JakenVeina

Last thing we need before minimum-viable functionality is power.

I want to do the same thing here as I did with the other Project Assembly factories: this overhead pillar support beam setup. For that, I ended up needing to redo several of the ceiling belt setups. Like this one.

And this one.

That's all the framework in place.

And all the power.

So, today's task, before I can start using Smart Plating at the new factory, is to upgrade the current one to match clock speeds. The current factory is downclocked by a factor of 12.5%, so that everything could fit on a Mk.1 belt, while the new factory is tuned for Mk.4 belts, I.E. a factor of 100%.

Since the Smart Plating factory is so old, I didn't have nerd docs for it, as I hadn't discovered Satisfactory Modeler yet, so I had to spend some time reverse-engineering the factory to make the above layout plan. That lets me easily see all the belts that need to be upgraded. Thankfully, I didn't make any mistakes, and it is possible to get this factory up to 100% by just upgrading belts, in place, and raising clock speeds.

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So, with the plan mapped out, I'll start the upgrade from the two Miners, and work forwards.

Of course, since it's all just upgrading belts in-place, there's very little to actually show off. I DID grab before and after shots of the main output belt.

Also, a nice wide-shot of the whole facility, cause why not?

Moving back to the new factory, I can finish running the final belt line, with another little dip to weave it around the belts I'll need to run for the next factory, even though I don't QUITE know where they're gonna go.

And I can drop all the excess Smart Plating I had from the old factory and inject it into the new factory directly. Finally, a real use-case for a Priority Merger, even if it is just temporary.

Time to fill in this last empty Conveyor Wall Hole. Oh, you thought we were done with resource collection? After 6 whole days worth of it before? And the one where I said there was only "one more"? Nah, there's one more MORE.

And it's Smart Plating, from a couple factories over.

First thing we can do is get rid of the buffer and uploader. The ONLY use for Smart Plating anymore is for making Modular Engines.

Next, I need to figure out how to route a belt from this new ceiling hole out of the building, and over to the new factory.

I think the best bet is just roundabout here, near the two input lines for the building.

While I was here, I went ahead and swapped out the weird nudged overlapping wall slots I'd made for the new proper Wall Holes. As much as I liked the old trick, this is better.

This, I think, is the best spot for a new wall hole.

And after that, I realized it would be much simpler, now that the Storage Container and Uploader are out of the way, to just swap the input and output to the top floor.

Belt's now in place, and weaved through the big mega-junction. From here's it's pretty much a straight shot to the new factory. I'll deal with that later.

Last floor to do is Manufacturers for the final product. And, you know what? Screw it, we're doing another sushi belt!

Again, a Mk.4 belt is the upper limit, and that's more than enough to handle the 3 inputs we need, 2 of which are low-volume. Two mergers to get the three products onto the belt, and a Smart Splitter to handle any overflow, in an emergency, like before. ALSO, since this is the end-of-the-line, I turned the whole thing into a loop. So, any resources that don't make it into one of the machines, just loop back and try again, unless there's an actual backup.

I actually was going to use 2 Priority Mergers here, at one point, such that they would prioritize using resources already on the loop, before adding more on, but I realized that would be counter-productive. It would mean that the loop NEVER stops flowing, so the emergency overflow splitter would never trigger, in the event that the loop gets flooded with too much of one type of resource.

Maybe someday I'll have a legit use-case for a Priority Merger again. I'm had one in the playthrough I was doing with my wife, before they existed.

Some belting to connect everything up, an elevator to move between floors, an an AWESOME Sink to handle overflows. Also, I just realized, from the screenshot, that I need to split off a portion of the main product for uploading, before sending it to the Sink.

Only 2 more things to do before we can power on for a minimum-viable factory.

Alright, time to move on to the upper floors. Which means tearing down all of these earlier work, since I've already had to dismantle several portions of it, after adjusting the positioning of the Diluted Packaged Fuel loops, cutting into the foundations I had laid out on the first pass.

The layout I ended up with is roughly the same as it was before, but this time with actual belting, and shifted around a little to match the final foundation locations. I went ahead and marked out this screenshot with the logistics, cause it was pretty tricky to get right, and I'm SUPER happy with it. This here is 3 banks of Wire, consuming 2 lines of Copper Ingot from the 2 Refinery banks below. It's such a perfect fit for 38 Constructors, with the 2 little extra ones on the wings up top, that I have a hard time believing I didn't plan it that way from the start.

Similar deal on the opposite side of the building, with 2 banks of Constructors making Steel Pipe from 2 lines of Steel Ingot, which I was able to fit in right next to the Constructors.

With those in place, I went ahead and routed in the Copper Ingot, Iron Ore, and Petroleum Coke for all those machines.

So, it was tight before to fit in 2 floors worth of Assemblers for making Motors from this stuff, and with even LESS space now, that concept definitely had to get reworked. I ended up putting just the 8 Assemblers for Motors on the same floor as all the Constructors, and built a second mini-floor for two giant banks of Assemblers, for Rotors and Stators. Gotta love the symmetry of using the Steel Rotor recipe that takes identical ingredients as Stators, and produces them at the exact same rate.

Again, I'm happy with the logistics work here, with 3 lines of Wire and 2 lines of Steel Pipe to route evenly among the machines. You can kiiiind of see it in the first screenshot here, but it's unfortunately quite dark. I dunno, maybe I should have used one of the filters? The other logistics to feed the Motor Assemblers is much easier to see in the second one.

I realized after building all this that I prooooooobably am gonna need to raise the mini-floor up by like 2-4 meters, because I eventually want to put catwalks all around these machines, to match other Project Assembly factories I've done. But I'm gonna leave it for now. When the time comes, I'll probably just save-edit that part.

Also went ahead and blueprinted-out the resource trunk, as I no longer have anything that needs to change about it, up to the point of factory entrance.

Next step, I think, is gonna be to setup water.

As it happens, I only need 4 Water Extractors in total, so I can divide them up into 2 per side.

However, this is the point where I hit a design snag. I realized that the way I had all the Refinery banks laid out was going to result in quite a lot of splitting and crossover of the water pipes. After like half-an-hour of brainstorming, I decided on a solution that involves reorganizing most of the Refineries, and more importantly, rebuilding the 2 Diluted Packaged Fuel loops, so that they're on opposite sides of the building. This is actually something I kiiiiiinda wanted to do yesterday, but I didn't have a compelling-enough reason to do it. Now I have several reasons.

Specifically, the advantage I was thinking of yesterday is that if the smaller bank of just 2 Refineries is on the same side of the building as the resource trunk, and then I don't center it, I get a nice open space where I can bring resources into the building.

And I can go ahead and plop down the Water Extractors on that side, as well.

Logistics work.

At this point, I've got interconnectivity between machines mostly done, so it's time to bring in resources.

One caveat: with the way all these lines ended up, one of them (Iron Ore) is on the wrong side. I need to figure how to weave it between the lines that need to move on to the next factory, so I can pull it off here.

Orrrrrrrr.... I can go re-weave it way back at the source.

Kinda tough to see, but the two belts that were crossing over each other before now don't, eliminating the issue.

Presumably, I'll put a wall here, eventually. We'll see.

Lots more logistics work.

Now, this here I can't help but smile about. I've got two banks of Refineries producing Plastic, one from Fuel, and one from Polymer Resin, which then need to combine to feed into making Recycled Rubber, which is the product I actually NEED. Unfortunately, the two Plastic banks are not adjacent, and this was the last bit of logistics I laid in, so I was having trouble finding a nice path to route a belt, between other stuff that's already there.

Until I realized that the only thing between the two Plastic Banks is the big long line of Polymer Resin.... whose belt isn't saturated. It's a Mk.3 belt carrying 135.31/m, which is coincidentally the identical saturation of the Plastic belt I'm trying to route. And the max belt I can use is Mk.4.

That's right, I have a legitimate use-case for a sushi belt. Only the second time ever, for me.

So long as neither Plastic nor Polymer Resin backs up to this here Smart Splitter, this should work flawlessly. I think. I've never done something QUITE like this before, so I also added the overflow line there, on the side. The AWESOME Sink for the whole building is probably gonna end up right nearby, so I can connect that up later.

So, to get started with logistics, I spent a while coming up with yet another setup for a Diluted Packaged Fuel loop.

It ended up quite compact, so I'm pretty happy with it.

All the machines rest on a 2m elevated set of foundations, but with 2m troughs left in, for the package loops. You can barely see them at all, normally, unlike my previous iterations of this kind of loop, but you can see it just barely here, underneath the main belts going in and out of the Refineries.

Same thing on the other side, but half-size.

Then I setup a bunch of the Refinery banks that take both pipe and belt inputs, with this little number.

Also connected up this bank of pipelines that'll be for Crude Oil.

WE MAY NOW ACTUALLY START THE FACTORY.

Man.... I dunno why I thought this build was gonna be rather small, cause..... 47 Refineries..... just to start.....

I think this layout should roughly work. I'll adjust the positioning later, as I actually build out the logistics.

Now, since the Refineries are only about HALF of the machinery I need, I'm gonna need additional floors. This was my intention in keeping all the refinery exhaust stacks as close to the edges as possible, so we only lose one or two foundations around the edges, as we continue upward.

That captures all the machines for this build, in a rough layout that should mostly work, but like I said, I'm sure I'll be adjusting all of this as I build it out proper. The 2 little mini-floors of Assemblers in particular is a very tight fit, right now. I suspect I'll have to split them up into 4 mini-floors, instead of just 2.

Oh, you thought we were all done collecting resources? Nah, we've got one more node to branch off to, roundabout here.

Fun fact! Today's session was played ENTIRELY on the living room couch, streamed via Steam Link, with a controller. relaxing on the couch made for a pretty chill experience, but I definitely felt a little crippled the whole time. On one hand, I would have had less trouble going into it without having to fight against KBM muscle memory, but on the other hand, I think things were made easier by me knowing what all the different actions are that I SHOULD be able to do, like locking, nudging, mini-nudging, mass dismantling, etc. So, maybe it balances out. Still, on the whole, a better experience than I expected. An entirely viable game to play on controller.

So, unfortunately, this trunk segment does have belts in it already, AND as you can see, they're centered, instead of staggered to leave room for a third, so they'll need to be moved. On the upside, we only need one new belt, so we don't need to rebuild the framing, AND the belts in question are for the FICSMAS factory, which is currently offline, so tearing them down doesn't really mean anything.

New scaffolding laid out. Not a particularly long run. Even get to do it along a really nice vista.

Belts moved and new belt laid in.

At the other end of the line, is a sort of double-junction, with a LOT of beltwork going on, and absolutely no room to weave a new belt through to the other side. So, the best option was to run it underneath. I figured something like this might happen, a long time ago, so I left lots of room underneath all of the trunk lines in this area, so I could add new belts in later, without having to raise the walkway.

Aaaaaand, that's that whole line done, and run to where the new building will be that needs it.

Alright, so we've got the new resource belts we've been running sitting on the right-hand side here, and we have some more to pull in from the left, before we can finish this junction to take them towards the new factory.

Luckily, the trunk segment on the left here is empty, and we only have 2 lines to run, so we don't need to tear down and rebuild all the framing, just add in the lines inside of it.

As you can see, we started by scaffolding the whole length.

Yeah, we're going for oil.

There's only 2 nodes left here (not counting the pressurizable well, I guess), and we're pulling both of them. This pathing should do it.

Pumps are set up.

Piping laid in.

New junction installed.

All framing built up and scaffolding removed.

And the final junction built up.

So, I kind got ahead of myself several days ago, when I was tearing down segments of the trunk, to make room for the new belts. I forgot that THIS junction here is where I actually want to pull the new belts off, to the right, and I tore down a bit more than I needed to, on the left. So, we'll have to repair that, after building this junction.

Meanwhile, I need to work towards tearing down this short segment of trunk that the belts DO need to run on.

I figured the best way to figure out how far down the trunk I need to go is to build towards it from the opposite end. So I built some scaffolding in towards the coast, from out in the sea, and connected them up.

A little more power bypassing, and it was safe to tear down the trunk.

Belts are all laid in, from the junction where the Copper meets up with the Iron and Limestone, down to where the final junction will be.

And that's everything tidied back up, including all the bypasses removed and the unnecessary teardown rebuilt.

So, last time, I brought all the new belts up to a junction point where I said I had one more belt to add in. This is where we'll be running that new trunk line, a little bit upstream from where the unfinished junction is.

Got the rough outline of the new trunk line laid in.

Built out the miner platforms.

And started blueprinting out the trunk frame.

I had a problem with the slopes, though: as much as I tried when I was laying down the scaffolding, I could NOT get this to rise fast enough without doing 4 slope foundations in a row, in a couple places. Problem is that I only have blueprints for up to 3 slopes in a row, since that was all I could fit inside the Mk.1 Blueprint Designer.

NOW, though, I have the Mk.2, so I just had to go spend some time making a new blueprint.

Figured I'd also go ahead and do a blueprint for a straight segment, 5 foundations long.

With that, I was able to get the new trunk branch fully finished.