Source
r/SatisfactoryGame•
Demiga

Raw Resources or Intermediate Products?

Discussion

In the games I create, I usually create a HUB where I ship all my resources for advanced production - specifically computers+. Normally, I'll setup some dedicated bases to produce intermediate products for use in "end game" products. For example, Oil and Steel tech get their own bases where I produce everything on-site (if possible) and ship it back to my hub via trains or trucks depending on tech level.

I'm curious about what everyone else does. Do you do the same? i.e. setup dedicated bases with on-site production to ship back intermediate products to further produce end products? Or do you ship back raw resources to make all your products at your HUB? If the latter, do you set it up that way from the start? or do you produce things on-site and change your setup once you unlock a specific tech level?

I'm preparing to start a new game for the next update, and I'd like to see what others are doing during their tech-up phase.

Posted Dec 15, 2019, 6:00 AM UTC

320
n3rding•

I'm currently at the top tier have a huge mess of a base and now in the process of ripping everything down To build a huge train yard and mega tower to build everything in one place from raw, using the fastest belts, I'll probably get the lower tier stuff completed before the update and then may wait as they mentioned that they may be rebalancing.. or may just go ahead and make sure there is space to expand if needed.. but the aim will be to saturate the fastest belts where possible.

I think you have to plan a little for rebuilding as the supporting tech gets better and faster..

2
skribsbb•

Either we're both right or we're both wrong, but that's exactly what I was thinking. The more I build early on, the more I have to tear down.

2
n3rding•

I think the only thing you can do is try to build is in a way to.make it easy to upgrade, although without knowing the roadmap that's almost an impossible task!

2
skribsbb•

For right now, the highest belts we can get are Mk. 5. And the Mk. 4 are expensive, and I've only unlocked Mk. 3.

I see it as very likely I'd keep the Mk. 5 belts for a while, at least until the update. I don't think I'd keep Mk. 3 belts for that long, so I don't want to build an infrastructure with them.

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n3rding•

MK4 aren't too bad, it's a relatively small factory requirement, just put in a load of containers and store them up, I've been using them forever and don't use anything else. Mk5 is more work just because the component parts are far from each other.. but that's why I think you are better transporting to one location, tiering up becomes easy then!

Mk6 are much more expensive and will currently give you 900/min, I might build space for that capacity but update 3 could change the numbers anyway..

2
thegroundbelowme•

The thing is, I wound up keeping Mk 3 belts for the longest, as getting Mk 3 belts happens around the same time as unlocking oil, manufacturers, and Mk 2 Miners, plus you'll probably be getting a few good alt recipes by that point. So I wound up spending FOREVER at that level while I built oil production up, established a road network for trucks (& later, trains), upgraded all of my existing miners and smelting lines, revamped my production line for reinforced iron plates, alloy iron ingots, rotors, etc.

2
TheDkone•

Make sure you design/layout for Mk. 5/6 belt's. You will eventually need more throughput on your belts.

1
greeny-devhttps://satisfactory.greeny.dev•

I build dedicated bases that make end products.

There's no need to change setups when you reach a specific tech level, you can build your base so that it can be expanded and not worry about rebuilding.

2
DumbLittlChicken•

Im a fan of the main bus systems. I currently just restarted to go for a new plan. My old world had 250 hours r.i.p. the bus i set up is big enough for 44 conveyors wide. (I like to watch everything move) i bring in all raw materials (or refined ones like copper, iron, steel so that i dont have smelters at home base) then just route however many lines i need to produce a material. Each item im making gets its own dedicated line unless its something i have extra of. If thats the case i pull from my production main bus thats the sane size but about 5 walls above the inbound main bus. Ill link a screenshot of my old layout in the morning.

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crudcrud•

In my playthrough it was just a bunch of intermediate factories like you mention. I had a cluster of factories in the south grassland, but they were mostly separate production lines with a few conveyors running between.

Oil, plastic and rubber was all separate in the western islands - initially connected via a truck route and converted to a train later on.

In Quartz mine in the cave I made silica and quartz crystals. Used both trucks and trains to connect it to others - with the most volume going by train through the cave and to the cliffside to be used as input alcad sheet factory on top of the cliff. Also used truck for silica and quartz for a couple other locations.

Aluminum/Alcad sheet production was separate on the clifftop (used train to bring in large volumes of silica from quartz mine and copper from desert mine), and then if I'm remembering properly making heat sinks and then radio control units on a tall building reaching down to the ground adjacent to where the alcad sheets were produced. I stopped at this point when I heard about the coming update, but was going to use either truck or train to bring the final radio control units back to base for expanding the temporary nascent turbomotor line which was last thing I was planning to finish prior to hearing about the coming update.

My grasslands area did make the higher end parts motors/computers/supercomputers, but lots of other parts built elsewhere.

I "mostly" had a separate facility in the southeast for steel, and made the heavy duty frames, steel pipe, reinforced pipe, -- most things steel -- there - and also had a wing of that plant making final product for ammunition line - although part of that ammunition production line was separate also (beacons produced in separate detached plant, and black powder in detached plant near the sulphur), so it was largely compartmentalized even though maybe not great distances apart.

This approach emphasizes logistics more, and moving more products around is a bit more of a pain than big central base (I think?) - but I kindof like the logistics part, and it lets me build in smaller chunks that seem to fit into the landscape better.

Knowing what I know now I'll probably be more organized in my next playthrough when the game releases, but I suspect I'll still try to follow a similar approach - but perhaps with some better organization, and maybe better taking advantage of some of the advantages of better organized conveyor lines in congested areas.

1
DemigaOP•

Yeah, this sounds like what I've done for the last 2 games I played and made it to end tech. I definitely understand the logistics part - this last go around, I "overbuilt" by a lot: i.e. in my steel base, I built enough foundries to accommodate T3 coal/Iron miners even though I was only using T1 at the time. I would just set them up as ready to connect to the primary input line but wait until I unlocked the higher techs. I would try to do this where possible with other factories too - but unless you really take the time to research or look ahead, it's hard to fully plan what you need.

More time spent at the beginning, but I believe I really saved time in the end - I hate having to tear everything down and rebuild it so it can fit more factories, etc. I also hate spaghettification too, so I try to keep things more organized.

My issue is the train cars lol. They really need to let us attach a name tag to each car and to each freight container facility. Having to keep in my head what each car is loading/unloading for a 5 stop line is troublesome when you have 15 cars with different products going to different bases respectively. I also trap myself sometimes too by needing to add another train car but not being able to expand the station far enough cause Im up against a rock or a turn lol. It really makes it mental gymnastics when planning and future-proofing your train route.

1
crudcrud•

I also trap myself sometimes too by needing to add another train car but not being able to expand the station far enough cause Im up against a rock or a turn lol.

Agree on the trains. Based on what I've learned, I think I'm going to use more shorter point-to-point with trains rather than longer multi-stop loops. I had 3 stops of a 3 car train between my quartz/copper/aluminum plants - but probably 3 stops and 3-4 cars is probably the most I'll probably use because like you I'm finding I don't have enough long linear space to make the longer train stations, at least in places I want to put them. I had 4 or 5 cars on my first oil factory delivering rubber, plastic and fuel to my central area, but with the shorter point-to-point routes I realize don't need to setup double cars of the same material unless I have multiple dropoff points because for short routes the train is just moves faster than products can load into the station and faster than it can be produced.

In the train scheduler I hope they put a "pause" option so my trains don't have to run constantly so lot of shorter routes won't needlessly burn through alot of power on shorter routes when 1 run every 5 minutes might be sufficient.

For longer deliveries, I think I might build a switching station for final products that transfers finished goods from far across the map, and have one or two longer haul trains dedicated to doing that rather than having a big loop with lots of stops. Initially I had an idea of 10 or 15 car loop with lots of stations, but the size of stations needed for that just isn't practical imho, at least the way I'm building. So on my next game I'll probably aim for lots of shorter 2-3 stop routes with short trains; and then one or two long haul trains, maybe with a few more cars, moving finished products the full north/south or east-west dimension of the map as needed to deliver for final production. At least that seems like what I'll do.

I like trucks too, so if I can manage the fueling I'd like to keep them incorporated into the plan too as long as I can use them on routes where they don't cross paths so no risk of collision. The main issue I have with the trucks is that as you add more they can't share the same road, which hurts them compared to trains.

1
thegroundbelowme•

Something I just learned yesterday is that the Truck AIs use the same distance-based update limiting that all of the machines do. You know how when you get far away from a lift or belt, it looks like they're updating at about 1 frame per second? Well, turns out the AI for the vehicles does the same thing, which means that beyond a certain point, they'll just programmatically follow the path, rather than actually "driving" it. So no collisions, no overshooting turns (seriously, does the AI not understand inertia?), no traffic snarls... just as long as the trucks are far enough away from you to stop being rendered in real time. So if you're trucking materials to your base, what you really want to do is truck them in to a depot that's a couple hundred meters from your actual base, then use belts to move those materials from the depot into your base proper. This obviously is most future-proof if you can define one single hard "edge" to your base that you'll never build out, and put the truck depot in that direction, so you don't have to worry about expansion taking you into the truck's real-time rendering range.

Also, I've found that the best solution to limited space problems is to basically build a suspended monorail dozens of meters above the ground. As you said, I almost always find myself butting up against a cliff or ledge or rock formation or something. So what I've started doing is identifying those limiting factors first and then building relative to those hard limits.

For example, if I'm trying to build a station right up against a cliff base, the very first foundation I'll lay will be right up along the edge of the cliff. That way, every other direction is open to expansion. If the space really opens up at the top of the cliff, I'll stack foundation from the base of the cliff all the way up to the top - this guarantees that the top and bottom parts are on the same foundation grid - build my actual train stop at the top, and then run conveyor lifts down the side of the stacked up foundation to load/unload materials. Surround those lifts with the corrugated steel walls, and they look just like a real industrial cargo lift :)

The other part of my planning process is really just expanding on the idea in the previous paragraph - I'll stack, build, and expand my foundation (always building relative to those hard limits we discovered in the first step so as to stay on the same grid) until I've got an unimpeded straight line in at least one direction that's tangential to the limiting points of the landscape. This is hard to explain verbally, but easy to understand visually, so I'll just show you a pic. Green is landscape, black is the edge of my station. https://imgur.com/iqwloe6

1
crudcrud•

ou know how when you get far away from a lift or belt, it looks like they're updating at about 1 frame per second? Well, turns out the AI for the vehicles does the same thing, which means that beyond a certain point, they'll just programmatically follow the path, rather than actually "driving" it. So no collisions, no overshooting turns (seriously, does the AI not understand inertia?), no traffic snarls... just as long as the trucks are far enough away from you to stop being rendered in real time.

I don't know. I've had trucks that run fine and without issue independently, then collide with each other far away from my base (or where I was located) when both running at the same time.

I recall one instance of sitting at a truck station at my main base waiting for the trucks to return so I could turn them off, and on the map one just stopped moving. I normally would only send one at a time, but this time I sent both to different truckstops in my quartz mine (one silica, one quartz crystal) hoping things would work out, and it seems they ran into each other at the mine at a place where their paths could cross. One kept going and returned, but the other one was sitting on it's head when I got there to rescue and reenable it.

Maybe it was something else weird that happened, but it seemed like collision was the only thing that made sense based on where it happened. It was in the middle of bid sandy area without anything else around - but in a location where their paths overlapped. (one was pulling out from the cave and heading back to the base after filling up with quartz crystal - it was already loaded when I rescued it - and the other seems to have been pulling into another truck stop to pick up silica.)

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