Infinite vs limited ore

[Idlemind]

What do you guys prefer... for a long time the idea of moving miners around or having to go find a new patch of ore turned me off this game. I've played the ♥♥♥♥ out of satisfactory but I am as far in that game as possible with respect to EA content. The infinite nodes made things easier.

Do you think having to find new ores is a chore or an engaging part of the game? I guess you can still turtle up and have ore processing on site...

[Evilsod]

It tended to be that once the game reached the point of my first few nodes of resources mining out, I'd also hit the point of having to constantly loop around my expanding pollution cloud to clear out biters and I'd start to get a bit bored with that run through. In my 260 hours on this game, only one playthrough I've actually dipped into infinite technology.

I was never very good at creating my production in such a way that it made use of trains to deliver ore (or handled smelting on site).
Having to create a transport infrastructure so you can easily maintain your factory by just expanding your mining facilities... that is also part of the challenge, and one I've never really managed to overcome.

That said, my latest game now we're on 1.0, I've modded the game for the first time and added in the 'Angels Infinite Ore' mod as one of them. It's not the same as Satisfactory's infinite resources, but maybe it'll take some of the pressure off of constant expansion.

[Dakota]

Personally I'm not so big on exploration, and when you're doing more than just rocket launching and you need like a thousand drills per material to feed your factory, especially with copper trying to get processing unit supply chains up and running, it's kinda nuts the amount of logistics setup required to supply that and by the time you finish setting it up you know you'll need to do another rather soon. It is somewhat distracting from the experience of building up all the processing, and on maps where resources are very spread out much of the time will simply be spent riding on a train out to the outposts to build more rather than planning out the factory.

For this reason I've found that, past the rocket launch, I don't particularly like default ore settings and would rather prefer more resource rich and larger patches so that my supply can be more centralized.

[Nailfoot]

I prefer having to go get new ores. It gives me a valid reason to expand.

In my current game, I set the richness TOO HIGH and ore patches right next to my starting area have 40+ million. The game is too easy and I will never need to expand beyond this initial area. I will simply get too bored of this map since I am not challenged to constantly claim new territory.

[Fel]

Rather than miners that produce less and less as you go I prefer a constant amount and then nothing with a warning on the miner itself to remind me of it.
I find it hard to make a factory when the amount of ores per second, the most basic thing that everything relies on, is constantly changing and going down by small, nearly unnoticeable amounts that really stack after a while.

EDIT: oh, you meant infinite not like oil...
I still prefer finite because it gives me reasons to continue playing rather than just wait forever (which is one of the weak points of satisfactory for me).

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by Dakota:

... by the time you finish setting it up you know you'll need to do another rather soon. ....

I used to "smelt on site", which meant that I was always tearing down miners, electric furnaces, and the associated stuff.

That was a long time ago.

Now, I smelt centrally. So all I need to do is add in another ore patch to my train network. It is pretty easy to plop down a new train loading station, and a few hundred miners on a new ore patch. Then you just route a train or three to the new patch.

As long as you have a modest train network and a good stageing area at the central furnaces, you can expand very easy.

[Evilsod]

Originally posted by Nailfoot:

Originally posted by Dakota:

... by the time you finish setting it up you know you'll need to do another rather soon. ....

I used to "smelt on site", which meant that I was always tearing down miners, electric furnaces, and the associated stuff.

That was a long time ago.

Now, I smelt centrally. So all I need to do is add in another ore patch to my train network. It is pretty easy to plop down a new train loading station, and a few hundred miners on a new ore patch. Then you just route a train or three to the new patch.

As long as you have a modest train network and a good staging area at the central furnaces, you can expand very easy.

That's a good point actually, localised smelting gives you extra to set up and tear down.

Setting up a large train network is one thing I've never got to grips with.
I see some youtube videos with beautiful blueprinted sections for train tracks that allow multiple things to travel and cross on the same line. Mine mostly just end up with a haphazard track and a few signals to manage maybe a handful of destinations at best.

[Dakota]

Originally posted by Nailfoot:

Originally posted by Dakota:

... by the time you finish setting it up you know you'll need to do another rather soon. ....

I used to "smelt on site", which meant that I was always tearing down miners, electric furnaces, and the associated stuff.

That was a long time ago.

Now, I smelt centrally. So all I need to do is add in another ore patch to my train network. It is pretty easy to plop down a new train loading station, and a few hundred miners on a new ore patch. Then you just route a train or three to the new patch.

As long as you have a modest train network and a good stageing area at the central furnaces, you can expand very easy.

That's what I have setup is a central smelting area where trains come in, dump their cargo in some passive provider chests, and thousands of logistics bots split it between my smelting array that's setup to request ore for iron or copper depending on what is lower at the time that goes into the smelter's passive providers so make sure they don't just overflow storage if they aren't needed.

Last time I was playing was with a friend who had taken it upon himself to setup the trains in the early game and had setup on site smelting, by late game there were near constant train rail blocks, stuff not getting where it needs to go, and my centralized smelter desperately trying to carry iron plate to the main assembly base.

Would have been much more comfy to have setup a proper railway system that was more standardized from the start, but much of it was set out with the idea of simple A to B back and forth trainstops that were never meant to connect, so even with signals it couldn't save the one lane rails everywhere.


Aside from the logistics nightmare of introducing more trains onto our already godawful network, there was the case of setting up defensive positions at each outpost. For a long time my friend would just chain roboports from the central base out to every little outpost, but in time this became a nightmare for the logistics system coupled with a few too many active provider chests and my friend's grand idea of placing storage chests in his outposts that led to bots flying around all over the map into dangerous area or far off lands with little charging to move things around so you'd spend upwards of 10 minutes waiting on a logistics request. Anyway, the main annoyance was simply expanding outposts in that way meant that each new mine would mean more stress on the logistics and construction grid and further and further expansion away from the central base meant more and more walking down rail lines trying to fix problems and figure out backup in other places.




TLDR: I made a nightmare factory with a friend of mine due to very little combined planning and future planning that is constantly choked for every material and demands my attention at every intersection which sapped my will to expand.

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by Evilsod:

...

That's a good point actually, localised smelting gives you extra to set up and tear down.

Setting up a large train network is one thing I've never got to grips with.
I see some youtube videos with beautiful blueprinted sections for train tracks that allow multiple things to travel and cross on the same line. Mine mostly just end up with a haphazard track and a few signals to manage maybe a handful of destinations at best.

Trains make this game what it is!

Also, having to constantly go out and get new ore is very easy using a train network. It would be virtually impossible if you relied on belts. Infinite ore allows you to use only belts as you don't need to go get patches that are far away.

I have two blue print books dedicated just to trains: One is for double rails and all associated junctions, round-a-bouts, cross tracks, train stations, staging areas, parking lots, construction trains, supply trains, etc.

The other is a quadruple version of everything.

They go together like puzzle pieces, and I can just line them up and place them down. They always align correctly and I don't have to "figure out" how I want to work my train system. The system is based on the grid made by large power poles stretched to maximum length. I also run red and green data lines so I can make a smart factory without needing to run hundreds of data cable lengths manually...

[Evilsod]

Originally posted by Nailfoot:

Trains make this game what it is!

Indeed!

As I say, I have used them, but I've never managed to scale them up to work on dozens of lines and destinations with neat grids and intersections.
That is a whole other house of cards (checkmate).

[VsTheWall]

I think a mix of the two would be preferable. Have limited resources in a large patch around the spawn and infinite resources after a fair distance away from your start pos would be sweet. Gives you a good reason to expand without being strenuous while also giving you a reason to hit up the smaller nodes along the way.

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by Randy the Rando:

I think a mix of the two would be preferable. Have limited resources in a large patch around the spawn and infinite resources after a fair distance away from your start pos would be sweet. Gives you a good reason to expand without being strenuous while also giving you a reason to hit up the smaller nodes along the way.

Vanilla simulates this very well. The further you go, the richer the ore gets. You never hit an infinite patch, but when you get patches that are 50-100 million or more, it might as well be. Especially once you get a high number of miner productivity bonus.

The ore is so dense, you HAVE to mine multiple ore patches because you simply cannot get enough miners on one patch to mine the ore fast enough.