I may wander off, I may restart time after time, I may abandon more saves than I finish… but I love this game as much now as I ever have. It’s gotten me through my diabetic years (and the pandemic years, both of which are ongoing) at least as much as any other piece of entertainment you could name, and moreso than most.

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of Satisfactory’s version one point oh release. The reasons I keep coming back are varied and probably too many to count, but I’ll count some of them here anyway, in no particular order:

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For some reason, when I got to the point of wanting to replace some of my early power plants (coal, maybe some regular-fuel) with nuclear power, I decided to build the biggest plant I’ve ever made in the game, solo or multiplayer. This is my “1.0” save, started when the game officially left Early Access last autumn.

I ran the numbers and decided that 4 uranium fuel rods per minute feeding 20 power generators was exactly the right number to aim for.

What the hell was I thinking?

Please allow me to offer some advice if you want to follow in my virtual footsteps. I made some mistakes; perhaps my hubris will be partly absolved if I can help others avoid them.

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I’ve been taking a bit of a break from my solo Satisfactory save, mainly because dealing with the logistics of nuclear power is a major headache when you have to build every last concrete foundation, conveyor belt, and hunk of machinery involved all by yourself.

Luckily, several of my coworkers agreed to join me on a new multiplayer save.

Unlike with the two-year-long multiplayer save with the kids, I’m not trying to impose any sort of restrictions on how these guys build out their projects. Huge concrete slabs hanging in the air? Fine, cool, as long as we’re getting results. And with four sets of hands (minus one of our players in the most recent session) it’s amazing how much progress you can make. We’ve gone from “nothing” to “coal power and steel production” in about six in-game hours. Never mind the mountain of research we’ve already unlocked.

I’m having a blast, playing with people who are coming at the game from very different perspectives. We have one guy who’s roughly at my level of time spent really digging into the game, one who’s kind of a blueprint-based speed runner (I’m not judging here, I could honestly be better about using blueprints), and one who had barely touched the game at all before we started this run.

What will we achieve? Fun, if nothing else, I hope.

To be clear: There are videos on YouTube which can show you how to do this, but I don’t like scrolling back and forth through a video to tease out the details of a process. If you’re like me in that regard, here’s a tutorial for making a single-track train spiral structure in Satisfactory.

Note that you can (and should) play around with materials and other design elements. Maybe you want sign-based lighting on yours? Sweet, go for it!

Let’s get started.

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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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Well, this is moderately embarrassing.

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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