Satisfactory

After maybe an hour of setting up blueprints for the inter-building walkways that I prototyped last time, I decided to actually start today by finalizing the Geothermal Generator here, and getting it fully connected to the main grid.

Then I went ahead and placed the first set of blueprints over at the main entrance, while I was nearby, to allow access to the logistics floor.

After that, I just headed over to where Crude Oil is coming into the first building, and started going crazy with getting buildings connected.

This here is the connections between the two buildings that are processing Crude Oil into Heavy Oil Residue. In order to fit the terrain, I ended up with one building of 3 Refineries, and one building of 6. So the first building consumes some of the Crude Oil, and passes the rest on to the next building, along with the Heavy Oil Reside and Polymer Resin that it did produce.

The next building receives them.

The one line of Heavy Oil Reside from the first building, plus 2 more from the second, trunk over to the Fuel processing building.

Meanwhile, Polymer Resin moves on to the waste waste processing and packaging building.

Waste processing also needs water, which comes from Fuel processing, which is also an adjacent building. One of these 3 lines is used to process all the Polymer Resin, and the other two will pass right under the building over to Compacted Coal.

There's a pretty drastic height difference between the two buildings, so I added this little support strut for the pipes.

Slightly wider shot, from Fuel Processing.

Co-op today!

Got the shipping lot for Ironworks finished out..... except I'll actually need to do one more rework, next time.

We neglected to realize that the sheer volume of resources this factory produces means we can't sink all the overflow with just one AWESOME Sink. So, after finishing the lot, I expanded the corner where the Sink sits, enough to add a second one, and re-routed the overflow belts to match.

Except we ACTUALLY need 3 Sinks, not 2. So, that's what I'll have to do next time. And the corollary is that we ALSO made this mistake for Copperworks, so I'll try and get that fixed as well.

My wife made more good progress on Cateriumworks. Structurally, it's pretty much done: all the building and machines are in place. It still needs lighting, power cabling, and a shipping lot.

During the process of all of the above, we found we were running out of Reinforced Iron Plate again, despite getting that factory up and running last time. Essentially, it's just running WAY too slowly. It's only producing like 2.5/min, and THEN it's not prioritizing that 2.5/min to the Depot, and instead splitting it equally between the Depot and the Truck Station, which is currently unused.

As an immediate stopgap, I cut the belt to the Truck Station, and then we got into a conversation about why the factory is running so slowly: it's because Copperworks is running equally-slowly, (12.5% base clock speed), because I didn't think we could afford the power to run it any higher. Which is when my wife pointed out that we never upgraded the power plant to Mk.3 belting, which I thought we had.

So, I went and got that all upgraded. A nice 2.25x boost to our power capacity, so we should be able to afford increasing the clock speeds on Copperworks and Advanced Ironworks a bit.

Next up is connecting the factory to the primary tubeway. Got a path laid out from the factory entrance up to the closest branch of the tubeway, easily enough.

However, at this point, it got a little tricky. To connect a new branch to the tubeway properly, I need at least 24m (3 foundations) of straight segments, and there's really not a lot of room here for me to curve and join up at that straight segment to the left.

So, I just pathed out a small adjustment to the existing tubeway.

With that, the new branch is connected. I'll come back to this maybe tomorrow to run a belt of Sulfur underneath here.

Moving on, built a little hut for the Oil Extractor, and prototyped a new design for a walkable support to pipe it up to the factory.

I'm moderately happy with it, so I'll probably spend some time tomorrow making reusable blueprints for this design, to get walkways and resources connected between all the buildings much more quickly.

Also prototyped an access ramp to go between machine and logistics floors, that I'll need to put in each building. Again, I'm planning to blueprint what I can of this.

Starting out today, I wanted to lay out the rim of the ceiling, before laying out machinery that might get in the way, since all the 45-degree corners have to be built my hand.

I experimented for a WHILE with the blueprinter, and spacing and alignment and whatnot. Ultimately, I managed to fit 55 generators in the floor space, and I think that's about the max.

Filling in the ceiling, and that's this building pretty much done. Except for all the piping work on the logistics floor, but I'm going to save that for later, until after I have all the generators laid out. There's a very specific distribution strategy I'll need to implement for grouping up generators with refineries, so I'll need to know where all the generators are going to sit before I can finalize that.

I also ended up with a few foundations worth of empty space, that wasn't enough for an additional generator, so I turned that into a little balcony to serve as the main entrance to the campus.

So, after 55 generators in the last building, I need 16 more to finish out the campus, and it just so happens that's what I was able to fit in here.

With the concept proved, I laid down an outline for the building, to guide placement of blueprints.

Aaaaaaaaaaand, these big chonkin' corals aren't destructible. Great.

Reworking the outline and layout again, I can avoid the indestructibles, but I lose the space for 3 machines. Nothing for it, there just isn't enough space here to expand out this building any further. Gonna have to do 1 more building.

Before that, I got this one detailed and finalized.

After agonizing for a little while, I decided on this little spot up here, and built a proof of concept. There's just enough space here to avoid interfering with the coal mines in the background there, that I'll still need to build out.

To make this spot work, I'll actually need to reclaim this extra foundation of empty space at the end of the prior building. Due to the big difference in elevation between these two buildings, I'll need that extra space between them to run piping and walkways. And again, I want to leave as much space as possible between the new building, and the coal nodes, so I don't want to shift that one backwards.

More outlining, blueprinting, detailing, and finalization.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand that should complete all the buildings needed for this factory. All that remains is to build out an Oil Extractor, a couple Coal Miners, the tubeway to carry in Sulfur from the outpost I built last week, and to run all the interconnections between the buildings. Closing in on the final stretch.

Back in coop today. Got another big chunk of road built out, toward Cateriumworks.

Speaking of which, my wife made some decent progress on that.

Second building from yesterday is finished up.

The next one's gonna be a doozie. I think I should be able to make this footprint work.

Yeah, this should definitely work. We'll see tomorrow what I can end up fitting in here.

Next building is done.

Also the next next building is mostly done.

Next building is done.

First truck lines are up and running!

These are very low throughput, so each of these trucks will actually idle form 4-8 hours, per cycle.

That started with my wife and I rebuilding the shipping lot underneath Ironworks, to make room for Truck Stations.

I also had to make the fueling station accessible. I decided to just move it over by the existing entryway, as a temporary setup. I'll eventually build a full and proper fueling station on the other side of the road, when Liquid Biofuel is available to us.

And while I was recording and configuring the truck routes, my wife got a start on Cateriumworks.

Next building is mostly done.

Now, since today was slow for pics, and since I was asked about it, and since I meant to do it at the end of Phase 2, and forgot, I took a few shots of the whole world, or at least as much of it as I could get.

This one actually captures almost everything. Everything up through Phase 2, anyway. The Coal Power Plant is hidden down below the cliff, but you can see the infrastructure around it. You can juuuuuuuuust make out the Projectworks campus in the distance, plus FICSMAS on Paradise Island. No view of Oilworks though, it's farther off to the upper-right.

Off to the east is all the new Geothermals, and the current in-progress build, in the Blue Crater.

If you REALLY want to see the whole big picture at once, https://satisfactory-calculator.com/ has you covered.

I started today by figuring out where the next couple of buildings will fit, but then I had some questions in my head about how I'll be connecting them together, so I decided to just go ahead and fully-detail the first building.

Moving back to those other two buildings, I got them fully built out, as well.

Not much to show off today. Just made a little more progress on this factory. I've decided, for now, that I'm gonna try this sheltered-but-open-air kinda design. Basically, just no walls. We'll see if it's viable for the other big segments of the factory.

Also picked out a color scheme, based on these nearby..... mushrooms? Coral? Whatever they are.

Spent most of the evening building out this little Geothermal and Sulfur outpost. I'll be using the Pure Sulfur node here in the next build, and I'll very likely be wanting the others in the near future.

That finishes all the prepwork I had in mind. Time to start the next build, proper. Should be the biggest one yet.

Got the remainder of the interconnect finished, today.

Had a slight issue here with the clipping, and the fact that there reeeeeeeally wasn't much room for me to just move the slope forward.

Finagled with the layout of the curves ahead of the incline, and I managed to make enough room for just a 4m incline, and I made up the other 4m farther along.

Also built out the Geothermal outpost, down in the river.

Building my way out to the Blue Crater today, to prepare for the next big build.

Definitely going to want to connect up the Geothermal Geysers up on this ledge, as well as the 3 Sulfur nodes.

Picked a central spot to place down a permanent Radio Tower, for the area, and built out to there.

Decided to go back and re-route this segment, in order to split off another path heading down into the Southern Forest river.

Since there's more Geothermal down there. Also several Quartz nodes I'll almost certainly want in the future.

Before starting on laying out the blueprints for the interconnect, I decided I wanted to collect a few more Mercer Spheres, so I could do a couple tiers of research on the Dimensional Depot. I burn through an entire Depot's worth of Quartz in about 30 seconds when I'm building with these blueprints.

Back to the interconnect, and it turns out these particular variants of flora are still indestructible. The gigantic versions of this same plant aren't, though. Go figure.

Got about half of the blueprints laid before my eyes started giving out on me.

Another factory fully completed.

Very happy with the detailing on the roofs.

Also happy with the little pump station, and the sandwich support for the pipe.

Glamor shots of the main floor.

Also the logistics floor.

Design documentation.

Efficiency SEEMS to be good, since all the final output machines are running at a consistent 100%. But there is still a small issue with efficiency in the Heavy Oil Residue and Fuel pipes. I think they just got over-filled during a period where I had the final Smart Splitter for Rubber misconfigured, and that whole half of the factory wasn't running. Hopefully, they balance out to an equilibrium now that everything's running again. The Plastic half of the factory seems to be running flawlessly.

Oilworks is up and running today. All that's left is cosmetics.

Had to rip out and redo the Water Extractors, because I somehow incorrectly determined I only needed 3, instead of 4. Fortunately, that still fit with the general layout of the building, it just now has a small extra-wide section.

Also came up with a little something to support hanging pipelines, since there isn't a hanging pipe support in the base game. I quite like it.

Oh. So there is, in fact, a hanging pipe support, it's just not actually in the build menu that way. Because screw consistency, I guess.

I still ended up using my little custom thingie almost exclusively, because the vanilla pipe support isn't height-adjustable.

Anyway, I got all the beltwork and pipework done next. Decided to make basically everything ceiling-supported, instead of floor-supported.

Except this spot, where all the crossover, loopback, and sink routing needs to happen. There's just too much going on here.

With a ceiling built out, I was able to run power and get everything online and priming up. We'll see if any flow issues emerge before 100% efficiency is reached, but it all looks promising so far.

Canister closed loops, in action.

First task for today was actually re-working the Liquid Biofuel setup from yesterday, a little bit. Specifically, I realized I needed to do buffering for the inputs to that little subsystem, and I needed to not be sinking the excess. I found it was sinking away the vast majority of the spoils from yesterday's exploration.

I ended up moving the buffer crate for Solid Biofuel BACK to where it was before, along with an additional one for Plastic. However, the Dimensional Depot Uploader for Solid Biofuel is still over on the other side. With this setup, any plastic I dump into recycling will actually get saved for making Empty Canisters, as part of Liquid Biofuel. Before adding this buffer container, I would have to worry about never dropping more than 1 or 2 stacks of Plastic at a time, because it would get sunk otherwise.

Similarly, All Solid Biofuel that's either dumped or crafted from scraps gets buffered, and that buffer feeds both Liquid Biofuel and the Dimensional Depot. Only if BOTH of those are fully backed-up does any Biofuel get sunk. And since Solid Biofuel is getting sunk already, there's no need to sink the Liquid Biofuel as well, that would make it much more difficult to prioritize how and when Solid Biofuel is used or stored.

The three belts here send Solid Biofuel, Plastic and Liquid Biofuel (so I can dump it in the recycler and have it end up back in the Dimensional Depot) over to the Liquid Biofuel Refinery.

Next, I decided, after how much success I had with them yesterday, to make a few permanent Radio Towers, within the developed areas.

A new segment of tubeway gets me a Radio Tower that covers the Oil Coast, where I'll be building next.

Another new segment takes me down along the coast, toward the Oil patches.

This looks like a solid spot. I'm just gonna be using the one Normal node I plopped down an extractor on, in the top-right.

Tubeway.

Here's what I came up with for machine layout. As you might guess, the first new products for Phase 3 will be Rubber and Plastic. Tomorrow, I'll setup the logistics, and see if I can get it powered on.

First item on the to-do list for Phase 3 is upgrading the Coal Power plan to Mk 4 belts. That'll a-little-less-than-double my total power capacity. Which I definitely need, I ended up having to hijack a bunch of Somersloops from my recycling facility last week and use them to make a second Alien Power Augmenter, round about the time I was bringing the FICSMAS factory fully-online.

Next up is expanding the recycling facility to make Packaged Liquid Biofuel. I actually was looking ahead to Oilworks, where I was planning to make Plastic, Rubber, and Packaged Fuel, and I realized... Liquid Biofuel is superior to Fuel in every metric (except that it can't be fully-automated). So, I'm actually going to completely skip making Fuel for its own sake. Liquid Biofuel is gonna be my go-to until I get to Turbofuel, so this definitely needs to be done right.

In the above shot, the building wing on the right is the new part I added on to the existing recycling facility, where Solid Biofuel was already being made.

Here's where Solid Biofuel used to be buffered, for the Dimensional Depot.

Finally for today, I recovered my Somersloops from the extra Alien Power Augmenter I had built, but I still don't have enough to fully kit the new stuff in recycling facility. And that's the magic that's gonna make all the Biofuel stuff really effective, having every single step in the process doubled with Somersloops. So, it's time for some exploring.

Loving the addition of Radio Towers. With that, I can be confident the entirety of Grassy Fields, Southern Forest, Blue Crater, and Eastern Dune Forest are fully cleared out.

On a side note, this trip I think has convinced me I'm gonna need a dedicated weapons factory, eventually. The Eastern Dune Forest is actually a nightmare, I dunno why this area doesn't have the same reputation as the Red Jungle and Red Bamboo Fields.

Great haul, though.

Bonus screenshot, our Hub from our new factory, 50 points to anyone who can guess the inspiration

That's Phase 2 completed.

Nothing all that special, really just the same general design as the last two, with a couple slight variations (accent color, and shape of the floorplan).

I ended up ditching the idea of having the entrance on the side of the building, instead of the front. Too much clipping.

Another glamor shot. Oooo, what's that over on the roof? I thought all the FICSMAS gifts had stopped...

Yoooo! A FICSMAS-themed nobe---

Starting up Automated Wiring today.

This might be the largest machine array I've ever had to make, for just a single product. Man, these things need a crap-ton of Wire. 42 Constructors for up to 3,130/min.

I sorta forgot to continue taking progress pics while building.

Everything seems to be running now. Just need to wait for it to prime up, while I finish out the structure. Haven't quite come up with a concept yet for how to take the design from the last 2 buildings, and adapt it to having the entrance on the side.

A while ago @[email protected] and I had a discussion on here about dual level rails. There was a problem with them that milkisklim eventually commented their solution to, but I didn't want to go that route. I settled on a single level LHD network for a "skyway" but wanted to find a solution I liked for stacked lines to use for local networks.

It can still be difficult to tell from above which way is which with the railed version, and the trains will clip through the beams a little, but if it works well for me I have tweaks in mind before I use it too much.

FICSMAS Factory is complete! ETA on 500 Stars for the final research is just under 12 hours.

Really happy with the exterior cosmetics.

First thing I had to do today to finish the build is realize that this setup I built yesterday completely neglected to account for sinking of excess products. So, I had to tear down a few parts of this, and adjust my plans.

I started by just going ahead and laying out all the machines, roughly where I thought they'd end up. I figured that would help me figure out where I would put the sink and all the Dimensional Depot Uploaders.

I'm actually really surprised I was able to fit all the machines in here, with so much room to spare. I thought for sure I'd have to make a separate wing, at least for all the uploading and sinking.

I ended up having plenty of space at the back of the facility to upload all 16 unique FICSMAS items, and sink all the excess, with a simple sushi belt setup.

Also went ahead and moved the stairs down to the logistics floor.

Glamor shots of the factory floor. Overall, I am EXTREMELY happy with this whole factory. There's some really crazy beltwork going on here, but it all runs to perfection. 61 machines in total, and all running at a 100% efficiency.

Also, the logistics floor.

And for the nerds like me, the production plan and logistics map. Satisfactory Modeler really doesn't like the complexity of this one, it refuses to actually calculate out all the flow rates.

More road work today!

Also built out most of a trucking lot for the RIP/MF factory. As in, my wife built it out, and I did some of the compact belting, at the end.

Next session, I'll have to manually fill in all the oblong space and line with barriers to connect it up to the road.

Meanwhile, in singleplayer, I'm back on the FICSMAS factory. I noticed the roof was pretty dark at night, so I blueprinted out and added accent lighting around all the trees.

Then I did an initial rough-draft for all the gift beltwork and lighting, along the ceiling. I figure, I don't really have enough room to do all the gift belting in the logistics floor underneath this one, as it's only 5m tall, so I'll be taking this rough-draft, and reorganizing it as needed to pull off gift lines in the various spots that I need them, as I build the machinery. I rather like the organized chaos vibe going on here.

I started with the Iron and Copper machinery, as that's pretty much the only set that has to be (or should be) in a particular spot (near the front door, where the ores enter the building). From there, I built out all the ornament factories that use them, in the way that felt the most natural.

I figured this was enough machinery to go ahead and power up, and get a head start on priming the facility. Also, I don't actually HAVE all of the FICSMAS research done, so I need to get ornaments going, in particular.