Building the Ultimate Automated Alien Factory
After five years in development and a year following its full release on PC, Satisfactory has made its way to console.
Billed as a factory simulation game, Satisfactory puts players in the shoes of a FICSIT employee sent to an alien world, tasked with the goal of gathering resources and developing a factory network to produce various materials to send back to Earth.
This unnamed employee, simply referred to as Pioneer, starts off with the bare-bones necessities to get started. Dismantling the drop pod she arrived in to get the first resources needed to slowly start building a base of operation. This hub allows for slightly more elaborate crafting, as well as serving as a delivery point for supply drops that can unlock new types and tiers of structures. And after ripping apart some bushes with her bare hands and using a pick to dig away at iron deposits, the Pioneer can slowly start creating new tools and structures to expand the operation.
The Conveyor Belt Puzzle
These tools begin as simple machines that assist in collecting resources and generating power, which need to be loaded and unloaded by hand. But it doesn’t take long before conveyor belts start winding around the landscape, delivering ores and materials to furnaces and fabricators, as resource production becomes automated. From here the landscape continues to transform as foundations can be laid to flatten out areas, walls can be set up to section off areas, and storage containers begin to pile up as production outpaces what a single individual can carry on their own.
And this is when things really begin to scale up. There are several types of resources, each of which serve their own purpose. Preliminary items usually only take one type of ore to produce, but as items become more complex they start requiring different types of resources, and different manufactured items. Several pieces of iron will be needed to make items like rotors and structural frames, and there are several steps of production required to get every item needed.
Because at the end of the day, Satisfactory isn’t a building game, it’s a puzzle game. Finding a way to route every fabricator, smelter, and conveyor belt so that resources are being fed where they need to without bottlenecks or shortages occurring. And it’s not just manufacturing that needs to be managed, but the power supply too.
Managing the Grid
This starts off with biomass burners which the Pioneer will constantly be shoving leaves in, to keep energy production up, but that’s just the start. Soon, hydropower plants are being built, and energy production can be automated as well. But each power plant has its own energy output, and overloading a power grid will cause it to shut down. This can be remedied by disconnecting structures or by increasing the energy capacity of the grid.
When multiple generators are connected to the supply grid, if one runs out of fuel it will shut down. If this causes the other generators to become massively overloaded, then a fuse may trip even if they still have fuel. Refueling every generator before resetting the fuse will allow it to start back up. Later on, energy storage can be incorporated into the power grid to keep the energy grid from failing during an energy spike.
Massive Scale, Seamless Building
All of this production is intended to provide resources back to Earth, as it’s implied that overproduction and short-sighted goals back home led to ultimately destructive practices that made searching for resources off-world a necessity. Some people might think there is a lesson in there, but the Pioneer wasn’t hired to philosophize on things like environmentalism. The Pioneer was hired to be efficient.
Satisfactory is the quintessential factory production game. There are so many options for building and harvesting that become available during the course of the game, which are paired with a large map and even some light combat encounters.
It even offers a co-op mode for people that want to play with their friends. But solo players have the option to continually expand their conveyor network, or even incorporate vehicles into a transport system to improve their individual efficiency.
What sets building apart from other games is the removal of a build distance limit. If it’s within viewing distance, it’s within building distance. Most buildings have viewing platforms atop them, and there are even towers that can be easily built to get a bird’s eye view of areas. This makes laying out a building plan significantly easier, and allows for greater scalability than in other building games. It significantly cuts down on the tedium that is normally involved in these kinds of games.
Blueprints and Longevity
Before I knew it, over a dozen hours had passed, and I felt like I was still just scratching the surface of what was possible in Satisfactory. Everything can be automated and structures can be recycled without any loss in resources, so reconfiguring a base doesn’t result in the loss of progress.
Eventually the Pioneer gains access to blueprints which allow the player to configure structures, decorations, and layouts to make building even easier and more streamlined. It also means things can be planned out independently before being incorporated into a main production facility, without the same loss in production that rebuilding from scratch causes.
A Flawless Factory Sim Time Sink
During my time with the game, everything ran smoothly, I didn’t deal with frame drops or crashes. Even using Quick Resume after playing other games didn’t lead to any issues, and that’s typically where games fail to optimize.
Satisfactory knows what it wants to be and it executes that near flawlessly. It’s a game that players will easily sink dozens, if not hundreds, of hours into, especially if it gets its hooks into them. Time flies when you’re having fun, after all, and who knew being a foreman of a factory on an alien planet could be this much fun?
Important Links
Goodbye, Free Time – The Acclaimed Factory-Builder Satisfactory Arrives on Console – https://www.thexboxhub.com/goodbye-free-time-the-acclaimed-factory-builder-satisfactory-arrives-on-console/
Factory-Building Phenomenon Satisfactory Gets a November Xbox Release – https://www.thexboxhub.com/factory-building-phenomenon-satisfactory-gets-a-november-xbox-release/
Buy Satisfactory on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/satisfactory/9npr2cg6s95q
