Summary
- Satisfactory merges space, crafting, & exploration with a linear story missing in Minecraft.
- In Satisfactory, you work on automating production from basic parts to complex items, optimizing your resource usage along the way.
- I typically focus on function over organization in crafting games, and Satisfactory lets me do just that.
I’m a huge Minecraft fan, but lately I’ve been trying out other games that scratch the exploration and crafting itch. Satisfactory by Coffee Stain Studios is my latest obsession—here’s why.
What Is Satisfactory?
If you’ve never heard of Satisfactory, let me explain why I’m so obsessed with this game.
It takes three of my favorite themes and merges them together: space, crafting, and exploration. I have been in love with Minecraft for the past several years because it enables me to explore and build however I want.
Not only does Satisfactory bring crafting and exploring to space, but it also does so with the goal of building a factory. One thing I really miss when playing Minecraft is a linear story to follow—Satisfactory gives that to me.
In Satisfactory, you’re a pioneer space explorer that ends up stranded on a planet and your only goal is to collect resources, automate the production of components, and help rebuild a space station. Your completely trustworthy and definitely not sarcastic AI assistant, ADA, tells you that you’re going to Save the Day.
Minecraft can only dream of the level of automation that Satisfactory allows you to build. The Create mod, one of my must-have mods when playing Minecraft, gives some of this, but it’s still not nearly as impressive as Satisfactory—and that’s to be expected.
Satisfactory is a factory game in space, while Minecraft is made for exploration and building.
I’m Obsessed With Automating Everything
Some games have a fun storyline, and others don’t. Satisfactory, to me, is fun. I could replay it again and again and find new ways to accomplish the same tasks and still find it fun.
Things start out simple in the game: just make a few parts. This is done manually on a crafting bench at first but quickly expands to using automated machines to make parts. You go from 1-to-1, all the way up to 4-to-1 assemblers.
The catch is, it’s not always turning raw material into a finished product. Sometimes it takes several machines to make one finished item. For example, to make the Thermal Propulsion Rocket, which is the most complex item in the game, you need 172 machines.
On a simpler note, making screws (which are integral to the game until you get alternative recipes) takes a few steps. First, you have to mine iron ore and feed that into a smelter. Then, send the iron ingots to a constructor to make iron rods. From there, send the iron rods to another constructor to make screws.
Each machine produces items at a different rate. Let’s continue with screws.
If you had one smelter making iron ingots, one constructor making iron bars, and one constructor making screws, you could only make 40 screws per minute.
However, that wouldn’t be maximizing a normal iron node. A normal iron node produces 60 iron ore per minute, which can be turned into 240 screws per minute.
To do this, you’d need two smelters, each taking in 30 ore per minute. Those two smelters would feed four constructors making iron rods. The iron rod production would then feed six constructors making screws, thus giving you 240 screws per minute. All from one 60 iron ore per minute node.
This optimization is what I love about Satisfactory. The resource nodes are infinite, and you can put upgraded miners on them to get more resources out of them per minute to produce items faster. If that all sounds confusing, then check out Satisfactory Tools, which has calculators and planners to help you build out the perfect base.
I’m not saying that Satisfactory is for everyone, but if you get a kick out of this sort of mass-scale optimization and construction of ever-more-complex assembly lines, you’re going to love it.
Organization Takes a Back Seat For Now
When I play crafting games, I typically focus on optimization before organization. I prefer to just get my resources however I can, then work on making things pretty later (or never), and Satisfactory is no different.
My Satisfactory play through is on a server with a friend, and we couldn’t be more opposite. While I build for function over form, he builds for form over function, so it’s always fun when one of us plays without the other. I love running conveyor belts across the map in a wild and wacky fashion to get the job done. He prefers to do things more methodically.
Whichever way you prefer to play, I just love strewing belts through belts and machines over to the next area to produce something. Satisfactory allows collision, so I truly do have belts running through machines, and it works just fine. I’m producing the item I need, after all, so why waste time making it pretty?
I do plan to slow down and make stuff pretty soon, but many Satisfactory players have said that in the past. We’re now at phase four on the Space Elevator in the game and are pausing moving to the next stage while we completely rebuild our entire factory. The new factory will be built on proper foundations and floors with well-designed conveyor belt planning.
We’re at a point in the game where it makes sense to go away from where the original base was built and build a new base slowly and more organized. The original base is still producing the parts that we need to build the new base, and the server keeps the factories running 24/7.
This allows us to just grab the necessary parts, go to the new base location, build things out using the Satisfactory Tools website to know how many machines we need for a specific task, and get it all prepped to go online the moment it’s all built.
This exemplifies what many love about the game, and how it feels like a whole campaign of planning and reward that pays off in a, well, satisfying way eventually.
Satisfactory Is Finally Out of Steam Early Access
I’m super excited for Satisfactory 1.1 to come out. The game originally launched as Steam Early Access in 2020, and 1.0 finally was released in September 2024. Now, 1.1 is in early access and, from initial reports, it’s going to be a fantastic update.
I’m very glad that the team at Coffee Stain Studios took its time on the full Satisfactory release. I played the game during the early access period and, while good, there were definitely some quirks. Things wouldn’t always work right, and clipping would occur when it shouldn’t. The multiplayer definitely needed some work.
Now that it’s in its full release, things are much more polished. Items that were useless in early access finall have some use, and the team is hard at work improving the game still, with Satisfactory 1.1 introducing a lot of new features.
I absolutely love Satisfactory, and it’s replaced Minecraft for me—for now.
