Category: Games

Space Ninjas… Again

Early last year we finished up our long-running family game session of Satisfactory, and as a follow-up we decided to give Warframe a try. Out of the three of us, Spud (my son) is the top-tier expert with all the goodies and lore and know-how. Nyx (my daughter) was a dabbler who had played the game a bit but didn’t have a lot of equipment, let alone much of the star chart (playable locations) unlocked.

Me? I was somewhere in the middle. I’ve played the game off and on for years, giving up a few years ago when I realized I was never going to have the kind of skill at navigating 3D space in a looter-shooter game that it takes to really tackle serious challenges. But… given a dedicated team to run with, maybe I could manage to at least pull my weight more often than not? I agreed to try it out.

And now, here we are, months later.

I admit, the game’s grown on me… with certain provisos.
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12 February, 2025
Satisfactory: Logistics Floors Rock

It’s been an entire month since my last Satisfactory post, hasn’t it? Not that I haven’t been playing, it’s just that I haven’t done anything particularly noteworthy. I haven’t picked up any more strange bomb-shaped gifts, don’t worry! I’ve just been chugging away, making progress toward nuclear power.

(What’s that, you ask? What about the Turbofuel plant? Have I maxed that out yet? Of course I haven’t. Never mind, though! It’s time for the new and the shiny!)

To that end, I needed a factory that can churn out a sufficient quantity of something called an Electromagnetic Control Rod. Today I completed that factory… and actually put a roof and some walls & windows on it, even.

The details of the factory itself aren’t that interesting. What I want to highlight is the use of logistics floors.
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12 January, 2025
Satisfactory: FICSMAS Takes Its Toll

Well, this is moderately embarrassing.

Insert “record scratch” meme, here.

There I was, minding my own business, preparing a new site for a couple of electronics products (Remote Control Units and High Speed Connectors) when I saw something shiny.

We all like shiny things, right?
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12 December, 2024
Satisfactory: FICSMAS 2024

With the 1.0 release of Satisfactory comes the first “true” version of the annual FICSMAS event. The inaugural rendition came in December of 2020, right at the time I’d just bought the game… which made for a slightly odd first impression, indeed. The developers tinkered with it a bit once or twice since then but mostly it was just a low-priority side-project amusement for the team.

This “northern lights” effect is a new addition for 1.0, and I love it. I want it all year ’round, now.

Now, though, it’s fully fleshed out and polished to a higher sheen. Let’s get into it.
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8 December, 2024
Satisfactory: Water Reclamation

When you break past the point of sending the Phase 3 shipment up the Space Elevator in 2024’s Golden Joystick Award Game-of-the-Year-winning Satisfactory, what you’ve mainly done is unlocked the twin titans of the mid-to-late game: Aluminum and Uranium. I have a couple of posts about nuclear power in the archives, and yes I’ll need to revisit that topic at some point because things have changed with the advent of Version One Point Oh. Today, however, I want to talk about waste water reclamation, a key part of the Aluminum production process.

Let’s get into it.
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24 November, 2024
Satisfactory: Waste Management

The core focus of Satisfactory is on automating the production of things. Iron products, steel products, aluminum products, all of these things need factories to extract the raw materials and turn them into fun and useful objects. In the process, however, you end up with leftovers and other unwanted fillers of inventory, such as plant matter and the remains of hostile creatures. Once you’re past the early game stages and no longer need biological gunk to power your empire, nor do you need spare ingots and whatnot, what do you do?

You sink them for Awesome Shop tickets, of course. And the best way to do that is with a fully automated waste management factory.

I later changed the sign’s text to “Trash 4 Tix” because I’m clever like that. Also please note that this bin faced the wrong direction at the time of this screenshot. Whoops.

I completed such a build this weekend, and here’s how it went:
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17 November, 2024