Satisfactory - 3D Factorio?

[csduff]

Got the game. Definitely different from Factorio, not entirely in bad ways.

I've got a gaming laptop (Asus GL-753V), but it isn't a supercomputer. It has no problem running Satisfactory on full graphics. Factorio gets a bit bogged down when I get to later technologies, the way I play.

3d changes the way you have to think and layout. Sometimes the belt mechanics are a bit of a pain. E.g., trying to account for clearances without any visualized bounding boxes. In my play through, I'm currently in process of tearing down all my infrastructure and rebuilding on a larger platform for a more finished factory look. This is proving quite fun.

Combat is a pain, currently, but that gets easier once you have a vehicle and can just run down the "aliens". (I know, I'm on their planet so I'm technically the alien)

Unfortunately, I've unlocked all but the last couple technologies, and the last available resource to exploit is oil that is located over 2km from my base.

I think I've done most of what is available in the game, up to this point. I'm looking forward to what will be available in future releases.

Someone mentioned that the game would be better with a Jetpack. There is one. I should unlock it once I get to oil.

I think Satisfactory will definitely be a contender with Factorio, but it will not surpass it. At least not to me.

Oh, and to everyone complaining about it being on Epic's launcher, just wait a year. As I have read, they have an exclusivity agreement that should terminate one year after launch.

[Optera]

Is Satisfactory a 3d Factorio? NO, and here's why.

Satisfactory looks nice, it is also very addictive. However it lacks mechanical depth of Factorio.
Currently the alpha ends on tier 6 leaving at least one more tier locked, so I can only talk about what's in the current alpha.

Early game options are rush to coal power or keep manually feeding the biomass burners.
Rushing to coal requires a lot of hand crafting, but skips all the tedious twig collecting to keep those biomass burners running. Why does the mid tier 0 biomass burner not have a belt intake?

Real base building only started after reaching coal power. Probably the best part of the game. Constantly expanding production chains into ever increasing complex products, mixed in with exploring for more rare resources.
Automated Vehicles are fun at first, annoying later on when the derps keep driving into rocks or off ramps because they took corners full throttle while I took them at half while recording.
I also start missing smart inserter, filter splitters and circuit network to make my factory smarter. I later found out Filter splitters are gated behind Caterium research, which is not even shown in the normal tech tree unless you have stumbled across caterium ore, mined some and researched it in the MAM.

Which brings us to progression.
There are two progression trees, one is always visible and offers clear goals to work towards. The other like Caterium is a whole tech tree that players can miss entirely. I have no clue who thought it might be a good idea to require players randomly stumble across that ore, grab some and by chance access the MAM afterwards to get access to this tech. There is no in game way of knowing this tech tree even exists.

Conclusion:
Building factories is engaging, but it soon becomes repetitive. Recipes are straight forward, nothing shakes things up like balancing multiple results from Oil Refining, or having outputs feed back to input like Coal Liquefaction and Kovarex Process.

The lack of smart automation really kills it for me.
While machines produce computers, AI inhibitors and Supercomputers none of these can be hooked up to turn off an assembler when a storage is full or have a truck stop have the truck only set off when there is less than 90% left.

Automated vehicles are also limited to drive a simple circle and should never cross paths or they might bump another off path causing them soaring straight into obstacles or worse off the map. Compare that to Factorio trains going full Transport Tycoon.

[GrumpyJoe]

Video: Epic Store exclusive, or how to kill your games sales in one 2 minute 8 second video

Just look at the like/dislike ratio. The game will be dead, or soon "finished", without a chance of getting upgrades/DLCs. Or the company will get eaten by a big one.

The comment that sums it up the most to me:
Thus you have lost the battle with Factorio

You cant deny that the concept is a shameless copy. Without any depth. Yeah, its pretty. Thats it
Ive seen some Youtubers getting review copies and yes, it looks big. But its actually not more than your typical 5SP/1s first rocket base. The difference, why anyone who understands the concept would need more than 5h to build this is
1.) first person running around
2.) constant handcrafting and/or running to your supply boxes

It also has no replayability whatsoever, at least i haven´t found any. Handcrafted map, that, to be fair, looks pretty.

BUT! I would have bought it!

But coming back to the top of this post. Epic Store exclusive for a PC game? No thanks. I understand that big companies want their games on their store, exclusivly.
But taking away smaller ones from Steam?

I started playing Factorio for a completely different reason, but what got me hooked (to a level that the first two years of WoW after launch not even come close), beside the game itself, is how things are getting done here.

With someone that sells his soul to that bullcrap, you´ll get excuses and statements overlooked by lawyers. No thanks. Its a loss, but i´ll manage, thank you very much

And i have not even started to find the ES spyware threads in tech forums again.
And i mean not the "journalists" of gaming news sites a..holes that are deep in the industries pocket, that try to tell everyone "its actually not that bad, Epic promised not to use it". ORLY?
That company can S... M. .....

Actually the devs can too. With a statement like "you might have your opinions, .......", saying it like "but i dont care about you, go f*** yourself, i got the money" he/they lost all respect i had.

[BlueTemplar]

Do you have a link to that Q&A he mentions ? He's pretty vague - why would you want to release a bumbling video like that, I have no idea...

They already have been bought by THQ, as he says.

I don't think that they ever intended to frontally compete with Factorio anyway...
AFAIK, it's also more of a "copy" of other 3D games like it, it's more like a Factorio's "cousin" if you will.

The exclusivity part is not a big deal... especially if it's one year like for other games like it, rather than "forever" (who can believe that anyway?).
Lying to crowdfunders might have legal consequences though...
(For my part, I'm not planning to buy any games on stores like Steam and Epic that don't take a stance against DRM. Also if you buy your game directly from the developer, they get a bigger share !)

The spyware issue is a much bigger deal, and is almost certainly illegal under GDPR, and is a current hot societal topic.

[GrumpyJoe]

Q&A

I have not watched it myself, I simply dont care any longer.

I never thought they could compete, at least in game stlye. First person is such a different approach to these mechanics, that im not sure i´d have liked it. But i would have tested it for sure.
Just wanted to see a huge selfbuilt machine in 3D i guess.

What i meant is that they could have dragged a few Factorio players over, to at least test it, guys that think like me. Or that get attracted by graphics. I dont get the appeal of jumping around like ive seen it on Youtube, but the market is there i guess.

But they definatly losing alot of them with the Epic store move. Im not saying they will lose all of their potential, but pretty much from "this side" of the gamers population. I can live without Fortnite players.
Factorio has a fantastic open community and the fact that ive seen ALOT of people complaining about that "toxic Fortnite launcher" shows that they scared away alot of people that they could have gotten upfront, rather than "in a year" (?)
I mean, its not just a few upset guys. Just look at the like/unlike ratio and read through the first 2 pages of comments in the first video i linked.
I can understand coments like "Don't listen to all this negativity, i for one can't wait to pirate your game as soon as possible!"
For the first time in like 15 years, im thinking about that too.

I have no problem waiting a year for a game, but:
They used steam to announce it, build a hype and then take away from us. And what i read about the Q&A is that they knew well in advance they will pull out that move.
The question is, am i willing to support that behaviour?
Will i support a PC games store war? This is anti-consumer to me.

Beside Factorio and a few years on WoW, ive always been an ANNOholic and right now im thinking of not getting ANNO1800 before its removed from steam on the 16th. Just to show UBI that its a bad move.
I was surprised they opened up to Steam, they could have gone for UPlay exclusive, its their title and i have bought some games there.
Hell, i even bought a PS4 just to play RedDeadRedemption2
Its the way Coffee Stain (Satisfactory) and Epic is doing this, that will keep me away from it. Until they come crawling back to Steam, begging us to buy it in a 10€ sale

[ChoMar]

Satisfactory - Pros and Cons
First of all, its not a bad game, really. I played it as far as current content allows together with a friend.
It is incredible pretty. It just looks beautiful.
The 3D - Style with Gridbuild only on Platforms however, thats a bit annoying. More than a bit. You basically constantly need to climb your buildings to build from an elevated position, and even then it is sometimes hard to set things where you want them. The Game gives you a lot of help there, true, but still, it is difficult. Traversing 3 Dimensions in your factory also consumes a lot of time. Jumppads help. Still, building is, while not exactly a challenge, annoying. Annoying to a point where I hardly ran any optimization, because I really didnt want to build more than necessary. This also leads to certain Problems with not bothering to keep stuff beautiful. Most people just build a Plattform. This platform has no physics check and the best thing is to build it endlessly from a Hill, over a big hole or the cliff of the World. Thats not looking good or realistic. The finished Factory itself with its conveyors, moving arms and stuff, is again very good looking and somewhat rewards you for the efforts.
Luckily, the Production chains are way easier than in Factorio. They dont have that depth, I think the maximum Chain length of Factories you need from raw Material to finished Product is 5. Wich is laughable by Factorio Standards.
Also, the Game lacks the "The Factory must Grow" of Factorio. Partly due to the easier standards, partly because I, as mentioned before, didnt always enjoy building stuff. On the other hand, it actively encourages you to explore that beautiful world.
The Game has basically two tech trees, one of them forcing you to explore.
However, due to the annoying 3D building, I dont see me playing the game that often. It is just too much effort to build something. I will play it again when new content gets released, but imho it doesnt have a really high "replay value". And, with this being a fundamental design choice, I dont see how that might change in the future.
Plus, there is that epic store thing.
So, I wouldnt call it a bad game. However, I also wouldnt call it a good game. It has its pros and cons. But if you arent into factorio, this game probably also isnt for you and if you are into factorio, factorio is still better.

[BlueTemplar]

Q&A

I have not watched it myself, I simply dont care any longer.

Thanks, but yeah, after seeing what the first video was like, I'm not going to inflict that on myself neither. (I hoped for a text Q&A.)

I mean, its not just a few upset guys. Just look at the like/unlike ratio and read through the first 2 pages of comments in the first video i linked.
I can understand coments like "Don't listen to all this negativity, i for one can't wait to pirate your game as soon as possible!"

I've learned to not waste my time on YouTube comments (it's harder for YouTube itself). Please don't tempt me.

I have no problem waiting a year for a game, but:
They used steam to announce it, build a hype and then take away from us. And what i read about the Q&A is that they knew well in advance they will pull out that move.
The question is, am i willing to support that behaviour?

Yeah, while it seems like that in this specific case it isn't a contract violation, it's a trust violation at the very least...

Will i support a PC games store war? This is anti-consumer to me.

Positive side :
Developers might be less willing to rely on Steam for such important features as mods and multiplayer.
Having the game you bought crippled because you didn't buy it on Steam, so don't have access to Steam Workshop mods (which are most of the mods), or to people playing on Steam servers (which is most of the people) is making me very angry !
(Also, game reviews - at least we still have Metacritic...)

Very negative side :
Despite Tim Sweeney being even more vocal against Tiles (aka Windows 8/10) than Gabe Newell, not only Epic has released Gears of War on Windows Tiles Store, Linux isn't even on Epic's Store roadmap !
With me dumping Windows, and with GoG having financial issues, and having never been really great with Linux support to start with, I'd hate to have to buy games from Steam again, just to support Linux gaming (and therefore Linux on Personal Computers overall, which has ramifications much farther than games)...

[GrumpyJoe]

I've learned to not waste my time on YouTube comments (it's harder for YouTube itself). Please don't tempt me.

I most of the time read over them, but mostly not getting tempted to reply to the idiocy a comment section usually is.
This one is different. Like the one i quoted about "dont worry, i just pirate it" (the actual quoue is hillarious as its dry and dark )
I´ve NEVER seen such a comment section like in the announcment video, so much in unison that one can actually dream the voices are heared

[AndrewIRL]

Youtube: Why Satisfactory Is So Addictive (11:19)

Satisfactory has big boots to fill. It's not easy to take a cult classic game, recreate its mechanics and recapture it's addictive essence. It's even harder to take a classic game and change those mechanics in a way that improves the overall experience. But Satisfactory achieves all of this and their secret was to be judicious in what they changed, keep as much of the original intact as you can, but then change it at the key points where your change will have maximum impact.

Satisfactory is a first-person 3d building game. Now it's easy to think that's just a gimmick something that barely changes how the game really plays but changing the camera perspective actually changes a lot of other things that I took for granted in Factorio: first of all you can no longer see your entire Factory from a bird's eye view.

This slows factory construction way down maybe tenfold and so the game compensates for this by reducing the number of buildings you'll need to set up. In Factorio a patch of metal ore can usually fit at least a dozen drills. But in Satisfactory each resource node accepts just a single drill. You'll similarly need fewer smelters and fewer constructors to use up all of that all ore.

Now at this point you might be thinking: hmmm a 3d perspective actually sounds pretty bad it just makes the game slower and fiddly but there's another side to this coin because the third dimension also brings a major benefit. You can build things on top of other things. In Factorio I would often run out of space like maybe you find out you need more green chips but your production line is surrounded by other machines; you won't be able to place down new assemblers without cannibalizing another part of your factory.

In Satisfactory where if you run out of space for something you can just build another floor right on top and then another floor right on top of that. This means you can make sloppy slapdash factory designs and it can still work out for you in the end.

This creates a safety net that takes a whole load of stress off the player: there's always enough spare space to make up for your poor planning and this means that you're pretty likely to wind up in that flow channel where the difficulty is just right for you to keep building.

Power is the limitation that you'll be scraping against every time you expand.

Limited power supply creates a conundrum you need to expand your factory to tier up but until you tear up the size your factory is pretty limited and I'd say that unraveling this riddle is the game's primary challenge. You can't just spam your machines up and down the countryside because you'll blow through your power limits; instead you have to prioritize, building what you need most and trying to do it efficiently. You'll also have to scout around for new resource nodes which will let you expand a little bit further but only if you can transport the spoils back to your base.

In Factorio power is rarely this much of an issue, instead your primary limitation is the hostile aliens that cover the map and limit your expansion. Satisfactory has hostile aliens too - but they take more of a backseat because they can't harm your buildings.

This means you can't actually lose any progress, the worst case scenario is a power cut which means your production isn't moving forwards but it isn't moving backwards either. Since your factory is never under any serious threat you can take your time building things just the way you want them and this change also helps make Satisfactory a relaxing experience.

It turns out that these Satisfactory factories are harder to make than I expected but with perseverance I managed to build and build and build and keep building until I'd created a sprawling towering monstrosity. There's something special about being inside of your mega factory traveling over the walkways watching your production from above and seeing towering buildings on the horizon and knowing that you created all of it.

What struck me most was the tone of this game. Satisfactory shares almost all of its mechanics with Factorio but thanks to just a few key changes the game has become serene and calming where Factorio was sometimes hectic and hurried. At the same time they've kept enough of the original intact to make sure that they recapture its addictive essence.

[BlueTemplar]

[...]
Satisfactory is a first-person 3d building game. Now it's easy to think that's just a gimmick something that barely changes how the game really plays [...]

Uh, who would even say that ?! Sorry, but this is such a weak straw man...
I haven't even tried Satisfactory yet due to this very reason !

[...]
You can build things on top of other things. In Factorio I would often run out of space like maybe you find out you need more green chips but your production line is surrounded by other machines; you won't be able to place down new assemblers without cannibalizing another part of your factory.
[...]

You can "build things "on top" of other things in modded Factorio" : See Factorissimo, Warptorio, &c.

[...]
In Factorio power is rarely this much of an issue, instead your primary limitation is the hostile aliens that cover the map and limit your expansion. Satisfactory has hostile aliens too - but they take more of a backseat because they can't harm your buildings.

This means you can't actually lose any progress, the worst case scenario is a power cut which means your production isn't moving forwards but it isn't moving backwards either. Since your factory is never under any serious threat you can take your time building things just the way you want them and this change also helps make Satisfactory a relaxing experience.
[...]

You can disable alien nest expansion and/or pollution in Factorio if you want a less stressful game. Or disable enemies outright.