· build · 2 min read
Satisfactory: starving for parts you already have
A Satisfactory line can starve for an item your base holds hundreds of. That is routing, not production, and building more makes it worse.
Here is the most useful sentence Factory Board writes, and it surprised us the first time we saw it: a line is starving for something the base already has plenty of.
Short of it, and sitting on it
You build a Cable line. It runs at half speed, and the machines are short of wire. The obvious move is a second wire line. But somewhere in the base a container holds hundreds of wire, filled by a belt that ends in the wrong place, or by you, carrying stacks by hand.
The game will not connect those two facts for you. The machine says it is waiting. The box says nothing at all.
What the board does
When a line is starving, Factory Board looks at what it is short of and then looks in every container in the save. If the base holds at least one run's worth of that item, the reading changes. On the demo base that ships with the board, the Cable line is short of Wire, with 2 left and 2 needed per run, while 900 Wire sit in a container. The board calls that routing, not production.
And the fix changes with it. Not "build more wire", but "Feed it from the container holding Wire." More production would only fill the box faster.
The Overview's In storage panel lists what your containers hold, base wide. A row a starving line is waiting for is marked, with the name of the line, and a "find the box" link. That link opens the map on the fullest container holding the item and rings it, so you know where to walk.
The map names boxes by what is in them, too. A stack of containers standing on one spot is one place on the map, named for what it mostly holds.
The same trap at the Space Elevator
The elevator has the same blind spot. Parts you built and put in a container do not count toward a phase. Only what is delivered to the elevator does. The board shows both numbers next to each other, so "0 delivered" with a full box nearby reads as a walk to the elevator, not as a factory that made nothing.
Look in your own boxes
Drop your newest save on the page. It is read in your browser, never uploaded, and the In storage panel shows up as soon as the save has a container with something in it.
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