Satisfactory Early Access – Episode 10: The Jetpack, Manufacturing, and The Edge of The World

Now that we’ve automated our oil production, it is time to step up our manufacturing game. Manufacturing is the final production stage in early access at time of writing, so as you might expect it took a fair bit of time to set up. In the interest of keeping things well… interesting, I completed the build process between sessions.

Once both manufacturing chains were complete, I cleaned things up around the base a bit, and started recording the next episode.

[G^G] Satisfactory Early Access – Episode 10: The Jetpack, Manufacturing, and The Edge of The World

Episode Index

Manufacturing Computers and Heavy Modular Frames

I’ll admit initially I was dreading setting up the manufacturers. Getting my various assemblers set up was bad enough, I could only imagine the spaghetti that would result from the next tier of production. However, all of that changed once I made a key discovery… up until this point I had been doing splitters all wrong.

I had originally thought that each splitter output could only push out 1/3 of its input. Looking back I’m not sure why I thought this because I had already used splitters in ways that defied this idea, but when designing my factories for some reason this concept always creeped into my head. The reality is that splitters and mergers are much smarter than I gave them credit for.

It turns out that whenever a branch of a splitter is overloaded with resources, the splitter will automatically increase the flow of resources to its other outputs to prevent a back-up upstream.

This means that if you are looking to create a perfectly balanced(as all things should be) splitter chain, you don’t need to set your belts up in tree structure. Instead you can simply create a single conveyor belt with splitters piping resources into their inputs, and over time as the upstream splitters back up, the downstream resources will eventually get the resources they need.

Once I understood this concept, creating large smelting and construction chains was a piece of cake! However, I was still running into problems with assemblers. The multiple inputs proved to be very tricky to manage because the belt from the first input blocked the second inputs belt. Fortunately, before I gave up I was able to make another major breakthrough.

It turns out that you can actually place splitters on existing belts, including belts that are in mid-air! Using this technique I was able to create a parallel belt in the air that was able to get around the lower belt, and feed resources into the assemblers second input.

Once I had a firm grasp on these new mechanics, setting up manufacturing chains for computers and heavy modular frames was pretty straight forward. After setting up an new iron node, and pulling some excess resources from around the base I was able to get both manufacturers working at nearly 100% efficiency.

Flying Around The World

With the final tier of production complete, I decided it was time for me to truly leave the next and start exploring the four corners of the world. During the recording I lucked into being able to land on the back of the flying manta-ray, and decided to hitch a ride. Unfortunately, a tree branch eventually knocked me off of my noble steed, but I was able to cover a fair bit of ground before that happened.

Rather than turn around and go home, I decided it was time for us to truly journey into the unknown. My goal was simple… I wanted to jump off of the edge of the world. Using a combination of jetpack/conveyor belt sling shots, I was able to quickly make my way to the worlds end, and after making peace with my past transgressions, I jumped.

And died…

I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised. I was a little bothered by the fact that despite that fact that it appeared I was going to land in water, I actually just plummeted right through the ocean and suffocated at the bottom of the map.

Due to the fact that I would definitely not be able to recover my body, I decided to reload the game so I didn’t lose the snails and hard drives I collected along the way. Kind of a wuss move I know, but hey it’s not my fault the ocean was intangible!

Lessons Learned

1. Keep Splitters and Mergers Simple – Let your splitters and mergers do the load balancing for you. Don’t worry if a conveyor branch is backed up. When that happens the excess output goes to the other branches. What this means is if you have enough resource production, eventually the entire resource chain will balance to 100% efficiency.
2. Always Use Your Fastest Belts – To make the load balancing strategy above work, you’ll need to make sure you always use the fastest belts available. This is so whenever you have excess output, it is always entering a belt that is fast enough to handle the new influx of resources.
3. You can put splitters and mergers on existing belts – Instead of setting up splitters in advance, you can actually drop a splitter on an existing belt. One game-changing thing this allows you to do is set up splitters and mergers in mid air! This is extremely helpful when setting up rows of assemblers in the manufacturing process. By utilizing the 3rd dimension(height), you can keep your factory chains neat and compact.
4. Keep More Filters On Hand – Filters are pretty cheap and easy to make. They also stack up to 50, so make sure you keep a full stack on you before you go out exploring.
5. Organize Belts with Stackable Conveyor Poles – The spacing of stackable conveyor poles allows you to transport resources around your base very compactly. They also allow you to very effectively lift your resources up higher, giving you more space and flexibility to lay out your base.
6. Don’t Jump Off The Edge Of The World – Between session I learned that if you crash your truck in the water it is really hard to get out. As far as I can tell the only way to “pull it out” is to disassemble it and rebuild it. This can be a pain if your truck is loaded up with resources, especially because the overflow box is placed under water.

If you have ideas around how I can improve my videos, please reach out to me on twitter via @GrowUpAndGame.

I hope you enjoyed my content, and until next time… stay efficient everyone!

The Latest G^G Articles