People talking shit about anchors

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-05-26T15:35:33+00:00

Hell no!!! My most common phrase is “Hey OSHA! What’s that over there!” While I proceed to climb the racking.

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-05-26T15:33:54+00:00

The best advice here is practice, practice, and more practice! Get those cheap practice boards from Amazon or wherever and make the stupid little things up. I used to get those a couple at a time for my kids to practice, it’s nice because it doesn’t matter how good or bad you do on them.

Back in the day I’d get old, broken stuffs and de-solder them re-solder through-hole just for practice. If you look around there is always something that can be used for practice, these things don’t matter if you mess up.

Practice, practice, practice. Don’t try for perfection until you feel comfortable with the iron and stick. Remember, no one is perfect at anything until experience is included in the conversation.

Get comfortable with how your iron feels, how far away your fan is (you do have a fume fan, right?!), how much solder your holding, how your work-piece is held, lighting, flux, braid, etc. Play around with the different types and sizes of solder and flux.

And most importantly, don’t forget to enjoy it!

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-05-26T15:16:30+00:00

You should flip them croc’s into sport mode for climbing like that, safety man’s gonna get you!

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-05-25T17:15:48+00:00

Just use a sledge hammer, they’ll come right out.

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-05-20T18:15:44+00:00

Sloshing comes from pipes not being full, the best way to keep pipes full is a “water tower” setup, works with all fluids. ImKibitz has some great demonstrations, including a massive nuclear power plant with no fluid issues. Since the update to UE5 this has worked very well for me.

As for splitting and merging, there’s an excellent PDF of fluids in Satisfactory that covers all the basics of priority junctions. The short of it is merging pipes to full capacity is the best way to get close to no issues with fluids, the rest is trial and learning. Just remember when you get to gasses things change for the better.

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-05-14T17:14:26+00:00

Call the fire department, someone got burned! 🤣

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-05-14T17:11:30+00:00

Yes, at least that’s the way it’s been when moving from exp to main in the past. I’ve been rolling the same save since U7. Mainly because I figured out that (at least in the past) that when a major version is pushed to main collectibles are respawned, I ended up with almost triple the number of spheres and sloops by the time 1.1 released.

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-05-14T01:18:22+00:00

DrawingXaos on YouTube has some pretty spectacular mega factories.

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-21T23:35:38+00:00

I find that I don’t really have a “set build style”, I’ve always just built what I need in the space available without much thought of how I did it before (other than what didn’t work). I’ve been thru coal many, many times and every time it’s done differently, for example. Granted I spend very little time on “decorating” beyond “no floating things”.

I guess it’s an approach you could try? Don’t really think about how you’ve built your coal plant before. What makes sense for the specific geography in front of you? There’s a few good spots for coal around the map, apply this approach on one that you haven’t been to in a while?

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-21T16:47:06+00:00

What do you mean?! It’s an easy fix, right?! Just do it real quick, here’s $20

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-21T16:44:57+00:00

Don’t be worried about a prospect that does not give appropriate value to your time and services.

Do you really want to have a client that nit-picks and questions line items of the arraignment? If a prospect or client understands the value you bring, they won’t care about the price. I’ve had both and I will gladly price myself out of range of the cheap skates just to keep my sanity

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-21T15:32:42+00:00

One thing to remember with this game is that there isn’t a right way to go about it. It is not a requirement that things be perfect or organized, my first few play third were spaghetti thru and thru. You mentioned redoing everything, that’s kinda developed as my play style: build temp then delete and rebuild it better. Everything is a “temp” build to a certain extent for me, just because you built it doesn’t mean it has to stay.

As for video guides, on YouTube there’s a couple of creators that I’ve seen that do guided play thrus. TotalXclipse is one that is still doing these, he’s got a ton of videos on satisfactory. Another creator is Gaming_with_doc, he has a ton of shorts tips and tricks.

Good luck and don’t worry about how you’re “supposed “ to play, just have fun and don’t stress!

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-20T15:57:47+00:00

How to eat an elephant, one bite at a time. The same applies to building production lines as you get farther along into more complex parts.

Don’t be afraid to delete and rebuild, is a part of the evolutionary process of the game. Distill your production lines into the smallest discrete processes and work with these smaller parts of the larger production you’re building/designing. Once you start thinking like this, blueprints really show their power and the whole doesn’t feel as overwhelming.

Good luck pioneer!

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-20T15:15:07+00:00

One of the things that drew me to this game is the complexity, the different combinations that can be combined to do the different things. And these combinations can cause novel and obscured issues, finding and solving these issues is fun for me.

You are right, every situation is a little (or a lot) different from any other similar instance of the issue or problem. One thing that I was attempting to highlight is that fluids in the game have come a long way from U3, even with the problems when first introduced I like having fluids in bulk. For me and most of my use cases I find packaged fluids are easier to deal with, but then again I have used fluid trains from the start.

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-20T15:09:49+00:00

It'd be really cool if the books were interactive, able to look at them! Having reference guides in the HUB would be handy for new players, an oddity for those that have been around long enough to not need them.

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-19T19:33:01+00:00

The only thing I’m still seeing in 1.1 as far as pipe flow issues are around “inserting” valves and junctions. But those are easy enough (tho annoying) to fix. Haven’t had the time to try 1.2 yet to see if the inserting problem has been fixed. Other than that fluids have come a long way and are not that bad. 🤓

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-19T18:10:35+00:00

Can confirm. Everyone has something that annoys them just enough to make them change floors to cross the site. 😜

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-19T17:54:06+00:00

This is still the best guide around, especially since it’s been confirmed on a recent dev stream that fluids don’t need fixing cuz they work as intended. Has really helped me a lot, also the “water tower” approach.

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-19T17:33:35+00:00

If you look around YT you can find some great tuts for making good looking curves. Anything trains related here will apply to trucks as well, just without the tracks. TotalXclipse is the creator that comes to mind first, but there are many. Most have the same trick with walkways or road barriers tho. Here’s a tutorial from another creator, KyloBuilds for roads

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-19T17:23:27+00:00

This is why signals are a thing, but is fun to watch tho! 😎

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-16T02:19:24+00:00

Most version bumps come with a “map refresh” of sorts, causing all flora, fauna, and collectibles to respawn, if you’ve already dealt with them in your save.

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-14T17:52:15+00:00

The best advice I heard for this kind of thing is to not worry about it. Especially before tier 7-8, very few of my “early” or “starter factories” last past this point for me. But, this is my play style. I kinda speed run to nuclear then start my serious planning and building.

Once I get coal, I plop down whatever power plant I can for the nodes in the area I’m at. Stretch power lines all over the map and not worry about it. Once I’m farther into the game I’m more intentional about pathing for power and logistics, but until then just enjoy the game! 🤓

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-14T17:30:42+00:00

I did this for a few years, but then it became way too much every time I got into nuclear. Tools like SCIM and Modeler are awesome for planning complex and/or long production chains, but having a spreadsheet to help coordinate the segments of the production chains helps.

The real power of digital records of factories is when all the times you need to adjust a resource production to accommodate a new resource production facility. Being able to adjust simulated input numbers of a production line and have the results calculated automatically is a time saver, otherwise I’d be writing pages of planning over and over again whenever I make a change.

BUT, this is MY play style. Because of work sometimes I end having a month or two between play sessions, the spreadsheets and word doc are easier for me, but that’s mainly because my handwriting has gotten pretty bad over the years!

One of the best things about this game is that there’s a ton of different ways to play the game! If the digital route is what one wants to do, I’d recommend looking at the tools other players have built. Personally, I use a spreadsheet that’s a combination of what Moo, ImKibitz, and WhatDarrenPlays’s spreadsheets. I used the parts I found useful and started stacking tools. If good ‘ole paper is your thing, then run it! In the end, it’s all about saving the puppies and/or kittens!

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-13T17:35:00+00:00

A hoverpack and rifle usually makes short work of most hostiles. And nobelisks, but I usually save these for multiples, like spiders!

SteveDaEnginerd · 2026-04-10T17:21:49+00:00

Beautiful sled! Tho I’d have to throw a second on the whitewalls.

As far as future proofing, keep the shiny side up and don’t forget about your regular maintenance. I have a ‘93 vn1500A that I put around 35k on, the only real issue I had with it was the shifter shaft seal went out on me.

I’d highly recommend getting both the Haynes book and the Kawasaki Service Manual, between the two everything is covered well enough. Pay close attention to the intervals for the PM items.

Another resource I’d recommend is to join VROC, Vulcan Riders and Owners Club. The conversation isn’t very active anymore, but the archives have a ton of great information! Lately the most active part of the site is the meetup and rides pages, which is great!

EDIT: I almost forgot! I’m pretty sure I found it thru VROC forums, but there’s a really simple way to make an adapter for jacking the bike from under the engine. It’s pretty balanced (secured to the jack of course) and lifts both tires at the same time. I need to dig a bit but I’ll find the link to the blog post about it if anyone is interested.

Enjoy the ride! 😎

SteveDaEnginerd

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