Created blueprints in satisfactory for a modular ore processing tower. The base is a wrapper around a miner, and the floors process 240 ore each. Scales up to 5 floors tall, allowing for 1200 ore/ingots from overclocked pure nodes.

Concept and inspiration came from Yakez42: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmnoLVtGfvg

In the basic setup, each floor connects to the base directly. With 1-3 floors, each floor is balanced input wise.

Each floor has 3 ore inputs, and 1 ore "forward" port. One of the problems with Yakes42's design is that it was before mk6 belts, and thus didn't need more than 3 floors. To support additional floors, I added an ore output to chain additional floors. The forward port ore is also split out before the machine groups lines are split, so half of the incoming ore is forwarded.

Each floor has 3 ingot outputs, and 1 ingot forwarding input. Again, to chain an additional floor.

There is a slight gap in the roof where i have the steel frame floor that allows you to check on the status of a machine if you really need to.

Internally, it's two machine groups of 4. Splitting is done on the logistics floor.

Screen of the miner with it's cover. There is some internal work to connect the miner output to the cover.

To support 1200 and 5 floors, you need to chain 2 floors off of other floors. The bottom floor needs to connect via the middle lift. Floor 2 needs to chain into floor 3, and floor 4 needs to chain into floor 5. Otherwise, you will exceed the lift height (without using other tricks)

It's using what I call "budget" 1:5 balancer that isn't actually that bad for balance. It's a spliter connect 1:3, and then two of the three legs get split 1:2 again. Once branch (the middle) gets 1/3th, and the other 4 get 1/6th of the resources. As soon as the "middle" leg backs up, it is balanced. I kind of hate the design of real 1:5 balancers, and would only use them if I really needed them for something critical. For smelters with 1200/min input, it really doesn't matter except on the initial fill time.

While I really like the look of radar tower on the top, the Lookout tower looks really out of place. I'll probably come up with a cosmetic design. I've been trying to brainstorm on something actually useful to put on top. The only thing I can think of is for a few to have hypertube cannons.

I like how far away I can see the full tower with a radar tower on top.

Next I plan to do floors with Forges. 4 per floors would let each floor handle 300 for iron alloy, and 400 for copper alloy.

I've had a problem in several games, and I don't really no where to to being debugging it. It's not like there is any error message. Is it my DE? my distro? drivers? proton? the game engine itself?

I've done some basic web searches, and all of the answers are hyper specific, or "alt-tab just breaks some times".

The actual problem: When I alt-tab, some games will appear to freeze when I tab back in. I've noticed that while I am holding alt-tab and have a non-game window selected, the game is not frozen. As long as have not selected the window I am trying to swap to, it keeps running. It's almost as if the game has inverted it's internal state of whether it's in the foreground are not.

(if it does matter, I am using Gnome on 22.04 PopOS, Nvidia 565 driver, Steam/Proton).

I was trying to come up with a compact design mini factories that I could blue print and wanted to see how many manufacturers I could squeeze into a mk3. Along the way, the solutuon I came up with ended up being load balanced. Now that I post-end game, and some of the final products can be really slow, I certainly appreciate being able to not have wait for a manifold to fill.

I started the design with what I am calling a "center feed" pair of manufacturers. Instead of resources coming from the left or right in a manifold, they are fed in between the 2.

I had a similar design before for a 3 input version, but didn't have to solve what to do when splitters on the head of the lifts are too close together. This time around, I just pulled further back and removed the splitters on the lifts.

Next was simply mirroring 2 more manufacturers and feeding the inputs in again from the middle (above the outputs). Now I had a balanced design for 4x. It could also trivially be extended to 6x, although it wouldn't fit in a blueprint.

The final step was to link 3 floors together. The inputs are routed via lifts up the middle floor, and there are split 3 ways. One output goes directly out the back the feed the machines on that floor. The right output goes to the top floor via lifts (easiest to see here), and the left goes the bottom floor also via lifts. The key to getting this to work is to stagger the lifts, and to not care that I we re-ordering which input was "on top" etc. Staggering the lifts usually needed me to build a splitter, nudge it in location, build the lift, delete the splitter, and then connect the lift via belt.

All of the outputs for the top two floors are routed back away from the inputs lifts, and then down to be merged with the ground floor mergers. They were pretty easy to route since there was a lot of room beneath the input splitters.

I didn't start playing until 1.0, and am wrapping up my first play through. I've complete the main progression, and complete all of the achievements (hopefully that's spoiler free enough). I am probably 95% done with my personal end game goal.

Since I started on the Grassy Fields, I want to try a different starting location. I like the idea of the Northern Forest, as I like the scenery, but it seems like a terrible location to start. I don't want to steam roll the terrain to try to build with the new players tools, and would rather come back later when I can properly build more in harmony with the terrain. I do like the centrality of the location. I like the idea of the Dunes, but it's so far removed from everything else. It seems like a great place for an end game mega factory, or if you want a mega factory from the start. So that leaves mean leaning towards the Rocky Desert. I do like the biome, but I also just recently built a large factory there. I have not really explored or built on the Crater Lakes, Red Forest, or Forest Lake much and want to change that.

I want to give tractors/truck a chance for the early game, and I think that's another point in favor of the Rocky Desert or Dune Desert. I'll likely go back to a real hypertube network, instead of cannons everywhere.

I want to take the game slower, decorate more, load balance more, and use blueprints extensively. I will probably visit a certain cave, grab some hard drives for a certainly terrible early game item, rush some research to get my toys back, rush the mk1 blueprint designer, rush coal, and then dial it way back.

Anyone restarting for 1.1 or doing anything else to change it up?

The only info I've seen is "in 2025". I was wondering if anyone knew of any more information.

Edit: This is the only bit I've found this far, and it looks to be a joke: https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/wiki/Future_content#Version_1.1

For those thinking of buying the game, there is a side feature that lets you build crazy machines. While almost completely unnecessary to complete the game, it allows for some pretty bonkers builds.

This seems like the most relevant community. I have so many questions - some from pure curiosity, and some from actually considering hosting an instance.