I recently finished my space elevator after about 550 hours! I made a video that visits a few of the more creative things I managed to build and shows off how beautiful the game can be.
Some of those factories showcased by TotalXclipse are on a whole other level. I can’t believe how creative some people are. I never got to those levels, but I still had a lot of fun working on “creative” factories and playing around with the Blueprint Designer.
Who would have thought my favorite game of 2024 would be one where I spent a bunch of time outside the game planning inputs and outputs in spreadsheets?
You mention spreadsheets but honestly Satisfactory makes those pretty optional outside of really big picture stuff. It also expresses I/O in terms of units/min which really simplifies how much mental math you need to do. There are a few legitimately tricksy things (vanilla bauxite refining being the most notable) where it is possible to deadlock/starve production. In most cases, however, a fun side effect is if you’re tinkering with something to make it more efficient because of a shortage that issue will usually partially resolve itself by your factory having some time to build up a backlog.
Satisfactory’s build perspective and weak blue printing system would really frustrate if you were tasked with building something like a Factorio Gleba chain and I think they’re aware of that and try to keep things accessible.
