early gameplay is a mismatch to the actual gameplay advertised?

[Darkhart]

Running around hitting a button to harvest every leaf in the world does not feel great. I am coming back to try the experimental after finishing another run through of Factorio so I know I am biased by that but I remember building a giant factory in my last time with Satisfactory. Now I am running around collecting leaves because I can't keep my power systems running. I am trying to run as many machines as I can so that I can get to real technologies as fast as possible but feeding biomass into generators is killing my wrists. Trying to speed through to chainsaw is not fun but will at least make things more efficient.

I guess my question is: If the game is about automating a giant land consuming factory of industrial nightmare, why does so much of the early game force you to be a lawnmower?

In Factorio within literally the first seconds of gameplay I can place down an automated drill to collect coal and as soon as you have steam unlocked you can quickly get a rudimentary power system going and focus on building machines so you can build more machines to build a factory. Outside of the first 10-20 minutes you never have to manually harvest materials like a technology deprived barbarian. Now i'm struggling to get to a chainsaw so I can burn wood instead of leaves and flowers. I am going to force myself through it but man it is not fun. Every second of downtime I have from manually crafting parts, because I can't manage to power enough machines to do the work for me, is spent harvesting leaves. If I make more machines to make parts I need EVEN MORE leaves to power them which means more time harvesting biomass. I honestly don't want to harvest biomass ever, I'm not sure it is a necessary or worthwhile gameplay loop, it just feels like added tedium for no purpose? The draw of logistics games is the passive gameplay of managing logistics and watching the machines work while you plan your next expansions. The engineering madness of massive systems and structures is the draw, right?

Help me understand why this is a good gameplay loop. What does this stage add tot he experience other than the feeling of "Finally I have coal unlocked and I can actually start playing the game for real". I can't be the only person, right?

[Suzaku]

You're doing everything wrong. Don't feed leaves into generators: turn it into biomass. Don't focus only on leaves, get wood and turn that into even more biomass. Then once you get the chainsaw, you can chop down trees for tons of wood and leaves; literally thousands of each in minutes. Then turn that into biomass, and then convert that into solid biofuel.

5 minutes of running around with chainsaw, and then dumping the resulting resources into an assembly line to convert it all into solid biofuel will result in enough fuel to power dozens of bioburners for several hours.

If you're just dumping leaves into generators, you're literally playing as inefficiently as possible.

[info]

Its a pretty brutal start, in 8 you have options like No Cost Build and Unlock Harddrives and MAM so if you want you can go straight to building a Nuke Plant.

After having gone through the chasing leaves a few times and just getting downright done with running for materials to build with I have opted to use these settings to get right to the part of the game I enjoy.

I do wish there was an option between vanilla and no cost using a Global Storage for building so that you indeed do have to produce everything that is required for building but you no longer have to run all over and carry it to the build site.

[DaBa]

Your problem is that you're not paying attention to the game you're playing. Who shoves leaves into generators? The game tells you to make biomass out of it, and I mean literally says that both when you get access to biomas AND second time when you get an even more efficient fuel source that is solid biofuel. And even if you have not heard it, it's literally there in the crafting menu, how can you miss that? The only reason you don't know this is because you're not paying attention.

Normally you're not supposed to spend more than the first couple of hours at most running things on Biomass, and it takes at most ten or so minutes of harvesting leaves and wood with a chainsaw to get you enough fuel to last you until you can unlock coal. So no, this is not the gameplay loop. This is you being silly.

[Joeyramone]

once you learn more about the game early game gets shorter and shorter. each factory i build i complete faster.

[Remnar]

When I start a new game, I find I need 10-12 biomass burners before getting coal power.

You need to automate the creation of solid biofuel. My set up consists of 4 boxes: 1 for leaves, 1 for wood, and 1 for the regular biofuel (it's like a clump of mulch), and 1 for the solid biofuel.

The first 2 boxes feed into their separate constructors to create the regular biofuel. Those get sent into the box.

That box sends to a 3rd constructor which makes solid biofuel, which is sent into the final box.

It takes a while to fill the box, but you only need enough stacks to add to the number of biofuel burners. You can be doing other things while that biomass is being made.

Edit: I forgot to mention you'll eventually unlock the chainsaw early, so you can use that to gather your wood and leaves fairly quickly.

[Man's Best Friend]

Most games don't show you the earliest stages of their gameplay in their trailers. They want you to know what you're working towards.

[Bookslayer10]

The aim of starting slow is to make automating power feel like an achievement you'll remember. Other games have done it before, including Factorio. In Factorio, you need to place every single building down by hand, even when using blueprints. Once you unlock bots, it is a massive productivity boost, and feels amazing.

It's a delicate balancing act for games to preform, and some players are always going to be unhappy with the default game. Some players just want bots from the start because they are annoyed by the tedium, so they just mod it into the game. There's nothing wrong with that, but that doesn't mean bots should be in the game from the beginning.

Same with automating power in Satisfactory. Sure, you may feel less like a factory designer and more like a vacuum at the start of the game, but I think that's part of the charm. You start out on a world with no other civilised life, and it takes a lot of manual labour to set up the basic infrastructure to then let you fully exploit your surroundings.

[info]

Originally posted by Bookslayer10:

The aim of starting slow is to make automating power feel like an achievement you'll remember. Other games have done it before, including Factorio. In Factorio, you need to place every single building down by hand, even when using blueprints. Once you unlock bots, it is a massive productivity boost, and feels amazing.

It's a delicate balancing act for games to preform, and some players are always going to be unhappy with the default game. Some players just want bots from the start because they are annoyed by the tedium, so they just mod it into the game. There's nothing wrong with that, but that doesn't mean bots should be in the game from the beginning.

Same with automating power in Satisfactory. Sure, you may feel less like a factory designer and more like a vacuum at the start of the game, but I think that's part of the charm. You start out on a world with no other civilised life, and it takes a lot of manual labour to set up the basic infrastructure to then let you fully exploit your surroundings.

This is it in a rather chunky nutshell.

Thing is that after you have seen the movie you may want to skip to the good part, thats where SF is lacking a bit. They have offered some options like No Cost Build but they need something in between that and vanilla game where you still have to produce to build but you dont have to run 1000KM to do it.

[Darkhart]

Originally posted by Bookslayer10:

The aim of starting slow is to make automating power feel like an achievement you'll remember.

It's a delicate balancing act for games to preform, and some players are always going to be unhappy with the default game.

Thank you for giving a thoughtful response, I appreciate it. The struggle of what gives any given player satisfaction is a challenging topic for sure and there really isn't a good answer. i can understand that some people like the struggle of manual labor early on.

I feel like at the core I am looking at it as a manual vs automated situation. Converting leaves and wood into biomass and then organic fuel can partially be automated, but the harvesting and the placement of fuel into generators never can be. The closest you ever come to manual collection after developing coal is power slugs?

I've been turning this over in my head while grinding through to coal and I am wondering why coal isn't just available from the start. Like as a thought experiment what exactly is lost by not starting with coal available? It makes the entire process more streamlined and matches and prepares you for the gameplay of managing power by creating elaborate refineries?

Thanks again.

[Bookslayer10]

Originally posted by Darkhart:

I've been turning this over in my head while grinding through to coal and I am wondering why coal isn't just available from the start. Like as a thought experiment what exactly is lost by not starting with coal available? It makes the entire process more streamlined and matches and prepares you for the gameplay of managing power by creating elaborate refineries?

Well, one of the big parts of setting up coal power is learning to manage liquids for the first time. Not just that, but you need to have a steady supply of water to the generators in order for them to run properly, which can be very challenging to figure out to a new player. Unlocking coal sooner would likely overwhelm the player if it still required liquids to function. However, if you removed the water requirement from coal - which actually was the case before pipes were added to the game - then you'd need to find a new point in progression to introduce liquid logic. Oil would be too late because that's when the game introduces byproducts, so shifting the learning to then would still be an issue.

I guess one way you could help streamline the game or make plant collection less of an issue is by letting players burn coal inside biomass generators. It should probably be less fuel efficient than other options, but it could help players who are frustrated by the constant exploration and instead want a more engineered solution to early game power. Maybe you can't burn coal directly, but you can quickly mix coal and biomass in an assembler, producing solid biofuel much more efficiently while still requiring a bit of manual gathering.

[Malkuth]

This game is an investment of time. My save is 1 year and 6 months old right now, and I still have not built a nuke plant. Again time. Granted this is like my 3rd game since release, but this is my longest game for sure. Its mind boggling the amount of time you have to put into the game to get things right for you.

Factorio is awesome, but even that game has nowhere near the time investment this game does.. And its all because its 1st person... makes building things much longer and much harder.

In other words its not for everyone.

[info]

To start up a Coal Plant you need electricity, thats why the Biomass burners are there.

Also if you are collecting hard drives many pods need electricity and only the biomass burners can be dropped and fired up right on the spot with no additional infrastructure and using fuel you can collect pretty much anywhere if you are not carrying solid biofuel.

[Darkhart]

Originally posted by Malkuth:

Factorio is awesome, but even that game has nowhere near the time investment this game does.. And its all because its 1st person... makes building things much longer and much harder.

Despite being factory building logistics games about managing machines on an alien planet, the more I think about it the less fair it is to compare Factorio and Satisfactory. One is 2d and has infinite maps, the other is 3d and has a single map. They really are only superficially similar.

I spent nearly 180 hours building my first factory in Satisfactory and I feel like that is more than fair enough time to make an assessment of what the gameplay offers. The freedom to build vertically as well as the ability to just kind of put belts everywhere is really enjoyable. The 3d and verticality however turns a lot of the production into an abstract.

Factorio lays all of your production out in front of you, the 2d gives you nowhere to hide. It makes all of your production tangible on a different level because you see everything moving everywhere.Looks like i have spent about 800 hrs into Factorio, the randomly generated maps gives me a ton of control of what kind of experiences i want to have. It expresses it's freedom in the mapgen.

Factorio also has artillery. And flamethrowers. i don't think they are too fair to note though cause they really are such different games.

Originally posted by Malkuth:

In other words its not for everyone.

Weird take. I like Satisfactory. For me it is an easy 8/10 game and if they adjusted the first 5% of the game it could be a solid 9/10. Few things do what it does and it does the thing it does well.

[†WeedZebra†]

you need to find coal and biomass

[Darkhart]

Originally posted by Bookslayer10:

Well, one of the big parts of setting up coal power is learning to manage liquids for the first time.

I guess one way you could help streamline the game or make plant collection less of an issue is by letting players burn coal inside biomass generators. It should probably be less fuel efficient than other options, but it could help players who are frustrated by the constant exploration and instead want a more engineered solution to early game power. Maybe you can't burn coal directly, but you can quickly mix coal and biomass in an assembler, producing solid biofuel much more efficiently while still requiring a bit of manual gathering.

So I think the biggest part is that you have to manually harvest leaves/wood. You can then automate turning it to biofuel. You then need to manually put fuel in generators. I tried every side and couldn't get a belt to feed into one. Changing that would be a huge step forward. Being able to dump leaves and wood into bins to be converted and autofed into generators seems like an odd oversight. Why don't bioburners accept belts?

Oh and I 100% agree about the coal and water link, you are totally right on that. You need steam for coal plants to make sense on a science level so it is natural to link the two. Oil is def too late so it does pose a dilemma. I'm thinking an option to skip to tech 4 might be a good way to boost start returning players, in so many ways everything up to tech 4 really is an extended tutorial?

Thanks again