Satisfactory - Steam Deck

[mackster]

So, probably like many others, I have a preorder steam deck due sometime (allegedly) in Q3. Just wondering if anyone lucky enough to have one plays Satisfactory and, if so, how it plays on the steam deck?

I see its advertised as playable, but not verified. Which generally means playable but have to tweak controls and settings to get it to work.

[Omono]

The game runs pretty well, staying at or above 40fps on medium-low settings on my 100 hour save. The main issue is that for a game that relies heavily on keyboard shortcuts, the default control layout on the Steam Deck is really cumbersome, which makes it annoying to do any serious building. You can for sure play it and tweak the controls a bunch and it might work, but I personally highly prefer playing on a keyboard.

[DaBa]

As the person above me said, it doesn't really matter how well the game runs, what's the actual problem is playing the game with a controller. And the simple fact of the matter is: Satisfactory is a game made to be interacted with using a mouse and a keyboard. Trying to play it on a device with limited inputs and no mouse precision is going to be a bad experience regardless.

I didn't try Satisfactory specifically, but I tried playing Factorio on the Steam Deck myself which should in theory actually be easier seeing how it is a 2D game and it has a grid for buildings, which cuts a lot of complexity from the building placement in a 3D space. Also that game is officially certified "great on the deck", and even has official optimized controller layouts for it. And yes, technically it is playable and everything works. But actually playing it like this? No way, it's terrible. Everything you want to do takes SO MUCH longer and so much unnecessary effort, half of which is battling the clunky control scheme. I imagine it's only worse in Satisfactory.

[mackster]

Good to see it runs OK. I wouldn't see myself playing a long time on it, but would be nice now and again to pop in when I am away.

Wondering if I could add in my folding Bluetooth keyboard, which has a track pad as well, to help out.

[Arkhne]

I play Satisfactory on Linux (not steam deck) and almost exclusively with a controller (so about as close an experience as you can get to a steam deck without having a steam deck).

For the most part, the control scheme that I've been working on seems to work pretty well, excluding the things that are inherrent in a Controller to KBM scheme rather than direct API. That is to say, things like the stick being digital directional commands, driving a vehicle is pure hell on the controller (and admittedly not much better on keyboard, the vehicle physics in this game is truly terrible).

I do my building exclusively with the controller, I mention this specifically as it's the sort of thing most people would be reaching for the mouse with. The *only* problems with building with a controller in this are inherrent in the game, most notably the bad camera perspective, I feel like the game has crotch-cam level view, either that, or the PC is a dwarf.

The first thing to realize when trying to build a controller scheme for Satisfactory is that you're going to need to lean heavily on the multiple inputs option in the configuration. IE: I have hotkey 1, 3, and 5 all bound to the same button, one on press, one on double press, one on long press. This is.... less than optimal, but you really can't achieve much of anything without it.

I started out using somebody else's configuration, but within about 10 minutes, I'd changed almost every button. I did end up exporting my config once I felt like it was working well, but I think I've tweaked it since then, so I'm not sure if it's updated.