty straightforward: all basic production would lead into the next tier of production and so on. What this meant was that I found myself constrained by the output of resource nodes and the maximum capacity of machines. Daisy-chaining your machines together into one giant mess is going to lead to disaster as time goes on.
- At this point in the game I wasn't even overclocking my machines, but it would have done little good longer term because eventually you'll outstrip the production of a maxed out machine. It happens fast.
- Additionally, I did not understand fully the capacities of conveyor belts and their overall limitations for some forms of production. Okay, so I maxed out a resource node. No big deal, I can tap another and plug that line into the front end of my production line that is starved of that resource and everything will fill up again and production is back on track. Right? WRONG. This does not work after one or two times and if you are doing this, you haven't planned out your build nearly enough.
- I made a massive error in my overall planning and the structure of my factories with regards to the amount of space I was using. Plus I was not using foundations. OOPS! We've got the whole map to work with. Foundations are easy to unlock. There's no reason to build compact factories unless you're trying to challenge yourself or doing something specific. Ultimately I needed to build bigger, which is to say there needed to be more room between my machines and belts and other equipment. The game rewards good planning and built-in expansion space; conversely, the game will punish you severely if you neglect this.
- Obviously small and compact builds are their own niche and do have a place. They also provide a very fun challenge for your brain. But we need to think logically here and understand that no matter how much space you think you've given yourself, add another five rows of foundation blocks just in case. You'll thank yourself later.
For every product you desire to make, the easiest route to success is to build the entire chain needed for that product each time and to keep those chains isolated from one another as much as is possible. NO DAISY-CHAINS!
This immediately solved most of my issues and also forced me to adopt a fix for point number two, which is to use more space. Since I'm building these production lines as dedicated systems and not a global feed for multiple outputs, by design I needed to start using more space and utilizing the organizational tools the game offers.Welcome to Satisfactory's filter. Coal power production is both when the game actually starts and when most people bail. Moving fluids in Satisfactory is easier said than done and it is made more difficult when you consider that the way fluids work in Satisfactory is not a 1:1 recreation of how fluids work in the real world with real physics. They're close, but they have their own idiosyncrasies that can become frustrating if you are not aware.
The best advice I can give you with constructing pipelines and moving fluids in Satisfactory is to read the fucking manual. This guide is invaluable if you're serious about learning how the game functions and how to keep your fluid systems up and running.
I was making massive errors in my construction because I was making assumptions about how the game should work and not recognizing how it actually worked. Learning how to build water towers is a great way to solve almost all major problems with fluid systems. But understanding how fluids move through the pipes and the impacts of "sloshing" within those pipes is a big deal. Valves are your friend and utilizing proper input
utput ratios are necessary for success. I did not distribute water properly or have a grasp of designing and building manifold systems; and without that knowledge I was doomed to fail from the start.Yuuuuup. But I actually went and finished the Christmas tech tree this year and it was pretty neat. A nice twist on the game's normal progression.
And that's about all I've got right now. If you have any questions or want to discuss Satisfactory, have at it. And maybe there already is a thread and I've missed it, but search returned zero results. Regardless, I'll leave you with some real good advice that will hopefully improve your factory building adventures:
- Build your factories in reverse order!
- Plop down the machine that would be at the end of the line first. Tune it to the desired parameters first. Then work your way back one step at a time, satisfying the needs of the machine that follows in the production series. Your life will become to much simpler. You will waste much less time. And the damn factories will work.
- Keep your machines running at all costs!
- Whether you need to perfectly tune your machines for zero-loss efficiency or if you simply want to strap an Awesome Sink onto the line, keep your machines running. Don't let them fill up and stop. Power management is the hardest thing for most players in this game after the behavior of fluids in pipelines. You can render power management trivial if your power draw is constant and predictable. To accomplish this, ensure that your factories never stop. Perfect your line or sink it, either works and both have benefits.
- You're going to need the tickets that the Awesome Sink produces anyway, so there's no shame in sinking your excess supply. Just keep the factories running so you don't have a massive, unexpected spike in your system that blows the mains out and shuts everything down. Because going back and priming all of your coal plants or fuel plants can take hours. A minute-long blackout across your map could cost you hours of time.
- Whether you need to perfectly tune your machines for zero-loss efficiency or if you simply want to strap an Awesome Sink onto the line, keep your machines running. Don't let them fill up and stop. Power management is the hardest thing for most players in this game after the behavior of fluids in pipelines. You can render power management trivial if your power draw is constant and predictable. To accomplish this, ensure that your factories never stop. Perfect your line or sink it, either works and both have benefits.
I hope you enjoy Satisfactory, friends.
