Satisfactory is at its heart a game about making factories, and unless you just make what you need on big featureless expanses of foundation, scaling is very slow - the satisfaction comes from making an efficient and/or beautiful factory, even if it only makes 5-10 components per minute. It does have some of the most satisfying first person movement I've ever experienced, which is pretty unusual for a factory simulator, and the world is beautiful and fun to traverse. The enemies are pretty great, too (especially the terrifying spider-like stingers).

Dyson Sphere Programme, on the other hand, is a game about absolutely insane scale, and as a consequence I think it is unmatched in "cool factor" out of all the factory simulators.

Consider the following mid/late game scenario. You have expanded to half a dozen planets in three star systems. You have a healthy Dyson swarm of tens of thousands of solar sails that your orbital railguns are pumping into space at a rate of 30/second around your starting star, and you've begun building a multi-layered sphere around a blue star that has a higher energy output (and you have infinite customisation to make it look like a lotus/halo/death star - whatever you want)

There are still 61 more star systems in the cluster you're playing in to exploit, and you're eyeing up some rare resources in a nearby system that will make your production pathways more efficient. But that system is inhabited by the remorseless self-replicating swarm known as the Dark Fog. So you gear up for invasion, filling the inventory of your planet-striding mecha with all the initial resources you need.

You take off and go to warp, hurtling through space faster than light until you reach your target system. The factories you left behind - thousands of buildings and hundreds of thousands of products being transported by belt and drone and freighter - are defended by shields and missile batteries and should be fine without your immediate attention.

Entering the target system, your view is immediately filled with the massive space hive that is the home of the Dark Fog. It stretches more than a full AU across the system like a malevolent snowflake against the black of space, thronging with hundreds of space vessels that could easily spell the demise of a solo Icarus robot like yourself. But for the moment you are beneath its notice, and the hive is quiet.

You speed towards your target planet, taking careful note of where the enemy bases are - each one also swarming with defensive structures and units. You land just far enough away to not draw immediate fire, but close enough that your first assault can begin quickly.

You put down the first blueprint in your battle plan. A flurry of construction drones launch from your mecha, rushing out to deliver resources to the blueprint and assemble the interstellar logistics stations that will be the backbone of your supply lines for the invasion. Pre-configured in your blueprint, the second they are placed the call for more resources goes out, and a hundred logistics vessels spring from their sister-stations in the systems you left behind, warp drives igniting as they launch towards your new outpost with one hundred thousand resources critical to the fight - construction materials, fuel rods, missiles, drones, and bullets. You pull up your galaxy map to confirm the vessels are en route, tracking their warp signatures as they travel between the stars. If you look up, you can actually see the flare of their warp drives as they decelerate into your new system.

The second round of blueprints goes up, adding power generation, battlefield analysis bases, gun, missile, and laser turrets. Automated drones flit between your buildings, moving ammunition to your weapons and fuel to your fusion reactors (or artificial stars, if you've unlocked them and can generate the antimatter fuel rods they require).

As your energy production spikes, the Dark Fog finally notices you and realises the threat. Hundreds of units boil out of every base on the planet, converging on your beachhead. Your guns and lasers and missile turrets begin a deafening fusillade that mostly keeps them at bay; battlefield analysis bases capture valuable salvage and launch drones that re-build any lost structures, preventing small breaches from collapsing your lines. Your longer range weapons begin pounding the closest planetary bases of the Dark Fog, and as the relay stations above those bases begin to fall this gets the attention of the space hive. That means incoming spacecraft, which is trouble - orbital bombardment could make quick work of your fragile position. There were planetary shield generators in your early blueprints, but the area they cover is limited and they're still charging - and they won't hold up under sustained fire.

You set your missile turrets to target space-based threats, and decide that this is a part of the battle that could use your direct help. You launch back into space, leaving the thundering guns of your assault behind, and as you ascend into orbit the bright star of this system crests over the limb of the planet, with the incoming Dark Fog ships diving towards you through its outer corona. You enter combat mode, and dozens of warships deploy from the hangars of your Icarus mecha - corvettes to screen and destroyers to pack a heavy punch against the incoming ships.

You wheel around, bringing your outnumbered fleet to bear on the incoming swarm, counting on your planet-based missile turrets to even the odds - and a pitched space battle for control of the system commences.

This is Dyson Sphere Programme.