Satisfactory

So, the factory I'm going to build next, I've actually had planned out since, like, Christmas. I just need to figure out how to build it. I laid out these sections of machines to try and estimate what kind of space I'm going to need for this building. I've got a good idea of the layout I want now, and a rough idea of where I'm going to put it.

Next step was to get some tubeway laid out in the area. There's actually 2 different segments here, one from behind Quartzworks, and one in front of it, that run out a ways and then meet up. I'm not entirely sure which one (if not both) will connect to and serve the new factory, so I wanted to get them both done.

Aaaand, all blueprinted out.

Finished product!

Let's take a tour.

First floor is constructors, making all the intermediary products and sending them up.

Second floor is... a singular Manufacturer, making SAM Fluctuators.

Yeah, I might have made this building a liiiiiittle oversized.

Third floor is the comically-large Smelting platform.

I think I'd like to eventually use the roof for some additional Alien Power Augmenters. There's plenty of space for it, and it'd fit with the SAM work the building is already doing.

Access hatch.

Didn't even need to do any planning in Satisfactory Modeler for this one. There's just not very much going on here.

I started today with rebuilding the spiral staircase. I also added interior lighting on all the machinery floors, which I neglected to get pics for.

Next, I figured it'd be best to get the SAM line built out, since that's really the last precursor to building machines.

I started today with the realization that I forgot an entire chunk of the build (as I often tend to): the uploading and sinking wing, which I was planning to do as an extension onto the front. That's gonna throw off the entire placement of the spiral staircase, so I simply tore it down entirely.

Before moving on with the staircase, I figured it'd be a good idea to finish out the triple-thick walls throughout the build, since they can be rather tricky to place, after I have stuff blocking the way. And since I was able to do it pretty darn quickly with a handful of repeatable blueprints.

Moving on to the new entrance wing, I was able to get it almost fully completed. Just need to add some lighting and the windows.

Tomorrow, I'll get the staircase put back up.

After a little bit of scouting, I decided on roundabout here for the next build. What with the SAM underneath the archway, and the unused Iron Ore right nearby.

This build's actually going to be quite small, compared to most of the other recent ones, so I can try out this relatively-small hexagonal layout I've had in mind.

I only actually need one Iron Ore miner.

All these perfect 120-degree corners were actually QUITE tedious to build, and then replicate up to each floor. Sure look nice, though.

Miner and a walkway built out, for Iron Ore.

Next, I spent a little bit of time building out a blueprint for detailing walls on the logistics floors. Had the idea for 45-degree ceiling lights, so I came up with this double-wall and tilted ceiling to cover the pillars they sit on.

Also came up with beams as a nice way to cover the gap between the walls, in the spots where I need doors.

As promised, not leaving walkability until the last minute, with a spiral staircase reaching all the floors. Which I just now realized isn't actually a staircase, since I didn't use actual stairs. I'll have to fix that tomorrow.

Also tried out this idea that's been in my head for a while: triple-thick walls to prevent z-fighting and clipping with windows.

First item for today was to finish this building by adding stilts. Had to be unorthodox here, compared to the last two buildings, because the space to PUT these stilts was so limited by the miners. Happy with the result, though.

A few more blueprints for the tedium of the final building, since the sizing is slightly different from the others, and that building is all done.

Finally, for walkability, I just connected each building to the big trunk/walkway with some catwalks, and then added some ladders to interconnect all the floors. Definitely a lazy solution, since I didn't really consider walkability from the beginning. Still a productive experiment, I think, in just laying out some flooring, and figuring it all out as I went along, but I'm gonna try and keep walkability a higher priority, going forward.

Final wide shots of the whole campus.

Nerd docs.

The idea struck me that the stilts don't have to attach to the top of the building, just near it. I'm quite happy with how it came out.

Second building went a LOT quicker. Largely cause it's so much smaller. Also, it's possible I forgot something.

Again, though, I didn't get the stilts done.

For those who remember, it was bad enough where it was memeable. Once your factory got to a certain size we would have to turn autosaves down to every half an hour because they would take over 3 minutes - or longer. It became a mandatory break time, to stand up and get a drink.

I've AAAAAAALLLMOST got this building finish. The only thing I didn't get to is the stilts on the back side.

I have a total of 13 temporary blueprints in my library right now, that I used to build out this building, and it STILL took like 10 hours, total. I might have overdone myself.

Man, I ended up liking this design, but GODDAMN did I pick one that's extremely tedious to build. This was like 6 hours of work, and I'm STILL not done with the FIRST building. I've only done about half of the lighting, haven't done any coloring, realized I completely forgot all the beams lining the undersides of the floors...

Welp, more tomorrow.

Okay. I can't put it off anymore. I have to figure out how to detail these buildings. Let's start with this small one, and see what we come up with.

This style of edging was kinda the only thing I had in my head to try, where the beam is even in height with the foundation. Buuuuuuuut, it doesn't work. The Z-fighting is extremely obvious, and not something I can just ignore.

Let's try something really crazily different.

Yeah, I hate that.

I really wanted something that was going to give the edges more depth, but looking through everything in the build menu, what I've already tried is basically it: beams and pillars.

So, I'm gonna go with this. Really unsatisfied with it, as is, but I don't see what else I can try that isn't just pillars, which I've rather over-done at this point.

Maybe it'll get better as I add floor supports.

Alright, you know what? That does rather help. I can nudge to avoid clipping into the beams on this side, but on the other side, where there's an acute angle between the floor and the pillar, the clipping in the railings is more offputting, and much less avoidable.

How's about we just ditch the railing on that side, in favor of something that clips into pillars, no problem: more pillars? I actually like the increase in variety here.

I like it much, much less, extending it up to the top floor. I didn't take a shot of what it looks like on the actual top, but it's very weird.

Adjusting the positioning of the angled pillars a bit gets the cross-pillars centered much better.

I'm feeling a heck of a lot better about this whole endeavor.

I got really into things at this point, and ended up not taking any more progress pics, until I got to the finished product. I'm astounded that I came up with something I actively like, here. Not my favorite design, by a long shot, but I'm entirely satisfied to get something this nice out of the UTTER design-block I was in.

The angled support pillars, mirroring the angling of the floors, was basically the only thing that was always part of my plan.

Night shots.

So, I now have a confident game plan for duplicating this out on the other 3 buildings.

The only actual remaining question is how I'm going to place some staircases or whatever between floors. Or really, I suppose, where in the layouts I'm going to PUT them.

I actually spent most of today's time playing in my son's game.

I made myself useful by just prepping resources for MAM research for him.

Needed a ton of Raw Quartz for making Crystal Oscillators.

Meanwhile, he was tearing down his whole starter setup. Which I forgot to get a screenshot of.

He decided he wants to rebuild everything out on a platform, off the side of the cliff.

I proposed the idea of a little sub-floor for power generators.

Concrete.

Iron Plate.

Iron Rod.

Alright, time to get the rest of this factory connected up.

Also needed to build one final building, for sinking and uploading.

With that, everything is powered up and running, and we can do some auditing.

For starters, I was producing about half of the Screws that I should have been, due to an abberant Mk.1 lift here.

Next, I spotted that I actually never connected the Raw Quartz feed here, for the last couple of Quartz Crystal constructors in this line.

That feed was supposed to come from the overflow here, on the next floor up.

That meant swapping the splitters on this Raw Quartz line to Smart Splitters.

Also neglected to ever connect the Iron Ingot feed here, for Iron Plates.

Somehow, I must've planned to have unbalanced belt feeds, that both deadend at this merger? Definitely didn't end up with that, this whole floor just has one Iron Ingot feed, as the throughput needed is less than the capacity of a Mk.4 belt.

So, that's gone.

Next, I realized that this little balancer that takes my 3 Iron Ore lines and evenly combines them into 2 produces 282/min on each of the two belts. And yet, I used Mk.3 belts for them.

Unfortunately, after a while, I realized that this did NOT fix my Iron Ore issues. Because while this balancers does evenly split the ore across 2 belts, the Smelters downstream are not PULLING evenly from the two belts.

And thus, the lack of a Smart Merger in the game strikes again.

So, screw it. Forget even belts. One Miner can feed one Mk.3 belt, which feeds 7 Smelters for Cast Screws. The other 2 Miners can feed a Mk.4 belt for 13 Smelters, for Iron Plate. No crossovers or balancing issues, and it all runs like clockwork.

So, that was all the issues I could find. I THINK the facility will equalize out to 100% efficiency now, with a little time, so let's go do a few side errands.

With the new facility online, I can FINALLY tear down my LAST temporary factory on the map.

No need to bother recovering the goods, I'll just sink it all. the new factory will be full up by the time I could cart the materials over.

I also figured I should do the Mk.4 upgrade to Advanced Iron Plate. I go through them QUITE quickly when I'm building signs, second only to Quartz Crystal, and since my Quartz Crystal availability is now DRASTICALLY increased, I figured this might end up being more of a bottleneck, without an upgrade.

Not much to see here, I guess, except that some of the belts in view are upgraded. But this should now be producing about 74/min Advanced Iron Plate, double what it was before.

So, I STILL haven't come up with any real ideas for how to decorate or get around on the big stairstep buildings, so I'm putting it off some more. What worked out well for the other two, and for the miners, was just running a main beltway alongside them, instead of directly connecting them, so I decided to keep going with that idea, and redo the little bit of beltwork I'd already done on the other side of the facility.

With that line built out all the way to the other big tubeway trunk, I was able to fully connect up the first building I built, with all the Iron and Copper machinery.

And, in fact, that finishes production for all of the intermediate items, and the belting to get them over to the final factory.

Aaaaaand fully-detailed out.

Interior shots.

Built out a little bit of a "hub" room today, where the main power switch for the campus can sit, and where we can do some of the inter-building belt routing.

With that built out and connected up, I was able to route all the belting and power for the first building, and get it powered up.

Well, everything except the Limestone feed, which is gonna come from the opposite side of the campus than the Quartz.

Wide shot, including more Tubeway.

After building the platform for the first Miner, last time, I've got 7 more to do, so I figured it was definitely worth blueprinting it. Also, a few for the interconnecting beltways.

With those, I managed to get everything fully-finished for all the incoming resources for the factory.

Then I noticed this...

Yeah..... I have 0 willpower to fix this.

Still procrastinating on the main factory, so I spent my time today building out the tubeways that carry in nearby resources.

Also sat down an workshopped a design for detailing the miners and the resource lines NOT on the main tubeway. Definitely a bit reinvigorating by actually just focusing on something simple, and new.

More progress today. Got all the miners and resource delivery laid in.

I still have no idea where I'm going with this, but progress is progress.

Man, I am really hitting a creative wall with this factory. I am at a loss for ideas on what to do next here. I tried laying out this sorta terrain-hugging foundation to try and build on, but turns out, I hate it.

Also, I'm really getting salty about the randomness of the indestructible flora.

So, I'm scrapping this.

Screw it, I'm just gonna lean harder into the stairstep theme.

This should be all the machines for the factory, except for a Sink and some Uploaders.

A little more progress on the next building, today. I decided, what the hell, let's just stick with the stairstep design. See what I can make of it. I really have no idea how I'm going to turn this into a proper building, yet, but ideally, that'll be part of the fun.

Also extended out the tubeway some more, a decent way beyond where I need it, so I can fully visualize what space I have to work with.

Long hanging fruit for today is the final building of Frameworks, to make Heavy Modular Frames. Literally everything is already done for this, except I didn't have Manufacturers, at the time.

So, removing the temp Sink and Uploaders I had here, and framing out the building, we get a layout for where the final machines will go.

Building out and detailing the building.

And with a final long shot, we're done.

Nerd docs.

Next up, I've picked out a rough location for the next project, mainly due to proximity of resources.

For starters, I need to extend out the main tubeway to map out a new building.

This machine layout should get the job done.

Also needing to be built out is the segment of the main Tubeway that I built out a couple weeks ago, to attach the two Geothermal Generators to the grid.

Done. Completely. The largest and most-complicated build I've ever done. A full 2-week project. All running at 100% efficiency.

I had to run the last of the 3 Turbofuel lines over to the big Generator building.

Then I had to connect up the entirety of the Generator building itself. Same strategy, each of the 3 Turbofuel lines, is one long straight shot, that just has a small splice coming off for each machine.

So, that's about 20GW of additional power that I didn't have before. And that's only running at 100% clock speed. I'll need Mk.5 belts to upgrade it any further.

Nerd docs.

All said, this facility is actually doing QUITE a lot, and I'm really proud of the design. I get a small amount of Packaged Turbofuel for personal use, made from a little bit of the Polymer Resin byproduct, and a small siphon of Turbofuel from one of the 3 lines.

The rest of the Polymer Resin gives me a source of fully-automated Fabric.

Then we have the Compacted Coal, which is made from a Pure node each of Coal and Sulfur. The Pure node of Crude Oil only requires 88.9% of a Pure node's worth of Compacted Coal, so instead of underclocking those machines and miners, I just take the extra 11.1% and feed it into some Coal-Powered Generators. It's basically just free additional power, at that point.

On its own, this facility is good for about 15.5GW of power production, at 100% clock, and will be able to clock up to 250% when I get Mk.6 belts unlocked, for 38.9GW.

The only info I've seen is "in 2025". I was wondering if anyone knew of any more information.

Edit: This is the only bit I've found this far, and it looks to be a joke: https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Future_content#Version_1.1

Alrighty, time to actually run out some Turbofuel.

The first line here actually gets a small splice off to package and upload to the Dimensional Depot.

Then it feeds the little mini-building of 3 Fuel Generators.

Then, the builiding of 13 Fuel Generators.

Then, the first 7 Fuel Generators in the giant generator building.

The whole line is structured as one single long run, with a small splice off for each generator. No complicated forking or balancing needed. Hopefully, this prevents any weird backflow issues from arising.

And that's a full 1/3 of the plant running at 100% efficiency.

Built out the Coal mines today.

Plus more inter-building and inter-floor logistics. The Crude Oil, Compacted Coal, and Waste Processing buildings should all be fully-complete now. I think.