Satisfactory (Early Access)

[fragger]

Art, if you'd made the YellFac much taller, you wouldn't need the Space Elevator

Do nodes ever run dry of whatever resource you're getting from them?

The screenie with the pink trees made me think of Autumn. A psychedelic Autumn maybe, but Autumn nonetheless

[Art Blade]

no, nodes never run dry, which is just as cool as the fact that you always get 100% of your materials back if you dismantle anything.

[Art Blade]

I've rearranged a couple of my modules since I unlocked another cool alternate recipe. I can now make copper wire out of caterium ingots instead of copper ingots. It's cool because copper wire is required for quite a few demanding production lines and it's easy to get half of the factory going into production mode to keep up with the demand.

Now I've got two separate container columns (!) for copper wire. One is old-fashioned or shall we say normal and feeds copper wire for instance to my cable module. I had some space left on one of the floors to set up a caterium to copper wire module which is now filling the second column and feeds that copper wire to some processes/modules like for stators and stuff. Now I am less in conflict if I start up modules that require both cable and copper wire as they're now draining different sources. Of course I had to rearrange columns first and ramp up caterium drilling and smelting.. which required me to expand the ground floor where copper and caterium smelters are located in order to fit 9 but 6 caterium smelters in there. It's in the lower right corner of the front where there was just a spared-out cube-shaped hole in the building so it was easy to expand within the building's perimeters.

Currently I'm save-scamming. The devs did not completely prevent that but made it time-consuming. Once you inserted a hard drive for analysis, the outcome has already been seeded so reloading a savegame from shortly before the analysis finishes won't change the outcome. So you need to save before inserting the hard drive, then wait 10 minutes for the analysis and decide what to do. I always pick one of three recipes and save the game, then reload from before inserting the hard drive in order to play some lottery. It's worth it especially if none of the three recipes you got from the first run is really interesting.

[Art Blade]

having won the lottery (3rd savegame reload) I used the new "caterium computer" recipe which, of course, required me to restructure the module and quite a bit of in-house infrastructure. The new recipe is cool because of two facts: it only needs 3 rather than 4 components (always better to get the same product with fewer types of material) and the other fact is that it uses materials that are not part of the components which means I won't run dry on one component because two or more modules also need it for supplying the main module. Excellent. Plus, actually a third fact, I get almost 1/3 more output. Computers are being assembled slowly.. by default 2 per minute. Now almost 3 per minute.

I hope that I can FINALLY go to what I had planned to do for some time now: that bloody oil and aluminium production.

For that matter I have been moving a lot of building materials from the YellFac to the old oil site. There I want to receive the bauxite as well so I'm going to try to route bauxite to the oil site now. The reason is that aluminium production requires water (just like the oil production) and that site is located at a lakeside. Also, I need stuff from the oil production for the aluminium production. Essentially, aluminium is somewhat tied to oil. Therefore it makes sense to build the elementary modules of each right there and then lead the stuff that can be processed further to the YellFac.

And now that the summer is almost over, the first mosquito this year has finally found me and keeps ambushing me. It's driving me mad to keep finding new itching bites. I'm going to kill that bastard if I can find it.

[Art Blade]

the mosquito must have escaped or died somewhere, no more bites since.

Well, as to the "project oil and aluminium" (lol) still no real progress, I haven't built a single machine yet. The reason is that I wanted to lead the bauxite ore to the oil site first.

As I completely agree with Binnatics that sky bridges are ugly and ruin the landscape, I decided to "lay low" and kept building close to the ground. While I was at it, I came across lots of hostile beasts, collectibles (with the suffix "WIP" which obviously stands for w0#k In Progress but it can't hurt to collect them even before we know what they might be good for later) and I found quite a few power slugs (got over 60 spare ones now, they are used to boost/overclock machines and drills) so I had to build tons of sky bridges and of course dismantle them again, then I spotted several supply pods I too had to access somehow which means more sky bridges to build and dismantle. A pod isn't just something you open to grab the hard drive but typically something that requires power AND some components to unlock them. So I had to run back and forth, lead power to them, bring materials, retrieve the hard drives, dismantle everything, take the hard drives to the YellFac where my base computer is located and there I started the save scam routine.

Just now I unlocked a VERY cool alternate recipe for aluminium

I no longer need "petrol coke" (I never remembered that, I always thought of "cake" lol) but normal coal. That means, I no longer need oil to produce aluminium. And that means, I might actually have to rethink the WHOLE F'in BAUXITE infrastructure, rendering a HUGE ground-based supply route probably useless, and I had already fitted it with hyper tubes.

supply route probably useless now
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But I much rather rethink it for a better result than complaining about the time and w0#k that went into it. All the stuff I came across, including the recipe, was part of the endeavour so I wouldn't be in this new (and good) situation without all of that.

This game can be worse than FO4 at times

[Art Blade]

This is going to be fun:

Now I need coal and water, not oil and water. Both oil and coal are located at a lakeside.. you guessed it, I shall now go the other direction and lead bauxite to my coal site

Most of the infrastructure is already in place there, the "main stream" allows me to stack more conveyor belts so I can lead the aluminium all the way down that well-established route to the YellFac "All" I need to do is lead the bauxite ore to the coal site and that's pretty straight forward, too, as I will try to pass by my sulphur node which is very close to the bauxite node, and the sulphur is already connected to the main stream so I'll simply have to stack the conveyor belts on top of that, then deviate to the coal power modules rather than to the YellFac.

It's almost unbelievable how again I got so lucky that it all falls into place as if I had planned it which again I didn't

[BinnZ]

Great progress man! Real creativity comes when planning, labour and awareness are working together.
You did an excellent job and it's fun to read. I wonder what this all is going to do with the YellFac

[Art Blade]

thank you

yeah, that building is almost full. I don't know yet how many more modules I need to set up in there but I reckon it's going to be more than there is room for. Which means, I might have to add more storeys. We'll see

For now, I'm pretty busy outside. When I was checking possible alternative routes from the bauxite node to the coal site I came across another pod which this time I cannot unlock. It requires parts that I didn't know and a quick search on the net showed me that those parts are not yet published/implemented in the game. A bit silly to find pods that I can't unlock but well, likely later when they update the game. I left a sky bridge to access the pod when the time has come.

However, I can't completely avoid sky bridges but I try to keep them as short as possible. For instance that bauxite node is located on top of a mountainous region, behind some sort of a rocky cliff. Of course I could use a couple of combined conveyor lifts but that's complicated and not necessarily looking better. So I'll do my usual thing but I'll keep in mind to keep it at a minimum.

I checked the coal site. There's access to the water and still room to build stuff across the lake. It's likely a lot less bombastic than 2x12 huge coal generators but I don't know yet how it's going to pan out. A new challenge

[BinnZ]

Interesting indeed, looking forward to the results

[Dweller_Benthos]

When you mentioned the WIP stuff is reminded me of Kerbal Space Program and the dangers, for me, of playing early access games. I played Kerbal Space Program a lot in early access, so much so that when it was finally fully released, I had no interest in playing it anymore. I haven't played it much at all since then. The same thing almost happened with Subnautica, I was playing each new release in early access, searching for new stuff, finding all the secrets when I realized what was going on and decided not to play it anymore. Told Steam not to update it and left it for almost a year until they finished the game. Then I played the full thing start to finish and it was amazing. Then there's the danger like with Stranded Deep where the game changed radically during early access and things were added, then dropped, and now it seems it's getting updates very sporadically if at all. I stopped playing that a while ago as well, maybe eventually it will get finished and I'll play it then, but the danger of early access is there, the final game may be very different from what you're playing now, or it may never get finished, or you may be bored with it by then.

But anyway, it seems you're having a ton of fun with it and it shows in how enthused you are with each new post, and that's all that really matters at this point. The stuff you've come up with to solve these problems is really epic.

[Art Blade]

thanks, guys.

Before I reply to your post, Dweller, first an update on my progress.

You guys may recall that I was going to build my basic aluminium modules at the oil site which is over a minute away from the YellFac, travelling by hyper tube.

One minute may not sound like much but I moved several industrial containers worth of building materials from the YellFac to the oil site which means I first had to dump my whole inventory somewhere to make room for those building materials, collect them from various containers at the YellFac, move them to the oil site, travel back and repeat, and finally pick up my whole inventory again. All of that took maybe half an hour or more. Then I built the supply line (bauxite ore to the oil site) from scratch which took several hours, plus the time I spent spotting and retrieving power slugs and hard drives from supply pods which every time required me to create a path with sky bridges and to fight hostile creatures. You need to know that every goodie you find is guarded by one or more enemies of random strength and they can potentially kill you. While it is a challenge and quite OK to cope with once in a while when you feel like it, it still is quite time-consuming. And defeated enemies don't respawn which I am grateful for. Analysing retrieved hard drives also takes 10 minutes each time you do that.

Well, then I got the "game changing" new recipe that rendered the whole preparation at the oil site obsolete. That was perhaps over 10 hours real time until that point.

All of the above was of course of great gaming value. However, essentially I had to go through ALL of the above again to reverse it and to build a supply route from the bauxite node to the coal site. While some of the infrastructure was already in place (a sulphur node not too far from the bauxite node was already connected to the coal-to-YellFac route) and I made sure to benefit from that fact. However, I still had to make quite a few modifications to that route and still had to build the whole conveyor belt system plus sky bridges to connect the bauxite supply line.

And then I had to move the building materials from the oil site to the YellFac to the coal site. Coal is like 1.5 minutes away from the YellFac when travelling by hyper tubes. I tried a different route, too: The one I said was now probably useless which is about two minutes from oil to quartz (which is also close to the bauxite node and that was my first route that I built in order to lead bauxite ore down the quartz route to the pond next to the YellFac before deciding to lead it to the oil site) and from quartz to sulphur and from sulphur to coal.. yes, too many hops and too far between hops so it's really not worth it. It takes way longer than from oil over YellFac to coal.

Are you grinning? Because I am It's just so crazy the stuff I have to deal with but it's still good fun

Anyway.. by now, all the building materials have miraculously arrived at the coal site. I only left one container full of bags of concrete at the oil site because I will need that for building up the oil production. Which is something I also still need to do.

Alright, so I have actually started to lay the foundation for the basic aluminium production at the coal site.

FINALLY

What may not have been clear to you guys: I'm only covering a small area of the whole game world, on purpose. When I'm done with the current projects (aluminium, oil, and unlocking the rest of tier 7/8) and won't have anything to do any more regarding unlocking stuff, I will then be going to enjoy exploring the world.

***

@Dweller: still here? Thank you.

I can relate to all of what you said. I too played early access games before (like No Man's Sky.. lol) and I know the effects you are mentioning. NMS (the way that game was treated by the devs was no different than any real early access game) was exactly as you described and another one was Space Engineers. By the time they went out of early access, I had lost interest.

Satisfactory so far has been quite different. The devs know and said it publicly that players are "proud of their factories" which is why these devs tread carefully. They want to keep their updates backwards compatible so the players don't have to worry about losing all their progress. That is really cool. So you get a lot less updates but if you do, they are more likely to be big and add stuff. Which is cool, too. Also, this game has only crashed once on me in over 600 hours of gameplay. That is better than many other games after full retail release. And those 600+ hours have been a BLAST. It is such a great sandbox game. I really didn't expect it to be THAT great. I thought yeah, LGIO showed off some fun stuff that I wanted to try myself but I didn't expect any of what I would make of this game. The stuff you've been reading about here.

I haven't had so much fun with any game in a long, long time. It has paid off that I've never looked for nor watched YT tutorial vids (except the two or three you know about as they were mentioned here in this topic) and that this game allows you to go any direction, gives you so much freedom, that, like in my case, it is possible to develop a unique factory. To play it like nobody else does. Or you can try to copy and implement what you saw other people do if you are so inclined. In my case, I am glad that I was able to develop my own ideas and it has been fun to see them through and make them w0#k.

This game here is closer to engineering than anything else that I played before

So by the time this game is out of early access, I might have lost interest, yes. That is possible. But until then, I know that I've had a lot more fun with it than I ever expected and it has been a really great gaming experience

[nex]

There were one or two major changes the devs made after the launch in March 2019 D_B.
The original coal generator only needed coal to supply power, that was changed to one needing
water and coal.
I watched a few video clips on the game before purchasing it and there I only saw the original ones which
confused me because the version I have has the updated generator.

I've done most there is to do except going for nuclear power D_B, I'm sticking to coal power which
I have three pure nodes close to each other with plenty of water to feed 43 generators.
Although I am producing all parts needed in the game my setup is not spectacular nor massive,
but enough for what is most needed. Until Tier 8 arrives I basically have nothing to do so the
game can unfortunately become boring unless you rebuild, improve on layouts or tidy up.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah there's the issue with early access, like the coal generator, say you had a setup all complete and the next update comes out and all of a sudden your setup doesn't w0#k because they now need water. I guess issues like that don't come around too often, seems they have a definite plan on how to move forward. I know in Stranded Deep they radically changed the entire world map setup somewhere along the line, and even though the new version is better in some regards (custom maps for instance) it's not nearly as extensive as the old one used to be. Trade-offs I suppose.

As long as you're having fun with it then that's really all that matters at this point, keep it going!

[nex]

Thanks, it is quite fun that's for sure   

[Art Blade]

Finally my basic aluminium ("scrap") module is online

aluminium scrap module
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There's something worth mentioning about that thing: some machines not only produce what you need (here Alumina Solution and Aluminium Scrap) but also a side product (here Silica and Water) and if you don't pull those side products out of the machine, it will clog up the machine and by that the main product won't be produced any more. So you need to either process those side products in whatever type of production line that needs them or you need to stuff them away in containers which will eventually fill up to the brim and then that stops the production as well..

I found a solution for each side product.

Producing Alumina Solution requires water and bauxite and you get that solution and silica. Producing Aluminium Scrap requires coal and alumina solution and you get those metal scraps and water.

Since I'm using two types of machines in that production module, I simply feed the byproduct "water" into the main input of the alumina solution production, in a way relieving the water extractors a little. So when that solution is being produced, water comes both from the extractors (they alone meet the requirement) and from the scrap production. In simple words, I feed those machines some of their own *bleep*.

Now I've still got that silly Silica. Normally you'd use that in the aluminium production but I don't need it. Plus, I've already got a Silica module in the YellFac which uses Quartz to produce a lot more Silica a lot faster when needed. So what to do with that annoying byproduct Silica which has to be taken care of?

You surely remember that ticket machine. It destroys anything that you feed it with and produces coupons to buy blueprints and other stuff. That machine is actually meant to be fed with excess products.. stuff you don't or no longer need.. like the byproduct Silica..

In other words, my aluminium module is now producing useful coupons as a byproduct. That's what you call "to turn *bleep* into gold."