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.

Apparently this gameplay status update series is a thing I’m doing lately. Hey, at least it means the ol’ WordPress site is getting some use. I made a fair chunk of progress in Satisfactory this week and wanted to share some details about how that went.

How about a game status update for the thing that has taken over most of my free time this past month? (Yes, I bought it on Dec 3rd 2020 and here it is, Jan 3rd 2021 and the honeymoon ain’t over yet.) I managed to send up another shipment via the space elevator, which means I unlocked the potential to make petroleum products such as plastics and fuel from the newly-available oil.

The operative word there is, “potential.” In order to take advantage of the ability I’ll need to craft a bunch of materials needed to build the production facilities. I have a spreadsheet for tallying up the requirements.

Yes, a spreadsheet. For a video game. No, I don’t know what sort of stranger I’m becoming, either.

At any rate, a big part of today’s session involved retooling my meager copper operation into something which can crank out more materials, faster, routed and stored more usefully. I need Wires (made from copper) to pair with Steel Pipes (made from steel, which is made from iron and coal) to make Stators which, when paired with the Rotors that the iron works produces, makes Motors, and I need hundreds of those to get the oil fields project running.

You get the idea. Maybe.