Satisfactorio

I’m actually just selfishly making this thread because I’m fucking stumped in Satisfactory, and am hoping one of you brain wizards can help, but may as well set up a place to discuss factory games too.

I’ve got a little test railway network I’m tooling around with to get acquainted with the block and signal mechanics (or perhaps reacquainted, after having done this in Factorio years ago). But I’ve hit this roadblock and can’t figure out what I am doing wrong. See this diagram:


There are four trains on this system (the stations in the greyed area haven’t been utilized yet). Two in the green area, two in the red area, one for each station. Each train has its time table configured to travel to the central black station, and then back to its own respective outer station. So each train has two stations it travels back and forth between; the black station, which all the trains share, and the respective “private” station which it has exclusive use of. I marked the block and path signals on the side of the rail they are actually built on in my map.

The trains from the green area travel just fine and do their rounds without a hitch. The trains in the red area do NOT move, and just sit in their station, complaining of a “Signaling problem”. Yet as far as I can tell, the structure of the tracks and signals are exactly the same. But I guess I’m just missing something? What am I doing wrong? Someone with a bigger, wrinklier brain than me please help

As a more general not-just-waving-my-hands-in-the-air-for-help post, what do y’all think of the difference between 2D overhead view and tile based positioning (eg Factorio) vs full 3D and grid-less positioning (eg Satisfactory)? I played Factorio and finished end game eons ago. Now I’m going through a Satisfactory run with a friend.

On the surface, I can see why full 3D and positioning freedom would seem awesome. The ability to build vertically, and weave structures and belts around between each other with a bit more finesse does seem attractive at first. But I often find myself at points in the game where I stop and wonder to myself… am I actually having any more fun than I did in Factorio, let alone enough to make up for all the extra room for hassle and bullshit that this extra dimension and resolution create? And is it actually a bigger hassle like it seems to feel, or has it just been a super long time and I’m no longer in the mindset of having to set up these logistics, and Factorio was actually just as finnicky but I don’t remember? I don’t think so, but, who knows.

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Actually I just remembered a few concrete examples of how the approach Satisfactory takes is definitely more finnicky and requires more care. And is even ironically less flexible in certain respects than Factorio was.

Because there are no tiles, the game only lets you connect belts and rails to the end of another segment, as opposed to Factorio where you could easily merge or connect stuff by simply placing into the adjacent tile. Like in Satisfactory, if I build a long railway segment, and then afterwards decide I want to merge another rail into the middle and create a switch point, I have to delete the whole rail segment and then build it back, but deliberately place it in two parts that join where I want the switch to be. Speaking of that and also my signal issue from my first post, in Factorio you could place a railway signal on any tile adjacent to a track and the game would know what to do with it what it means. In Satisfactory, those signals have to be placed at segment ends.

It’s also just super easy to traverse the map in Factorio and see everything at a glance and understand what’s going on, and maintain the assembly lines. You’re looking down at it all and that’s that.In Satisfactory, I find myself having to walk around from different angles and look for the exact perspective needed to position something just right, climbing about on outcrops and crafting machines to see what’s happening and work effectively. There’s certainly something visually impressive about a 3D factory setup that’s built vertically but it’s definitely much more cumbersome to navigate and get a good eye on things

I’m sure some of these things could be resolved with a bit more clever programming, but I imagine it’s more complicated to do so compared to a tile system, and who knows if the devs will ever do anything about those issues z if they even consider them issues at all. They might just feel that’s “just how it works in this game”.

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This was my take on Satisfactory, though i ended up playing it way more after this. I quit after setting up a truck to carry oil and something stupid happened where i had to redo the entire truck path and i gave up. I think the game misses every mark except being pretty and having wonderful music.

I went back to Factorio after this and it was a breath of fresh air smog

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I think some of the hotbar and switching stuff you mentioned is in the game now. Or it might just be experimental, which is what I play, though that has other bugs and issues.

I really only got Satisfactory to play with a friend, but I usually avoid buying early access games because of stuff like this, where I feel unsure of how harsh I can actually be on a game that isn’t finished yet. But that’s a whole other topic not specific to this game.

It was definitely validating to hear that I’m not just being dense in feeling like 3D is a huge distraction.

For the record, I finally fixed the “problem” in my rail by removing a single segment of track and then putting it back, and everything started running. Cool. Glad I spent 2 or 3 hours scratching my head over that one assuming I just did something wrong.

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