Satisfactory 1.0 introduces an entire game mechanic that wasn’t in any of the Early Access versions. And I don’t mean the (erstwhile) storyline.

Meet the Dimensional Depot Uploader, which allows you to dump materials into a kind of Hammerspace. Neat, huh?

You unlock the Dimensional Depot system surprisingly early in the game, and it’s done via the collection of certain alien artifacts (you’re on an alien world, this makes a certain amount of sense) plus mining & processing a certain kind of strange, er, alien material. What does the Uploader do? You can send one kind of material per depot into a pocket-dimension-y “space” from which you can pull that material as needed when building factories (or railways or whatever) in the world.

At first the rate at which you can upload and the number of item stacks which can be stored are appropriately small for the early game. Research trees in the MAM (your research hub) will allow you to spend alien-tech-related materials to bump up the stack and rate limits considerably as you progress through the game.

This is, to put it mildly, a game-changer. In the almost literal sense of the term.

One of the big frustrations when doing large-scale projects is the limit of your player character’s carrying capacity. It’s amazing how quickly you can go through 3000 Concrete when building a really big factory… and then you’re stuck hiking (or hyper-tubing or driving or whatever) to the nearest source of more Concrete. Lather, rinse, repeat. But now, with the Dimensional Depot system, there’s a source of materials available at the metaphorical snap of your gloved fingers! Always, anywhere!

So how does one set up one of these lovely hammerspace-filling beauties? I’m glad you asked. Building one is easy, it’s the same size & shape as the starter storage bin and can stack with them if you want. All you need is some of the aforementioned alien-related stuff plus some other materials. Then the fun part comes: Figuring out how best to feed it. I have a system and it involves Smart Splitters.

1. Produce the thing, in this case Concrete. In the above image this is coming down the conveyor belt on the left.
2. Route to a Smart Splitter, one output heading toward production (if any) and the storage bin(s) with the overflow going to an Awesome Sink (if you want tickets, and why wouldn’t you). In the above image this is the leftmost splitter and the large machine off to the side.
3. Optional: At the next Smart Splitter, send one output toward your production/depot line with the overflow going to a regular storage bin. If you don’t care about having a regular on-site storage bin simply omit this entire step. In the above image this is the center splitter of the three and the bin just above it.
4. Finally, if there’s a production line to feed place one more Smart Splitter and send the item output onward from there, with the overflow going into the Dimensional Depot Uploader.

You don’t have to do it exactly like this, but it’s one way that gets the most out of your production line. Your needs and mileage may vary.

So what are the gotchas? The first is that you’re limited, especially in the early game, by the speed at which an Uploader can do its job and by the maximum amount of each kind of material. These values are upgradeable but at a steeply increasing cost for each boost.

The second gotcha is that while using stuff from hammerspace is free and instantaneous, if you decide afterward to remove what you’ve built then those materials go back into your inventory, not hammerspace. It’s possible to go to a build site empty-handed and then end up with a full inventory with loot boxes littering the landscape if you’re not careful. (There’s a feature you can unlock which lets you upload directly from your inventory… but not quickly.)

All in all, this is an amazing system and a great way to ease you into the… alien-ness… of the game world. There’s more to come… I just haven’t gotten there yet, other than occasionally hearing… voices…