Because this community deserves more activity.
Today was spent setting up a basic Quartz/Silica factory, from one of the pure nodes in the giant Rocky Desert cave.
Got it most of the way done. Need to finish running power along the input belt line, finish enclosing the Depot wing, bring the road up to meet the building, setup truck stations, and color and light the whole thing.
Nice. I wonder what people do here strategy wise, say you have 4 iron nodes close to eachother, do you create a single factory that produces rods, plates and screws, or also derived items like reinforced plates and frames? Or do you split the iron nodes up and create separate factories for separate items? I love this game but this is still something I struggle with (and grass sticking through my foundations, we need a lawnmower in this game), mostly because I don’t know if my design choices will give me logistics hell later on.
In my last playthrough, I used the strategy of using enough buildings to completely consume all available input. So, if I had 240 iron ore, I would make enough smelters to completely consume that iron ore, enough plate constructors to consume the ingots, and enough rod constructors to consume the ingots too. While it’s impossible to keep both the plate and rods running fully at the same time, I can guarantee that my limiting factor will be ore input regardless of the ratio of plates to rods I am pulling from the system. That property can be chained to more advanced parts, so when I make something like modular frames, I can still guarantee I’m input limited, not building limited, by just using the existing plate and rods systems.
Do you account for excavator (not the right name) upgrades and over clocking when you do this?
I usually do, but sometimes, it just doesn’t feel feasible. Not if you’re going for “pretty” factories, like we’re trying to, this time around.
Like, this build will be able to accommodate me upgrading the one miner that powers it to a Mk3 at 250% clock, without needing a clock higher than 250% on any machine. And no belt will need more than 1,200 items/min. But, for example, my first attempt to plan for this factory was to use all of the mine-able Quartz in this cave, not just a single Pure node, and that would have required me to have 40 constructors. It just didn’t seem worth it to me, when this facility will already produce over 500/min of each item, when it’s fully-upgraded. If that does turn out to not be enough, I’ll add another miner, and figure out how to either expand this facility, or build a second one right next to it.
Thank you!
Oh, and if you haven’t heard of it yet, check it Satisfactory Tools, their production planner is absolutely vital (though you might want to disable SAM as an input if you’re going to tell it to maximize as it’ll convert everything under the sun to get more resources)
Mostly, early on, I’d tap what I need and produce everything I can from it
I automate pretty much every part I can with a focus on the current objective, and leave things running indefinitely
As I go up in tiers I’ll upgrade miners and belts if it makes sense, like I could get something I need by expanding existing production and there’s room available
At higher tiers, I mostly set out to solve a specific need, like I need to make these parts and I want them produced at this rate, so I start by looking at what I already have, and the components I don’t have I’ll set up production for
I rarely set out to completely max out a node right out of the gate, unless that makes sense for what I need
By the end phase, my build schematics were surprisingly simple as a lot of it was just bringing production together and extending, overclocking, and/or slopping to feed the inputs I needed
For the four iron nodes, I probably tap one or two because that’s what I need right now and build my platforms covering the rest which I’ll maybe open up and tap later if needed
A friend of mine, however, has made these stackable blueprints with as many of each maker building as he can cram into them. He’ll then go to a set of nodes and start dropping a massive tower of these things together to set up an absolutely unholy amount of whatever it is he needs. His landscape is dotted with these monster factories reaching skyscraper height
Me personally, I’d do a combined factory.
I also have to make an effort to suppress the design paralysis urge. Like, sure, thinking about how stuff bow will fit with future ideas is good, but it’s not worth agonizing over. Figuring out how to connect systems that weren’t necessarily made to work with each other is part of the challenge/fun, and usually produces a more interesting result than something fully-planned-out.