Satisfactory (Early Access)

[Dweller_Benthos]

Well, say they had a tube system like yours, with the ends far enough apart, you build the far end so they connect and they don't know it, then wait for them to use the near end, then hurry over and connect those two ends and stand back and laugh!

[LowPolyOWG]

The moment the left tube spat me out, the right tube sucked me in mid-air and sent me on a trip to the other location. I had no choice but to walk all the way back and put some space between those two entrances

You can change your direction/slow down your speed in a tube by pressing S or W. Unless, the entrances were too close to eachother, making it impossible to escape regardless.

[Art Blade]

putting both entrances side by side

as I said, it sucked me in mid-air. As if there hadn't been an exit to entry transition at all. But even if you could "escape" that by using W or S, it would be too much of a hassle. It was much better to simply space out those two exit/entrance points so you didn't have to worry at all.

@Dweller: not going to argue with you, try it yourself And yes, first you'll need the game for that.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Not arguing, just theorizing, heh. So, trying to get me to buy the game? I see what you're getting at lol!

[Art Blade]

Not trying to pitch that game to you but hey, you know, it really beats Space Engineers and Astroneer by miles

[Dweller_Benthos]

Has a different feel from both those games though, I wouldn't compare them to much really. Closest would be of course Factorio, which I was also semi-interested in and really it's just a matter of having the time and being busy with other things. I'll keep watch on what you guys are doing though, you keep coming up with pretty cool stuff.

[Art Blade]

thank you

The good thing about my good stuff is: it wasn't influenced by anyone, it either was born out of necessity (sky bridges) or out of my mind set free on creative mode (YellFac) and the joy of freedom to actually create that stuff. Mind you, to build the YellFac, I had to have tens of thousands of bags of concrete, thousands of steel plates and iron rods and whatnot. I had (and have) all that in the massive industrial storage containers as the result from prior factory setups

I'm currently getting rid of most the sky bridges that went zig-zag across the skies. Meaning, I try to get stuff on a lower level and fewer bridges but wider if needed. It includes rerouting the massive streams of conveyor belts that I had loosely stacked to up to six belts.. hard to control that stuff now which is why I am rearranging it. Ease of access and all that..

I also dismantled the part of the factory with oil-based production because it was never meant for eternity. It was a mere test that actually went rather well.

My biggest worries now: with the YellFac all set with hopefully enough room ( ) the decision where to lead all the raw materials to go in and how to get the products out. It may sound trivial but it's the base of where the machines will have to be, which directions their in/output point and then all the "plumbing" that comes along with it.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Maybe this would help?

https://satisfactory-calculator.com/

LOL!

[Art Blade]

heh, I noticed that there were tools on the net but no thanks.. I don't want that, not for this game. It's fun to use my own brain to w0#k things out.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah I hear you there, but in some cases, I would want to have something figured out ahead of time, and not want to do all the tedious math, which is what computers are for lol. So most likely I would get to the point of asking "How many of X do I need to get the output of Y I am looking for?" And since I've already done it small scale, just need to figure out the large scale and that's where pages like that come in handy.

[Art Blade]

I think that all those schematics and calculators are great if you've got unlimited resources. Then you can build monster-factories with hundreds of machines to create perfect production loops and so on.

In my case, I don't have that. Actually I am working with "local" resources from around my factory or in a few cases, the "nearest" ones which may be over a mile away like with my coal and crude oil and quartz and caterium and sulphur and uranium. Since those are already far away, I really don't want to go beyond that. I was curious and checked an online map to identify my factory's location. Turns out to be in the South of the world map and also turns out that everything I'll ever need is within roughly a 1.5 miles radius and turns out that I already found all that stuff without external help.

Now, my idea of how I want to play (and how I actually am playing) the game is to keep ONE factory for everything. I won't spread out across the map starting factories all over the map only to get more resources. And that means: My resources are limited.

Well, in a way. Resource nodes are actually unlimited sources but the quality (impure, normal, pure) of a node means different yields. To use it, you need transportations of sorts, like conveyor belts and pipes which are capped when it comes to how much liquid or how many units they can transport per minute. Essentially it's more like this: I've got an ocean of water but only a straw to suck it up. People who spread out across the map and start factories all over the place can use all those resource nodes at the same time and by that create a bigger stream. Like, using a hose rather than a straw.

So I produce some stuff in high quantities which may take a lot of time depending on what exactly I am producing. Some things are fast, some aren't.

So essentially I know what I'm doing and that's why I don't need online tools. All I need is time which I've got. And I have always preferred a slow gaming style over a fast one.

I am tremendously enjoying the game while I keep learning new things from mistakes that I made and from solving problems I had encountered. Learning by doing and learning from mistakes is fun. I also got a lot of things right without mistakes but everything combined results in a better understanding and that is why I restructured my factory a couple of times.

Right now I'm working on a "main stream" of raw materials flowing into the factory, at the time improving my whole infrastructure. As a side effect, a lot of those sky bridges became obsolete so I dismantled them and that makes the surrounding of my factory look better. I'm kind of releasing the landscape back into freedom lol

Long story short: I don't need online tools like calculators and schematics and interactive maps.

[Art Blade]

Right.. here I am far away from my YellFac but close to the quartz node. I still need to clean up some of the sky bridges here but at least I've meanwhile installed a hyper tube all the way. Look how far the YellFac is and still it's bloody BIG

YellFac from far away
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And this is what I had been working on for the last couple of days: I rerouted all conveyor belts from all nodes that I'm using from all across the map. Only the quartz and oil nodes are coming from the far right of the pic so you can't see those. Now I've got all the stuff coming in from one side towards the factory.

Conveyor Main Stream
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[Dweller_Benthos]

One thing is for sure, the scale that the game can produce is impressive. Everything is large and you need the space and it gives it to you as long as you use it properly.

[Art Blade]

fully agree.. it's literally and figuratively as this expression goes: "the sky is the limit."

Currently I'm busy with another idea I've had for quite a long time now. So far I had only partly realised it but now after all the rerouting and cleaning-up, now is the time:

Modular Wiring.

Essentially I'm creating a fuse box combined with a switch board. It allows me to switch off individual parts of the production, like "all iron ore drills" or "floor 7 in the YellFac building."

part of the "fuse box switch board"
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This helps in many ways, especially when a peak in power consumption that exceeded the power production blows the main fuse (that's all the game knows how to handle it) and everything goes dark. Then you'd normally have to find out what it was by running around the entire factory and manually switching off machines followed by switching the main power back on just to see how the fuse blows again.. No.. been there, done that.. and I had already prepared as you may recall by separately setting up the power for hyper tubes and by leaving only power production on while the rest of the whole factory could be cut off the power grid.

This here is going to be much better.

[Art Blade]

So here it is. With that "fuse box switch board" I can individually control every basic module as well as groups of modules now. And the example in my prior post is actually included, it does w0#k: I can switch on/off the entire bunch of iron ore drills, as well as each and every other resource type I'm using, and indeed I can switch on/off each and every floor in the factory or the whole building if needed. While the hyper tubes will still be working.

fuse box switch board
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