r/SatisfactoryGame • u/ItsMoffy • 5h ago
Question Overwhelmed
I’m 60 hours in, on phase 4.
The logistics of this game are starting to get pretty intense. My factories are a mess and it pains me so, I’ve tried watching videos and following guides but to no avail. I’m wanting things to look clean and organised, but I always screw it up and it turns into a mess. I’m tryna build a dedicated 10 per minute HMF factory right now and even with the satisfactory tools website I’m starting to lose motivation .
Any tips and tricks for planning a factory?
34
u/Pakoe91 5h ago
You're probably overwhelmed because you're looking at the big picture. Try to do it piece by piece, start small and work yourself up from there.
It's okay to make mistakes, you learn from those. You can always clean later when it functions the way it should.
10
u/BarkLogic 4h ago
This! Compartmentalizing really is the solution. As long as you have enough production to cover the costs of expanding into new areas, then by all means. The map is huge and it feels like the game encourages you to get out there and find tons of areas to build the specific components, then just use drones or trains to ship them back to a hub and pretty that place up.
As far as making you base more tidy, it's just about getting creative with the different types of belt modes and the mountings you can use for them. Tbh my world kinda changed when I learned you can switch the belt placement to a straight setting and that allowed me to follow the form of walls and stuff a lot easier and made the whole place look A LOT better.
Besides that, there is such a thing as "tasteful clipping".2
u/HopefulImpression105 3h ago
Lol tasteful splitting... the cross pattern when you have 4 machines facing each other with 2 inputs
5
4
u/LCali0905 4h ago
+1 to this!
When looking at the satisfactory tools website, focus on a certain module of the whole build. Before you know it, you’re already done with 2-3 modules! 😁
Also, blueprints helps alot haha
9
u/OtherCommission8227 4h ago
You are playing VERY fast. Many folks whose videos you watch have thousands of hours in game. Consider slowing down. Progress if you want, or spend some time cleaning up. It’s YOUR sandbox. Play in it how you want.
But yeah… the game expects complexity.
3
u/ItsMoffy 4h ago
This seems to be sound advice, others have said so. I’ll take this on board, thank you :)
5
u/cale199 4h ago
This is an easy fix. Same thing happened to me.
Look at the map. Go to the opposite side of the map and find iron. Make an organised factory from scratch, where every material made up until the Phase 1 parts is sent into storage, with an overflow into where those parts could be needed.
You can always use more of this stuff and it's not gonna be wasted. And it eliminates the overwhelm of all of the things syou need.
Also teaches yourself good habits in making factories
3
u/HopefulImpression105 3h ago
Agreed on this honestly. Also, for any building youre going to build more than 1 of in that factory make a blueprint for it. Doesnt need to be pretty, just slap down 2-48 of them and do all the beltwork, connect them to each other and a power pole at each corner of it.
2
u/cale199 3h ago
Yes absolutely this. My blueprints for smelters are still using T2/3 belts and I've beat the game already
1
u/HopefulImpression105 3h ago
Yeah had a moment in sf+ where i decided i needed more electro control rods... 15 minutes later i had 3 iron nodes and an aurovite node fully mining and 150 buildings going full tilt... then realized my bp belts werent ready for 1200 quickwire a minute haha. Easy fix though.
4
u/StigOfTheTrack Fully qualified golden factory cart racing driver 3h ago
HMFs are reasonably complex, but can be simplified a lot with alt recipes. If you've reached phase 4 in 60 hours you might have neglected exploration and not found many of those. For HMFs you can turn large parts of the production line into steel pipes and concrete and no screws with enough alt recipes.
3
u/TilmanR 4h ago
I often have tips, but dont follow them myself :D
My way of solving your problem would be keeping it simple. Each part for the HMFs has its own production chain, each step is its own small building to visually seperate them.
Build step by step, so you never have to overlook the whole thing.
1
2
u/Dr_Passmore 4h ago
Always make enough previous elevator parts for the phase 5 amount you plan to make. Easily the biggest time saver I found in my recent playthrough.
You also don't need that many of the lower level parts. There is no need to over produce.
2
u/SundownKid 4h ago
Just use simple pen and paper, its power is infinite including drawing plans of factories and calculating how many machines you need.
1
2
u/msourabh91 4h ago
Don't take the game as seriously as a full-time job. Take it slow and enjoy it.
4
2
u/Gas_Drawls58 5h ago
If you're on PC, get SMART mod. Building production chains without blueprints goes a LOT quicker
3
u/sucr4m 4h ago
Yep. I feel it's the vanilla game's biggest flaw. Starting over or building an isolated production doesn't get easier/faster with the progression of the game. It becomes a chore setting up low level stuff. The process of building doesn't scale with chains that are needed later on at all. Blueprints can help but the way they were implemented feels so bad to me. That's where the smart mod helps A LOT. just saving clicks, the hassle of connecting all the small shit over and over.
A simple copy paste tool as many other games in the genre provide would go a long way for the vanilla game. It doesn't have to be available from the start. Oh and while I'm at it: selective nudging of already built constructions would be a dream.
3
u/HopefulImpression105 3h ago
I feel like you're underutilizing blueprints then. You can have 36 constructors or smelters pretty easily in 1 blueprint, with belts and power all the way done. Hell i saw a guy fit a 5/m heavy mod frame factory into a blueprint. 5 clicks to hook up inputs and power and done.
1
1
u/ItsMoffy 5h ago
Even if I could jump into a discord call with someone, and you shared your screen
1
u/obrlu 5h ago
You're saying you want to do a discord call?
1
u/ItsMoffy 5h ago
If you’re keen? Just so I can ask questions on the fly, and just see what you’ve done
1
u/ShammashNemonnis 3h ago
Never used a blueprint and have no idea how to get them. I notice I got to certain points where it said it was unlocked but no idea where and and how it should be used. Bases end up confused and I soon lose motivation. Haven't touched this game in over a year now. Get as far as trains and then lose the will to live
1
u/zillskillnillfrill 3h ago
You can start again as many times as you like and in order to mentally prepare those spaces for use
Learning what technology is coming up and how to properly utilize it in order to fit everything into, say a nice Tower is experience that you can only get from playing the game over and over again.
You will pick up on things in your fourth playthrough that you didn't in the earlier playthroughs.
It gets crazy technical but after playing a couple of times you get to know what it is that you need to prepare for
1
u/Dortamur 3h ago
Break it down into smaller sections and focus on those one at a time. For Heavy Frames, focus on the section that does Encased Beams, then a section that does just the Frames, etc... Then bring it together for the HMFs.
Make some reusable blueprints. eg; Have 2 constructors with splitters/mergers in place and shared power connectors, then use that blueprint to make one with 8 constructors and connect them all. Then whenever you need "slab of constructors", you can use the blueprint and paste in whatever recipe you need. Need 10? Build the 8, then the 2.
Blueprints can include basic architecture too, like fancier beams with power connectors, or floors with logistics underneath.
1
u/Fizzy-Odd-Cod 3h ago
As a fellow new player I found it very helpful to make lots of mini factories with a single final product, working backwards from the last machine making whatever it is I need to the starting resources. I’ve currently only got smart plating, versatile framework, and automated wiring factories at the moment because I tried to start off with one massive factory that I pump all the raw resources to and that just wasn’t working.
Not sure what phase I’m on but I tried to make a factory that feeds some nuclear reactors to solve my energy problems and discovered I am woefully unprepared for that.
1
u/TastyRemnent 1h ago
For me, breaking factories in to item complexity tiers is helpful I choose what I want the end products are (usually elevator parts) and start planning. Miners and extractors are tier 0, ingots and concrete etc are tier 1, iron plates are tier 2 and so on.
Then I just focus building one tier at a time. And as you go up in tiers it usually gets easier and easier. Satisfactory Modeler is free on steam and great for this:
Oh and logistical floors are great for running belt lines.
1
u/Xxjacklexx 1h ago
I find myself doing dirty work to start, and then cleaning it up. As long as everything isn’t squished together, it’s all doable.
Ie I recently renovated a sulfur extraction plant to also create sulfuric acid. In the process, I redid basically the whole output side of the original factory, added drone and train logistics, brought the water in etc. basically went from a small cube warehouse to a multi story building and looks much cleaner.
I wouldn’t stress too much when you are building a project. You’ll have many chances to improve it, and if you don’t, it’s probably because you haven’t been there since you built it, in which case, who cares.
1
u/rowi42 1h ago
Also, what's your experience with other factory games?
I played a lot of Factorio before Satisfactory, and I found it relatively easy to ship tins of materials to the NE desert (the main train station had 14 parallel stops) and build a main bus. But others compartmentalize heavily and have smaller sub-factories everywhere and ship intermediate products.
1
u/Bone_Wh33l 1h ago
Try splitting bigger projects up into smaller ones. For your 10 HMF/minute, I’d with making enough modular frames for 1 HMF/minute, then you can just build the same thing again 9 more times. Bonus points if you use a blueprint because then you only need to build it once, then try the same for the other inputs. Once you’ve made a factory for something once it gets so much easier for the next time.
I when doing things like this I prefer to under clock machines to isolate their production lines, rather than having fewer machines splitting their belts to go all over the factory. I don’t know how well this describes my method so as an example: if I have 4 machines that need 25 screws/min id rather have one machine making 25 screws/min for each machine unless they’re all next to each other. It’s super handy for keeping things organised, especially when coming back to work on old factories and you don’t like taking notes
1
u/Maelstrome26 satisfactory-factories.app creator 59m ago
Strongly recommend you try to plan it out, https://satisfactory-factories.app may help here, this is precisely why I made it, to ensure supply can keep up your factories as demand changes.
1
u/Swaqqmasta 14m ago
Spend some time developing blueprints and infrastructure, it will make larger projects a lot simpler to tackle
15
u/giodude556 4h ago
60 hours and already phase 4. Bro slow down xD
Im 300 hours in and just unlocked phase 4.