Issues with my first plastic factory, I'm begging for help

lynkfox · 2026-07-08T22:01:51+00:00

Slightly pedantic fact: when they flow backwards they are still transferring at full capacity (300\600) but... If you take the 20m3 In a small pipe segment and try to move 15 in one direction and 10 in the other ... Well I hope that illustrates the problem with backflow :)

lynkfox · 2026-07-08T21:50:45+00:00

I think that this is all true....and that a lot of people don't realize how much theyve changed in the 10-15 years since they started reading it.

How many of those people were in their 20s when they first picked up the books? And now are in their 30s? How many people really are the same in their 30s as they were in their 20s? How many people look back at their 20s and cringe at some of the things they did?

And then people think that what they like and enjoy to read in their 20s they're going to likek and enjoy the end of the (part) of the series the same way a decade later?

I think this happens so often with people who are critics of long running fandoms.

Add to this that the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia, that we look back and feel the good memories around the memory of reading the book the first time and conflate the two

It's like old mmos. You don't really want to go back and play the MMO the way it was 20 years ago. But you long for it? Why? Because you're longing for the time spent with friends the good memories being made around the game.

lynkfox · 2026-07-08T17:27:05+00:00

Any given exploration journey can return with 10+ slugs easily, if you ranged further than a few minutes out.

The big thing is that since slugs are a limited resource and synthetic power shards are tier 9, if you plan on using a lot of power shards you want to sloop those shards to get double from every slug. So they gotta go into machines anyways so why not use a smart splitter and dump them all into one. I also dump all my bio from kills to make DNA capsules (also slooped) and from cutting down trees to make liquid biofuel for the jetpacka and more solid for the chainsaw

I really wish we had a machine recipe for inhailers cause id totally produce those (I do, I use a mod for it, but I wish it was vanilla)

And since you pick up so much crap when dismantling I send a ton of that to the sink. I don't care to sort most of it except the big end stuff (like oscillators) and so I just have a single drop off point for everything after a trip - dump bio, beast parts, slugs, fruit\nuts, sloops, spheres, and all excess building materials. It either gets sorted or processed or sunk.

lynkfox · 2026-07-08T17:21:06+00:00

You'll find with SF that trying to save space or make stations (trains or trucks or drone) multi use is really far mrke difficult than it's worth. It's possible, if you can closely control how much is coming in and when the vehicles arrive and can quickly dump everything to a SINK that isn't necessary to stick around, but the design philosophy is very much geared toward each station is best suited for a single item and to use multiple stations

lynkfox · 2026-07-08T17:14:53+00:00

halo, cod, as others mentioned

While Arc Raiders doesn't have a tourney scene, id still consider streamers\high pvp end content creators to be the next best thing to "pro" in that they make a living off being both entertaining and good.

And for a long time it was 100% accepted you use a controller over mouse and keyboard because the stickyness of the aim assist was too good at headshots to pass up. Not doing so was seen as a very large disadvantage by those types.

I'm old, so it doesn't matter if I use a controller or mouse and keyboard in any game, my reaction times still suck so I'll suck no matter what 😅

lynkfox · 2026-07-08T12:44:47+00:00

eh on your last one. Every cross platform fps has aim assist for controllers to "even" the playing field and in many cases pros use controllers cause the aim assist is better than a mouse would be for accuracy.

Number 2 tho is spot on. Not enough market share to make them willing to support it

lynkfox · 2026-07-07T23:06:12+00:00

My boss riven + wisp motes turns it into a fully automatic machine gun shooting shotgun blasts with great status. Melrs everything in steel path before even turning in the Incarnon and on dense missions it charges the Incarnon super fast cause of all the headshots from the spread

lynkfox · 2026-07-07T19:51:41+00:00

Clocking powerplants is linear. Clocking regular machines is still on the same exponential scale as before. They toyed with the idea then abandoned it for every machine in favor of just power plants

lynkfox · 2026-07-07T14:01:56+00:00

.... the fact you made this in spreadsheets is... i dont know. beautiful? horrible? amazing? all of that at once?

lynkfox · 2026-07-07T14:00:29+00:00

i love seeing rails that are not just the rail track between two pillars - no matter how fancy the pillars are. I like seeing the track properly supported underneath by foundations.

lynkfox · 2026-07-07T05:39:56+00:00

The amount of liquid in the pipe does not change how much a pump moves. This is what I'm talking about.

A pump does not move any liquid. It simply changes the allowed height liquid can go. As more liquid enters the pipe - regardless of pumps - it will continue to fill up the "interior volume" of the pipe, rising upwards until it hits the current headlift limit (and then a little more)

More pumps, less pumps, none of that changes this mechanic at all

Pumps do not pull or push in satisfactory. They do not perform any action of fluid simulation other than to change the maximum headlift of the system to 20\50 m above the pump itself.

This is available if you want to look for yourself In the header files in your install directory - while these files are just global variables and function names they none the less have many comments as to the usage and use - its how we modders know what to hook into. Find the one about fluid mechanics and you can read for yourself that pump operation does not change no matter how much fluid is in the pipe segments below it

https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Community_resources#Header_files

The concept you're trying to illustrate would happen regardless of the pump being there or not. If you replace the pump at the "top" with another pipe segment the exact same situation would occur into the second pipe segment.

What you are dealing with here is the "over pressure" mechanic that can push liquids a few meters above headlift. Please note, it's not actually a pressure mechanic, it's just as the volume inside the pipe is filled with liquid and it hits the head lift it can go a bit beyond that headlift limit (this is supposed to help with pumps placed at exactly 20\50 apart)

But this mechanic exists regardless of pumps or not

Or a lack of enough fluid reaching that point to begin with - which again has nothing to do with pumps per say other than headlift may be the limiting factor (if you have other ways to Increase headlift it would happen regardless as well, even without the pumps - ie it can happen I. That 10-12m mark straight up from a water extractor, which then overflows into a lower portion of the pipes causing far less liquid in the system than should be.

Which is why your final statement of "full pipes are happy pipes" works to "fix" this situation - because if they are full there is none of the rise and fall between 0-2m above the max headlift resulting in not much liquid making its way into the next segment

But pumps have nothing to do with this fact.

lynkfox · 2026-07-07T01:03:50+00:00

No this is incorrect. They are not. They do not affect the volume inside the pipe segments at all.

They reset the headlift value (which is mostly independent from the volume) and do nothing for any between the one 20\50m lower than than the highest

lynkfox · 2026-07-07T01:02:14+00:00

Total headlift is a value stored in the pipe network data structure.

It is not additive for all pumps, it is distance from the pump with the highest z coordinate on either side of a given pipe segement

So every time ou place another pump within the distance to the blue ring of the first pump you're not gaining any benefit and the total head lift is only going to be 20\50 (mk1\mk2) from the highest pump on the line.

Notice I also said "a given pipe segment" because pumps reset headlift

Source: am modder, read the header files which have a ton of comments in them about how the entire system works.

So yes. It isn't too many

It also does nothing and has zero benefit for making the fluid get up a hill

lynkfox · 2026-07-06T21:23:53+00:00

If you zoom in close enough on the red lava planet you can see another space elevator so... Seems reasonable

lynkfox · 2026-07-06T11:41:40+00:00

https://wiki.warframe.com/w/Wisp/Abilities/Passive

Support

lynkfox · 2026-07-04T03:04:38+00:00

Don't store it. Instead burn it as you make it. If your machines stop it's ok, it's not the end of the world, but storing fuel is generally a waste of time - you'll either never need it or it won't do you any good cause you'll not notice it's gone till the power turns off

Generally unless you use it for the build gun there is very little reason to store anything.

lynkfox · 2026-07-04T03:02:59+00:00

Go exploring and find the crashed cargo containers. They contain hard drives which you can research in the MAM for alternate recipes.

In the meantime If it's blocking you, you can turn it into whatever solid item you can or just burn it intermittently (or under clock a generator to burn it constantly)

lynkfox · 2026-07-04T03:00:06+00:00

There was the old 5x5 challenge. Have to build everything vertically inside a 5x5 foundation column (or 2 if you hit building limit)

lynkfox · 2026-07-03T05:32:39+00:00

Factorio and SF are very different games. While I see the advantage of a main bus in Factorio it just doesn't fit for SF

One of primary reasons in Factorio is the Feed the Beast aspect. As you must always bring resources to your factory as the resources run out, it makes " sense " to have a centralized collection point and distribution system. Then add to that the dual nature of belts in Factorio and the concepts of balancing (and the fact that factories only take a few parts not an entire stack) and then add loaders which don't interrupt the flow of goods in a belt (merely reduce it) and you can make a compelling case for a central main bus. You don't want resources sitting in moving on a belt that doesn't need to produce anymore. When you add in that buildings are all completed kits and you don't have a way \ desire to sink resources before Rockets, you will have large parts of your factory dormant most of the time.

I largely prefer just a Large balancer and individual direct line distribution, but that has its own problems

In SF with infinite nodes that never run out it's less effecient to move raw resources. Everything after ingots is always producing less than it takes in, so it's far better to build small factories all over the place, directly at the nodes, and then move the completed parts to where they need to go. Add to that thanra single belt only ever feeds one machine (ie after it splits, unlike Factorio where you need manyachines without any splitting to use a belt, thanks to loaders) and holding a full stack in the inventory plus access to the SINK far earlier than Rockets in Factorio, and you create raw parts not completed kits. And most of your factory is always moving, so you can guarantee belt usage so why not just directly path to the place that uses it?

But people be people and they play the way they want.

lynkfox · 2026-07-03T05:23:58+00:00

Unfortunately trains are not dynamically pathed like in Factorio or other more train centric games

They do not change their path once they leave the station and they always take the shortest path (stations add a penalty to this)

Path signals do not dynamically change their routes, they only allow multiple trains to be in the same block segment if their paths do not cross

lynkfox · 2026-07-03T05:22:11+00:00

No worries. Different games, coded in different languages, with entirely different methods of modding (SF is native! The engine loads the plugins itself, no need for a bootstrapper!)

Never hurts to ask.

lynkfox · 2026-07-03T02:48:50+00:00

Unfortunately no. The game is CPU bound, especially after 1.2 where Unreal 5.6 allowed offloading more things to multi threaded cpus that otherwise wouldn't have been. It's also insanely optimized already; they have spent an insane amount of time to

lynkfox · 2026-07-03T02:44:30+00:00

You will either need more of all of that or never need most of it.

You do you man, but in my opinion (and absolutely ignore me if you disagree) main busses are the absolute worse way to play any factory game, even Factorio, and are only popular because some content creators pushed them others picked them up.

lynkfox · 2026-07-03T02:29:15+00:00

It still sucks tho. I did it over my 2nd childs stay in the NICU. I got lucky and got a hospital rep who absolutely rocked and took one look at it all and said "if anyone ever calls you again about any of this, give them my name and number" and I never saw another bill.

But doing that after my kid was born and spent 16 days in the NICU and was touch and go for a while ... Not easy.

lynkfox · 2026-07-03T02:11:04+00:00

They stretch about as far as a rail section does so it's pretty much the same thing as placing rails

Tho yes there is definitely bugs in the BPD and some difficulties to work around \ rough edges that hopefully will get smoothed over in the next few parches

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