Experimental is up with new patch. I think going to wait for it to go live but some good stuff here.
Unpopular opinion but I think vertical lifts are going to make vertical factories too EZ/simple. Building your own lifts was half the fun/challenge. Don't get me wrong if they are in I will use them. Just think it's going to take something away overall. Only time will see.
Implemented additional Hand Slots for Equipment that can be unlocked via Milestones
Yay more hand slots! (is that the bar at the bottom or where your sword/chainsaw goes?)
Adjusted Hub floor collision so the player can walk onto it without having to jump
woot!
Not sure if it's been posted here but this calculator is pretty amazing. Default view is not that great but the visualize and the items list is big.
Make sure to add in your alternate recipe's and change buildings you can use.
This video shows off a bit about how the Conveyor lifts work. They're a little funky with connections but I love the quick way it lets you build vertically instead of segment by segment. I hope they do something similar for stackable poles soon.
Thé map feature is a delicious Quality of Life update!! Can’t wait for this update to get pushed live.
I love my belt spaghetti as much as the next man but those conveyors look rather useful. I hope you can rotate the ends though.
I've been poking around, but don't see anything about when the experimental changes will be applied to the base game, does anyone know?
I hope it doesn't take too much longer, they're getting close (ish) to the end of May updates.
I've been poking around, but don't see anything about when the experimental changes will be applied to the base game, does anyone know?
I hope it doesn't take too much longer, they're getting close (ish) to the end of May updates.
No confirmed time. Apparently from alpha most patches took about a week to test and be stable so that was the best guess. I had a few crashing issues early with the experimental but they were fixed so hopefully soon.
I have played through the majority(I think all) of the experimental content. Do note unless you were already doing more or another play through you may want to wait for May update. There is some cool content (especially the new vehicle). However, it's spread through 4-6 tiers and is mostly additive things. Don't get me wrong it's good content just not really "Meaty".
This game is $20 right now thanks to a fairly ridiculous Epic sale. Epic is providing the $10 discount and giving that money to the dev.
What's the current state of things in this as far as solo content? Is there any kind of progression of missions or anything to give you goals, or is it just "go build some stuff"? I like the idea of building contraptions, but I do badly when it's too wide open sandbox. I need goals and some hand holding.
There are a series of milestones which unlock more advanced recipes as you complete them, where each milestone is a resource sink that is usually easiest to complete by automating the items unlocked by the last milestone.
What's the current state of things in this as far as solo content? Is there any kind of progression of missions or anything to give you goals, or is it just "go build some stuff"? I like the idea of building contraptions, but I do badly when it's too wide open sandbox. I need goals and some hand holding.
Yes, they do goals by way of tiers. You start with the goal of dismantling your drop pod, then it shows you how to build that into the hub, how to scan, etc.
New tiers/additional tech and building unlocks are withheld until you demonstrate you know how to make what the game has already given you.
Everything you can do in the game has a tutorial and goal associated with it. I'd say it's very beginner friendly.
I'm actually really happy with how they have goalposted everything. The tiers are massive resource sinks, utter impractical to accomplish without automation, but each milestone within a teir is a sink based on the previous set of items so there is always a small goal to aim for moment to moment in addition to the self set goals that natually come with this kind of game (I'm gonna optimize a factory to make X, i'm gonna explore that direction, i'm gonna unlock alternate recipes, etc)
What's the current state of things in this as far as solo content? Is there any kind of progression of missions or anything to give you goals, or is it just "go build some stuff"? I like the idea of building contraptions, but I do badly when it's too wide open sandbox. I need goals and some hand holding.
This game would be perfect for you then. It divides it's content into milestones and you unlock them by feeding resources to the project in orbit. You build some stuff to gather the resources to unlock the next thing, then you build the next thing and unlock more stuff. Then you go back and tear down your old stuff to replace it with new stuff you just unlocked etc. It's much less of a sandbox than Factorio where you have to give yourself arbitrary goals and milestones beyond unlocking the next technology.
Building an early stage factory, I solved the gathering of materials to one place like so:
It's expandable, which is good as I don't have any assemblers building anything right now, and I find it much handier than running everywhere for resources to complete milestones and the like. Three tiers of storage!
Nice idea!
I've always struggled, especially in the early stages, of having one place for everything
Do you think buffers are necessary in satisfactory? I know you have to have to build up a surplus in order to unlock stuff so it makes sense to stockpile finished products for later use. But as far as basic manufacturing goes having any production over what is necessary to feed the next machine down the line is just a waste of power. Since mines supply an unlimited amount of resources you will never use up a surplus of materials unless you deliberately make your factory outstrip it's supply.
if you produce more then you consume then buffers can't hurt. They just take more power until the buffers are full. If you produce the same amount that you consume then the buffers will always remain at a constant capacity so they again can't hurt and if you produce less then you consume you will always have a system under-performing. In a perfect setup you would clock your builders based on their known input rate which is easy early on, but as your factory gets bigger, that calculation gets harder.
The eight units I have set up in that screenshot above (or rather there were six then, now I've finished the full eight) are Concrete, Iron Plates, Iron Rods, Screws, Copper Wire, Cable, Reinforced Iron Plates, and Rotors. I haven't found any reason to store anything more basic than those yet, though I'm missing the other key material, [That I can't seem remember at the moment; some sort of cubic frame thing] and I haven't found a good place in my assembly line to produce it yet (everything running behind the first person perspective of that screenshot is pure production chaos) 
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On a separate note, I've discovered and researched the production of Sulfur, but all of the mine-able sources of it that I've found even vaguely close by seem to be surrounded by toxic fumes. Are the plants producing them destructible? And if not, does anyone have any suggestions on how I might be able to venture into the area w/o dying horribly to set up a drill? For reference: I've only just unlocked Milestone tiers 3 & 4 with fledgling amounts of coal production and automation. Thanks in advance for any useful tips!
There are gas-emitting rock-pillar-things, and there are gas-emitting plants. You can not destroy the former, but you can eventually destroy the latter. In addition, at a higher tier, you will unlock a gas mask.
In the meantime, it is possible to build things from quite some distance away. It may be possible to set up this miner from outside of the toxic gas cloud, if you can find (or construct) the right vantage point.
The eight units I have set up in that screenshot above (or rather there were six then, now I've finished the full eight) are Concrete, Iron Plates, Iron Rods, Screws, Copper Wire, Cable, Reinforced Iron Plates, and Rotors. I haven't found any reason to store anything more basic than those yet, though I'm missing the other key material, [That I can't seem remember at the moment; some sort of cubic frame thing] and I haven't found a good place in my assembly line to produce it yet (everything running behind the first person perspective of that screenshot is pure production chaos)
While storing helps you need to make sure that you're producing things at specific rate. I was doing what you were doing and when i hit the end tiers and automated computers and super computers i found out that i was no where near the levels needed to keep up with the new factories and when the storage was sucked dry my processes stopped. I had to completely redo my wire and cable production.
I'm thinking hard on a restart so i can do things like set up central storage for basics and that sort of thing.
Does anyone have any opinions on the three starting locations? i initially did my set-up in the grassy plains, but later discovered the desert area and liked the distribution of nodes there a lot.
I loved the Desert. At the time there were accessible Pure nodes of various minerals. It's lots of space with plenty of interesting features. Coal was around 1km from the start and Oil was more like 2k, so that's pretty far.
They've moved some nodes around and changed the purity of some things so Im not sure if it is still as good but I didnt notice "Desert" called out in the patch notes.
I loved the Desert. At the time there were accessible Pure nodes of various minerals. It's lots of space with plenty of interesting features. Coal was around 1km from the start and Oil was more like 2k, so that's pretty far.
They've moved some nodes around and changed the purity of some things so Im not sure if it is still as good but I didnt notice "Desert" called out in the patch notes.
Well the best oil spot, the little islands, i found was no further from desert than it was from where i had my main base in the grassy area.
Does anyone have any opinions on the three starting locations? i initially did my set-up in the grassy plains, but later discovered the desert area and liked the distribution of nodes there a lot.
I'm a fan of this start location northwest of the forest spawn area. It has a bunch of pure nodes on the edge of a cliff, so you can use foundations to have a big, flat area for expanded production. It's stingy with just one coal node, so I was capped at 1000MW until I got to tier 4 belts.
I pretty much played all weekend. This is my third restart where I finally discovered foundations. I have something like 10 constructors just making rods. Does everyone else find they need a massive amount?
Yes, iron rods are in huge demand... at first.
Initially, you need them to make screws, and then you need screws to make reinforced iron plates, and then you need reinforced iron plates to make modular frames (along with even more iron rods). You also end up needing screws in other places, like rotors and computers.
But! There are some very useful alternate recipes out there which simplify matters considerably. There's one which lets you make screws directly from iron ingots, for instance. There's another which lets you make reinforced iron plates using copper wire instead of screws. And so on. And most of these, as a bonus, will also make their products at a higher rate than the original recipe.
This means that an end-game factory will usually use more advantageous ratios of basic items like iron rods, which really helps keep factory sizes under control. However, this does mean that you may need to redesign large parts of your factory once you unlock those alternate recipes, if you want to take maximum advantage of them.
Yes, iron rods are in huge demand... at first.
Initially, you need them to make screws, and then you need screws to make reinforced iron plates, and then you need reinforced iron plates to make modular frames (along with even more iron rods). You also end up needing screws in other places, like rotors and computers.
But! There are some very useful alternate recipes out there which simplify matters considerably. There's one which lets you make screws directly from iron ingots, for instance. There's another which lets you make reinforced iron plates using copper wire instead of screws. And so on. And most of these, as a bonus, will also make their products at a higher rate than the original recipe.
This means that an end-game factory will usually use more advantageous ratios of basic items like iron rods, which really helps keep factory sizes under control. However, this does mean that you may need to redesign large parts of your factory once you unlock those alternate recipes, if you want to take maximum advantage of them.
I just found that screw recipe. A big redesign is definitely on the horizon. Maybe the next big patch.
Do you guys ever use conveyor belts to feed things directly into the space elevator? Seems a bit superfluous because you can just physically carry stacks of stuff and put them into the elevator in less time.
This means that an end-game factory will usually use more advantageous ratios of basic items like iron rods, which really helps keep factory sizes under control. However, this does mean that you may need to redesign large parts of your factory once you unlock those alternate recipes, if you want to take maximum advantage of them.
This is why I would rather separate my production lines so that all materials are drawn from and fed into a mainbus. Production ratios are constantly going to change with new recipe unlocks and belt/miner tiers, if your factory produces it's own intermediates you will have to tear down practically the entire production line to make any changes.
Huh, that start location you linked Delbin is the one I have and it was just by happenstance. I was blown away by the resources when I got there, 2 pure copper, 4 pure iron, and 1 pure stone? It's a bit insane. Now I just have to build up and flatten out since everything is scattered around deep down in those ravines right now.
Do you guys ever use conveyor belts to feed things directly into the space elevator? Seems a bit superfluous because you can just physically carry stacks of stuff and put them into the elevator in less time.
MightyMooquack wrote:This means that an end-game factory will usually use more advantageous ratios of basic items like iron rods, which really helps keep factory sizes under control. However, this does mean that you may need to redesign large parts of your factory once you unlock those alternate recipes, if you want to take maximum advantage of them.
This is why I would rather separate my production lines so that all materials are drawn from and fed into a mainbus. Production ratios are constantly going to change with new recipe unlocks and belt/miner tiers, if your factory produces it's own intermediates you will have to tear down practically the entire production line to make any changes.
I did on my first run, but mainly because i set up quick and dirty sub optimal supply lines for the goods it wanted and just let it chug away while i was exploring or optimizing elsewhere.
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