Satisfactory (Early Access)

[Art Blade]

good luck, nex It may help to plop down a bio fuel generator to get the water pump(s) started and to fill the coal generator with water. Fill in some coal and you can switch off the bio generator. Kind of strange that you need power to create power but you'll get used to it.

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LP, interesting site but I think I won't use it because I want to figure out stuff on my own. All those calculators and location guides would kind of take the fun away for me.

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The more you advance, the more difficult stuff gets and I mean it.. when I started out, I had those videos in my head and it didn't take long to understand that those vids had hundreds of hours of satisfactory behind them. It looks easy and you don't even think about how they did that until you start to grow your own factory and advance.

For instance, I need heavy modular frames. You need one of those massive assemblers (machinery) with 4 intakes. The ingredients for a single heavy modular frame are 5 (normal) modular frames, 15 steel pipes, 5 encased industrial beams and 100 screws.

All of those things are made of other parts that you have to produce first and those parts require resources like iron ore that has to be smelted into iron ingots which are used to produce a lot of things like iron rods of which you make screws and other stuff.

I have a ton of machines running to produce ingredients for the ingredients for the ingredients of something I need to stuff into an assembler along with 3 more of the same kind of production lines but different components. ALL that just to create a bloody wireframe cube called heavy modular frame. And I need to create computers. They require a similar extensive production line composed of various sub-pruduction lines.. and all THAT requires power. I've just hit 1.2 gigawatts power consumption and that is 900 megawatts of coal power (12 coal generators) and 2 fuel generators with 150 MW each, 300 on fuel and 900 on coal, and I only got enough power to blow the fuses when I sneeze. So I added another fuel generator to cover power consumption surges but man, I just had a spike that whacked my power grid.

Turns out that for reasons unknown, the coal generators keep dropping out for lack of water. I had it before and thought I had built something wrong. But it has kept happening. Randomly. I did everything from adding more pumps, water reservoirs, rerouting half the water to the back six generators and the other half to the front six generators to give an even spread.. nothing. Eventually they start to dry out and falter, resulting in power dropping below my average consumption and BANG! fuse is gone again.

The only thing that helped was to keep power in a small closed grid just to run the generators, coal miners and water pumps so the coal power is kind of self-sustaining and then wait until the water is back in all coal generators. Might have to fiddle with the pipes to get it going. Once that whole coal power grid is stable, connect it to the rest of the factory and switch on the power. Until the next time.

Well, early access does come with bugs and it's OK, I can live with that one.

[LowPolyOWG]

Yeah, I had some problems with my water/coal supply once. First, I forgot to reconnect my water pumps to the coal power grid and I forgot to add some water pumps on my pipelines.

Second, coal supply. Didn't overclock my miner so that meant the coal burned out faster than what my machine could produce. At the same time, I overclocked my coal plants at 250% (187.5 MWh each) and that burns through coal fast.

I haven't set up my oil plant yet, but I will return to Satisfactory at one point 

The resource map site is best avoided for playing first time, but maybe for a second playthrough where  you want to "speedrun". I haven't bothered using it on my current save game, as using the scanner is sufficient to point out a general direction.

[nex]

Two things bugging me right now, l don't have the map, so finding thing takes up a lot of my time and
I'm just wondering when the power pole MK2 becomes available. Semi automating the biofuel process
has helped a lot keeping the six burners up and running, hoping the coal burner setup will w0#k which
would take over from one or two fuel burners.

[LowPolyOWG]

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Scanning for resources. If you want the map, gotta research quartz in the M.A.M. Once you pick a mineral to scan for, the compass/map will highlight their distance from your location. It doesn't tell the resource node quality, so you gotta check on your own.

To unlock power poles, gotta find a metal called "caterium" in the world and research it in the M.A.M. Or, you can w0#k your way to tier 6. I kinda forgot about looking after caterium in my current game world

[Art Blade]

I almost can't believe we're actually discussing a new game together

The power pole Mk2.. you need to research caterium in MAM, it's the 4th research node, a branch to the right. Since we're playing on different maps (grass fields here) I can't even tell you where you should look.

As to coal, it can be fully automated indeed and that allows for time to explore the area. Just a drill, a water extractor, a coal generator, pipes, conveyor belts and power lines needed. "Just. "

The map.. I noticed the key bindings contained "m" for "map" but it didn't w0#k so I ignored it until, in a way accidentally, I advanced to a point that allowed me to unlock it. I think LP got that right, the caterium section in MAM got it as one of the later branches to unlock.

I came across it when I was looking for something else I didn't know what it was or where to find it, that stuff called Mycelia you need for crafting textiles (and by extension, parachutes, which until today I don't know how those w0#k.. "when opened" during a fall.. but HOW to open them.. no tooltip, no description.. I died twice trying them lol) so I ran around and saw weird coloured rocky stuff sticking out as some of those smaller mineral deposits (not resource nodes) do and it was caterium. I also found SAM ore and other stuff that still hasn't got any meaning to me but I kept and stashed it away in the personal box at the hub. I also found extremely dangerous uranium which killed me the first time and DON'T pick that up, you'll die carrying it.

The best thing you can do is to craft beacons and stick one near or next to interesting stuff so you can find it later. I did that with all important things like sulfur, quartz, oil and so on so now a look at my compass tells me where for instance my oil drilling site is.

Overall, I was late starting to unlock all the MAM skill trees because either I didn't have the stuff to unlock one of those skill trees or I hadn't found a sufficient amount of that stuff to do the research but when I ran into space elevator projects that were too challenging for the moment and my mood, I decided to do MAM instead and boy, it's bloody worth it.

As of now, still short of unlocking tier 6+7 thanks to the ridiculous effort needed to produce all the stuff for the space elevator, I at least have unlocked virtually everything else except two final branches in MAM (like supercomputer and radar stuff) because those are equally challenging to get the amount of stuff (like "50 computers" and more of that kind) to start the analysis of the last branches.

What is also cool and not apparent is the Awesome Sink and those bonus points coupons to buy stuff from that Awesome mini shop. What is on offer greatly depends on how far you have advanced so it's worth checking it out every once in a while. I realised that one coupon is now like 500k points while it used to be something like 250k so I assume it has to do with your progress. The more, the more. High end components create more points than say, pure iron ore. When I feed one of those aforementioned heavy modular frames to the sink, it instantly jumps ahead in % of completion while iron ore wouldn't even as much as show

This game is cool. So easy but so complicated.. it's all in your hands

[LowPolyOWG]

I almost can't believe we're actually discussing a new game together

The power pole Mk2.. you need to research caterium in MAM, it's the 4th research node, a branch to the right. Since we're playing on different maps (grass fields here) I can't even tell you where you should look.

The map.. I noticed the key bindings contained "m" for "map" but it didn't w0#k so I ignored it until, in a way accidentally, I advanced to a point that allowed me to unlock it. I think LP got that right, the caterium section in MAM got it as one of the later branches to unlock.

I came across it when I was looking for something else I didn't know what it was or where to find it, that stuff called Mycelia you need for crafting textiles (and by extension, parachutes, which until today I don't know how those w0#k.. "when opened" during a fall.. but HOW to open them.. no tooltip, no description.. I died twice trying them lol) so I ran around and saw weird coloured rocky stuff sticking out as some of those smaller mineral deposits (not resource nodes) do and it was caterium. I also found SAM ore and other stuff that still hasn't got any meaning to me but I kept and stashed it away in the personal box at the hub. I also found extremely dangerous uranium which killed me the first time and DON'T pick that up, you'll die carrying it.

Yep, the Quartz branch to be specific. Parachutes are activated by clicking space while in mid-air. Until you have the hazmat suit, stay away from uranium or stack up your inventory with inhalers

Semi automating the biofuel process
has helped a lot keeping the six burners up and running, hoping the coal burner setup will w0#k which
would take over from one or two fuel burners.

Speaking of bio burners, it's worth having them for kick-starting your extra power plants. Also, pick up power slugs, they allow you to research overclocking, which will come in handy later

[nex]

Looking around on youtube I saw a guy setting up a coal power generator, this generator only uses coal and have no water supply connection

[LowPolyOWG]

Well, that must be some old footage. Patch 0.3 released in February made water mandatory. Current game build is 0.3.5.4. If you need water, look for deep lakes or the edges of the map.

[Art Blade]

by the way, thanks, LP, the chute worked with space bar.

[nex]

It seems the coal power generator is not compatible with the
vanilla power pole< so I've got to get my hand on the mk2 pole   

[LowPolyOWG]

You sure you haven't connected too many power lines on one pole? I'm currently running Mk1 poles on mine

[Art Blade]

that is a strange statement, "not compatible," because there is only one type of power line. The difference between power poles Mk1 and 2 are the amount of connection points. Mk1 allows 4, Mk2 allows 7 lines to be attached. There's even an Mk3 with 10. You have to look at the pole when connecting a line to it: make sure you see at least one white dot (for a free connection point) otherwise it will be brown(ish) and it always shows connections and the amount of points like (o) (o) (o) () 3/4

Essentially, you typically "lose" one point to the line connecting power to that pole (1/4) and another one connecting the next pole to get some distance from the last pole (2/4) and finally 2 points to connect machines or other poles to.

Alternatively, you can set up one terminal (last) pole that connects to the previous pole and three to connect machinery.

Also noteworthy: you cannot "abuse" machinery to connect something else to and from them, only one line allowed, so that would lead to a power pole.

power poles Mk2:
2x6 lines to 12 generators,
2x1 to the poles connecting the generators to the power grid.
You can also see those "rays" of power lines down ahead in the pic
connecting 6 water pumps per pole and one line to the grid
using 2x Mk2 poles for 12 pumps.
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[LowPolyOWG]

Yeah. Anyway, I finished Caterium research to get the Mk2 and Mk3 poles. At the same time, made a skybridge to set up a refinery.

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How the parachute look from a 1st person view

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Oil pipeline network. Made a skybridge for the pipes. The area towards the oil has a canyon so had to make a bridge to traverse it.

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The skybridge and a vacuum tube for easier travel between.

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My small refinery. Most likely, I will expand it due to the heavy oil residue being created as a byproduct from plastic/rubber production.

[Art Blade]

LP, I too have been thinking of moving my factory onto a sky bridge / platform. At least you don't have to worry about enough space to build up there.

nex, come to think of it, maybe you never got the coal generator started. It needs water to be pumped into the generator first before it can produce electricity. Funny thing that you actually need to help the coal generator with a different generator.

What I did was:

Coal drill, powered by biofuel generator
water pump, powered by another biofuel generator
connect coal drill to coal generator with conveyor belt
connect water pump to coal generator with pipes
wait for the water to fill up the coal generator
power up the coal generator
connect it to the factory with power lines.

[nex]

My setup at this stage.
3 Water Extractors, connected to one Biomass Burner, manifold pipe layout with one line connected to coal generator   
1 Coal Miner, connected to one Biomass Burner, conveyor belt connected to coal burner
1 Coal Generator, connected to Biomass Burner

The extractors start-up and as soon as the water indicating glass on the extractors show full they shut down.
The water pipes expand between the extractor and manifold but not in the manifold or elsewhere in the pipeline