Need a planning tool, not a cookbook

[The Big Brzezinski]

Are there any online planning tools that calculate the production of an assembly line? All I can find are tools that do the inverse. I'm not interested in building what someone's script thinks my factory should look like to produce a thing. What I need is a projection of what a given assembly line will produce and consume.

[DaBa]

Originally posted by The Big Brzezinski:

What I need is a projection of what a given assembly line will produce and consume.

I'll give you a better deal than just a projection. The game tells you EXACTLY how much the buildings need and how much do they produce. All you need is a notepad to write it down.

[Xajar]

This might be what your looking for:
https://daniel2013.github.io/satisfactory/calculator

[Super Toaster]

The math really isn't hard, you can just grab a small calculator and a notepad

[Mr_MeGusta]

https://satisfactory-calculator.com/
Honestly all I use is the interactive map feature. All the math I just do in my head.

[The Big Brzezinski]

The math is certainly easy. Assembly lines are already physicalized algebra problems. Calculator and Notepad are very hand as well. The work CAN be done by hand. It's just a tremendous pain is all.

The problem is one of collation. It's easy enough to plan out a half dozen or so machines to make reinforced plates in our head. Things get considerably more complicated when you start fine tuning and adding more lines. It's a heck of a lot of clerical work both to plan out ahead of time and adjust after the fact. Digging through half a wiki's worth of browser tabs, typing out an essay's worth of notes, and calculating all the math myself is just too much of a hassle. It's an inefficient use of time. More often than not, it's faster just to mock up a new line in an open field in-game.

What is needed is a simple tool that adds up the total inputs and outputs for a list of machines. I can source the resources and do the conveyors myself. Unfortunately, every tool I've come across does things backwards. They have you put in the desired end products, and spit back out a list of machines. If you want to tune that list, you can't do so directly. Satisgraphtory is the closest tool I've seen to what I need, but its still focused on end products. Plus I think it's out of date.

[N.A.T.]

Watch this guide on youtube. Clicking N on your keyboard brings up the search and is a calculator. But, seriously, watch the guide. If the link does not work, search you tube for "The Satisfactory Calculator Tool INSIDE the Game! | Satisfactory Base Planning and Math Tutorial"

Hope this helps you with planning.

[cswiger]

The map link mentioned above has global production and consumption stats per resource. (Of course, just because you might be overproducing something, doesn't mean it's actually going to a consumer of that resource.)

I think most folks work backwards from setting up a key factory-- e.g. I want to make motors, or heavy modular frames, or goods for the space elevator-- and then building out the infrastructure needed to keep that fully satisfied and running.

The alternative approach might be to say, I've to 240 units of iron and 120 of copper, what can I build that fully utilizes those resources. That's the way to go if you want to keep feeding an AWESOME sink, perhaps.

[The Big Brzezinski]

Originally posted by N.A.T.:

Watch this guide on youtube. Clicking N on your keyboard brings up the search and is a calculator. But, seriously, watch the guide. If the link does not work, search you tube for "The Satisfactory Calculator Tool INSIDE the Game! | Satisfactory Base Planning and Math Tutorial"

Hope this helps you with planning.

I found that video. It's very cute that quick search also functions as a calculator. However, Microsoft Windows already comes with one. Also, obligatory Do you guys not have phones?

Here's the sort of thing I'm looking for. https://kayahr.github.io/xadrian/
Xadrian is a station building planner for X3 Albion Prelude. I used it all the time to plan out production lines, both for resale and for supplying my fleet. It's very simple and easy to use. It also lets you store complex plans locally.

In contrast, all the online tools I've seen for Satisfactory are obtuse and limited. Focusing right away on end products is a very backwards way of thinking considering the game these tools are for. The fun of Satisfactory comes from exploration, experimentation, and creative problem solving. Well made as these tools might be, their paint-by-numbers methodology is missing the entire point.

[N.A.T.]

Originally posted by The Big Brzezinski:

Originally posted by N.A.T.:

Watch this guide on youtube. Clicking N on your keyboard brings up the search and is a calculator. But, seriously, watch the guide. If the link does not work, search you tube for "The Satisfactory Calculator Tool INSIDE the Game! | Satisfactory Base Planning and Math Tutorial"

Hope this helps you with planning.

I found that video. It's very cute that quick search also functions as a calculator. However, Microsoft Windows already comes with one. Also, obligatory Do you guys not have phones?

Here's the sort of thing I'm looking for. https://kayahr.github.io/xadrian/
Xadrian is a station building planner for X3 Albion Prelude. I used it all the time to plan out production lines, both for resale and for supplying my fleet. It's very simple and easy to use. It also lets you store complex plans locally.

In contrast, all the online tools I've seen for Satisfactory are obtuse and limited. Focusing right away on end products is a very backwards way of thinking considering the game these tools are for. The fun of Satisfactory comes from exploration, experimentation, and creative problem solving. Well made as these tools might be, their paint-by-numbers methodology is missing the entire point.

IMO, anything outside the game breaks immersion, so the in-game search/knowledge base/calculator is a nice feature that keeps you immersed. If I wanted to break the game and not have fun I could use things like CT and not even have to worry about "planning." The point of the game is to be immersed in a world that you have to discover and make your own path in how you want to build a factory, not copy someone else's min/max layout, otherwise it seems like a waste of money to pay for a game that you will not "play..." To me, it's the journey of discovery that makes it fun, not the destination. :)

[The Big Brzezinski]

That's the trouble I'm running into. What I need is a tool that lets me try out different combinations of machines compare their operation. All we have are tools that say " You want this many X? Just build this Y." I don't need a tool to think for me. I can do that well enough myself. What I need is a tool that helps me remember way more than is unassistedly possible.

[jamesc70]

I use the 'N' bind a lot to remember things. I either type in the name of an item, or just 'plate', click on iron plate, then click on 'parts' in the new window to view them all. Much faster than running to benches to check a recipe.

[Your weakness is your own]

This guy is exactly right. I too found the online tool to provide something I don't really need (the list of total components was actually the most helpful). The ability to (graphically) plan out various buildings in advance and get some help determining the splitting ratios would be immensely helpful.

I shouldn't NEED a spreadsheet in order to place some buildings in a manner which satisfies my need for reasonable efficiency. There will always be a place for taking things to the extreme, but the default should provide for reasonable efficacy without having to undertake the tedium of basic arithmetic and memorization.

The way splitters and internal buffers work also mean that the "try it and see" approach is not feasible. You will be waiting an inordinate amount of time for a series of splitters to fill up a bank of machines in order to get an idea of how many producers and consumers you need. Factorio has a much better deal in this regard: it's simple to determine how many inserters you need to provide a building, and that immediately gives you some visual feedback on how many buildings you can use on a supply line. A row of buildings in satisfactory will consume far too many items while filling their buffers, and they will do so as greedily as the fractional split provides them, rather than consuming items at a rate limited by an inserter which only consumes a reasonable rate of items, and which can only fill a very limited input buffer.

[OBXandos]

These tools exist in game. The Q and F keys. You can build and plan anything you want, test it out and record the results. If they don't stand up to your liking deconstruct it all and try something new. You don't lose any resources in this game when you deconstruct so there is not much reason to fear doing so.

You can also use that production calculator in reverse. I do that all the time. Want to know how many iron plates you can make off of a given mining node? Just increase the number produced until that mining node is 100%. It doesn't matter what sort of buildings the planner made for you if all you want is a max number of items from a given source.

You are also quite free to make your own tools if you can't find ones to your liking. Maybe if others in the community also want something similar you all can collaborate.

[The Big Brzezinski]

Maybe I'm not explaining properly.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2140725238
This is my main parts factory. It does everything. It started as a simple ironworks designed using Daniel's Satisfactory tool, and expanded from there. It works well enough. The problem is tuning it. Way too many extra intermediate parts than are necessary are being made and fed into the sink. At the same time, I seem to have a shortage of screws somewhere. In addition, I have a petroleum refinery complex at a secondary site and numerous mining and power generation satellites.

It was one thing to use end product-based calculators to come up with a new factory. To take inventory of an existing one to plan out changes would basically be impossible.

[Vyndicu]

I would like to have a tool more like what I used to plan out Factorio production line/ratio and allows you to tweak individual machine without having to manually adjusting the end-product number multiple time over.

For example, Say I want X computer per minute. I can easily adjust the alternative recipe for circuits and what not. But I can't adjust iron rod and screws production line on their own.

I notice that most tool treat all "miners" as if they were the same mk X and quality. IE, I have 5 impure Iron node I want to use for smelting steel and my coal node is pure quality. I have to create two distinct graph: One for pure coal and one for impure iron and merge it myself together.


https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.html

This tool can do so much more than most Satisfactory tool I have look over so far. You can individually adjust overclock (via module/beacon). You can also tell that editor to either crack oil or not.

Heck you can even simulate using nuclear fuel rod instead of coal in your non-electric smelters just because you know someone will be nut enough to do it.

https://kirkmcdonald.github.io/calc.html#tab=graph&furnace=steel-furnace&fuel=nuclear-fuel&items=iron-plate:f:112


TD;LR: I agree with OP and most Satisfactory calculator I have seen so far aren't flexible enough.