To those who celebrate, for whatever reason you do so, please have a lovely and pleasant holiday.
I was going to just leave it at the simple line of text, then realized… hey, I can add something seasonal AND silly! So here you go, a gift from me to all of you.
Since the inception of the Final Destination site project in my current solo Satisfactory game, I knew I was going to make “content” out of it. (Sorry, Patrick Willems.) There was always going to be a tour, it was just a question of what format the tour would take. I went back and forth on whether to make it a long post with lots of pictures or just record a tour video and put text bits in it. Both options have merits and downsides, and the internal debate allowed me to put off doing anything for several weeks even after (more-or-less) completing the build.
Yesterday I woke up and decided, it’s time to record a video. Thus, the following:
On Tuesday, the 14th of November, 2023 the 8th major update to Satisfactory arrived in Early Access, after spending months in the Experimental branch to shake out the worst of the bugs… most of them, anyway. We have a few things to talk about with “U8” but today we’re going to focus primarily on the new engine’s support for something called “Lumen” and how that makes an already-pretty game even prettier.
I took this screenshot within the first two minutes of enabling Lumen while at the Final Destination site. Just a purely random view and it shows off the new lighting so well! Dang this game’s pretty.(more…)
I haven’t written much about my current solo game progress, largely because most of it’s been very, very boring. That’s not to say I’m having a dull time of it, just that there’s not much to report here which is worth the reading.
I didn’t route this rail line directly under Mothra’s flight path on purpose, it’s just a happy accident.
I’m making progress, though.
To sum up:
I’m working on what I’m calling the “Final Destination” project, a factory which makes all four of the last space elevator shipment products in one location. (This may not have been my wisest decision.) Remember the flowchart? Yeah, I’m referencing that a lot.
To do this, I needed to make a whole bunch of new factories making enough of things I already made but in too small of quantities previously. For instance, I lost most of September to building a high-output Battery facility.
The rail network needed expansion and better interconnection to effectively route materials to-and-fro.
Building the FD site the way I’ve chosen to has resulted in the occasional “whoops, that’s not gonna work,” so I spend a lot of time figuring out some other better way.
Today I can happily report that the initial production run of Magnetic Field Generators has commenced. Delivery is a whole other issue, as the receiving drone ports at the Space Elevator simply do not exist yet, but when the time comes I’ll have a bunch of parts ready to send up.
Catching the rays of the evening sun out in the Dune Desert, here’s the “barn” in which one of the final shipment products gets made.
Next session I’ll need to decide which of the other three products to proceed with. Part of me wants to jump right into the Nuclear Pasta because that’s what uses those super-cool Particle Accelerators… but given their positioning (up above the other three production areas) it’d be smarter to complete the other two first. So I’ll probably do that.
I’m honestly not sure what I’m going to do once this project is all finished. Maybe it’ll be time for a fresh start. Maybe something slightly less dependent upon rail networks.
I’ve reached endgame for my “ChooChooingScenery” game of Satisfactory, the point where I gear up to send off the final Space Elevator shipment consisting of four products: Assembly Director Systems, Magnetic Field Generators, Nuclear Pasta (which, despite its name, contains zero radioactive source material), and Thermal Propulsion Rockets.
The math is all sorted out, source materials (almost) entirely in production, and I have a vague notion that I’m going to build a gigantic factory in the “dune desert” to house this last great project. But I want to make it nice and neat for a change. I want to build a set of machines that not only fit together well but looks good doing it.
And I can’t do that if I’m not absolutely clear on the exact order of what things I need to go into which other things to make the next things.
It was the jankiest of builds, it was the jankiest of builds.
Sorry, Charles Dickens, but in this case repeating myself is the most accurate way to start.
This past Tuesday evening, the kids and I finished up the “Tier 8 Products” factory build. Which is to say, we’ve now automated the final three requirements for the final milestone unlock: Turbomotors, Fused Modular Frames, and Cooling Systems. (Electromagnetic Control Rods are built elsewhere for various reasons.) I noted in voice chat at the end of the session that our co-op build was vastly more efficient and elegant than my personal version of this same (basic) factory had turned out. Spud found this amusing, as he sees our version as being quite “full of the jank.” Which isn’t wrong, but there’s janky and there’s janky.
Please allow me to illustrate.
Yes, it “needs” supports underneath. We’ll get there some day. There’s beautification to be done all over this co-op map.(more…)
