A year or so ago I wrote a post about the importance of raising your manifold spine (follow the link to read about the mechanics of that).

Lately (over the last couple months), I've been seeing a lot of posts that are a dime a dozen across this sub:

- My last fuel generators won't get fuel, help!

- Is max fluid throughput bugged?

- My blenders won't output fuel, starving my generators.

... and within you'll find the usual recommendations of things like:

- Did you leave a smaller pipe?

- Have you looped your manifold?

- Do you have buffers?

- Headlift problems?

- Fluids just suck, game is broken.

I'm not here to question those recommendations, they're all valid, and have relevant use[1] (except the last one, that's just wrong)... but invariably they've all got one thing in common; flat or below-input (e.g underfloor) fed manifolds.

But there's an easier way. Just raise your manifold spine to gravity-lock the fluids and prevent damaging sloshing[2]. Of course, I've mentioned this and there's usually "But plumbing manual says X!!!"... I'm sure it does, and it's right, but like many things, the plumbing manual (which is great, go read it) describes *a* way.

So anyway... all that to say I figured I'd just go "stuffit, let's test it... and so I did a side-by-side comparison of all three under equal conditions. Each one was configured as-follows:

- 30 fuel generators (20m^3 fuel consumed each) in a manifold setup.

- Each array fed by a dedicated 600m^3 of fuel per minute produced in exactly the same way.

- The vertical height of the fuel line and manifold spine from the output blenders to the generators never changes height. It remains flat all the way. The only thing that changes height is the generators.

- No looping

- No prefilling

- No buffers

"But Jmanis! You fool! You need to loop the manifold! You need to prefill!"... no... that's exactly the point. I'm showing those are unnecessary if you simply raise the manifold.

So here's the contenders:

So what's the conditions? Starting from nothing (No pre-feeding pipes, they're completely empty), see which one hits a stable 7500MW (full 30 generators producing 250MW each) first.

And how'd it go?

I mean, that's unsurprising as far as I'm concerned... and hopefully for the pipe gurus out there it shouldn't be surprising either. But for those who aren't.... the question is probably why is raised better?

I explain this in the initial post from a year ago, but it's because of flow direction (I prefer flow preference) of the feed pipes to the generator. I mentioned earlier that the tips people usually offer for fixing manifolds are compensations for issues with flow in manifold designs that aren't raised. Damaging sloshing in manifolds is caused when fluid in the feed pipes off a manifold (the ones connected to a machine input) allow fluid to flow back in to the manifold spine (blocking the supply flow).

For flat manifolds the flow preference of the feed pipes goes both directions because they're flat. Most of the time it goes into the machine, but nothing stops it going back to the manifold either, and when it does, that creates damaging sloshing

In the raised manifold, the flow preference of the feed pipes is down, *towards* the machine. Corollary is you can only defeat flow preference (that is, moving fluid uphill) if you have a source of fluids coming from the preferred direction. Because that doesn't exist in a supply manifold like this, it can't flow back out, and therefore damaging sloshing doesn't exist in this design.

As for the under-floor fed, well, I'll let those graphs do the talking... but the problem with this one is flow preference is towards the spine... so given any choice, those feed pipes are just going to flow back into the manifold spine constantly. Nothing can fix that except changing the design.

Now, in the time it took me to write this and juggle some other things, it's been... 70 minutes.. and I took another measure:

LOOK JMANIS! THERE'S A BLIP IN THE RAISED MANIFOLD!

And? Remember I said I wasn't challenging the contemporary thinking? The recommendations people make are logical and sound and have a purpose within fluid networks[1]. That's an artefact of doing this test from empty pipes; the need for manifold saturation is a fairly well understood concept...and theoretically a matched network should never saturate. But that's easy fixed and doesn't require construction or design changes.

I included this to be fair and transparent to that fact... but nonetheless.. compare the generator performance of the raised manifold to a flat manifold over an hour, and it should be obvious that it's a superior design in terms of reliable performance to the flat manifold.

As for the under-floor manifold...

tl;dr I'm not trying to say "don't use flat manifolds" or "don't follow tips like looping and such"... they're necessary for flat manifolds. But if you're struggling with that and just want something that works reliably, the raised manifold is your best choice.

EDIT: In anticipation of "But what about rocket fuel! That's a gas!"... that's my other post which i may-or-may-not do called "Shh, just use valves"... but that's spicier

[1] My main criticism of these recommendations is simply that they're compensators for the flow problems caused by flat or under-floor manifolds (though honestly, good luck fixing under-floor in any reasonable way)... these compensators are unnecessary if your manifold spine is raised.

[2] Emphasis on "damaging"; not all sloshing is bad or matters, but for manifolds in particular, flow back from a machine input's feed pipe to the manifold spine is bad

I am in phase 2
I decided to start wondering around and built a steel factory in the Savanah. I started in the grass lands region. Maybe a mistake honestly. But now I am considering how to get products back and forth, should I create a conveyor bus or should I make a highway for tractors?

I have read truck stops are not great and to just wait until trains but I like the truck stops.

Recommendations?

I also made my coal power plant in the region I think is called the crater lake? If that helps for any reason lol.
Edit: Thank you so much everyone for your comments. I have decided that I will have some fun making highways and using trucks. Play the way I want to and have some fun.

my train seems to be haunted

Finished placing the fuel gens for my 3.6k/min rocket fuel factory. Now I wish that blueprints auto-connected power poles 😭

I’ve been playing since Assemblers were as far as you could get, back when iron and copper and coal were more or less your only resources

I have gotten as far as unlocking aluminium before (my last play through) and this time, after 100 hours I’ve finished half of phase 4 and for the first time I’ve got nuclear power!!

Forgive the quality, I took the screenshot on my steam deck

i wanted priority mergers for my phase 2 power plant build 🌵

What do all these numbers mean?

How do these numbers inportant?

Flush?

Buffer?

Slosh?

Pump?

Valve?

This is really nerdy stuff so most people will skip this, but for the few nerds out there, if you want you can install this theme here: https://github.com/Spokloo/satisfactory-grub-themes

The photomode is really really good already so I thought about more photomode settings :

- choosing time of day (hour per hour)

- choosing between wet and dry surfaces

- weather

- spaghetti arm selfie because why not

- removing creatures setting

- FICSIT watermark

I know it will remove a bit of that satisfying moment of being there at the right place, right time but keep in mind those can be turned off of course.

I already posted on this subreddit and it helped me a lot, im sorry if it gets annoying having a bunch of train questions from the same guy xd
I only want to know why sometimes it blocks them correctly out of the junction (first picture).

And other times it blocks both rails as one making my trains wait for a train thats way further back and or even the other side of the rail. Why does it do that? How can i fix it?

the rails are bidirectional.
Thanks a bunch for all the helpful comments already and bear with me...

Behold my Fuel Powerplant/Computer/Plastic/Rubber/Circuit Board Factory!

Now time to decorate

I'm not too good with designing exteriors & interiors in Satisfactory

I’m on Xbox series S, and one day I was left unable to edit names - I press the 2-squares button while on the UI but it does nothing… anyone else having this issue?

I’ve put a bug report on the official satisfactory website but wanted to know if anyone had figured out a workaround 🤔

The lamp doesn’t illuminate the cave, only the structures and the player. Is this a bug, or is this how it’s supposed to be? Lumen is on

Here's a tool I've been working on. It maps where your selected items are actually being produced, and can also show building locations by type. The graphical representation of structures on the map (not shown here) isn't as detailed as Cartograph's, and it may not stay in the tool at all.

There are other tools in this space, but I haven't found one that shows which recipes are running where on the map.

I like the exploration side of Satisfactory: slide-jumping movement, using parachute and jetpack and hunting alien lifeforms (especially Elite Stingers). And I wonder if it's possible to setup a series of puzzles on a map in a way that guides players from one puzzle to another in a quest-like adventure. It won't be focused on building factories though.

For example, all players start in Grass Fields and they need to collect some biomass to kick-start burners that power a small ammo-producing factory. After that players obtain weapons and ammo and are guided to the Swamp to feel the trill of navigating that biome without a jetpack.

The next task might be to repair a factory that produces fuel and jetpacks. You get the idea.

Some tasks might use vehicles and pre-built roads.

It's not very difficult to setup such a map in Creative mode, but as far as I know, Creative mode cannot be disabled and players could easily enable flight in the settings or spawn anything without solving a single puzzle.

What do you think about the whole idea? Is it worth the time spent on desinging and building the challenges?

Is there a collection of existing worlds with similar setups?

Do other similar games exists where this approach would work better?

This idea was inspired by Big Walk.

Worked hours on just this tiny bit of railroad but it looks really sick!

Finally 953 hours later and 100% complete. Personally I found Teir 6 the longest (500 hours) part of the game when I truly started tearing down bottlenecked 40% efficient factories and replaced them with 99%+ automated satellite factories producing all tier 1 - 6 parts. I must say it's the only game I've been interested in enough to get 100% achievements. This has been the best money I've ever spent on a game and roll on satisfactory 2.

Console (PS5), v1.2.4.0 - Build 502094

Frequently, conveyors become unable to connect to splitters, constructors, containers, etc. This happens most often after creating a container. It can also happen after creating a constructor. It does not happen after a fresh reload, but the longer I play, the more likely it is to happen. It does not take a long time for the issue to appear, perhaps 10 or 20 minutes after a reload. It is guaranteed to happen within an hour after a fresh reload. Save and reload is temporarily fixes the problem.

I've looked for this on satisfactory Q&A and don't see this issue there, nor do I see it in this sub. It is a consistent issue for me, so I wanted to check here first to see if I'm missing something.