I became distracted by a distraction on the way to my Supercomputers (And Other Electronics) factory project.

Much as I love the FICSMAS snowballs, I decided that it’s time for a more point-and-click experience when it comes to clearing obstacles: Explosive Rebar. Sure, it doesn’t allow you to set up a big chain of explosions like you can with either Nobelisk or “Snow-belisk” but the Rebar Gun has considerably better aim and the explosive ammo takes effect instantly, making it one heck of a time-and-effort saver.

I just needed to slap down some equipment to generate a modest trickle of ammunition into “depotspace.” Easy peasy, the work of an afternoon… plus part of the next morning.

Since I was in the Rocky Desert for my Crystal Oscillators project (itself a step along the way to Supercomputers), I selected a cluster of three normal-quality iron nodes and got to work on producing three expendable (but handy) items:

1. Automated Miners. Sure, it’s easy to place a workshop and knock out a half dozen or so every time I need to place some actual mining equipment… but it’d be even easier if I had this particular key ingredient always available in depotspace, wouldn’t it? So, for the first time in any of my solo saves, I’m actually using the relevant alternate recipe.
2. Explosive Rebar. Regular Rebar Gun ammo + Steel Pipe (made with iron ingots because of another useful alternate recipe… scavenge those hard drives, folks!) + Smokeless Powder (not the reason to hurry up and unlock petroleum products, but it’s certainly on the priority list somewhere) = What amounts to point-and-click explosions. You may start leaving your Detonator at home (instead of the Rebar Gun) when you’ve got this stuff handy.
3. Nobelisk. Yes, regular old explosives. Why? Because I might want to make fancy explosives at some point. Like, when the capability to craft the “Oppenheimer Special” arrives…

Luckily, when all you need is a few items per minute of (relatively) simple products, even three normal-quality iron nodes is basically overkill. Or “strategic future-proofing” if you want to tell yourself that. The only outside materials required were Black Powder (Nobelisk), Smokeless Powder (Explosive Rebar), and… Packaged Rocket Fuel.

For the drones. To bring in the powders. And yes, that makes this build site the first actual use of drone transport in my current save. Both of the powders are made at nearly the opposite end of the map, and I’d already decided to load the Smokeless Powder (made at the “Plan A” Rocket Fuel site) into a drone port for quicker, simpler delivery wherever I decided to build my munitions factory. It was there and ready, it just needed a destination. And a drone. And fuel for the drone. Which, ironically, I delivered to the munitions factory via train. From the same site at which the Smokeless Powder is made.

(… yeah. I know. In my defense, with drones it makes more sense to fuel at the “home” port for each drone. If you’ve worked with drones in Satisfactory you’ll understand. Hopefully.)

This sort of small-scale low-throughput project is almost ideal for drones: It saves space (drones take up vastly less real estate versus trains), it saves build time (even in my laziest mode, the time required for me to build rail from Point A to Point B is non-trivial), and since the drones carry less material per trip they make logistical sense for a build site that doesn’t need much material.

Drones are neat. Part of this save’s game plan (as it were) includes relying on them more than I’ve done previously. We’ll see how that pans out, of course.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to clear out more native flora and various surface obstructions so I can build a factory to crank out… wait, how many per minute of Crystal Oscillators…? Have I gone mad?

(Next week: More zombies! Or another terrible build project. One or the other.)