At which point did you start caring enough about efficiency and aesthetics to rebuild your factories?

[moshiwakeda]

I've sunk probably 20 hours into this game now and I've only scratched the surface, I think. I'm really impressed by it. There are so many clever design choices in how the building works, giving it a good balance of rules and being very forgiving with clipping, so I can just build functional stuff without worrying too much about anything.

As a rule, I largely avoid wiki's and browsing peoples factory pictures. Because a big part of the fun is learning by myself how I can run things efficiently. If I just look it up, then I rob myself of the whole iteration process.

So a lot of my systems are completely ♥♥♥♥, probably. I might be feeding 200 or 300% of the required water into my coal power plants. I don't know. Better safe than sorry, I guess. I just need electricity
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That said, I realize my factory is a mess. I mostly don't want to mess with it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? But I'm nearing the point where it's becoming painfully inefficient, and I can't reasonably expand without redesigning (or actually designing..) my systems.

So now I'm going to have to get a spreadsheet I think? Because if I just keep building things "as needed", then it's always going to end up being a mess. I either don't create enough space, or I create too many of one thing, not enough of another, and only realize that later when I'm trying to manufacture something and start to see all the bottlenecks.

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So I'm wondering how long it took you to get to this point of rebuilding? Did you just look up the best setups and copy them? Did you rebuild an entire new system in a different location and then remove your old one?

Personally, I think I'll just travel to fresh resource nodes and start a completely new factory. Then I can leave the old one running as a museum for how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ my designs were.

[XistenZ]

I always go in with the mindset "make it pretty, use walls, make sure there's space".
Then I ignore that completely and just plop down what I need. I do calculate things tho, and depending on resource I will underclock factories so that they don't overproduce.

I constantly find myself thinking how sweet it'll be when I redo the whole thing once I just unlock THIS tier or THAT recipe but that never happens.

For me, making something aestethic is impossible at least until end game when you don't introduce new changes in a production line. Re-doing something that's going to change is pointless, right? ... right??

Final note... if you don't yet use spreadsheets... have you unlocked aluminum?

[Tirandys]

This is with a caveat, I restart a lot, I like the journey more than the final building game. But I restarted with update 6 and I am hoping to stay with this save through fixmas. I have not really redesigned anything at this point but I am only working on aluminum right now and have not started on the last space elevator parts. I will redesign when I get all the alternate recipes that I want and unlock what I want to use in the awesome shop for building design. I will more than likely also look around the map for a new location for a main build site and just let things accumulate in my old ugly factories. This is just the way I am planing to play this save before I restart again. (Mostly just waiting for 1.0 to drop and playing around building stuff and trying to figure out what I like. I have a lot of hours played on the various restarts.)

[Vectorspace]

I never did except when forced to by recipe changes, though I did extend some of my earlier factories.

But I'm not one of those players that has e.g. a single motors factory that supplies to everything that needs motors. I have e.g. a turbo motors factory that receives raw resources and does all the production stages.

[moshiwakeda]

Originally posted by XistenZ:

I always go in with the mindset "make it pretty, use walls, make sure there's space".
Then I ignore that completely and just plop down what I need. I do calculate things tho, and depending on resource I will underclock factories so that they don't overproduce.

I constantly find myself thinking how sweet it'll be when I redo the whole thing once I just unlock THIS tier or THAT recipe but that never happens.

For me, making something aestethic is impossible at least until end game when you don't introduce new changes in a production line. Re-doing something that's going to change is pointless, right? ... right??

Final note... if you don't yet use spreadsheets... have you unlocked aluminum?

I never thought about underclocking anything. That is interesting. I suppose it is a way to prevent a shortage of a resource if it is producing a redundant amount of some item further down the assembly line?

I only just discovered that I could use slugs to create these booster capsules. I got very confused with a lot of items because my research tree is messed up from all the updates that happened since the last time I played (I played like 8 hours a year ago)

Originally posted by Tirandys:

This is with a caveat, I restart a lot, I like the journey more than the final building game. But I restarted with update 6 and I am hoping to stay with this save through fixmas. I have not really redesigned anything at this point but I am only working on aluminum right now and have not started on the last space elevator parts. I will redesign when I get all the alternate recipes that I want and unlock what I want to use in the awesome shop for building design. I will more than likely also look around the map for a new location for a main build site and just let things accumulate in my old ugly factories. This is just the way I am planing to play this save before I restart again. (Mostly just waiting for 1.0 to drop and playing around building stuff and trying to figure out what I like. I have a lot of hours played on the various restarts.)

I don't even have a clue about how big the map is. The furthest I went was to find a crystal node. I just unlocked the little buggy so I guess I can get around a bit faster now

[EdibleSponge_]

On my main game, every time something wasn't right and mistakes piled up, or I discovered a major design flaw, I just left the factory running and started designing a new one somewhere else. That way the factory continues to produce, and I can funnel the resources into building an even bigger and better factory. It's been a lot of fun!

I would not recommend you tear down your early factories until you've replaced them, since you might hit a point in building where you need like, 50 more motors or something to finish a build but you have no factory actually producing motors. Of course, you can rebuild pieces of your factory one at a time.

I think I did my first rebuild once I unlocked steel and found caterium? Those threw a wrench in my plans, and I wanted to rebuild the floor from the bottom-up. Then I used that factory until I reached Phase 4...when I realized I needed to go bigger.

[GobboKirk]

I generally start thinking about it once I got more than enough concrete and decent amount of stuff unlocked in the awesome shop.
Yeah good to build on foundations as soon as you got them ofc, but to make it fairly efficient and pleasing I need a bit of the shop goodies.

[Brakxel]

I usually just build until I get to oil. Slap stuff together to get the milestones and shop tickets, then it is time to get organized.
By that time I've got decent belts, coal power and enough stuff unlocked from the store to make it easier to organize. I try to pick a spot near the main beltway of the map with plenty of horizontal and vertical room and plan a main base with trucks on the bottom, a layer to organize incoming belts and build up to a medium size bus system to feed a bigger factory and make a mall for all my needs. I try to plan for trains. That hasn't gone well, but I'm learning.
As far as efficiency, if the belt is full, it is efficient. If I supply more power than needed and a little more for expansion, power is good. Pipes are full of liquid? Yah, it works.
At first, Satisfactory is a building game. Build and look at all the cool stuff you can make. Later, Satisfactory is a logistics game. Y needs X, but X is across the map. Z needs X, too, but Z is over there--somewhere. Solve that riddle, Batman. The good news is you get good tools to help solve the problem. You just have to be creative enough to build a solution in the space provided. There are no wrong ways to do it. Does it work? Yes? Count it as a success.
Endgame, for me, is beautification. I solved the logistics, but can it be elegant and simplified?
Remember, nothing is wasted but your time. Build, rebuild, try and fail, try again. Enjoy the journey. You'll know you are hooked when you are drawing blueprints offline to map your next expansion.

[Brakxel]

Originally posted by taxSyn:

As a rule, I largely avoid wiki's and browsing peoples factory pictures. Because a big part of the fun is learning by myself how I can run things efficiently. If I just look it up, then I rob myself of the whole iteration process.

Good on you for taking this approach. I would advise to take the same approach with mods. There are some genuine handy mods out there, but take the vanilla for as long as you can stand the flavor.
At some point you will feel like your brain has been drained of all creative juice. At that point heading the UTubes will help. Even then, try to keep your searches as focused as possible. General tips, or how train switches work, or most likely how pipes work will be good searches to focus on later, after you've tried it all on your own.
I'm a bit jealous of you being at the new stage. It was so fun learning and failing at this game. I still learn and fail, but that wonder and newness wears off a little in a hundred hours or so. Still fun and worth it. Enjoy the ride.

[Trubbles]

Personally, in this game, I always tear down almost everything at least once in each build.

Like, at first I build to get resources rolling as quickly as possible. Efficiency doesn't matter much in the very early stages and the best approach is to just get things moving so you quickly have thousands of iron plates and concrete, and hundreds of everything else (or more). Then, aside from a few core buildings (like my bio power plants, constructors for solid biomass, etc) I tear down EVERYTHING and rebuild more carefully.

But even then, I'm still usually only on L2 miners and L3 belts so I can't quite design stuff the way I would want. So I usually do another partial tear-down when I get to Tier 6 or 7.

It works out to something like a full teardown after 6-10 hours, and a partial teardown after 30-40 hours. I've heard that others do similar, although I'm sure there are some people who plan from the start to make everything scale up.

[OkieRobbie]

I have other 1000 hours in. My wife and I play together. We are on probably our 6th game save. Neatness is very important to us now and I use the calculator alot :P to make sure I'm maximizing our factory outputs. We love this game and have a blast playing together. It can be frustrating and tedious. Building aesthetically pleasing looking buildings, roads is very important to us and we take it into account with every build. It's amazing how we have progressed in our style of play with each new save.

[asbrainiac]

Always build on foundations and give yourself more space than you need. Remember, you can always build vertically. If you're overproducing iron ore but don't have space on the ground level, just build a second story, split off your iron and send it up there!
You don't need to worry so much about being 100% efficient. You cannot waste materials unless you physically throw them away, however if your constructors and assemblers are overproducing compared to how much the production line needs with nowhere to send the excess, just find out how much the line needs and underclock your buildings. If you need to get rid of stuff, just toss it in a container linked to an AWESOME sink.
Don't worry so much about having the ideal build, because there is none. Factory games provide you with open-ended problems and let you create the solution. Whatever solution you come up with first is better than none, and every time you go at it you'll learn a little bit and you'll be able to make it more efficient next time.

[Hurricane]

All the time. It may be one of the reasons I'm kind of burned-out when I reach rank 7/8 ...

[Rvlion]

As soon as I can build foundations, splitters, mergers and t2 belts.

[moshiwakeda]

Originally posted by asbrainiac:

Always build on foundations and give yourself more space than you need. Remember, you can always build vertically. If you're overproducing iron ore but don't have space on the ground level, just build a second story, split off your iron and send it up there!
You don't need to worry so much about being 100% efficient. You cannot waste materials unless you physically throw them away, however if your constructors and assemblers are overproducing compared to how much the production line needs with nowhere to send the excess, just find out how much the line needs and underclock your buildings. If you need to get rid of stuff, just toss it in a container linked to an AWESOME sink.
Don't worry so much about having the ideal build, because there is none. Factory games provide you with open-ended problems and let you create the solution. Whatever solution you come up with first is better than none, and every time you go at it you'll learn a little bit and you'll be able to make it more efficient next time.

Using foundations was an important lesson for me. In the beginning it seemed so redundant, but now I think that more than half of my entire factory is build on a huge slab of foundations that is floating above a ravine.

It's_free_real_estate.mp4

[Kage Goomba]

It depends on YOU and less what others think.

Everyone's got a diff style and approach.

I only look at guides for efficiency hints - but do my own thing.

Like learning a Ratio of 3 Water : 8 Coal works - but with certain caveats - and I intend to fiddle with that and improve on it.

Beyond that - its entirely up to you on how you want to do it.
It really is a sandbox - and limit is only resources you have to work with within the set rules of the game.

Which is quite expansive.

And yes - foundation plates are your friends.