Automation is Slow and Pointless

[Gelfan_Dothea]

After screwing around for five hours setting up extractors, smelters, constructors, storage units, etc., and fighting with power source failures, finding glow bugs, etc., I realized that crafting by hand is faster and more efficient by a huge margin. After an hour of automation I had around 500 plates, wires, rods, etc.. I literally could have run around to each portable extractor and hand crafted 500 of each item in like 10 minutes. Yeah, I know you probably get faster equipment later on, but seriously... with no actual goal in the game, and nothing to further the story, there's really no incentive to build anything outside of the hub. You can just run around exploring, collecting, and crafting by hand.

[markuswolfe]

Counterpoint: I've got a set up that produces 900 reinforced plates per minute.

[Aven]

The thing with handcrafting is you can't do anything else while handcrafting, and the thing with automation is you can always build more.

[Gelfan_Dothea]

Originally posted by markuswolfe:

Counterpoint: I've got a set up that produces 900 reinforced plates per minute.

Yeah, but for what? What mission requires 900 plates per minute?

[markuswolfe]

If you need a mission to motivate yourself to set up any automation, you may as well refund the game. Your brain isn't wired for it.

[Suzaku]

Some people simply find fun in building. To create and see the fruits of their labor, whatever it may be. And when it comes to goals, any other game offers much the same where they simply say "Do X, Y, and Z", which are in the form of milestones and tier unlocks in this game.

And in regards to your opening post: You can handcraft anything faster than one (1) machine. Can you handcraft faster than 10 machines? 50 machines? 1000 machines? Would you find the game fun listening to that endless metal *tink* sound as you make 10000 screws by hand? Or maybe you could set up multiple assembly lines to do it for you in minutes instead.

[Gelfan_Dothea]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

... Would you find the game fun listening to that endless metal *tink* sound as you make 10000 screws by hand? Or maybe you could set up multiple assembly lines to do it for you in minutes instead.

That's the point I'm trying to make. I wouldn't craft 10,000 screws by hand, because there's no reason to. It's not like there's an end goal that requires millions of parts to build a spaceship to get off the planet or anything. So why would I create this unworldly large factory to pump out millions of parts to do nothing with? And why would I automate machines to pump out millions of unneeded parts? I'd have nothing to do.

* "Wow... after 100 hours just look at all the materials you've managed to acquire. Whatcha going to do with em all?"

* "Nothing."

I do understand where you're coming from when you say "some people simply find fun in building." But, at least for my part, I've never met anyone who enjoyed building for no reason. Even Sim City has a purpose. I understand the game is in early access, but come on... all the work the devs have done up to this point and they couldn't take the time to give players a point? Not even something as simple as 'you need to ship 10,000,000 parts into space before you can be replaced and go home, and therefore NEED to build these elaborate factories in order to do that.'


I just think it's lazy and idiotic is all. Not saying it's not a fun game. Building with a purpose is fun. Building for no reason... not so much.

[cywizz]

The game is an Automation game, not a clicker game. At the beginning stages it is easy to craft a few items by hand and might seem more efficient, but as soon as you get past the tutorial stages and need to unlock stuff you soon realise hand crafting is pointless as you will never get anywhere.

Go look online at the use of screws, for example...go see how many and for what they are used for and you will see you need a lot and without Automation it will be near impossible. Another point is that you can not craft everything by hand...project assembly parts can not be crafted by hand and you need an machines for that.
And thirdly, repeating what suzaku said, automation is way faster than hand crafting by scaling your production lines.

[Suzaku]

"never met anyone who enjoyed building for no reason"? You're in the home of those people. More than 10k of those people literally playing right now, and that's not counting those that play through Epic.

Regardless, it just sounds like this isn't your type of game, or it's at least missing a crucial thing that you must have to enjoy it. I have a similar feeling with Minecraft, where I look around the world and just don't see a reason to do anything, even though I'm aware it has a million things to do.

[cywizz]

Originally posted by Gelfan_Dothea:

Originally posted by Suzaku:

... Would you find the game fun listening to that endless metal *tink* sound as you make 10000 screws by hand? Or maybe you could set up multiple assembly lines to do it for you in minutes instead.

That's the point I'm trying to make. I wouldn't craft 10,000 screws by hand, because there's no reason to. It's not like there's an end goal that requires millions of parts to build a spaceship to get off the planet or anything. So why would I create this unworldly large factory to pump out millions of parts to do nothing with? And why would I automate machines to pump out millions of unneeded parts? I'd have nothing to do.

* "Wow... after 100 hours just look at all the materials you've managed to acquire. Whatcha going to do with em all?"

* "Nothing."

I do understand where you're coming from when you say "some people simply find fun in building." But, at least for my part, I've never met anyone who enjoyed building for no reason. Even Sim City has a purpose. I understand the game is in early access, but come on... all the work the devs have done up to this point and they couldn't take the time to give players a point? Not even something as simple as 'you need to ship 10,000,000 parts into space before you can be replaced and go home, and therefore NEED to build these elaborate factories in order to do that.'


I just think it's lazy and idiotic is all. Not saying it's not a fun game. Building with a purpose is fun. Building for no reason... not so much.

Until V1 is released with full story, the goal is to supply the space elevator with parts that you can not build by hand...the rest of the goals you make up yourself. It is that type of game

[Gelfan_Dothea]

I appreciate everyones perspective and feedback. I think you're right. I absolutely love these types of games, but without a purpose I'm just a calculator trying to divide by 0. I'll revisit once the game is finished.

[Warlords Welt]

Originally posted by Gelfan_Dothea:

After screwing around for five hours setting up extractors, smelters, constructors, storage units, etc., and fighting with power source failures, finding glow bugs, etc., I realized that crafting by hand is faster and more efficient by a huge margin. After an hour of automation I had around 500 plates, wires, rods, etc.. I literally could have run around to each portable extractor and hand crafted 500 of each item in like 10 minutes. Yeah, I know you probably get faster equipment later on, but seriously... with no actual goal in the game, and nothing to further the story, there's really no incentive to build anything outside of the hub. You can just run around exploring, collecting, and crafting by hand.

Vou make my day.......long time not read so much nonsense in one thread

[nfgman]

Just a couple baby steps more. Try to handcraft a few stacks of steel beams or motors from ore.

[DownSouth05]

Simply put "please list any game that has a point" Seriously there is no game on Steam or anywhere for that matter that has a point! Unless you count relaxation, pleasure, puzzle solving as the point. Clearly this game is not for the OP as I am sure there are games he plays that would put me into a coma.

[YetiChow]

Yeaaaaaaaaah Gelfan unfortunately you've stumbled into a community which, at this point, has been completely taken over by the people who have convinced themselves that "activity for the sake of activity" is the point. The tedium of 'progression' that stems from the game being designed around this mindset completely goes over their head, because they're convinced that increasing their throughput by some arbitrary amount counts as some kind of achievement. Even more unfortunately, the devs heard that sentiment and have leaned into it pretty hard; and as a result they've taken a bunch of really interesting design possibilities off of the table in order to prop up the weakest possible 'incentive' to tier up.

The whole game can be summed up as "figure out some really basic solution to an extremely simple problem... and then copy/paste it as many times as you have the patience for." Like you, I enjoy building and figuring things out when there's some kind of meaningful challenge; sadly Satisfactory has boiled all of its challenges down to "you need MORE of X before you can get Y; even though Y is what allows you to do X efficiently, so you have to do X the inefficient way first and then you can have Y so you can build it all over again"

Someone said up-thread that "it's not a clicker game", and I'd say that no, it's even worse than that -- at least with a clicker game you balance your input vs automation and you're using creativity to try to get ahead of the curve (i.e. you have a limited power to bend the curve in your favour, and how you use that is what decides whether you're able to take advantage of various options to ultimately bend the curve even more in your favour.) In Satisfactory there is no opportunity to change the trajectory; no matter how "well" you play you still have a linear X input = Y output and, no matter whether you try to use PPM or some other measure of success, X always ends up really just being your time. It's not about how well you can build a factory; it's just about how patient you can be and how much tedium you can put up with -- because you don't need to come up with a better way to build these parts (and in fact, there are very few "better" recipes or techniques out there), you just need to sink more time into building more machines. And, since there is a static and predictable map, that means you're just going to be following the exact same "optimal" placements for those machines any time you want to try a new idea.

[Ragnaman]

Originally posted by Gelfan_Dothea:

After screwing around for five hours setting up extractors, smelters, constructors, storage units, etc., and fighting with power source failures, finding glow bugs, etc., I realized that crafting by hand is faster and more efficient by a huge margin. After an hour of automation I had around 500 plates, wires, rods, etc.. I literally could have run around to each portable extractor and hand crafted 500 of each item in like 10 minutes. Yeah, I know you probably get faster equipment later on, but seriously... with no actual goal in the game, and nothing to further the story, there's really no incentive to build anything outside of the hub. You can just run around exploring, collecting, and crafting by hand.

Early progression is fastest if you just throw everything into the AWESOME sink and buy materials needed for progression

Later stages can be quite troublesome with manual crafting.
protip: rush past early few stages, get to MK2 miners and blueprints, and only then automate stuff.

"You can just run around exploring, collecting, and crafting by hand."
You can, and its fine to do this tbh, some people rush to explorer vehicle and then roam the map uncovering wrecks as they give alternate and sometime better recipes before any automation.

Not to mention that you can just haul the HUB with you wherever you go.

Stage 2 and 3 of space elevator tho...yeah, brief quick maths can show it will take looooong time of manual crafting.

So I kinda agree with your OP, but its kinda fun that the game allows the explorer playstyle as well for quite a long time, despite its corporate theme being "turn every living cute animal into BBQ products".