Satisfactory

How many things can you see that are coming? I've counted quite a few new things!

K. Time to branch off to the other side of this T-junction, for the next building.

Rough layout, much like last time.

Machines laid out.

Pathing laid out for some Crude Oil.

Forgot that some of the machines are actually for Diluted Fuel production, and had to rebuild them with Packagers and canister loops.

All Water Extractors built, with piping fully laid out.

Same for Crude Oil.

Last time I got the logistics all run for the Refinery inputs, so next up was the outputs.

Also a little bit of decoration for an entrance, where the inputs are coming into the building.

After that, I needed power for the Miners.

That SHOULD be everything needed for minimum-viable functionality, so let's run a little testing.

For testing, I'll need power, so might as well go ahead and get most of the tubeway built out. Not all of it, though. If you notice, the basic tubeway blueprint is elevated 4m above the base height of the anchor foundations I laid out. We'll need this space eventually for a total of 8 belts worth of resources we'll need to run underneath there.

That also means I'll need to rebuild a portion of the existing tubeway, where the branch begins, in order to have the heights match up, and to make room to continue running the belts elsewhere. I'll deal with that later.

Alright, temporary power connection made, let's see what mistakes we've made.

Right away, I find I forgot to run power for the Water Extractors.

Then I remembered I need pumps.

Every machine seems to be producing, now, so I call that a win.

Filling in all the belts under the tubeway, up to the first junction, where more will join in, and this sub-factory is done for now.

Alriiiiiiiiight. So, after building a full logistics map for the upcoming factory, I've decided this is where I need to fork off a new branch of tubeway, to head off into the distance.

That should do it.

A little more brainstorming, and this is what I came up with for a floor layout.

First machines to get routed and built are the Copper Ore Miners.

Then it's a few Water Extractors and a looooooot of Refineries.

Finally for today, that should cover logistics for all the Refinery inputs.

Starting out today, this factory needs an upgrade. This is Steelworks, and when I was building out all the tubeways yesterday, I actually ran out of Steel Beam for the first time.

She's currently running at a base clock of 12.5%, and with Mk.4 belts, I can get that up to 100%. To do that properly, I need to do some planning work, though.

I made this factory back before I started using Satisfactory Modeler to do belt planning, so I have no idea what beltwork I did to work around the handful of belts in the basic flow plan that need more than a Mk.4 belt.

So, I went through the factory and mapped it all out. Had to cheat a little bit and insert that break in the middle, at the Steel Foundries. When I had those as just normal connections, the whole graph refused to calculate. I have a feeling this is only going to get worse, and I'm gonna have to find another tool for the job, eventually.

Anyway, upgrades made.

Exploration time!

I was REALLY hoping to get enough Mercer Spheres to finish off the upload speed research, but I don't feel like building ANOTHER leg for a Radio Tower right now. Otherwise, good haul.

A'ight, today's task is to lay out some new Radio Towers, to prep for exploring, and the next factory I'll be building. I have exactly 0 Mercer Spheres left after the last factory, so I at least need to stock up on those.

Aaaaaaaand, after getting these two built, I found that there's only TWO Mercer Spheres available in this area. Apparently, I did a pretty solid job exploring here already. That's not nearly enough, so I laid down a third one.

No, I haven't given up yet, I just had less free time this week than usual, and I was honestly frustrated that it took THREE more sittings to fully finish this out.

Anyway, let's take a tour.

Main entrance.

Uploading and sinking.

Really happy with how the transition between the main floor and this side wing came out. This is pretty much what I had in mind from the beginning, when I first laid out the flooring, like 2 weeks ago.

Also like the way I routed the Fabric from this side wing around the underside of the building here, to come out in this small corner and head upward to the Manufacturers' floor.

Pretty much a mirror image going on on the opposite side, where Polymer Resin and Heavy Oil Residue are made. And another small belt in the corner to connect between floors (carries excess coal).

Also very similar is the large wing on the front of the facility (or back, I guess?) that makes all the Smokeless Powder. I like the look of the catwalks connecting the floors, and allowing access to the maintenance floors underneath.

That maintenance floor is also how we access the Miners and Extractors we have down in the crater.

ALSO really happy with how these big, wide resource trunks came out.

Same thing on the opposite side, where there wasn't nearly enough room to maneuver underneath the mushroom caps, so I had to run the trunk on top of them, and then build another big support pillar to make up the height difference at the end.

More glamor shots, from the upper floors.

Top floor leaves some open ceiling for exhaust to vent.

More nice shots of belting running along the edging of the building, which I ended up really liking.

Final wide shot.

Nerd docs.

All cosmetics today. I'd say I'm about..... 50% done now? So, yeah, here's hoping to finish tomorrow.

Picking up from last time, I got Crude Oil laid in for real this time, to produce Heavy Oil Residue and Polymer Resin.

Sticking with the strategy of connecting to and from the big Refinery wing on the front of the facility by running underneath the main body, I pulled water across the wing to meet up with the Polymer Resin, both of which need to run over to the small wing on the opposite side of the building. These make Polyester Fabric.

With the Polymer Resin now having somewhere to go, Smokeless Powder is now running plenty enough for me to snag 400 of them for research.

The Manufacturer floor is juuuust about all that's left for this factory. However, while planning it out, I noticed I was no longer producing any Iron Rebar. I eventually traced it back to here.

This belt is definitely NOT supposed to clip through an entire merger, and connect to an adjacent splitter instead.

I had to setup a few different temporary splices like this to bleed all the ore out of the belts, as well as fully-rebuild all the elevators going through the floor to feed into the Constructors using Steel Ingot.

Back on track, we've got 3 Manufacturers dedicated to making Gas Filters.

And the other 7 dedicated to Explosive Rebar.

Finally, I've got a few things to wrap up on the Assemblers floor. The last big batch of Assemblers can now be connected up to make Cluster Nobelisks.

The last item is a single Assembler for making Rifle Ammo. Unfortunately, the most effective way to get the Copper Sheet for that to where it needed to go was to run it around the ENTIRE circumference of the building. In retrospect, maybe it would have been better to build the logistics floors for this building to 7m, instead of 5m, to allow for 3 layers worth of belting, but this Copper Sheet line was really the only problematic thing I had to deal with, due to only having 2 layers.

Running the Smokeless Powder for Rifle Ammo was distinctly simpler: a single 2m length of belt from an adjacent splitter.

Actually, the LAST last item was regular Nobelisks. Which I already had fully producing, but I needed to pull off the overflow to be sent down for uploading and sinking.

Aaaaaaaand we have a nice fat sushi belt for uploading and sinking everything.

Alright, time to start building out logistics. Here, I've got the Coal and Sulfur lines coming in, and feeding almost entirely to make Compacted Coal.

Some of the Compacted Coal, and the remaining Sulfur, hops over to the next lane of Assemblers to make Fine Black Powder. The rest heads up to the top floor to make Compacted Steel.

Of course, the steel also requires Iron Ore, so I need to head to the left-hand leg of the factory where I brought up the Iron Ore and Copper Ore lines, and route those up to the top floor. Also went ahead and setup an upper exit for the hypertube.

Just one smelter for the Copper Ore, and 2 for a small amount of the Iron Ore.

The rest of the Iron Ore joins up with the Compacted Coal for 36 Foundries worth of Steel. Compacted Coal as a recipe kinda sucks, doesn't it? VERY low throughput, per-machine.

Then, all 3 ingots head down to the bottom floor.

Steel Ingot makes Steel Pipe.

Then Steel Rod.

Which then circles back and makes Iron Rebar (I forgot to grab a pic of this step, it seems).

Copper Ingot makes Copper Sheet, and Iron Ingot makes Iron Plate, just 2 machines each.

Then aaaaaall the products from the Constructor floor need to ship up to Assemblers and Manufacturers.

Back on the Assembler floor, the Steel Pipe lets me finish out the line for Nobelisks, with the Black Powder that's already there.

It was about this point, when I was trying to take the next item coming up from the Constructor floor (Copper Sheet) to make Rifle Ammo that I realized I don't actually HAVE all the recipes I need to build this factory. I need to actually start producing some Smokeless Powder to unlock a few new things, so I changed gears and worked on getting everything that's already in place powered up and running.

That gets everything up to Black Powder actually running, but I still need Oil to get to Smokeless Powder, so I had to do the same thing on the right leg of the factory that I did for the left.

Also, of course, need to actually BRING Black Powder to the Refineries for Smokeless Powder, and anticipate sending the Smokeless Powder back, to 2 different floors.

Got the logistics all built out for Smokeless Powder next.

Except, I realized after about 20 minutes of diagnostics, that the reason the Smokeless Powder Refineries weren't starting up wasn't a pumping issue with the Oil, it was the fact that I tried to pump Crude Oil into a bunch of machines that need Heavy Oil Residue.

Agonized for a bit on how I wanted to route the pipes for Crude and Residue, to and from the side wing, since I didn't really leave myself any room for additional logistics on the side where I laid those exterior belts, but I eventually decided on sending them across the underside of the main body of the building.

More to come.

Got all the machinery laid out today, as well as most of the lighting I'll need.

Also tidied up all the existing Refineries to match.

Task for today is to get all the resources run in to the factory.

Conveniently nearby to the right-hand leg of the factory, I need a small amount of Copper Ore and a decent amount of Iron Ore.

Off to the left-hand side, we have an abundance of Crude Oil. We only need an impure node, though. Plus, a little Water.

Over on the opposite side of the factory, there's a couple nearby Coal nodes we can pull from.

And Sulfur, we already have laid out, in the big geyser patch in the distance. Just needed to pull a belt over from one of the unused Miners, along this big ol' length of tubeway.

First item for today was to finish the new sections of tubeway. I.E. tear down the blueprint scaffolding, and place support framing.

With that done, I had a look and this is basically the only segment of straight tubeway pieces that can serve as an entrance to our new factory. I decided to only consider the lower of the 2 new tubeways, so that I could leave all the nice foliage around on the upper segment.

Tube entrances are spliced in.

Now, from this spot, I'll need to gain some height so the building can clear that big jut of cliff out there. So, that establishes about 4 foundations of distance between the tubeway and the entrance to the factory: 1 flat up against the tubeway, 2 4m inclines, and another flat in front of the door.

That should be the rough shape we need.

I decided to re-visit the concept I tried for the Frameworks factory: big-honkin'-foundation-sized features to make up the walls of the building, instead of just the thin-ass walls that don't have a whole lot of opportunity for detailing. As such, all these floors are oversized by 1-2 whole foundations, and these foundation pillars are all sitting in that additional space. It's possible I might downsize a thing or two, as I go, but really, I'll probably just live with some extra open space in the factory, if it comes to that.

This should cover all the floor plans I roughed-out last time.

The rest of my time I just spent getting creative with detailing. Should be able to build out machinery tomorrow.

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.