Satisfactory

Alternatively, big ugly floating grey platforms focused on making big numbers! As much as I love the look of Blazin's stuff, and always mean to go back and touch things up, I just wind up building another thing or troubleshooting what already have.

This was my main base on my previous save. It was basically a big train roundabout with stops all over, and train collision totally ruined that plan. Despite it being easy to go elsewhere and restart, I had to give this one up because it takes like 30sec to autosave, and gets choppy in various parts of the world (though this is mostly my ghetto CPU's fault).



I do try to make things look somewhat nice and neat where I can, but a lot of belt clipping occurs due to laziness and simplicity.

This place is what I like to do in the game. Started as a simple aluminum facility based mostly on convenient location, but at some point it needed to be rebuilt for new recipes, and the whole project kept spiraling out of control until it got to this state. But almost all of it was either nearby, or underutilized/waste production from elsewhere in my sprawl. Puzzling out the different recipes and logistics and then watching the whole thing work what draws me to the game. Not so much making it look pretty, though I do feel like I should apologize when I share pictures.



All of that, and more besides, is just to supply these 8 machines, making 6/min Assembly Director Systems, which doesn't sound like much, but its the top of a very big pyramid. And then they go directly into the trash.

I usually get some idea and then just build it, then later figure out that it didn't work. This place is 50/min Heavy Frames, which were supposed to be for Thermal Rockets. Except I built this first, then finished out the rest of my math, and basically rage-quit for a month at the thought of building 100+/min Modular Engines. Then the purpose of this place changed about 5 more times as I figured out what to do with the frames and everything else around it.



This place makes Batteries to supply various drone setups all over, and the idea was that tons of drones would be flying around this clifftop facility like some big beehive. But most of them only come back like once every 3 hours. And I used the old battery recipe when doing the math, got to the top had to start over and rebuild it. Twice.



And this place makes 40/min Super Computers from the Crystal Computer recipe, and the idea was to cap it off with these 60x Manufacturers doing Oscilators. Focused so much on stacking that part I figured the rest would fit underneath. All that to the left is "the rest"

And this last picture I think pretty much sums up that save. It wasn't pretty, kinda boring, but it got the job done.

...And then all my trains crashed into each other.

Tuco said:

Epic gets a pass from me on their Epic Storefront because they are supplying the game dev community (as well as non-game devs like me that use Unreal!!) with a pretty far-reaching ecosystem that is 100% free to use and sell content on until you start making over a million $.

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lol what a loon

also Coffee Stain is part of an extremely large media group, they aren't some indie studio.

Tuco said:

So for a mega-factory like this, how do you typically get from mining ore to the top of the pyramid? Do you bring the raw ore in by train and then process it from the ground up to the Assembly Director Systems?

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Well that location was a bit of a hodgepodge. Most of it was raw resources processed on site, but there were some other "finished goods" that came in from other factories where I was making overkill amounts. And in one dumb case, aluminum was made there, sent via train to the drone hive to be turned into batteries, and then flown back via drone, I think because I didn't have room to make another train platform.

The Super Computer one though is more self-contained. The big train rail on the right brings in bauxite, and you can see in the top-middle there's some stuff back there that comes over, but most of the miners are in/around that big blob somewhere. I like to bring it all to one place when possible, but sometimes it just makes more sense to split it up. Or sometimes its a matter of compressing stuff, like one place builds Encased Beams on site to fill one train car, rather than 3 bringing iron/coal/limestone.

Tuco said:

Also, it's not a big deal but I kind of wish the awesome sink was just the Space Elevator. There is something cool and a little mysterious about being this expendable agent of extraction destroying the local habitat to rapture goods to unseen space gods. Having the game transform from that to a fucking joke with tickets is goofy.

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I could be wrong, but I thought something in game mentions that it still sends the sink stuff to FICSIT, just in the form of energy or something, rather than actual goods. At least that's my headcanon, must appease corporate space overlords!


edit - I guess I didn't really answer how I do things in the mega factories. I try to do things in big blocks by each step, and then feed those into each other, manifold style I guess its called? So all the Ore->Ingots in one area, then they all flow to Plates/Wire/Etc after that. And often up against belt limits, so there's some form of balancing/smart splitting in between. Things that really expand in # of items I try to keep localized, i.e. send a belt of ingots, but do Ingots->Rods->Screws right next to where they are needed. Or the opposite if possible, build right next to the miners and do Ore->Ingots->Wire->Cable and ship the Cable elsewhere. I try to locate stuff nearby where it will be used, like I'll make Pipes and Wire near where I make Stators, but that usually only lasts 2-3 steps before going all spaghetti from block to block. Production generally flows upwards, but sometimes liquids make that tricky, especially byproduct liquids. It takes longer and longer for each stage to fill up, so I usually build one section and run that into a sink while I build the next and try to troubleshoot as I go.

Are trains just for fun/diversity of logistics? When I played last year I never got one operational because when I started building my first one I realised that they take up too much space, and then I also realised that its easier and faster to just use stacked conveyors.