Do you guys prefer automation or manual feeding before coal power?

[Sterling]

I'm leaning more towards a manual style of hand feeding and button crafting. All your materials come out so much quicker than spaghettiing automation. Portamine ore and hand feed them into smelters. Hunt for a few hard drives and you have easy access to some more convenient alt recipes like cast screws and stitched plates. Stuff like concrete will just pour into the inventory if you setup a bunch of portable miners and button craft every few minutes or so. Yeah you're not actively playing necessarily, but you can progress pretty fast without bothering with bio fuel too much.

There's one spot in particular in the desert where one of each basic node is sitting on the lip of a crater. It's an easy way to loop around for resources, hand feed the ore to the smelters and button craft concrete, then do it all again right before the miners have finished filling up.

I dunno, maybe it's more of a placebo than actually more efficient.

[kLuns]

I automate as much as I can. I don't like cleaning up all the portable miner fed stuff when I come back from setting up my coal plant. It's even possible to avoid the entire craftbench throughout the game, first biomass can be made feeding flower petals, which burn very long.

The first part assembly facxtory runs on biofuel too
Crash sites often provide a lot of useable items for quick unlocks so the biofuel milestone is done pretty quick.

[Fenix]

I try and set a basic factory, that can run without me there, build the stuff I need for tier milestones, then go look for MAM Items, HDDs, Mycelia, Sulfur, Inhaler plants, Alien Remains getting Quartz and Quickwire set up as I like Sinking Quartz Items and Caterium Ingots, early on for tickets, stuff like that.

[Aven]

My first few hours of a given game are typically spent building a large biomass generator and production facility in the number of 50 or more burners, giving me a minimum of three hours between fillings at 400 MW usage. This allows ample time to go on planning and building excursions while building materials accumulate without having to worry about my power supply. It also gives purpose to the tens of thousands of leaves, wood, and flowers I accumulate clearing my initial factory sites.

[tdb]

I automate as early as possible. In the very beginning, before splitters are available, I may manually transfer some items between machines, and if I reroute some belts I'll dump the resulting unwanted items from my inventory into machines which can use them.

I suspect manual feeding is mostly placebo. It gives you something to do while waiting for sufficient amounts of items to be produced, if for whatever reason you don't want to expand. During the biomass phase I tend to keep my factory relatively small, running on 5-6 biomass generators. If I need to wait for production I go exploring or plan the next stage of my factory.

[Fenix]

tdb eredeti hozzászólása:

I suspect manual feeding is mostly placebo.

Somethings are faster to build by hand, like rods are better to craft at bench.
You can make 240 a minute at a bench, one constructer does 15 a minute.

https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Craft_Bench
There is a list of speeds here

[tdb]

Fenix eredeti hozzászólása:

Somethings are faster to build by hand, like rods are better to craft at bench.
You can make 240 a minute at a bench, one constructer does 15 a minute.

Yes, but if you craft items on the bench, you can't do anything else. So in the long term it's still better to set up automation. For small amounts it may well be faster to use the bench than set up an entire production line.

Also I meant transferring items from one machine to another. There's little reason to do that by hand instead of with belts. Maybe if you overclock a machine enough that it uses screws faster than your fastest belt can transport there could be some theoretical benefit, but then you'd have to be putting in more screws all the time.

[Fenix]

tdb eredeti hozzászólása:

Fenix eredeti hozzászólása:

Somethings are faster to build by hand, like rods are better to craft at bench.
You can make 240 a minute at a bench, one constructer does 15 a minute.

Yes, but if you craft items on the bench, you can't do anything else. So in the long term it's still better to set up automation. For small amounts it may well be faster to use the bench than set up an entire production line.

Also I meant transferring items from one machine to another. There's little reason to do that by hand instead of with belts. Maybe if you overclock a machine enough that it uses screws faster than your fastest belt can transport there could be some theoretical benefit, but then you'd have to be putting in more screws all the time.

Yea. But I’m more talking about what you can’t automate, tier unlocks early on, it just faster to bench craft real quick and launch the pod

[TH3R4BB!T]

Even in early tiers I automate parts to keep them running and as a stock for later tiers, and to quicker build the factory.

[Shneekey]

Two or three machines and three storage bins to get Solid Biofuel (one turning wood to biomass, one turning leaves into biomass, into merger that feeds into a biomass to biofuel machine) is pretty easy to set up, requires very little power to maintain, and you just dump your stuff and move on with your life. When power breaker goes, or next time you happen to be in your base, you put all the wood and leaves you've collected into the respective bins that feed into the machines, pull the solid biofuel out of the output bin, refill machines, and continue to go on with your life.

Much faster and more efficient than looking at biomass and biofuel manually go 'tink, tink, tink, tink, tink...' for a half hour.

[Doc✪Hollywood]

Sterling, I find this an excellent topic. I find myself between your lines. It's like a warm blanket reading this.

Crafting at the craftbench is really a lot faster than any machine, especially than the assembler and later on a loot faster than the manufacturer. Also it gave me satisfaction for about a month to make everything myself, since you can build craftbench and equipment shop everywhere when exploring the map. One good tip I found out about 450 hours in: press 1x spacebar then you automate crafting till all the ressources are used up. Very neat - you can go to make yourself a coffee, visit the forum or have a nap

Then I begun handfeeding smelters and constructors, did that for another few weeks.

The first thing that I really fully automated was concrete. You just need one constructor who's working days and nights making concrete - and you have enough of it. Build two consturctors and you have more than you need. That was the first time in the game that I noticed how extremly POWERFUL full-automation is (!) Just make sure to concatenate some containers at the output when you set out to explore the world. Doesn't matter how slow the one or the two constructors are: When you come back from exploring these containers are all filled.

Make sure that you find one of the the uranium node and feed the ore directly into the awesome sink. this gives you more coupons than you ever need. First thing to buy: CONCRETE FOUNDATIONS. They dont need metal plate, just pure concrete. Since you already fully-automated it you have now an infinite amount of foundations and ramps to reach every spot in the world that you want.

Another thing that you wanna have is the Blade Runners and the Xenoblade. Makes exploring a lot easier. Later on the vehicle "Explorer".

Other good stuff in the shop for explorers like you and me are the CATWALK STAIRS. They are double as steep as the ramps and you can reach very high mountain tops a lot better. But they need metal rods and plates. So thats for a bit later.

Now that I've said all those things:
In a next playthrough I would automate things a lot earlier. But that is the normal evoluton. The normal process of learning. I enjoy what I did, wouldn't change it. But the next time I will make easier for myself - now that I know how.

So, when we are talking about automation now let me say to you something very important: As long you have Mk1 and Mk2 belts there is really no sense in trying to build smart designs. The belts are just too limiting. Before I came to Satisfactory I played Shapez https://store.steampowered.com/app/1318690/shapez/ it is also an automation game but 2D, and also there the belts are the most important invention/equipment there.

As long you have Mk1 or Mk2 belts:

• Just find a node, doesnt matter if pure or normal (can also be impure) build 1 Miner, 1 Smelter, 1 Constructor, 3 containers just in a straight line and produce iron plates. Nothing fancy. Doesnt have to be efficient. Doesn't have to be fast. It's TOTALLY enough that it is fully autmated and works days and nights. THE LOWER YOU CLOCK THE LESS ENGERGY YOU NEED - IT'S EXPONENTIAL, NOT LINEARB
  
• Then find another node: 1 miner, 1 smelter, 1 contructor, 3 containers and build Iron rods
  
• Then find another node: 1 miner, 1 smelter, 1 constructor for iron rods, 1 constructor for screws and 3 containers
  
• Find another node: 1 miner, 1 smelter, 1 constructor, 3 containers and build wire
  
• Find another node: 1 miner, 1 smelter, 1 constructor, 3 containers and build copper sheets
  
• Find another node: 1 miner, 1 smelter, 1 constructor for wire, 1 constructor for cable and and 3 containers
  
• NOW, IF YOU REALLY WANT TO THINK AHEAD: Connect the last iron plate container and the last screw container with 1x assembler, 3 containers and build reinforced iron plates. The assembler works much slower than the constructors, so youre containers will still be filled with plates and rods.
  
  It can be so easy.
  
  When you get conveyor belts Mk3 or Mk4 then you can begin to make smarter, more efficient designs. That's the point where I am now, Mk.4. This belt speed allows to parallelize all smelters and then merge the output, to input the ingots to parallelized constructors, etc.
  
  But I still like exploring the map more than breaking my head with thinking about where and how to build and organize and STORE all that stuff. These containers really need a lot of space and look ugly and you never know what is inside when you have more and more of them. Making signs I should learn. For now I just put 1 piece of the content of the container and lay it on the output or input. Whe I appraoch the container I see with one glance what it contends.
  
  If I ever mod this game I look for much bigger pockets and smaller containers with more content and a smart labelling that displays what's inside.
  
  Of course the devs want us to have limitated pocket and container spots, so we are more motivated to fully automate everything. But still ... its a pain in the a ss this endless ceaseless micromanagment and not adding to the fun of the game.
  
  I really with the CTRL button would work when putting the content of pockets and containers on the floor.

[Doc✪Hollywood]

And plases tell me in case the Shapez link is not allowed, then I remove it.

[NZ.Zero]

I so wish there was something other than weeds to power things pre-coal.
But yeah, I automate even tho the gardening-sim to feed it is boring.

[Doc✪Hollywood]

NZ.Zero eredeti hozzászólása:

I so wish there was something other than weeds to power things pre-coal.
But yeah, I automate even tho the gardening-sim to feed it is boring.

Hi there, the most efficient way is alien-biomass. this is really super fast in the craftbench. But I am not sure if this is from beginning on or if it comes later with MAM research.

Just the next step from (Alien-) Biomass to Solid Biofuel takes long, this is one of few thing I would put in a container connected to a constructor connected to a container and then go exploring the world.

[Maehlice]

Both. It's super easy to automate the basics up to Coal while also manually supplementing with Portable Miners and containers. I catalogued my exact process in a Guide here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2686103223

[Shneekey]

Doc✪Hollywood Enterprises eredeti hozzászólása:

NZ.Zero eredeti hozzászólása:

I so wish there was something other than weeds to power things pre-coal.
But yeah, I automate even tho the gardening-sim to feed it is boring.

Hi there, the most efficient way is alien-biomass. this is really super fast in the craftbench. But I am not sure if this is from beginning on or if it comes later with MAM research.

Just the next step from (Alien-) Biomass to Solid Biofuel takes long, this is one of few thing I would put in a container connected to a constructor connected to a container and then go exploring the world.

I believe alien protein is a MAM research, but that's not an especially high bar all things considered.

I tend to not do this, simply because I tend to turn my alien protein into DNA capsules to get an early boost in the SINK, because the sooner I get things like the concrete foundations you mentioned or useful things like pipe/conveyor holes or the wire relays that affix to walls and ceilings, the better off I tend to feel.

So I stick to randomly holding down the 'collect' key as I'm running around and end up with a pile of leaves in my inventory to chuck in a bin to turn into biomass then biofuel. Or do a quick pass with a chainsaw around areas I'm going to be developing anyway to clear-cut some trees out of my way and get wood to turn into biomass then into biofuel.

Any time my face is in a crafting GUI, I feel my time is being wasted. But hey, that's, like, my opinion, man.