Satisfactory: The Ultimate Factory Builder – Automation, Exploration, and Engineering Mastery

In this episode of Gamer Chronicles, we dive deep into Satisfactory, the wildly popular first-person factory-building simulation developed by Coffee Stain Studios. Join us as we explore the game's evolution from its early access days to its current near-final form. We discuss what makes Satisfactory a standout title for fans of resource management, automation, and large-scale creativity.

From automating vast production lines to exploring the sprawling alien planet, we’ll take you through the gameplay mechanics, major updates, and community-driven features that have kept Satisfactory at the forefront of its genre. Plus, we’ll chat about the game’s multiplayer mode, how it compares to other titles like Factorio, and what we can expect from future updates.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Satisfactory’s development journey from early access to now
• Key gameplay mechanics: factory building, automation, exploration, and logistics
• Major updates like fluid mechanics, new power sources, and tiered progression
• The role of the Space Elevator and advanced automation in endgame content
• Multiplayer experience and community engagement
• Why Satisfactory continues to captivate players and what’s next for the game

Why Listen: Whether you’re a longtime fan of Satisfactory or just curious about factory-building games, this episode offers a detailed look at the game’s mechanics, its development, and its appeal. If you love problem-solving, optimization, and engineering in gaming, this one’s for you!

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Transcript

Welcome to Game of Chronicles, the podcast where pixels tell stories and gamers become legends. I'm your host Aden, and I'll be guiding you through the immersive worlds of RPGs. 

So today I'm going to talk about satisfactory 1.0, which is in a nutshell, a resource management game. That's the easy way to put it, but it is so much more than just managing resources if only it was that simple. I've been playing this game since it came out in Early Access. It came out in March, 2019, so it came out over five years ago in early access and by a developer called Coffee Stain Studios. If you don't know them then they're the ones who made Goat Simulator and Deep Rock Galactic two great games, especially Deep Rock. Love That Game, still play it to this day, even though it came out ages ago, and I'm saying that satisfactory came out five years ago, still playing it to this day, and it was done in Unreal Engine four, which is a shame because the Unreal Engine five was released I think last year, but they already started developing this in Unreal Engine V, and because they got so far ahead, they didn't transition to five.

So a very quick overview. So in 2019 March it got released as an exclusive on Epic Game Store. I bought it a couple months later because it was delisted from Steam, so I believe it released on both, then got Delisted on Steam and then was Epic only. So this is when Epic was throwing money everywhere and trying to become better than Steam, bigger than Steam by doing a lot of things like this by getting exclusives and paying developers for exclusivity. So unfortunately I have always owned it on Epic. The only game I have on Epic is satisfactory. That's the only one game I own on Epic, but never mind, I digress. Epic is okay. It's not as the other ones like Origin, EA, whatever it is now. And who else had one? Bethesda? All of these silly companies decided to have a ton of these gaming platforms, which is ridiculous, where PC Gamers, we only need one and Steam is the one, but Epic is better for the devs because they gave them more money. So I wasn't too bummed when I paid for it on Epic for satisfactory, and it was cheap back then. I can't remember how much it was. I think it was 20, 30 US dollars, something like that. Quite reasonable. Now it's about double that price, which is one of the things with early access, you take a risk, but obviously coffee, steam studios, very good studio.

So Game came out early Access March, 2019, and then a year later in June, 2020 is when it got released on Steam. Had a great reception initially because it was factorial if you ever played that game, was this game from a top view perspective, it was almost exactly the same game except you weren't in it. This is a 3D game where you single build things unlike factorial where it's a top view game where you can manage things a lot better. So originally when the game came out, it was a bit of just a shell of itself considering that it was just an introduction. This is what you can do. I had basic mechanics, some resource gathering and a research tree. That was it. That was effectively the game and there wasn't really enough to keep bringing you into it, but it still looked well polished at the time.

And then they slowly introduced things. So I'm not going to cover all the updates, I'm going to jump a couple. But in update three, they introduced all the fluid mechanics, the hyper tubes, the pipes. For me it was always, I played this game for a little bit for about 10 hours and then I left it alone for a year. Then they introduced the pipes and again, so on and so forth. And then April, 2021 is when they put in particle accelerators and tier eight items like uranium, waste disposal and things like that. And then Update six was a big one, which enhanced exploration tools, gave you new weapons and made the UI just generally better. And then update seven is when the new factory floor designs and optimizations came in. So between I think update six and now, so between June, 2022 and release one, I didn't play the game at all because it wasn't fully confirmed when the release was coming, but it was September, 2024 when they confirmed it.

So for about two years I didn't play this game. So it was great to get back into it, which is what I've done. I've learned a lot of mistakes from the past. I've now applied to the game and the game is for a broad audience. If you enjoy like myself, because I'm an engineer, I love problem solving and automation games, but it also brings in a lot of creativity and problem solving. And you know what a lot of maths as well. But if you are genuinely not good with your maths, which quite a few people aren't, which is fine, there are great little flow chart calculators out there that'll do everything for you. So you put, I want to make let's say 120 screws. How many iron rods do I need in order to do that? How many iron ingots do I need to make those iron rods?

And then how much ore do I need per minute to do that? That'll do it all for you, otherwise you have to work at it all out, which I enjoy doing. So I just sit there and work everything out. But there are calculators that are very good online. There's one dedicated on steam for it and quite a few other ones as well. So if you're worried about that side of things, that's quite easy and you can always bring a friend in because it has multiplayer where I think you can have up to four people. I've never played at multiplayer before, but you can build it a lot faster. The only problem is when you're doing it multiplayer, it might not end up being the way you want it to be as a whole overview of the game. So you start off as a pioneer working for the Fix It corporation and you're sent to an alien planet where you have to build increasingly complex automated factories and you have a choice of different plans to go to.

There are I think four obviously with more complexity as you choose up which one you want. The first couple are quite easy and quite nice going with a lot of resources quite close by. While as you go further out things get more and more complicated. And as you explore it, you obviously know this is for a huge corporation and you know how they all are. So you kind of uncover the motives and the world itself by exploring and is big. It's divided into several biomes itself. So the one I'm playing at the moment has got deserts and grasslands, but they're also swamps and forests and every single one has its unique flora and different challenges that you have to overcome depending on which map you do. I mean fortunately the one I'm on right now is quite flat. Yes, you can climb up places, but it's quite easy to get around while other ones aren't so easy to get around.

Now at its core, satisfactory is a factory building game. You have to build huge efficient factories where I've learned from my mistakes because you think, oh, I'm going to start and I'm going to build this factory that does this. And you start just spreading out everywhere. If you want to keep everything contained in a central location, you can't spread out everywhere. If you want to spread out everywhere, you can have mini factories everywhere. But if you want a big huge factory, then you go up. So what you do is you basically start at the bottom with your basic foundation and then you build continuously upwards and space it a bit out. And then you have a huge factory doing many, many things and it is difficult to get around, I won't lie as you go higher and higher, but then you unlock cool things like the jet pack.

So you can just jump around faster. You can unlock blade runner legs, so like in cyberpunk, that makes you jump higher, run faster. So there are quite a few things to help you get around quicker. And I have to say the beginning is a huge grind because you have to do everything manually first, starting with trees, wood leaves, using a crappy power plant to power everything and it can be tedious in the beginning. It is very overwhelming at different stages of the game, especially when you have to start with nothing and then obviously build it up because you're not only managing resources, you also have to optimise your power because if you lose power, then things trip and that starts to become a nightmare because the whole game is basically you can't do anything manual after a while because things just get too complicated. So everything's based on automation.

You have to start setting up everything using conveyor belts to move things between machines and pipes for fluid management. And then it gets even more complicated because where you've got multiple conveyors from one item coming into one place, you have to merge it together and then let's say split it out, use elevators to move things up or down all that while also managing your power, making sure that let's say if you have a ton of coal and water which goes into a coal power plant, neither one runs out because otherwise then if that happens, and let's say your power goes down, it takes a while to buffer pipes. So you have to start up your coal power plant some other way, which I found out the hard way because obviously that went down and you then have to buffer your water system. So you should try and keep that on a separate power grid if you can.

So it's learning about mistakes like this that you make, and it's not only just as you explore further, there are hostile creatures that will attack you on site. Yes, you can disable it in the options if you just want a relaxing game play through. But who wants that? There are spiders. So if you are arachnid phobic, they aren't too bad. They're not like your Hogwarts legacy spiders. They're a bit creepy, but not hoard's legacy, like proper scary spiders. They're like weird looking things. So it's not too bad. But then every single animal you come across has an upsize to it. So let's say you come across a small charger, there'll be a big one, small spider, there'll be a big one. I think they're called stingers in the game. So there's always going to be that double one. So while you can beat the small ones, you have to remember there's always going to be another tier the further more you venture out, which means then if you die, you respawn without any of the stuff yet you had.

So you lose that. So you have to be careful, but later on you can unlock rifles, rebar, guns, explosives. So there's a lot of stuff you can actually do later on in the game to help you with the combat. So combat just becomes more fun. But the thing is you have to do it as well for research purposes. So you have to collect their hides and then research them into alien DNA pods and use that to do some research for things. You have to unlock things as well, using something called the mam where you can put in hard drives that you find for being able to optimise recipes. Because in the beginning when you find hard drives, you're like, I'll never need that recipe. That's just crap. And then you realise later on that, oh, I should have taken that recipe and not the other one because now I'm going to struggle a bit.

That's the game for you. It just punishes you for every single mistake you make. If you don't build your factory right first time you've never played this game before, you'll be punished later on in the game because it will be a mess of everything, which is why it's a good idea to always go up. Because what you can do then is let's say you've made a really huge cock up, which has happened to me even though I've played this game many times before, I realised that, oh, my steel production is all the way on the middle floor, but I don't have any space to produce industrial beams. So I have to basically send everything through the floor using holes for conveyors in the floor all the way upstairs and then whatever I have upstairs, sending it all the way back down on another conveyor. So it's easier to kind of have a mess of conveyor belts on the roofs of each of your floors instead of on the floor because then you can't move around or anything else.

Keep the mess up there and it'll be easier for you in the long run. There is also a Tier progression system, which is so tedious. It is one of the most difficult tier systems I have ever done, and I'm only saying that because where you're making, let's say, easy things, you have to load something called the space elevator, which is the core mechanic, which is your progression tool, and you have to send up really complicated materials up the space elevator, for example, when you're unlocking your tier and progression. In the beginning you'll be building single items, but then for good to go to the next tier, you'll need to do double items. And then to go another tier, you'll need a unit that does four things, and then to go another tier, you'll need all the fluids that you're doing plus all of that.

It's all about enjoying what you're doing. It's not really a game you can rush because if you rush it, you're going to make mistakes, have a mess, and you just won't enjoy it. So you have to take your time to make things a bit easier. You've got vehicles that you can make and transportation. So like trains with stations where things get dropped off. So I've got six stations and the train has 12 cargo loads. So where you stop, you pick up two on each station, and then you also have to manage where each one's picked up from. So it's a very, very long complicated game. But as you go further out, then you need the transport more. And then later on in the game you get the good stuff like nuclear energy particle accelerator, supercomputers, propulsion rockets. You get quite a lot of good stuff later on.

Now, in terms of visuals and sound designs, the game is visually stunning. It's got its colourful alien aesthetics from lush to barren deserts. It is a great looking game. The sound design is excellent. All the mechanical noises of the factories and everything else, they're good. The music does get a bit repetitive. There's not a lot of it, so you kind of have to try and look for tapes in the game and then you can diversify your music in the game if you find those tapes. That is my take on. Satisfactory is an amazing game. It's complexity meets creativity and strikes a great balance between complex logistic puzzles and creative freedom, which makes it really addictive for people like me who enjoy problem solving. It's weird because I go to work and I need to make things more efficient, but then the satisfactory, I seem to be more dedicated to it.

It's also got great longevity and replay ability. The world's are huge and are many ways to optimise production. Sometimes you just say, oh, screw this, I'm going to restart. It'll keep you going. I've played this game for over 180 hours now and still going, so I can't complain. You will get your money's worth at times. It will get a bit strenuous and difficult and overwhelming, but trust me, stick with this game and you will love it. Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode about satisfactory. I know I love the game. Great game. I highly suggest you buy it. It doesn't matter where you buy it from, just buy it. Give the dev some money. They are amazing developers and if you enjoyed this show, please do leave some feedback. Please also subscribe to the podcast. That would be a real help. So yeah, thank you for listening, and I will be back here next week with another episode. So until then, have a great week everybody.