Fastest way to complete all milestones in the game
 
 

Introduction

Hello, factory builders!
 
 
In this guide, I will show you a very efficient way of building the factory.
 
This Approach allows not to reconstruct the factory over and over and not to remove manufacturing buildings that were already built.
 
Using this Approach you will save a lot of time and your factory will be very compact on the plane.
 
 
In short, there are 3 Key Advantages of the ApproachApproach:
 

• You will always know where to build new building
• You can easily turn off any building and release resources and energy it was using
• You can change output resource type of any building on the fly

 
Here is a link to a video guide that contains all materials in detail:
 
 
ENG and RUS SUBTITLES Available
 
 

 
Below is a summary of this video guide.
 
(Some tips and details are not presented in text version.)
 
 
 

First steps

What we start with is a conveyor belt which is producing iron ingots.
 
And what we do is placing constructors along the conveyor belt using splitters.
 
This constructors will produce iron plates or iron rods:
 
 

 
 
Let’s say, we have a conveyor belt producing sixty iron ingots per minute and three constructors.
 
First is making iron plates, the second and the third – iron rods:
 
 

 
 
The key point here is that we’ll not put plates and rods on the same conveyor belt.
 
Each type of resource will be placed on its own layer, one above the other:
 
 

 
 
We put plates on layer 1 and rods on layer 2.
 
 
For now, we just store all resources in the storage.
 
Resources of each layer are stored in its own storage:
 
 

 
 
 

Using resources instead of just storing them

Now let’s not only store iron plates and iron rods but also use them to construct new things!
 
 
We place two new constructors that will produce screws and consume part of iron rods:
 

 
Now we store eighty screws per minute and ten iron rods per minute instead of thirty.
 
Because twenty rods are now used in making screws.
 
 
This is how it looks like in the game:
 
 

 
 
The first row of constructors produce iron plates and iron rods and put them each on their own layer.
 
These layers stretch along with new constructors that produce screws and that take iron rods from layer 2.
 
All resources that were not used by screws constructors move to the storage.
 
Screws are placed on the third layer of the factory.
 
 
 

Inner storage of buildings

On a scheme screws constructors take 10 iron rods per minute.
 
 

 
 
Pic .1.
 
 
But that’s because their inner storages are fully filled. (each constructor can keep up to 200 iron rods inside).
 
If your constructors are empty, that’s what will happen initially:
 
 

 
 
Pic. 2.
 
 
The first constructor will get 15 rods p/m (per minute ) and the second – 7.5 rods p/m because splitters split resources equally.
 
The first constructor will collect 5 extra rods per minute because it uses only 10 rods per minute to produce 40 screws per minute.
 
After 40 minutes its inner storage will be fully filled. And it won’t be able to get more than 10 iron rods per minute.
 
And we will get the situation shown on Pic. 1. (But after 40 minutes only)
 
So I recommend to fill every constructor’s inner storage initially as it is built and no to wait for it to be filled.
 
For that, you will have enough resources collected if using this guide.
 
In this guide all buildings on schemas are fully filled.
 
 
 

First Key Advantage of the Approach

So, the first row of constructors is the first level of the factory.
 
It consumes iron ingots and produces iron plates and iron rods – first level resources.
 
 

 
 
Second row of constructors is the second level of the factory.
 
It can consume first level resources. The only type of resource can be created from first level resources is screw.
 
Screws are second level resources.
 
 

 
 
As you can see, the main direction in which the factory will significantly expand is direction along each level:
 
 

 
 
This is very convenient because for each level you will always have place to add new building if you need to. This is a First Key Advantage of the Approach.
 
 
To be always sure you will have enough space I recommend to find the edge of the mountain and build a big platform for the factory across the abyss using foundations.
 
 

 
 
 

Adding level three

Now let’s add third level of the factory.
 
It will produce resources, that can be crafted only using resources from any of the previous levels: 1 and 2.
 
There are two types of resources like that: reinforced iron plates and rotors.
 
For now let’s just add an assembler, producing reinforced iron plates:
 
 

 
 
To produce five reinforced iron plates per minute we need to take sixty out of hundred twenty screws per minute and thirty out of sixty iron plates per minute.
 
Now I store reinforced iron plates, but half less plates and screws.
 
 
This is how it looks like in the game:
 
 

 
We have three conveyor belts with three types of resources.
 
Assemblers take resources they need from any of three layers.
 
 
And then they put made resources on new layers.
 
Reinforced iron plates are put on layer four.
 
 

 
 
 

Second Key Advantage

The second key advantage of the Approach is:
 
If you don’t want to produce some type of resource anymore and you want to release all resources that were used to produce it, you just turn off the building, that produces it. Released resources will be stored or used in next buildings on this or next levels.
 
 
In relation to our scheme, if we don’t want to produce reinforced iron plates anymore and we want to store iron plates and iron rods, used in reinforced iron plates assembler, we just turn off this assembler.
 
 

 
 
All you need to do in the game for that is just to remove conveyor belts, connecting assembler and main conveyor belt.
 
 

 
You can do it with any building(s) and release resources and energy that it(they) was(were) using.
 
 
This is very useful because if you have reinforced iron plates assembler, built in traditional way, and you don’t want to produce reinforced iron plates anymore, all this buildings and conveyor belts become useless and resources produced here got stuck. And you will have to transport all stuck resources to another buildings using conveyor lifters or something.
 
 

 
 
We can imagine adding buildings on levels as adding pipes that convert one resources to another like that:
 
 

 
 
it’s very clear then that all that needs to be done to release resources used in the pipe is just to remove the pipe.
 
 
 

Third Key Advantage

There is one more key advantage that follows from the second one.
 
As we can easily turn off constructors and assemblers, we can also change their incoming resources and consequently output resources.
 
In other words – change building’s produced resource type.
 
 
Let’s say we have six assemblers, producing rotors.
 
What if now I want to produce reinforced iron plates instead of rotors?
 
I switch type of some first level constructors from iron rod to iron plate and type of assemblers from rotor to reinforced iron plate.
 
Also I turn off some constructors I don’t need anymore.
 
 

 
 

 
 
Before using the Approach if I had six rotor assemblers and I wanted to make reinforced iron plates instead. I had to turn off rotor assemblers. Turn on six reinforced iron plate assemblers.
 
And redirect incoming resources from one assemblers to another.
 
 

 
 

 
 
So I had to have twice more assemblers which take twice more physical space on the ground and also redirect resources from one part of the factory to another.
 
 

 
 
So, third Key Advantage of the Approach is compactness of the factory and the ability to switch resource type of the building on the fly.
 
 
Let’s have a closer look at this key advantage.
 
Switching type of first level constructors we don’t need to change input resource type.
 
Because for iron rod and iron plate constructors there is the same input resource – iron ingots.
 
What differs here is amount of incoming iron ingots.
 
We need 15 ingots p/m for the rod constructors and 30 ingots p/m for plates constructor.
 
Before using the Approach I had to combine conveyor belts in a way that iron rod and iron plate constructors to get different amount of incoming iron ingots.
 
And if I switched iron rod constructor to make iron plates it didn’t get enough resources.
 
 

 
 
Using the Approach as we have a single iron ingots conveyor belt and all constructors are fully filled the amount of incoming ingots changes automatically.
 
 

 
 
 

Adding Level 3-5 resources

Now let’s quickly review adding new types of resources and new levels to our factory.
 
To add assembler producing rotors to level 3 we need to add five rod constructors and four screw constructors.
 
 

 
 
Also we have to increase amount of incoming iron ingots from 135 from previous schema to 210.
 
Here is a little tip.
 
If your current conveyor belt can’t carry that much ingots, you can temporarily use second incoming conveyor belt like that.
 
 

 
Let’s finally add new level to our factory: level 4.
 
 
To make 2 Modular Frames per minute we add 2 plates constructors and 1 reinforced iron plate assembler.
 
 

 
 
Now let’s add one more level: level five:
 
 

 
 
To make 5 versatile frameworks per minute we add 3 rod constructors, 2 screw constructors, 1 reinforced iron plate assembler and 2 modular frame assemblers.
 
Also we need sixty steel beams per minute.
 
 
 

Outsource conveyor belt

As you could notice, the approach shown in this guide describes an hierarchy of resources, at first place produced from iron ingots.
 
But what if I need to get other types of resources that wasn’t made on our factory but are required here? (Let’s call resources produced not from iron ingots outsource resources)
 
We use special conveyor belt that is connected to layer six right before level four of our factory and is carrying all other types of resources.
 
 

 
 

 
I put all outsource resources on layer six just as all other resources produced on the factory, except those that are located on first five layers (iron plates, iron rods, screws, reinforced iron plates and rotors).
 
Having different resources on same layer I need a way to pick certain resource for certain assembler.
 
For that I use smart splitter and simply program it to pick certain resource.
 
 

 
 
To sum up, the outsource conveyor belt is needed to add resources to the factory that was not produced using base resource type of this factory. (iron ingot for iron factory)
 
On this factory we produce only resources based on iron.
 
But this approach can be applied to other base types of resources.
 
I also use the approach to build other mini-factories based on other types of ingots at first place.
 
 
Here I have a copper based mini-factory. It produces wire and cables that are delivered to main factory using outsource conveyor belt.
 
 

 
So different factories that are based on different ingot types exchange produced resources using outsource conveyor belts.
 
 
 

Adding Level 4 remaining resources

There are also level four resources we have not covered yet: smart planting and motor.
 
 
To add smart planting we don’t need to add more buildings because we have enough resources.
 
We just take 2 of 4 reinforced iron plates and 2 out of 4 rotors.
 
 

 
 
To add motor let’s add five rod constructors 3 screw constructors and 2 rotor constructors.
 
 

 
 
 

“Cut the Line” principle

I used i little hack, called “Cut the Line” principle, on previous schema with motor added.
 
Let’s consider first what we’d have on a schema without using the principle.
 
 
We’d see that motor assembler works only 50 percent.
 
 

 
 
Because it consumes only 5 rotors per minutes instead of 10.
 
This is very disappointing because we have exactly 10 rotors right before the splitter.
 
And we lose half due to splitting.
 
To avoid it, we must have twice more resources than we need before motor assembler.
 
(In our case 20 rotors instead of 10)
 
 

 
 
To have 10 more rotors we need to add:
 
Three rotor assemblers,
 
Which actually produce twelve rotors.
 
To make twelve rotors we need 300 screws and 60 rods.
 
For 300 screws we need 8 screw constructors.
 
Which require 80 rods.
 
Totally, we need 140 rods.
 
Which require 10 rod constructors.
 
Which is 150 iron ingots.
 
 

 
 
And this all is just to add 10 rotors that actually will be just stored.
 
But what if I don’t need to store them?
 
And no other assemblers use them next.
 
Why should I waste my time to add this 10 rotors that I don’t even need?
 
Of course I shouldn’t and and this is where “Cut the Line” principle comes into play.
 
If we don’t need to store rotors and no one next uses them, we can just cut the conveyor belt of rotors layer after motor assembler.
 
 

 
 
Using this hack in specific situations we can save a lot of time instead of adding more resources to the factory.
 
Cut lines will be marked with the X sign on a schema.
 
 

 
 
Now we see that on previous schema we used this principle twice to save resources and time.
 
After motor assembler with rotors layer(layer 5) and with the last level three assembler with incoming screws.
 
 

 
 
 

First Manufacturers

Okay, let’s add our first manufacturer to produce modular engine.
 
It consumes 2 out of 5 motors per minute and all smart plantings we already have.
 
The only new resource required is rubber.
 
We add it to the outsource conveyor belt.
 
 

 
 
Now let’s add first level 6 resource – adaptive control unit.
 
One unit requires 1 heavy modular frame and other non iron based resources.
 
 

 
So I need to add only one heavy modular frame manufacturer to the factory which also requires some non iron based resources, 5 modular frames and 100 screws per minute.
 
 

 
 
As we can see from previous schema, we already have five modular frames per minute, but there were no screws left to produce heavy modular frames.
 
So basically as adaptive control unit was the last iron based resource I needed for the completion of the milestone, I decided to turn off all buildings that I didn’t need.
 
(At that time update 4 was not out yet)
 
 

 
 
This is how using one of key advantages of the approach I easily turned off all building I didin’t need for the current goal and freed a lot of resources.
 
Also I freed energy that may be used in other parts of the factory.
 
 
 

Update 4 Compatibility

That was the last schema i was going to show you, but during finishing this guide update four has came out
 
 

 
And it brings new things to upgrade iron based factory.
 
Let’s use some of them one by one.
 
 
There is new level six resource: fused modular frame.
 
It requires heavy modular frames, aluminium casing and nitrogen gas.
 
 

 
 
Gas is a new type of resource.
 
It is provided via pipes just like liquids.
 
To produce fused modular frames we need to use new building: Blender.
 
 

 
Its feature is that it may use fluids or gas along with common resources provided by conveyor belts.
 
 
And that is a breaking change for the Approach because before buildings took all resources only from conveyor belts.
 
Now, to use blender, i had to build another huge platform under the main platform the factory stands on.
 
 

 
I’ve chosen the distance between factory floors in a way that six stackable pipes could fit there.
 
If you want you may make distance between floors bigger or double pipes stack like that.
 
 

 
 
I suppose that pipes should follow main conveyor belt on the underground floor.
 
 

 
 
Then it will be easy for any building to pick specific gas or fluid using pipeline junction cross from any of the pipes on the underground floor:
 
 

 
 
 

Pressure Conversion Cubes & Particle Accelerator

Let me introduce first level seven resource of the factory – pressure conversion cube.
 
It is produced by assembler which requires fused modular frames and radio control units to produce Pressure Conversion Cubes.
 
 

 
 
Finally let’s add level eight to the factory.
 
And first level eight resource is nuclear pasta.
 
It is produced by another new building: Particle accelerator.
 
It requires pressure conversion cubes and copper powder to make nuclear pasta.
 
 

 
 
So, we’ve discovered all levels avaliable for iron based factory at the time of update 4.
 
And here is a final scheme of all this levels:
 
 

 
 
 

Final

This is the end of the guide.
 
Thank’s for your attention!
 
Please, check the video guide if you want to get more detailed information.
 
I skipped some details and tips here.
 
 

 
Here are links to google drive archives with all schemas used in this guide:
 
JPEG: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xHVQlv2wMrcdLXKvAVh5YBEPhUqPbz6D/view?usp=sharing – [google.com] 
 
PSD: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Rce6lBjANdXhIWCb4SvI3V2q4DAJjS2v/view?usp=sharing – [google.com] 
 
 
 

 
 
Hope you enjoy the Guide about Satisfactory – Speedrun Tips (Long Guide), if you think we should add extra information or forget something, please let us know via comment below, and we will do our best to fix or update as soon as possible!