I’ve been working on a railroad. Not all the live-long day, mind you, but I did put in a lot of hours over this past weekend on a very silly project in Satisfactory. You see, I just shipped off the third Space Elevator bundle and unlocked Tier 7… but the forthcoming game patch called Update 4 is supposed to do exciting things to the tech at that level so I don’t want to actually build anything from that tier yet. Either I need to shelve the game for the duration (yeah, right) or find something to work on that doesn’t involve new tech.

I decided, “Oh hey, let’s spend our vacation week doing a silly rail project.” (I’ll have more on that later this week.) Along the way I worked out a couple of useful techniques that I thought I’d share with the group as a sort of follow-up to the previous big post about the game’s monorail tech.

Ever since a friend showed me the game, the goal I’ve worked toward this entire time in Satisfactory is unlocking the monorail. I finally got there, I have two working rail loops now, and I have some thoughts and advice for newcomers. Load up the cargo, release the parking brake, and let’s steam forward, shall we?

You thought you’d get out of January 2021 without another one of these, did you? Well, surprise!

I’ve been in Tier 5 & 6 content in Satisfactory for a little while now, and the bulk of my time at this stage of the game so far has been spent getting to the point of making my first petroleum-based products (Plastic and Rubber) as well as generating power from Oil. Unlocking some of the really fun stuff, however, required fully (if modestly) automating production of a couple of key components: Heavy Modular Frames, and Computers.

Here’s a bit of how I got those production lines up & running.

It’s time for another Satisfactory game update. This time, we’re talking about that guide to building an oil-based fuel power plant and how well the game’s multiplayer holds up in its current state.

Remembering that all of this is about an “early access” game boggles the mind, sometimes. It’s a remarkably polished and playable game for something in “early access,” even moreso than Torchlight III’s “early access” was right up to its launch date.

Anywho, let’s get down to business to defeat the puns.

All I’ve posted about so far this year is this one silly game, but hey, before Satisfactory came along I was lucky to manage one post per month. I’ll ride this content train as long as it lasts, absolutely.

Rather than talking about a specific build, today I wanted to share some tips for people who might be interested in the game but feel daunted by what looks like a challenging mountain of highly technical tasks. I am, let’s be clear, an absolute “filthy casual” of a player. This description applies to nearly every game I play, because I’m really just here to relax and amuse myself. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being highly competitive or taking a game super-seriously if that’s your thing, mind you, but neither of those mindsets suit me at all.

So, if you’re sort of like me and want to putter around in this game, I’d like to offer some modest advice that might help.