Satisfactory
Satisfactory, the next impending game that's got my excited bits ... excited.
A 3d Factorio, in first person perspective, with added awesome.
Funky trailer:
... and a short compilation of videos from alpha testers.
The game would appear to have great scale.
Note that for some corporate reasons that I can't be bothered to get into the publisher has pulled out from releasing on Steam and will instead be available on Epic, which I have not used before.
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
Early access scares me, so you'll have to let me know how it is.
Will do
I managed to get an alpha test key for this weekend too which is a bit of a lottery I understand so not too many have one. Not something I normally go for - I only signed up to get the newsletter
Won't be using it though as I'm in the throes of getting my house extended and renovated atm so am moving in with friends this weekend, so gametime is restricted.
Will get some gametime though once the actual EA kicks off, and report back.
Epic store - that's a hard pass. I won't trust those guys with my financial data anytime soon.
Plus, their attitude stinks.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Played a good 40 or 50 hours now.
There are three maps available currently, I've only played the first. Have unlocked all research and automated manufacture of all available items.
The roadmap has two main content updates coming, the first in a couple of days by end of April, the second due end of May. I'll return to the game and start from scratch with each update.
Thoughts
- Slick playability, slick interface, slick design
- Immersion is excellent - makes you feel like you have been dropped into an alien world
- Placing manufacture machines and laying out conveyors and other logistical items is a little fiddly, it's nowhere near as easy as top-down Factorio, but to be expected as Satisfactory is FPS. They have tried to make it easier - you are given placement towers which you can climb to give you height so you can plan and lay out production chains more easily. Everything can be placed from a distance.
- Production chains are good and make sense. They aren't as complex as those in Factorio, but I think they are right for this game.
- Logistics are not as good nor as complex as Factorio. I often felt myself hankering after the Inserters, which were so central to Factorio. Satisfactory gives you conveyor belt splitters and mergers, but no Inserters whatsoever. I felt this impeded my ability to move items around as efficiently as I would like. I will state though that I have not spent much time optimising my layout and my production chains - there are likely clever ways to optimise that I haven't thought of. Looking at incredibly large and complex designs on youtube etc would deem efficient optimisation possible. My efforts are small and inefficient by comparison so far.
- What is available does work well. Assemblers and manufacturing machines are well designed and it is certainly satisfying to get a good layout and efficient production chain.
- The fact that it is FPS and 3d is utilised well. Stackable conveyors upwards to the nth degree are possible. Intertwining spaghetti layouts of conveyers in all directions becomes the norm. It is here where Satisfactory really excels, and is where it is markedly different from Factorio. It's great at the late game when you get a jet pack too.
- Progression is steady and feels right - advances and researching new items is challenging and takes time, but also is not obstructively difficult
- Moving items from great distance is very well designed. You have two differing transport trucks which you can research. You build a truck station at a discovered resource deposit which gives you a raw resource you need but might be a great distance from your main assemblies. You build a second truck station at your main assembly, then, like a macro, record your driving route to the resource truck station and return again. Set the truck to automated and it follows the recorded route , collecting the required resource. This works very well. It is aspects like this which really drives immersion, you sometimes have to travel and explore great distances through challenging landscape to find needed resource. Update #2 in May brings trains too.
- Exploration is good. You do need to venture out from your main assembly/starting area to find things, and in the earlier parts of the game to manually collect resource. You occasionally stumble across random things, like crashed spaceship blackboxes or harddrives for instance, which you can then research to find new stuff.
- There is alien fauna, but these are fairly sparse and don't pose much threat. I feel this needs to be worked on and improved - alien life should pose a threat to your presence on their planet, like in Factorio. This would give added playability to this game - you are provided with weaponry which advances through the research chain, so it would be nice to have increasing threat to use your advancing weaponry against. There are no station defences or gun turrets or the like - alien fauna does not threaten your infrastructure, they will generally just attack you. Running them down with transport is fun though.
- Relatively bug-free in present state. Slight issues with items being lost on save-games which is probably patched since I last played a few weeks ago.
My view is it is easily worth the £26.99 or $29.95 asking price. A ton of very good game here for the money.
Last edited by Timbuk2; 04-27-2019 at 09:06 AM.
How big are the maps? I was kinda hoping for an infinite world like Factorio.
Certainly big, but finite.
Factorio maps are procedurally generated, the 3 Satisfactory maps are designed and built.
I have not reached a boundary, but my exploration in the one map I've played is by no means extensive.
Regardless, it is certainly big enough that you don't feel at all constrained.
I'm sure further maps beyond the 3 available in EA so far will be provided in future updates. Modded maps would undoubtedly follow too if indeed modding is added in the future.
Update III is out now, which has brought me back to the game.
It is also due to be released on Steam shortly, rather than only being available on Epic.
Lots and lots of new content in both prior releases.
Still a superb game.
Just a heads up, there's not 3 maps, it's all one big lurvely world.
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
Update 4 is coming up. Includes gases and new types of oil, water and nitrogen nodes. They take a pressurizer and multiple extractors. Good stuff indeed.
Also it will break Tiers 7 and 8 because they're refactoring (heh) nuclear power and aluminium production.
Still enjoying the game a lot. I always have a new project or new ideas I want to try. Just finished a 48 hopper HUB so I'll always have the items I need in a central location. There's 300 hours in the save now, and I'm still at Tier 6, so the update won't ruin my setup too much.
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
Restarted again last week.
Have been trying to attain greater efficiency and higher volume outputs with proper layouts by the 5 Ps (proper planning prevents poor performance), mainly by using online planning tools.
This one is excellent:
https://satisfactory-calculator.com/...uction-planner
I always knew it as the 6 P's. You missed out the fourth P in my list (which ironically a synonym for sounds just like the letter P).
Not given this a go yet, I've just got hooked back into Crusader Kings II and would like to give Factorio another try later this year. Want to get Crusader Kings III for next Christmas (always think its best to wait a year for Paradox games to go through initial patches), but might give this a go later on. Is this better than Factorio do you think or just different?
See my review points in the post above from 27th April 2019. I point out differences to Factorio
That was written not far off two years ago now though, so the state of the game has improved quite a bit since then, with a lot of new content. And still in EA.
Given you have professed a love for logistics and chain production type games, this would be right up your street.
Yes I read you 27/4 one last year and re-read it this morning before replying. Sorry if I wasn't clear - I understand that this is more eg first person and from the sounds of it 3d than Factorio (sounds like you can build up as well as across), but much of what you wrote on 27/4 I took as what was missing compared to Factorio. Ie simpler logistics, production chains, manufacturing etc and the fauna not being especially developed.
I was curious if those aspects are more fleshed out now (or if you think they're appropriately enough fleshed out) and other than the 3d first person aspect whether its got eg new innovations that Factorio is missing?
Does sound right up my street indeed.
They're not nearly as bad as they used to be. Their last bunch of launches have been pretty smooth. Might not be a bad idea to wait still, but now it's for the extra content rather than the bug fixes.
On the actual topic of Satisfactory: I've played it, and it's fun. I think I'd recommend holding off though until the game is fully released - it's a good game, but when you hit the end of content, it just creates a void where you still want to play, but there's no point in doing anything because there's nothing to do with what your factory makes. Factorio solves this problem with the infinite research and expensive rocket launches, so there's still a point to continued expansion until your factory has grown too big and all-consuming for you to manage any more, but I have no idea what Satisfactory is going to do with it once the standard gameplay track is finished up.
The game also has a bunch of UI quirks that aren't bad really, but they make things a little more difficult and frustrating than they need to be. I'd expect them to get fixed before release though, once they're into the polish stage of development.
tl;dr: Plan to buy Satisfactory, but wait until early access is over.
There will be a story and an endgame to Satisfactory. You will be able to finish it not unlike Subnautica. SAM ore, the Assembly Project and items like Somersloops all will have a function as well.
In the Christmas Advent Calendar there were some teaser items like a Quantum Computer and some thing that has to do with teleportation.
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
Today I saw there's another Early Access game which is more like the classic Factorio called Dyson Sphere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh-voJ3TSt8
There's a whole lot of stuff that still needs to be added to it, so I'll definitely wait until grabbing that one. But it does look very promising indeed.
-----
I finished the HUB yesterday. A project which took me 2 months to finish, and another couple of weeks to iron out the glitches. I heard Rand likes logistics, and this project was all logistics. From manufacturing the items way down south, getting them loaded and unloaded on the train, managing 48 conveyor belts in 3 configurations on their way to the HUB and finally getting into the 48 bins from which I can grab whatever I like.
Spoiler:
Next up, converting 600 raw oil into power. Using the alternative recipes and MK2 pipes you can run 224 fuel generators of 1 pure raw oil node. Which will make me 33.6 GW. Which I'll need for the supercomputer, turbo motor and oscillator factories which are 3 projects in queue.
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
Jesus dude.
That set up goes waaaaaaaaaay beyond anything I've set up.
My set ups are mostly small and organic, just a few constructors and assemblers and manufactories to make enough of the next item to open up the next tier etc etc. As such the chains are difficult to scale up and hard to fine-tune. I guess you need to think large from the start.
I bow before your logistical prowess and uber-organisational skills.
Yeah, my first 3 playthroughs where exactly like that. Hell, my starter base where most of the items are manufactured is still a spaghetti mess
Jesus dude.
That set up goes waaaaaaaaaay beyond anything I've set up.
My set ups are mostly small and organic, just a few constructors and assemblers and manufactories to make enough of the next item to open up the next tier etc etc. As such the chains are difficult to scale up and hard to fine-tune. I guess you need to think large from the start.
I bow before your logistical prowess and uber-organisational skills.
The great thing about large projects in the game is that you can easily break them down to ever smaller tasks. And then simply get busy on a smaller task without worrying about the one after that. Plus, when you do screw up, you deconstruct and start over, since you never lose materials.
Add to that a lockdown and cancelation of all fun things
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
It's much nicer looking than mine. I started on a megabase at the top of that big plateau in the desert, but haven't really gotten very far. May post in-game pictures of it later, but that requires booting the game. I'm hiding most of the belts underneath a main foundation, with the factories on top so that it looks like a city full of buildings. That's the intent, anyways, I haven't really gotten around to fully building all the walls - I wanted a centralized storage structure and wandered just as I finished setting up all the train routes to bring in all the raw materials including aluminum & uranium.
Map:
Well, I don't want to alarm you, but if it's that featureless oddly texture less plateau area, chances are it will be filled in a future update. Also keep in mind aluminium and uranium will have their production lines adjusted in update 4. The idea is to have refineries mainly for oil based products. Which is why I am taking my sweet time with tiers 5 & 6 and spending whole evenings just decorating and painting.
Your train setup looks nice. I'm really struggling with junctions on trains. Mostly because I'm using 2 tracks for different directions, since somewhere in the future collisions will be a thing.
By the way, if you got 10 minutes to kill, check out Lets Game It Out, Satisfactory on youtube. He does things to this game. Bad things.
Last edited by Ziggy Stardust; 01-25-2021 at 06:59 PM.
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
As I understood it, the places that are dangerous are all blacked out on the in-game map. I think there's only a few parts in there to the north and southwest of that plateau (IIRC), and I've avoided building in there. Most of my buildings right now are around/over the lake that feeds the giant waterfall. If it does get significant changes, then I guess I'll be starting over when it happens. It took me a bit to figure out how I was organizing the megabase anyways, so I can do it faster next time. Not really looking forward to unlocking enough of the tech tree to start the permanent version of my base, though. I've done it three times now, and the biomass energy phase is a chore to get through.
Collisions will totally screw my train setup as-is. I was going to try single direction tracks like in Factorio, but just laying a single track is a pain in the ass, and I don't think I'm up for laying parallel tracks - it'd be way too much of a PITA. I'm always having to fight the track to get it to do what I want, and it's unreasonably difficult if I try to work it without foundations underneath. Though if I do have to redo things due to map changes, I can put some more effort into nice looking train tracks with the hypertubes hanging underneath.Your train setup looks nice. I'm really struggling with junctions on trains. Mostly because I'm using 2 tracks for different directions, since somewhere in the future collisions will be a thing.
Last edited by Wraith; 01-25-2021 at 08:06 PM.
Biomass sucks.
Train tracks took me ages to figure out. They're borked when hooking stations up, there's no getting around that. And I always have them on foundations 12 tiles apart (except in bends) like in the screenshot. I was also having lots of trouble getting curves in tracks aligned before I realised the bleeding obvious of first laying the straight tracks on either side and then simply connecting them. Only took me half a map
The huge downside with dual tracks is, whichever way you want to split, one of the tracks will need to go under or over the track that goes on straight. (well, you can cross them, but .... collisions)
Do you know about hypertube canons? Makes traveling the map a lot faster.
https://youtu.be/XGMvHh3v9Vo?t=1386
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
I know about them, and I've played with them a bit, but all my hypertubes are bidirectional, and they have issues often enough that I stopped using them for hypertube acceleration. Haven't really felt the need to be shot to the other side of the map yet for that aspect of them.
Forks in the track have always been a pain for me. Getting all three connected to each other just always takes me way too much time trying to get everything in the perfect position. I know there are rules about how many foundations are between the parts and where on each foundation the rails should end, but I can never remember what they all are.
In general I'd really like to see Factorio-like blueprints added to the game for faster building since I repeat a lot of the same things often enough. I know they've talked about it before, but it seems to be a "maybe" thing.
Blueprints are a good thing in Factorio and really helps you scale up. When I last played I downloaded a book of blueprints with t-junctions, roundabouts etc for rails that means you still need to design your own path but you're not having to reinvent the wheel every time you want a roundabout.
Given the scale of some of the things you guys are posting, I'm surprised to hear there are no blueprints yet.
There are mods that let you copy buildings, or repeat place tiles so you can lay down entire surfaces. But I always play unmodded myself, so I haven't used them.
My previous playthrough I started on a mega base, and there I might have used it, but I came to the conclusion mega bases aren't my thing. I set out to have smaller factories connected by railroads. It's easier to make small factories look good than to have to spruce up 54 tile wide walls.
And, I'm never in a hurry
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
t=9m50 is just lovely as well.
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
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