We don't have a Satisfactory thread? - Satisfactory thread.

Noticed the discourse of Satisfactory vs Factorio.
Haven't played the game since like update 5 I think like 3-4 years ago.
I've started a new playthrough along with convincing my wife to play it for a variety of reasons.
I was extremely excited to see that blueprinting was added as my constant finicking, mlg-pro clicking and bunny-hopping definitely tired me out when implementing my factory builds.
To be succinct I was disappointed with it on multiple levels.
Quite frankly I think it didn't spend enough time in the oven and I get the feeling that it will continue to fall short going into 1.0
The first inconvenience was a minor one, my tileable manifold design did not fit with both sides of the manifold inside the blueprint design box. (its an interwoven constructor design with belts fed between constructors)
image_2024-09-01_202450575.png
Simple enough of a fix, I'll just split the ideal blueprint into two halves and ideally when I nudge the second blueprint into place where both halves should meet, they will feed into the merged centerline and "just work"™
It didn't work. My first go assumed the game would understand if I imposed two identically placed and directed mergers to form a central belt from both blueprints it would understand to essentially merge the two objects
It did not. It just superimposed one over the other wherein I had two identical mergers existing in the same location along with my centerline bus belt. I know because when I deleted the first one, the second was in the exact same location and position.
So I thought maybe if I leave the merger centerline in one blueprint and just the bare belts on the other the bare belts should snap into the merger, right?
Wrong. The bare belts do not detect the merger input as an entity and thus terminate with no output, end of their belt, end of the line. (in the image above, that box of screws just ends where you see it it doesn't enter the merger)
Thus I realized the platform snapping issue everyone talks about extends to any expectation of a blueprint to interact with the game-world once you place it.
To me, this stymies most of my creative ideas regarding setup in the blueprint planner wherein the size limitation of blueprints would have invited an interesting challenge of spacing and organization.

Between the above issues with blueprinting and what I've observed in numerous factory design videos regarding the game's bugs with fluids (particularly a pipe bug forcing you to need to rebuild pipes upon modification) the game's left me pretty salty.

It may be an extremely creatively liberating tool when you don't need as many functional parts "just working" to implement, after all I could just manually add a number of objects to fix my blueprint and fix my issue.
In another case people can quite easily create architectural wonders with repeating blueprints that interlock on a rotation.

But to paraphrase the zoomers:
"The factory eats first"

This feature just falls short just for me because it doesn't properly enable modular factory design.
It's barely within the acceptable limit due to it requiring me to design isolated blocks where I then have to manually implement it's logistical connections.
They've even implemented a number of entities like conveyor hole walls that perfectly allow you to overlay the I/O from blueprint to blueprint.
I feel if I've met the bar for making a creative design within the confines of the blueprint box where they are positionally input/output compatible and you've given me the tools to enable them to be perfectly positioned I should be rewarded with interlocking/merging logistics.

That being said I still think it's a positive add because you can more easily automate out some tedium and hairpulling nonsense. Just like cmon, they almost had it.
 
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To be fair the Dev's never even wanted to put in a blueprint maker, they were basically bullied by the fans.

I personally don't use it as the building loop is the game play to me and skipping it is kinda silly.

I played Factorio for many years but always quit near endgame because all the end game is is me running around slapping down blueprints and letting the robots build it. To me that's not really engaging but to each their own right?

In Satisfactory, at least my games, every single belt, floor, wall, machine, track ect ect is all placed by me deliberately and that's what I enjoy doing. I guess if you don't enjoy building a factory one must ask why your playing in the first place. If copy/paste to make a massive world spanning factory is your thing then yes Factorio is your game and Satisfactory isn't.

But like everyone said, both games serve different audiences and can, believe it or not, co-exist and be successful.

I think this is going to be Satisfactory's biggest stumbling block come 1.0, as a lot of Factorio players are going to go "Factorio 3D? Awesome" then come away like the people in this thread. Satisfactory is not Factorio 3D and never tried to be. It's got some similarity in the fact you make a factory and balance out production lines but that's really it. They set out to do different thing using different player loops.

I can easily see many grumpy Factorio players buying Satisfactory on the 10th and getting all ass-blasted it's not just Factorio 3D like they wanted.
 
To be fair the Dev's never even wanted to put in a blueprint maker, they were basically bullied by the fans.
It's the meat of update 7 like it or not. Mind they added the world grid in 8 because they finally understood how mundane it was to path foundations around the entire map to align your factories.

They also deserve to get bullied tbh, they whined about being compared to Factorio, they then whined when people used underclocking (a feature unique to their game) to it's natural conclusion(extremely long underclocked factories), said they would "rework it" and just lowered the exponent to gimp it in a limp-dicked attempt to curb behavior they found undesirable.

Not to mention, right before the finish line, Satisfactory geared up to be just as bland and featureless as Factorio as to why you are doing any of this by cutting any narrative chatter completely out of the game.
In Satisfactory, at least my games, every single belt, floor, wall, machine, track ect ect is all placed by me deliberately and that's what I enjoy doing. I guess if you don't enjoy building a factory one must ask why your playing in the first place. If copy/paste to make a massive world spanning factory is your thing then yes Factorio is your game and Satisfactory isn't.
That's nice and there is the apples and oranges element of these two games: finite bandwidth/finite resources, "unique" 3D designs/unique recipe designs.

The reason I wanted my manifold design blueprinted in the first place is it not only saved space by 4m^2 per iteration over the standard side-by-side but that it would be my only constructor manifold design for the entire game.

But the thing that isn't fun between either game is the possible idea that you have to essentially memorize each neat design and painstakingly repeat it ad-infinitum. The fun of both games is figuring out a design to meet demand, not placing every brick.

Which brings me to the fact that the first two phases of Satisfactory are not compelling gameplay. It is a one-trick pony of finding a line design acceptable to you, underclocking/ratioing to fit your bandwidth needs and bussing materials for the next line. They've completely dressed up a 2D I/O problem as 3D except in 3D that's even simpler due to the fact that you can just stack vertically what would be two 2D lines.

Fluids are the only saving grace of Satisfactory as they supplemented it with such an ample feature set that someone had to go and make an entire manual to explain because it soundly takes advantage of the game being 3D.
It even shows when after phase two, every single production building integrates fluids.

Also cope. Everyone, and I mean everyone, who makes their money on creative Satisfactory content uses blueprinting as much as they can. If you solve the fundamental design issue of your factory, you deserve to just have it be repeatable and eliminate the monotony of doing the same finicky thing over and over again (as designed by the devs when you repeat designs and underclock for efficiency gains).
I think this is going to be Satisfactory's biggest stumbling block come 1.0, as a lot of Factorio players are going to go "Factorio 3D? Awesome" then come away like the people in this thread. Satisfactory is not Factorio 3D and never tried to be. It's got some similarity in the fact you make a factory and balance out production lines but that's really it. They set out to do different thing using different player loops.
Factorio fan-cope exists. But dismissing any criticism for the game out-of-hand as that is gape-faggot behavior.
If you think it's fun to implement the same constructor design for all twelve unique materials by hand, I hear picking cotton by hand is still in mode.
The size/shape/quantity of each bloom should provide just the variation you need to keep occupied.

I can easily see many grumpy Factorio players buying Satisfactory on the 10th and getting all ass-blasted it's not just Factorio 3D like they wanted.
It was literally a 3D Factorio+Pretty Unreal Engine Nigger-Slop until they added fluids in update 3 and update 4 marked the three year content plateau where they only added QoL content until now 1.0.
 
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I can easily see many grumpy Factorio players buying Satisfactory on the 10th and getting all ass-blasted it's not just Factorio 3D like they wanted.
Tbh I'd say a majority of them already have tried it already. I've already got 100 hours in and I like it because it's different to Factorio, They start the same but Satisfactory does at least let you skip the handcrafting phase and you don't have to worry about pollution making the monsters stronger.
 
OK so I think I got as far as I can before 1.0 got everything unlocked now and I'm not going to bother with setting up nuclear and the last space elevator parts. According to steam, I put in about 150 hours.

My factories are a bit of a tangled mess, but it's been fun learning and each one got a little bit better. With the knowledge I have, it should be a bit neater and better managed for 1.0.

My only wish for blueprints would be to have the rails and pipes actually connect between sections.
 
Also to be clear this game is fun, it has good design elements.
I mentioned I got my wife, who only got into games after dating me in her early 20's, to play this and that is for some very good reasons.
She sucks at games atm. She has no instinct for causality in game design, regularly ignores what is on screen in favor of asking me what to do/pay attention to, and has really poor spacial management/orientation/measurement skills IRL.

Satisfactory, at least in it's early game, hand-holds the player on all of the basics necessary to understand production lines and then leaves you to extrapolate the rest in a very fair way.
90% of the time when she asks me what to do I can point at a pop up that is currently flashing on screen. "the fuse blew for the power", "you're missing materials in your inventory to build that".
Almost every button at your disposal will lay itself out on screen to tell you or at least prompt you to explore what it can do..
It affords me at most of her junctures to point her to just building an idea out herself as this game has no consequences to early failure except time wasted. No redoing a boss, no mandatory cutscenes. Just deconstruct and try something new.
This game is straining her to actually fail and grow rather than feel like she's beating her head against a wall.

Factorio, and a lot of other games, leaves a lot for the player to figure out.
 
A breakdown of all the new "quantum" stuff coming in 1.0

Mark VI belts move at 1200 units per min! So now you can fully overclock a pure node and use all of it. Finally.

Warning it's 20 mins long. There is a lot of Snutt being...well Snutt.

I don't think I am going to watch any more of these. But it looks good!

particularly a pipe bug forcing you to need to rebuild pipes upon modification
Yeah that one... they better fix it.

OK so I think I got as far as I can before 1.0 got everything unlocked now and I'm not going to bother with setting up nuclear and the last space elevator parts.
But you won't get your completion reward!!


Okay all caught up! Reading your posts, I think my play style lands between most of the types described here. I do enjoy building my custom machines but I also utilize blueprints once I "master" a design.

When I start a new game, I do not bring my blueprints with me.

Beyond that, I very much enjoy setting up factory zones and connecting them with large transit systems that follow and blend in with the landscape. I'll usually make a pair of large resource conduits to bring everything everywhere and then I also add in rest stops and random "not factory" builds to make things interesting. Building out my world and making it semi-logical is as much fun for me as building factories.

And I also really enjoy playing the game with new players, offering help when asked (if appropriate) and watching and learning how different brains tackle the game.
 
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My style has evolved into a series of "smaller" satellite factory's that produce the components for my space elevator parts which are delivered via train to my central hub where they are assembled and sent upstairs to the bosses. Now when I say smaller that's a bit of a misnomer as they still span most of the local area. It just that a mega-factory tends to turn my PC, which is a beast, into a furnace so i think spreading out more might make the GPU catch on fire less. Hopefully...

I just really like to see trains too'ing and fro'ing all over my map. I guess it pleases the 'tism in me.

This time I will spend more time planning out my set up rather then just slapping down shit where ever all willy-nilly. I want to build with the terrain to make things look more natural.

Other then that I will just wait for the final numbers for the last space elevator part before I crunch the numbers for the last time. I'd like to use as much of the available nodes as possible, a massive map spanning machine that eats the world.
 
This time I will spend more time planning out my set up rather then just slapping down shit where ever all willy-nilly. I want to build with the terrain to make things look more natural.
After my last playthrough, I have realized the sheer amount of early-game wealth there is in the Northwestern drylands. Every node (iron/copper/limestone/coal) is normal or pure, the bauxite vein that bisects the map is close by and there is a single pure quartz node and a single pure caterium node very close. There is even a rare impure uranium node (above ground) and two SAM ore nodes! Plus the ocean is right there.

I've literally never once built up this corner of the map so I am excited.
 
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After my last playthrough, I have realized the sheer amount of early-game wealth there is in the Northwestern drylands. Every node (iron/copper/limestone/coal) is normal or pure, the bauxite vein that bisects the map is close by and there is a single pure quartz node and a single pure caterium node very close. There is even a rare impure uranium node (above ground) and two SAM ore nodes! Plus the ocean is right there.

I've literally never once built up this corner of the map so I am excited.

I think I will start off in the desert again, just because of the huge amount of space for my boot up factory, the ease of coal power with coal and water being in the starter zone and the large number of pure iron/copper nodes around.

Yes, the bio-mass era is much more annoying to do there as vegetation is rare but that's not too much of a problem. I was thinking of just taking a cube tractor into the red forest, biting the bullet and filling it up with biomass. Sure it will take a hour but in the mean time the first level of space elevator parts can build up.

It be rather kool if the Devs gave us like a harvester attachment for the tractor so we could just drive around and vacuum up the bio-mass. I like the tractor but it has hardly any use after tier 2 as the truck is just 1000% better at everything.

I'm thinking flat space may be the most valuable asset in the game and the deserts got that in spades. So I will build my main base out there and lay the track work to the rest of the world.
 
I'm probably going to just start over in the Northern Forest again, since I'm comfortable with making my small-but-tall factories in that area... However, this go-around I'll most likely experiment with the surrounding areas more, just to see if there's anything else that tickles my fancy nearby... Ought to be fun, regardless!
 
Some really big quality of life changes

A use for SAM ore, Mercer Spheres and Sommerslops. More (!) new fuels and Alien Tech buildings. New cosmetics for buildings and a lot more. More ways to boost power production and an increase in over-clocking.

I won't spoil shit if your wanting to see it for yourself but some of this stuff will make building really really easier. Some changes seem a bit too much IMHO, they're really going all in on making everything "easier" with less running around when building.

A lot of the most used mods were pretty much just added into the base game with small tweaks.

 
I won't spoil shit if your wanting to see it for yourself but some of this stuff will make building really really easier. Some changes seem a bit too much IMHO, they're really going all in on making everything "easier" with less running around when building.
Thank you thank you. I really appreciate that.

I wanted to show you guys my map, but I don't want to dox my game. So I threw it into SCIM and you can have the overhead view instead. By the way, if I did not mention it in the OP, the Satisfactory Calulator and Interactive Map (SCIM) is immensely useful. There is also a built-in save editor which effectively lets you cheat anything you want; however, it does have its uses outside of cheating, specifically allowing you a few avenues of fixing or circumventing glitches. So keep this one in your tool kit but don't bust it out unless you really think you need it.

My file most recent play through (the one I've been referencing throughout this topic) has a little over 600 hours of playtime. There are other people that played with me, but I'm not going to lie and tell you that they did a lot of the work. Basically I left our HUB area to the newer players to experiment and play around while I went out and played my own, larger game with multiple production bases and networks. If they needed help, they could ask. Every now and again I'd wander through their builds and take some notes and discuss with them what they were doing right and what they were doing wrong. And that is what they signed up for; these people wanted to learn the game and I think I gave them a very good environment to do so.

For their first play through, most made it pretty deep (up to tier 5) and didn't really start to burn out until manufacturers appeared and made a bunch of them go "oh shit..."

Anyway, here are my SCIM images:
SatMap 1.png
The full map.

SatMap 2.png
Southern regions.

SatMap 3.png
Northern regions.

If you've got any questions, fire away! I love talking about this stuff. As I said earlier, my goal for this play through was to really get a grasp on railroads and signal networks. This was a big success; however I play a lot of a game called A-Train (this link is to a long KF post I wrote about the game, please enjoy!) which makes Satisfactory (and most games') rail networks a mere trifle. I will get even more proficient with these systems in the next play through. I also think I want to start using drones a bit more... I've not used them a ton. Mostly, I've only used drones because by that stage of the game I didn't want to run a new rail line because I was sleepy so I'd just slap down some drone stations and call it a day. I'll work on a proper drone hub next time.

Speaking of hubs... the HUB, I'd like to be able to build a second one maybe. Oh my HUB location is in the Northern region map, the big blob to the left; the big blob to the right is my advanced manufacturing facility. But I strongly recommend that area as a potential HUB choice for anyone looking for something a bit different, but effective. I plopped it on top of this small cave which I walled off and turned into a storage site. That paid off big time. Even better because it is at a high elevation so you can get to most places with ease.

I think I will start off in the desert again, just because of the huge amount of space for my boot up factory, the ease of coal power with coal and water being in the starter zone and the large number of pure iron/copper nodes around.
It still makes me laugh that the desert is listed as a "difficult" start because I consider it easy mode. Even biomass isn't that hard to get what with the giant forests by the river or the lake. Once the initial fear of exploration is gone (which obviously you've blown through eons ago) it is no big deal to bunny hop over to one of the forests and load up to keep things running for a few hours. Desert is OP and I love it.
 
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Some really big quality of life changes

A use for SAM ore, Mercer Spheres and Sommerslops. More (!) new fuels and Alien Tech buildings. New cosmetics for buildings and a lot more. More ways to boost power production and an increase in over-clocking.

I won't spoil shit if your wanting to see it for yourself but some of this stuff will make building really really easier. Some changes seem a bit too much IMHO, they're really going all in on making everything "easier" with less running around when building.

A lot of the most used mods were pretty much just added into the base game with small tweaks.


The dimensional depot, holy shit.

God I can't wait. Can't believe we've finally made it to 1.0.

God is good, bros. :lossmanjack:
 
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How is the 1.0 performance? Have they talked about it at all? On my last save the GPU had the highest usage of any game I played despite lowering all settings and keeping everything walled off in big cubes. I don't really want to spoil myself with the patch notes and videos.
 
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How is the 1.0 performance? Have they talked about it at all? On my last save the GPU had the highest usage of any game I played despite lowering all settings and keeping everything walled off in big cubes. I don't really want to spoil myself with the patch notes and videos.
I will be able to find out tonight.

I'm still not sure ResizableBAR actually does anything... but I enabled it!
 
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4-6 years in the fucking making, they finally released Satisfactory 1.0, at which point they've previously said they were done and would move on, but their attempt to milk this game for all its worth so far has me pondering if they truly are capable of doing so. Anyways: Achievements and all, supposedly a 'story finale' included, are you gonna play it?

Personally I've restarted and dumped 2-3 digit hours into this game several times over the years, but its strengths compared to Factorio are also its weaknesses. Building a train; great!... but for what purpose? Infinite resource deposits means you can just build conveyor belts for miles instead of setting up a train system. But that also means you are technically progressing at all times and don't suddenly get put on hold cause a deposit ran out.

That said: IMO a great introduction to factory autism. The new FOUNDRY game almost 1:1 copied Satisfactory, albeit in a simpler and more contained small-scale way, which may honestly be more appealing at this point given how enormous Satisfactory has grown. Probably gonna see if I can beat it for the sake of it finally being out I guess.​
 
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