Satisfactory Early Access – Episode 11: Caterium, Supercomputers, and Geothermal Power

Now that I’ve automated pretty much all of the core hub upgrades, I decided to do a little exploring. During my expeditions, I found a couple of new things, but by far the most interesting was a new type of ore called “Caterium”.

After plopping the ore in the M.A.M. I discovered that there was a whole new line of research I missed! So after setting up some caterium supply lines, and doing some basic construction, I set the stage for the 11th episode of our Satisfactory adventure!

[G^G] Satisfactory Early Access – Episode 11: Caterium, Supercomputers, and Geothermal Power

Episode Index

Building Better Electronics with Caterium

Fortunately for me, I had pretty much all of the materials on-hand needed to progress through the Caterium upgrades. Unfortunately for me, the Caterium products were largely underwhelming.

One(well technically two) notable exceptions are the Power Pole Mk 2 and Power Pole Mk 3. Both pole upgrades have relatively light resource costs, and the ability to connect to 7 and 10 wires respectively. While this isn’t exactly a game-changing upgrade, it is definitely convenient, and worth applying to future builds.

Outside of the power poles I also gained access to two new splitters, a smart splitter and a programmable splitter. The smart splitter allows you to define what resources go out each output. I can see some niche use cases for this in some downstream manufacturing processes, but honestly I don’t have any intention to use these at the moment. At this stage of the game it seems like a solution in search of a problem. The programmable splitter is essentially a beefed up version of the smart splitter where you can assign multiple resources to a single output. So it is essentially an even more niche version of the smart splitter.

Geothermal Power

I was actually quite surprised at how many geysers there were nearby! I was expected to go on some lengthy expedition, but it turns out there are geysers all over the place!

While I still believe that fossil fuels are going to be my primary power sources, I can definitely see the benefit of supplementing coal and oil with geothermal power. The fact that you don’t need to maintain the facility at all is a huge plus, and the power output relative to the construction effort isn’t bad!

I can see geothermal becoming especially useful down the road as I start building more factories that use coal and oil. Right now my whole operation is powered by one coal node, but I am starting to see its limits get tested as I continue expanding my operation.

Lessons Learned

1. I Wish We Had Additional Body Slots – I really like the idea of the blade runners, and in future play throughs I will probably snag a pair earlier on. However, unless you already know they exist there is a decent chance you won’t get them until after you already have the jetpack. While being able to roller-skate around definitely has its advantages, it is unfortunately complete out-classed by the marvel of human flight…
2. Geothermal Power Isn’t Ready For Prime-Time – At time of writing, geothermal power is not an adequate power source for end-game factories. For how late in the game you get it, it simply does not output enough power to be seriously considered. Maybe over time this will be fixed by either making it available earlier, or increasing the output, but for now its only use is to supplement your fossil fuels.
3. Smart Splitters Seem Unnecessary – Now I might eat these words in the near future, but at the moment I don’t see the point of smart splitters. They definitely aren’t suited for high volume resources like ore, ingots, and screws; and their usefulness to pipe around assembled/manufactured goods seems dubious as well. I could see the case for using them to distribute goods from storage containers with mixed materials, but I still don’t see why you would wouldn’t just create separate containers for different materials.

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

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