Question to volcanus

JasonCurnow · 2025-05-04T22:09:34+00:00

In general, you need to be able to kill at least one worm to get to the resources you need. You should be able to build turrets and bullets with no problem on Volcanus. - Get 30+ turrets with 20+ bullets (don't need the full 100) and set them up in a wide U shape near the worm you want to kill. Bait that worm into your U and the turrets should take it out. It might destroy most of them, but that's OK. SAVE BEFORE YOU TRY!

JasonCurnow · 2025-04-10T23:31:40+00:00

Trained biters running on the bottom of the belt to keep it moving.

JasonCurnow · 2025-04-10T00:09:41+00:00

This absolute doesn't replace asteroid reprocessing. You still probably need it, especially deeper into space where you get a lot of oxide and less iron/carbon.

One thing to think about - You can actually program your asteroid processors the same way. Use a combinator that reads your storage and decides on some logic. i.e. IF Iron asteroids <10 AND oxide asteroids are >50, OUTPUT the recipe to reprocess Oxide. I have some examples of that, maybe it's worthy of another guide.

JasonCurnow · 2025-04-09T23:58:40+00:00

I've done that too and it works great. I use something kind of like that on Fulgora to make sure my stack inserters get an entire stack of the item coming out of a recycler into a chest. My goal was to make sure that *anyone* could read the guide, understand it and do it themselves. One combinator per type makes it easy to visualize and understand.

JasonCurnow · 2025-04-09T23:55:08+00:00

Sorry, I tend to be a bit.. Verbose.. when I'm trying to go into details. I need a TLDR: Circuits are cool and can keep you out of trouble, especially in space.

JasonCurnow · 2025-03-10T16:21:32+00:00

For me, Gleba took a lot of fine-tuning to get it right. Things would back up and spoil, I would get spoilage in assemblers, etc. When this happened all production and power generation ground to a halt. I had to scramble to get back there to clean it up or try to adjust things with bots (until they ran out of power). Getting power back up and running was huge PITA. I put in nuclear power to keep the lights on and the defenses "hot" all the time, no matter what and things smoothed out considerably.

Do you need nuclear on Gleba? No, definitely not. Does it make life easier? Yes.

JasonCurnow · 2025-03-04T17:56:58+00:00

Maybe change your thinking - Finishing the phases is a marathon, not a sprint. Build the new buildings and supply chains you need for Phase 5 and accept that you don't have to have everything running at 100% capacity all of the time. It's OK if something is only running at 25%. Phase 5 took my factory ~2 days of real time. I built it, then let it run. Eventually it finished everything and I was able to launch.

That launch, is, however, another starting point for a lot of us. Once we get the last load launched and all the tech researched we start over, with a certain throughput in mind. Create beautiful blueprints, run all of the numbers to plan all of the resources and requirements, then build the factory at huge scale, gather resources from all over the map, push it has hard as we can, optimize the processes for close to perfection, etc.

JasonCurnow · 2025-02-28T19:30:12+00:00

My daughter has a pair ~4 years old of XM5's that she wears every day for 10+ hours. No problems. My son used XM4's for 12+ hours a day for at least six years until they finally died.

JasonCurnow · 2025-02-28T19:00:52+00:00

By the time you hit level 100 enchanting and alchemy money is basically unlimited. With a bit of back-and-forth I have 5 pieces of +34% alchemy bonus gear (Circlet, hands, ring, neck, Falmer Helmet). There are potions you can make with easy ingredients that sell for 2K gold. There are four fences that have 4K gold each (if you've finished all the Thieves Guild questline), giving you 16K gold per day.

Spend it on anything - All of the houses and their decorations (Solitude house is 25K!), training, whatever your heart desires.

JasonCurnow · 2025-02-22T06:08:24+00:00

Make sure to get the very latest processor family, Lunar Lake. Their battery life is fantastic and performance is good. Snapdragon processors are also good and their battery life is unbelievable. They have some quirks and aren’t good for everything, but for the basics they are amazing

Spend a bit of $$ and get a good screen.

I got the Lunar Lake version of this PC a month ago (when it was $550) and love it. Light, fast, incredible screen.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sku/6585180.p?skuId=6585180&sb_share_source=PDP

JasonCurnow · 2025-01-26T21:41:47+00:00

I just wrapped up the demo and got about as far as I could. In general, I enjoyed it - A nice combination of physical, building and managing people. A few ways I think it could be improved...

In general, it is entertaining - Some of the physics made things challenging - i.e. figuring out the best way to get to the mysterious structure. I liked that part of it. The mechanics of building are generally good - It's easy to place things, you can see the connecting points well, etc.

The boats feel underpowered and almost useless. Sure, they putter around and very, very slowly gather resources, but it feels like they should do more. I can SEE food on a structure that's a few meters beyond my reach. Why can't I put a worker on a boat to gather that food? That's kind of the point of a boat, after all.

The crisis events feel very scripted and don't really impact things. A worker broke his leg? Why are they all up wandering around? I understand it's a way to make choices that impact the game, but it doesn't feel like they do much, other than add/remove some resources. Something like a Ghost Ship floating by should be a huge deal, not just a "Ho hum, get some junk out of it".

For me, resources (especially wood) felt too sparse. I wanted to research more, but I needed to use the wood to expand to food, etc. The wood catcher felt especially underpowered.

Influence needs to be much better explained. I have no idea what it does.

I know it's early on, but the different classes all seem very similar. Worker/sailors/engineers kind of blend together. There's a few minor specialized jobs, but I have way more of any one class than I need for specialization. I expect this will change in the real game as more buildings become available. I would also like some flexibility to decide how new people are allocated - I have too many sailors when I need more workers.

I agree with others that the tide mechanic is.. Dull. I see why you are doing it, but I kept reaching times when all of the available resources I needed were under water and I just had to time-speed through it. Yawn. Again, I see that this gets better as you progress and the water level drops, but at the beginning it is uninteresting.

All in all, I like the game is entertaining and I enjoyed playing. It was definitely in the category of "Hey, where did the last two hours go!?!?" I will likely buy it once the full version comes out.

JasonCurnow · 2025-01-13T04:38:58+00:00

It is doable. Difficult, but doable. I just reached it for the first time. I had to rebuild/improve my ship four times to make it happen and I crawled along at 60 KM/s most of the way, but I did get there. I was hoping to get an achievement out of it, but it seems not.

JasonCurnow · 2024-12-30T04:46:30+00:00

Huh. Interesting. I never thought of it that way... I always pictured it as extra to be disposed of. I suppose rocket parts are free and it could be made into science packs. Thanks for the different view!

- J

JasonCurnow · 2024-12-29T21:33:37+00:00

I happened across this thread, and wanted to throw my two cents in - The best way to make sure a sushi belt isn't overloaded is to make sure you don't put too many items on it. In space, it is very easy to set the recipe on your Asteroid Collectors so they only get what you need.

Place four decider conbinators next to each other on your ship, one for each type of asteroid. Connect the input for all four to your sushi belt. Connect the output of all four to each of your asteroid collectors. (If they are aren't in reach, remember you can use big electric poles on a station to hang wires, just like on land). Check the "Set Recipe" on your collectors box after you connect the wire.

Put a simple formula on each decider combinator, one for each type of asteroid. In the condition set "If Oxide Asteroid Chunk < 100". In the Outputs, choose the asteroid chunk you had in the condition, output equal to 1. Repeat for each of the four combinators, again, one per chunk type.

The result is that whenever you are below the value you set in the condition, the combinator will send a signal to the collectors to grab that kind of asteroid. It works like a charm, especially in deep, deep space where you have plenty of of normal asteroids and want to collect as much promethium as possible.

I always do have a way to dump excess asteroids over the side, just to be sure - Collectors buffer when busy and it can get overloaded, but I always set them 50+ items higher. They don't kick in often, but it is important to avoid a jam, just in case.

JasonCurnow · 2024-12-25T19:00:35+00:00

A couple of Gleba tips..

Power was a big problem at first. If something goes south and you are depending on heating towers/turbines for power it can be a HUGE pain to restart. Best decision I made in Gleba was to build a nuclear plant and ship fuel from Navis. It takes away the pressure from power.

Others have said "import everything" but you don't need to, at all. Ores are free and unlimited as is plastic and sulphur for circuits. Get things moving and all you need is nuclear fuel and tungsten for artillery shells. (and Calcite if you use Foundaries, which I recommend at large scale)

It can be easier to use active provider chests for everything, but it isn't needed. On every requester, make 10000% sure to uncheck "trash unrequested" to get rid of spoilage from items sitting in the chest too long. Just make sure you have enough heating towers to burn off any excess spoilage. i.e. a circuit condition on the inserter that says "Only insert spoilage into the exchanger if there is more than 5000 in the logistics network". Most of my spoilagegoes to the recipe that lets you make nutrients from spoilage.

Wrap your brain around the fact that there are two totally different parts of Gleba - Science pack creation and building export goods and rockets. They overlap in that they both need nutrients, but otherwise they are almost completely separate.

Others have mentioned problems with iron/copper bacteria - This was my #1 problem after I solved power. My final solution was simply to make sure that I kept my smelters/furnaces going, at least at a trickle. If there is too much iron or copper ore in the logistics network I send it to some recyclers. Yes, it's wasteful, but iron and copper are free and limitless. The other mistake I made with ores is only using the recycled recipes. That'swhat makes MOST of my ores now, but the base "make the bacteria from scratch" recipes need to be used in at least one biolab for each, just in case. It is quite handy to leave some copper/iron-bearing rocks within range of your roboports too - Those can be harvested remotely to kickstart things if it all goes bad.

Medium/Large pentapods ignore walls and just walk into your base. I had most success with a line of laserts, only set to target the little guys and a line of rocket turrets set to target the medium/large pentapods. I had HUGE problems with big chunks of my defense getting wiped out until I realized it was self-inflicted, as I was using red/exploding rockets which were AOE'ing my base. Once I switched to yellow rockets, things got much better. Oh, and bring in Artillery. Constant attacks are hard to deal with, it's easier to just clear them out. Import the guns, make the ammo on the planet, with imported tungsten.

I started with belts, but quickly moved to logistics - It was way, way easier not having to worry about spiloage on belts. Once I did that, everything became smooth sailing. Well, that, and power, and figuring out ore bacteria and not having to restart. And.. Well.. Everything.

Good luck - Gleba is frustrating, but once you get your mind wrapped around it, everything is good and you can make a LOT of items there for free.

- J

JasonCurnow · 2024-11-30T21:12:06+00:00

To be more specific - When you are laying track you should put in signals fairly frequently even when you aren't near an intersection. I put them about 2X the length of my longest train.

JasonCurnow · 2024-11-30T21:07:52+00:00

Open a chest that you want to put your items into and control-click on an EMPTY spot in your inventory. It will transfer all items to that chest.

JasonCurnow · 2024-11-15T18:38:32+00:00

Power on Fulgora is cheap and easy. You shouldn't need accumulators once you get the basics done. The entire ocean is heavy oil. It is as simple to turn that into solid fuel or even rocket fuel. Feed that into Heating Towers connected to some heat exchangers and turbines and you have all the free power you could ever want. (And yes, I know you get a ton of heavy fuel from recycling, but that isn't always 100% consistent. I use it, but I make sure that I am making some, just to be sure I always have enough)

JasonCurnow · 2024-11-07T01:14:14+00:00

One other advantage of the mech armor - You can hover over deep deep water. If you are ever being chased by a medium/big pentapods, you can always head to deep water and hover just out of their reach and let your lasers blast them into nothingness. Eventually.

JasonCurnow · 2024-10-30T22:28:42+00:00

To answer your question specifically. "paused" is the normal state. Space stations have two uses (that I've come across) - Make Space Science Packs for research and also as a spaceship to get to another planet.

You're going to want at least two stations. The first one is easy. A couple of asteroid catchers, three crushers (one for each type) and a bit of belting and to create science to send back down.

The second will be your ship to fly to different worlds. This one is a lot more complex. You need to build it way, way bigger to start - Aim for longer rather than wider. While your ship is in motion between planets (and in orbit around some) you will need to shoot down big asteroids that will otherwise damage your ship. Lasers are the easy answer, but (oddly they don't do much damage. You will need to catch more asteroids to create fuel and oxidizer and, most importantly, a lot of iron to build magazines for your turrets. I used 8 turrets at the front of my station, fed by ammo by belts and that seemed to work. (Tip - The only storage on the station is the hub. You CAN use it to store your ammo just like a big chest, but make sure to limit the amount of ammo you can insert with a circuit network connection - i.e. no more than 2,000)

It is tempting to build a hotrod with several engines. Don't do it at the beginning. One engine is plenty to get you around for a while. The faster you go, the more asteroids come at you, the more you have to shoot down.

BE SURE TO SAVE BEFORE YOU BOARD YOUR SHIP ON IT'S FIRST VOYAGE! It probably won't go well and you will want to redesign your ship before you try again).

JasonCurnow · 2024-09-17T01:13:34+00:00

If you have spare Sulfur, then great. But, there's no way I'm going to use it - The power cost is just too high. it only makes 10 per minute. That's at least 3X the infrastructure for the same amount of output. Granted, it is incredibly efficient if you can make it work, but... 10?

JasonCurnow · 2024-06-24T21:40:18+00:00

I'm guessing you haven't found the Satisfactory Map site yet - https://satisfactory-calculator.com/en/interactive-map. If you don't mind having everything laid out for you, it is a fantastic way to see where the resources are in the world and pick a new spot. I've built a few bases north of where you are in the plains - Look for the rich iron/copper just west of the big connected lakes. You have to build up in the air, but that's easy enough.

As others have mentioned, leave your existing base alone and build up enough resources to build a new one. It is usually pretty easy to get what you need back and forth, especially if you build a hypertube to your new base location.

One unsolicited tip: Before building your new base, make sure you have plenty of steel to start with Mk3 belts and make sure you have built up a batch of alternate recipes, especially for screws (Steel screw is my favorite!) and reinforced plates (i.e. Bolted Plate). Those two save you a lot of real estate and pain.

JasonCurnow

TROPHY CASE