Snapping blueprints would be so much easier if they added vertical nudging, I have no idea how it's gone through update 7, 8 and 1.0 launch without being added. How did it make sense to add nudging (good idea!) but not allow vertical? I love CSS but sometimes they make some odd decisions, same as adding a straight mode for conveyors which is FANTASTIC but then don't bother adding it for pipes. :-/
I believe straight mode not existing for pipes was because it was trickier to implement, I think they said this in one of the developer videos on coffeestains youtube channel. Sounded sort of like they were implying it could come in the future.
They absolutely need vertical nudging. They also need to have stretchable blueprints IE Roads and Rails that have a starting foundation point and an ending foundation point, a mix of static and flexible (think stretching conveyors, pipelines and rails as they are now) pieces. I should be able to build a blueprint of a nice viaduct or support beam for a road or a rail and place the beginning and the end point and have the rest fill in. As a new player for 1.0 I have to say, the game really starts to fall apart in fundamental ways once you've reached the stage of needing to transport goods across the map into a central hub to manufacture advanced parts, and the blueprint system is a big part of potentially fixing that. I absolutely blasted through ~40hrs of gameplay but things have started to grind to a halt around hour 60 and I have been losing steam big time - It took me two days to build a raised railroad from where I found crude oil to my main factory/hub near the grassland starting point that didn't look absolutely terrible. Not having the right tools to deal with inclines and declines in the terrain is a big part of this. I am transitioning from starter production lines to trying to build out a simple main bus system to make branching basic goods into modular-ish production lines easier and every step of the process is like pulling teeth, especially if you want to do it in a way that is aesthetically crisp and doesn't totally kill your eyes. Satisfactory doesn't scale up into the mid to late game as well as Factorio does and dealing with 3 dimensions is 100% the cause of those frustrations.
The Infinite Nudge mod is the single mod I consider a must have for anyone. It won't break your saves, doesn't change anything in the game, but lets you nudge vertically, removes the distance limit for nudging, and lets you move and rotate items more granularly. I cannot recommend it enough, and I hope we get it for 1.0 soon.
While I agree with your post, it can be easy to question decisions on certain features without being able to see the codebase and the relationships between all the interconnected bits within. Perhaps it's just not priority to them, but also perhaps the nudge system is built on a tower of bricks with no mortar and removing one brick at the bottom could cause the whole thing to tumble. But yes, I question it as well seeing as it doesn't seem to be an issue for modders.
@@thelolrus7491 as a software engineer, I'd find it difficult to believe that the nudge system is so complex and loosely built that it would be complicated to implement vertical nudging. We're talking about adding another 2 keys to a listener which change a Y variable instead of an X or Z.
Only tangentially related to this video, I'd LOVE to see a Beginner's Guide to railways. When to use them vs belts, typical material cost in making them over an example distance, examples of how to program them, how many trains and cars to use, how to create branches for other factories, etc. I learn best by seeing real examples, and I'm sure others do, too. I played 0.8 up to Nuclear tech but didn't finish, and I didn't have a single railroad, largely because I didn't know how to use them properly. With 1.0, I can foresee the benefits of using railways due to the increasing scale required to make the final products at reasonable rates, so I want to learn. And I really like how to present information! Thanks for considering!! FWIW, I'm currently in Phase 3 working on unlocking Tier 6 milestones, right at Railways.
I think some of it is preference, but I think the best high level summary I have for belts vs trains is this. If you are running one belt or just 1 resource along a path, belts are usually easier/ faster/ cheaper. If you are going to have multiple materials running along the same path (like a main line across the map, or a bunch of things going to one place), a train can help clean up the map. With trains, you only have the one line (or two parallel lines) running along a given path, instead of having a "belt highway" of 15-20 belts all going the same way. The train lines can share a "main line" and then have small branches off to each area (production, mining/smelting, etc), and you can save on not having to build belts again and again along an existing path. The trains do take a little more time to set up, but if you have a large system, it can be more efficient than belts going all over the map, as many trains (going to multiple destinations) can share the tracks.
I've honestly see no reason to use trains eva. Unless you like trains like I did as a young boy. If I need multiple resources along a common line I have belt raisers and I make multiple stacked belts. Same with throughput issues. Trains can fubar, belts don't. Definitive solution to me, but I'm just a medical type of guy looking for the simplest, most effective, definitive treatment.
@@jeffreyspinner5437 I appreciate your viewpoint and played that way in my 0.8 playthrough. I just think that in 1.0, especially with the endgame scale, trains will ultimately streamline logistics, should you want to do so. Build one main line across/around the world, then build spurs off of it as you need in order to send large quantities of materials where you need them. It'll take a bit of learning how to program them so they don't crash or get stuck, and I get that's not what everyone wants to have to do to play. Trains are just another tool in the toolbox for those who want to learn how to use it.
For people that change their keybinds and pressing "CTRL" does not give you smaller nudge increments, it is the "Snap to Guidelines" keybind that does it.
Man, learning how to manipulate and organize the blueprints was painful trail and error, glad to see someone do a video on it to save someone that pain.
tbh, watching a video about the blueprints GUI organization will only make you understand it at 90%. the last 10% is truly under trial and error from the user. its sorta like a ritual to fully understand it. Experience is better than Theory
Just FYI for anyone who is interested in curved rails: you WILL break the foundations' alignment to world grid if you use any, and there is no clean way to re-align. This means any train stations you build either need some janky patchwork foundations to get back onto the world grid, or you're going to have to settle with a series of belts that aren't right angles and pass over open space to get back to world grid.
While editing the blueprint, you can select multiple blueprints by holding Ctrl while you click the ones you want to select, then you can let go of Ctrl and drag them where you want
I have found a slightly quicker way of doing the continuous curves is to start and end the blueprint with half foundations, that way there is no nudging required to get them lined up when you stack them one after another.
One tip I've found immensely useful is using it for simple yet tedious tasks, especially involving customization. I'm making 1m fixit walls because they look better but I need a lot of them and they all need to be colored purple, so just tediously make it in the designer, then they all just snap to eachother when building. Saves so much time
I've been avoiding curves simply because I can't get them to align to the world grid. I like to keep all my factories and buildings aligned so they're easier to connect later on. It's easy to connect a curve to the grid at the beginning, but having the end of the curve line up is what's tricky. Would love to see how you make this work in a future video.
Relyen Gaming has done some road bp work. Basically, yes, build factories on grid, to ensure standardized heights. If building a factory city, roads on grid makes sense. Maybe if building main roads across country, keep the main trunk on grid, if you want. But it is a fundamental myth and mistaken perceived risk-benefit to go off grid, arising from ignorance about how to seamlessly merge roads. We've all been there, it's fine. But you see, it's really painless to do, simply a matter of using painted beams in freeform mode to align foundations. The results are typically quite good, barely perceptible. Can also be used to align vertically. Once you get the hang of it, you won't have fears about roads going off grid anymore, because you'll always be able to splice back on grid for factories. Then you can focus attention on getting roads to hug terrain to look more natural. For best results, use roads with a curb to hide the occasion imperfect edge.
I use 30 degree curves on my rails to get around obstacles, and after that it's 2 more curves to get back on the grid at a right angle, or a curve back to continue straight
@@somearthlingyeah consistent angles work great. I prefer just doing 45* because you can build directly on foundations at 45* and then smoothing the gaps is super easy
What I did for the continued curve was I did three normal curves using the method you're showing, then for the fourth foundation I used a half foundation. So I would use the blueprint the second time and just nudge it until it clipped fully with the half foundation, then I'd delete the half piece after placing the blueprint.
Definitely some tips I'll be using in my current build 😎 for the first time I'll be using tractors and trucks, then trains eventually. Megafactory builds do not like my PC 😂
If you load a blueprint, to add to a currently being worked on blueprint, and your current one is replaced with the loaded one.. build a 2nd Blueprint Designer. The loaded blueprint will appear in the 1st one built and allow you to work in the 2nd
I don't think you missed any hotkeys to open directly to blueprint designer. This is a common complaint on the QA site that got ignored or keeps getting bumped for more critical features, like ADA Snark. To learn how to really use blueprints, pobkac, the mad scientist, black wizard, and 'Pob Ross' of blueprint design in Satisfactory. He has a fairly organized naming convention :) but no icons or categories, so yeah, that's certainly 'fun'. But understandable to keep pace with his stream style. Organization is an exercise for the user. Example: pobkac has pioneered the use of extending beyond the bpd to rapidly make very large prints, like, he recently mentioned one of 6km long ... the world map is only 7.5 km squarish, so yeah.
Yeah, I feel like its the one area of the game where the UI is still in development. Like, it works; but it's lacking the polish that the rest of the game developed over its EA. Kinda like it was the first workable version and it just hasn't been updated yet. I've got faith they'll get it though. However, having blueprints auto-connect may be too complicated or finnicky. That would require adding hooks or "interface points" that would need to behave differently depending on what's around that interface point. That's relatively easy in something like Shapez where things are always on a grid, and always on a plane; like each side only has 12 junctions. It's a lot nastier when there's hundreds of possible hook points, things might not be square, and the game is designed to have pipe/belt segments. I'm fine without it though; making blueprints where you just have to connect power, and block inputs/outputs to things that are already placed/positioned is so much easier.
1. You and Nilaus are legends. 2. I love Satisfactory. I've only played Factorio more than Satisfactory but soon this will change. 3. The devs have done a brilliant job of designing the world the manufacturing systems, the machine designs and everything in between. That's why I have played it for more than 2,000 hours already. 4. BUT ... here is the BUT ... The user interface sucks. Just look how the UI has been done in Dyson Sphere Program (DSP). It's brilliant. Satisfactory MUST MUST MUST learn from it. 5. Coming back to your point in the first 30 seconds of this video: The Blueprinter interface as a subsystem of the the whole UI simply sucks. Again the devs should see how simplified blueprinting in DSP is and learn from it.
3:20 Why did they have to make the directory folders so unintuitive? I spent ages trying to drag and drop to organize blueprints into folders and it refused to work. There's no instructions anywhere and on Discord no one ever answers the question how do you get it to work? Hopefully I can repeat what you've done here next time I play. It's not super clear what steps to take to get blueprints organized into folders.
I haven't tried this in 1.0 yet, but before that at least it was a good idea to never mess with the directories from the BP designer itself and always do it from your build menu instead. There are things that are fussy and don't really work right in the designer that are easier the other way. Once you get that hang of it it's not too bad, but I agree it's pretty rough.
I had the same problem. The solution was that for each new categorie you have to create at least one under-categorie for it as well for drag and drop to work. I believe he also says this in the video.
Watched a few of your videos over the years. Can I suggest a updated video main bus that is compact, has high transport capacity and does not clip when adding splitters or mergers. Also a storage area that connects to it seamlessly and can distribute those stored resources to other machines. Bonus points for including a logistics floor to hide the belt work and to feed the materials up from below... plus timestamps please!!
Does anyone know why the signs usually default to upside down when placed on a wall? I thought it was just me until I saw the same thing happen in this video :D I know that I mostly just turn them into lights so it doesn't matter, but it's still annoying.
Super helpful in my 1st playthrough, thankyou! The only question I have (unrelated to blueprints) is how to deal with elevation? I get the "building out with a dummy foundation" that you can then delete, but if a cliff is coming up, is it just a case of building some sort of "going up" blueprint you can then stack? Thanks again for the videos you've put out for 1.0. They've really helped me.
Man I wish I had tested these out ages ago. Didn't try it in EA and in 1.0 have not tried it until now but WOW what I was missing not trying these out! Would have made things so much easier and faster hours or minutes to set up an entire factory rather then days!!!
One thing I'd like to see included in these if there's a trick for it is getting train tracks to lay nicely flush with ramps. I can't seem to get them to behave at any of the 3 grade options.
Great VODs learning a great deal of excellent tips and tricks from ur chl thank you. Just one question when u create a blueprint and save it can u also delete that blueprint in the designer? I can't seem to see how.
Can you do one about ramps? I had issues snapping ramps for train BPs to existing rail BPs. Mostly on going down. But just in general it wasn't very intuitive.
Mr. Xclipse, have you uploaded any of your BPs to sharing sites like satisfactoryblueprints? If not, would that be something you'd consider doing? I can see how it might be antithetical to your goal of teaching us to fend for ourselves, but I think your mind is better attuned for designing builds that are both functional and nice to look at.
I haven’t been able to find a solution for blueprinting long road ramps. What I want is a repeatable middle section so I can build my climbing or descending road to any height. But I can’t get them align and continue from each other. Would love some suggestions there!
Any tips for sloped to straight blueprints? Im making an all in one highway with power tower, tube, rail and road but the ramps up and down are a pain to line up with the straight sections especially as sometimes the blueprints just have a half meter wide gap all around them for no reason
The most annoying thing is when you open the blueprint menu and pick a blueprint too close to the blueprint designer it somtimes loads that blueprint into the designer which is super annoying if I've spent like 30 minutes making a blueprint and haven't saved yet.
No blueprint shortcut drives me nuts considering how useful they become if you start building a world bridge or larger factories with different repeating machines or load balancer arrangements. Need a mod just for this lol.
You can make it easier by creating categories, then switching the dismantle tool to "blueprint", when in this mode the middle mouse buttom makes you sample the blueprints, and you can cycle through them with 'E', and they'll cycle in the same category. This way you can build more often without opening the menu
My issue is after I made the curves as BPs, I still can't make my belts follow them. Is this only for train tracks? Or do I have to do one platform at a time belts, BP that, and then apply to my builds? I'm gonna try that...
How do you curve you’re traintracks into you’re curved foundations ? Because it doesn’t aline with me when i have a long curve ( i use the same technique as you to make curved foundations ). Or do you also add them to the blueprint?
One thing I find annoying about blueprints is setting up the belt directions. Usually I like all the belts pointing in the same direction, but sometimes due to space constraints it makes more sense to have the belts alternate directions. Perhaps there's some strategies I'm overlooking.
Hello, ich have a question. I tried making a curved foundation ground for my train. But it did not work well. The curve of the train track was to high for 10 degree and to low for the 5 degree curve and ended on the midways on the edges (either outer or inner) of the foundations when i try to place it in the middle of the next straight way. So i gave up on a foundation based track and just made it with pillars, but i would love to have them on foundations. Could you make a small video about how you place your train tracks on your curves so they are aligned to the middle of the curves? That would be great. Thanks in advance
Whenever I change the angle of the second foundation, there is a minimal offset at the bottom left corner. I have the feeling that a much finer movement of the foundation is possible in your video. Am I doing something wrong? 😞
Newer player here. I built a prefab conveyor tower to hold the conveyors for bringing resources into my factory. I then cut off pieces of the prototype into modules of the tower for more flexibility. However, the bp that is the top of the tower kept a large vertical offset even though there is only air under it, is there a way to fix that?
Is there a guide for trains because i am first time going in to it at 1.0 and I have some problems with on trach with no loops on the line and also with some signals
there are a few if you search 'train guide in satisfactory' , but your best bet is to ask, a lot of people here have done a lot of train track design and we could probably help.
Do you have any tips for belts and hypertubes going up ramps? Using 2m ramps and there's always this ugly bump. The merger/splitter trick doesn't work as well now and it's a massive headache. I don't know how they didn't sort this for 1.0
You almost covered something but not quite and no one talks about, when making roads or track foundations, how does height off the floor of the BP designer affects how they will snap together? People claim to put foundations below the snap point to give the BP something to snap to, but it never seems to work for me.
I ran into the issue that If you create a blueprint but don't assign a category or subcategory it defaults to undefined. But then I decided to create a category and sub category. But I was unable to remove the original blueprint from undefined category. I saved and closed window but no matter what did, it never removed the original undefined blueprint.
This was exactly my problem. I had the same blueprint in Undefined category, than I moved it in "good" category. Now I had same blueprint in two categories. Don't copy my next procedure: I removed blueprint from Undefined. It is gone also from good one. It looks like in good one was only reference to blueprint in Undefined.
My nudge is way more then that what you are doing, is it a mod you have or? ( is CTRL + H to go into nudge mode and CTRL hold it to do lesser nudges. ) SEcond question! THe light Blueprints! when i do the EXACT same thing, my lights are placed like a few cm off the object..
There is no vertical nudge. He placed a few foundations beneath for the bp to sit on. He pulled the blueprint towards us using the down arrow while nudging.
@@Warp9pnt9 at 10:34 it shows him dropping the block down while it is above, he doesnt seem to be doing it by the normal method of putting it at the end of the block, so I am asking if how because it looks like he is nudging it downward
@@Tolastun it looks like once he built the first foundation he then looked at the corner of it, you would then might need to ctrl+mouse scroll to rotate the 2nd piece, then he nudged it over the first piece towards its edge, built it, then he snapped on the third piece underneath the 2nd and then deleted the 2nd piece
@@Tolastun He's pointing at the bottom of the side of the higher foundation which lets you build one underneath it. He's just doing it very quickly and smoothly.
Why does it feel like TotalXclipse will make a video about anything except for the next installation of his let's play right now? These are all great, but damn you're making us wait man haha
Honestly, I would have preferred the Mk. 3 Blueprint Designer should have replaced the Mk. 1 and be the only Blueprint Designer. Having 8m a side locked behind advancement feels like unnecessary artifical difficulty. All I could think about when seeing the Mk. 2 and 3 was Square Cube Law and how much time would be saved with just Mk. 3's.
Lots of locked things are just dumb. Like extracting water is more difficult than oil (water node) and the blueprint MK3 in tier 9 is just crazy. Next time I just unlock everything from the start
Meh, personally I wouldn't call it artifical difficulty. To me it's just an incentive for progression, just like all the other items that are locked behind the tiers or MAM research such as parachutes -> jetpacks -> hoverpacks or tractors -> trucks -> trains. You might as well label all those progression trees 'artificial difficulty' and do away with them too. Even though it can be inconvenient at first, I get great enjoyment out of working toward those secondary goals. That said, I get it, if you've been thru multiple playthroughs that stuff can really be a chore for some. It's a sandbox game after all, play it the way you want to play it.
So, using your Curve technique to make 5° curves, i cannot make it align with another worldgrid foundation once it reaches the full 90° turn. If you or anyone else has a solution, please let me know, because I've been trying to make the alignement occur with multiple different techniques for... 6-ish hours now?
One thing I found with blueprints, they are not saved in your save file. I moved from one PC to another and all of my blueprints were gone when either using the save file from the cloud or the save file moved by USB stick.
I made blueprints for 4x4 foundations but cannot snap them to the world grid, the snap button and build mode options do absolutely nothing... Am I missing something? Foundation blueprints seem useless at this rate.
One subject I'd love to have a video about is the bigger picture of inter-factory design: how do you plan your resource flows between factories? Is every factory built with the explicit purpose for its output to go to one other factory, or can you set up a many-to-many system with trucks or trains ferrying some intermediate to multiple secondary factories?
@@TotalXclipse Pointing at another video as youve done in the video above and in this comment, is unhelpful. And will get more and more unhelpful as time goes by. Try to imagine In a couple of years or more, how much meaning "look at my recent video" will have. Yes I'm going to go look anyway, but good lord: links are a thing :/
@@SimonPeel That's fair - however I responded to the comment on the day it was posted, so for that particular person it would be helpful. Just not to people who come by at a later date surely?
@@TotalXclipse Sure, but there's only one of him. There are potentially 171K (or more?!) subscribers in the future looking for answers. All I'm saying is think about the future of your content, not just the present. Maybe I'm also saying, whern you say in a video that there will be a link below and there isn't.... grr. But mostly the first thing. The present is for now. The future is forever.
@@SimonPeel if I say the video is linked below - most of the time it is (sometimes I forget) - but if it isn't then let me know and I can link it. But most people don't realise that since the change from youtube a few months ago, if you click the description and scroll to the bottom the linked videos are there. Beneath the transcript. For example this video includes the Easy curves explainer as I mentioned in the video as well as a guide on managing liquids and the first episode of my new lets play.
Did they update something, or change something? I have been playing with blueprints for roads/tracks and curves, following your guide, and I can't get them to line up or snap to each other for the life of me. Hours making stuff wasted.
Should be a specific “snap point” piece you can add to any blueprint for east snapping. I’ve tried and tried and tried but no matter how i build my blueprints they never snap together and even when i nudge it’s slightly off. Completely ruins everything great about having blueprints to save time.
Something you did not mention but is the most annoying thing about blueprints to me: Every time I want to edit a previously made Blueprint, the Save Directory gets reset to Undef/Undef. It's so annoying to have to set the directory every single time I want to edit and re-save a blueprint.. Why does the game not just use the directory it's already in when loading, I don't get it. So many UI/UX nightmares in this game, it's not even funny anymore.
If you are trying to delete a building made out of blueprints, enter deconstruction mode and press the "change mode" button to enter blueprint mode. You can now delete entire blueprints instead of just the parts they are made of. If you are trying to delete the blueprint itself, press the gear icon while editing your blueprints organization and select the delete option.
Their choice to put the 6x6 in tier 9 is just silly, their choice to not have vertical nudging is just silly. Can't wait for mods to be fixed then we can have a bigger BP designer and vertical nudging again.
You keep showing 5 and 10 degree curves but you have yet to show a sharper curve. I have been trying to make a 45 degree curve for ages, will you please show how to do much sharper curves like 45 degree please...
Road Barriers can be used to make 45 Degree turns, just look at any older video about making turns. You will end up with a very tight curve: Straight, +11.25 Angle, +11.25 Angle, And then your final is at 45 degrees.
Not exactly sure how the 5 degree ones perfectly line up for trains. Is there a trick to how many foundations of the curve out you go to make each segment? No matter what, the curve of the track never seems to actually line up that well with the underlying foundations and looks wonky. Or is it just a matter of "still janky, but better than the 10 degree"?
You can copy paste blueprints actually. When in dismantle, hit R to switch Blueprint mode. Then click the pipette button (typically middle mouse button) on the blueprint.
The fact that isn't not obvious in the game that belts and pipes don't connect from print to print wasted hours of my time. This is bullshit that needs to be fixed.
I got 3 minutes into the video and already lost interest, you didn’t show what’s possible and the first thing you did was show a blueprint I’d never use. I know you put a lot of effort into this video but you put your weakest foot forward and showed a niche use that 90% of people will never use as your first example.
blueprints are broken. the UI is terrible beyond belief. and most importantly, you can't place a template blueprint into the designer as a starting point! which means you have to REBUILD EVERY blueprint from ZERO. not a time saver at all.
Snapping blueprints would be so much easier if they added vertical nudging, I have no idea how it's gone through update 7, 8 and 1.0 launch without being added. How did it make sense to add nudging (good idea!) but not allow vertical? I love CSS but sometimes they make some odd decisions, same as adding a straight mode for conveyors which is FANTASTIC but then don't bother adding it for pipes. :-/
I believe straight mode not existing for pipes was because it was trickier to implement, I think they said this in one of the developer videos on coffeestains youtube channel. Sounded sort of like they were implying it could come in the future.
They absolutely need vertical nudging. They also need to have stretchable blueprints IE Roads and Rails that have a starting foundation point and an ending foundation point, a mix of static and flexible (think stretching conveyors, pipelines and rails as they are now) pieces. I should be able to build a blueprint of a nice viaduct or support beam for a road or a rail and place the beginning and the end point and have the rest fill in.
As a new player for 1.0 I have to say, the game really starts to fall apart in fundamental ways once you've reached the stage of needing to transport goods across the map into a central hub to manufacture advanced parts, and the blueprint system is a big part of potentially fixing that. I absolutely blasted through ~40hrs of gameplay but things have started to grind to a halt around hour 60 and I have been losing steam big time - It took me two days to build a raised railroad from where I found crude oil to my main factory/hub near the grassland starting point that didn't look absolutely terrible. Not having the right tools to deal with inclines and declines in the terrain is a big part of this. I am transitioning from starter production lines to trying to build out a simple main bus system to make branching basic goods into modular-ish production lines easier and every step of the process is like pulling teeth, especially if you want to do it in a way that is aesthetically crisp and doesn't totally kill your eyes. Satisfactory doesn't scale up into the mid to late game as well as Factorio does and dealing with 3 dimensions is 100% the cause of those frustrations.
The Infinite Nudge mod is the single mod I consider a must have for anyone. It won't break your saves, doesn't change anything in the game, but lets you nudge vertically, removes the distance limit for nudging, and lets you move and rotate items more granularly. I cannot recommend it enough, and I hope we get it for 1.0 soon.
While I agree with your post, it can be easy to question decisions on certain features without being able to see the codebase and the relationships between all the interconnected bits within.
Perhaps it's just not priority to them, but also perhaps the nudge system is built on a tower of bricks with no mortar and removing one brick at the bottom could cause the whole thing to tumble.
But yes, I question it as well seeing as it doesn't seem to be an issue for modders.
@@thelolrus7491 as a software engineer, I'd find it difficult to believe that the nudge system is so complex and loosely built that it would be complicated to implement vertical nudging. We're talking about adding another 2 keys to a listener which change a Y variable instead of an X or Z.
Only tangentially related to this video, I'd LOVE to see a Beginner's Guide to railways. When to use them vs belts, typical material cost in making them over an example distance, examples of how to program them, how many trains and cars to use, how to create branches for other factories, etc. I learn best by seeing real examples, and I'm sure others do, too. I played 0.8 up to Nuclear tech but didn't finish, and I didn't have a single railroad, largely because I didn't know how to use them properly. With 1.0, I can foresee the benefits of using railways due to the increasing scale required to make the final products at reasonable rates, so I want to learn. And I really like how to present information! Thanks for considering!! FWIW, I'm currently in Phase 3 working on unlocking Tier 6 milestones, right at Railways.
I think some of it is preference, but I think the best high level summary I have for belts vs trains is this. If you are running one belt or just 1 resource along a path, belts are usually easier/ faster/ cheaper. If you are going to have multiple materials running along the same path (like a main line across the map, or a bunch of things going to one place), a train can help clean up the map.
With trains, you only have the one line (or two parallel lines) running along a given path, instead of having a "belt highway" of 15-20 belts all going the same way. The train lines can share a "main line" and then have small branches off to each area (production, mining/smelting, etc), and you can save on not having to build belts again and again along an existing path. The trains do take a little more time to set up, but if you have a large system, it can be more efficient than belts going all over the map, as many trains (going to multiple destinations) can share the tracks.
Yes! Please!
I see a lot of questions about this on stream, I think this would be a good idea for sure @total
I've honestly see no reason to use trains eva. Unless you like trains like I did as a young boy. If I need multiple resources along a common line I have belt raisers and I make multiple stacked belts. Same with throughput issues. Trains can fubar, belts don't. Definitive solution to me, but I'm just a medical type of guy looking for the simplest, most effective, definitive treatment.
@@jeffreyspinner5437 I appreciate your viewpoint and played that way in my 0.8 playthrough. I just think that in 1.0, especially with the endgame scale, trains will ultimately streamline logistics, should you want to do so. Build one main line across/around the world, then build spurs off of it as you need in order to send large quantities of materials where you need them. It'll take a bit of learning how to program them so they don't crash or get stuck, and I get that's not what everyone wants to have to do to play. Trains are just another tool in the toolbox for those who want to learn how to use it.
For people that change their keybinds and pressing "CTRL" does not give you smaller nudge increments, it is the "Snap to Guidelines" keybind that does it.
I didn't change any keybinds and CTRL only gives the snap to guidelines, whatever I try I can't use the small rotation, only 45%
Lifesaver, I always use CTRL for crouch
Man, learning how to manipulate and organize the blueprints was painful trail and error, glad to see someone do a video on it to save someone that pain.
tbh, watching a video about the blueprints GUI organization will only make you understand it at 90%. the last 10% is truly under trial and error from the user. its sorta like a ritual to fully understand it.
Experience is better than Theory
Just FYI for anyone who is interested in curved rails: you WILL break the foundations' alignment to world grid if you use any, and there is no clean way to re-align. This means any train stations you build either need some janky patchwork foundations to get back onto the world grid, or you're going to have to settle with a series of belts that aren't right angles and pass over open space to get back to world grid.
While editing the blueprint, you can select multiple blueprints by holding Ctrl while you click the ones you want to select, then you can let go of Ctrl and drag them where you want
TIL
I have found a slightly quicker way of doing the continuous curves is to start and end the blueprint with half foundations, that way there is no nudging required to get them lined up when you stack them one after another.
One tip I've found immensely useful is using it for simple yet tedious tasks, especially involving customization. I'm making 1m fixit walls because they look better but I need a lot of them and they all need to be colored purple, so just tediously make it in the designer, then they all just snap to eachother when building. Saves so much time
I've been avoiding curves simply because I can't get them to align to the world grid. I like to keep all my factories and buildings aligned so they're easier to connect later on. It's easy to connect a curve to the grid at the beginning, but having the end of the curve line up is what's tricky. Would love to see how you make this work in a future video.
Relyen Gaming has done some road bp work. Basically, yes, build factories on grid, to ensure standardized heights. If building a factory city, roads on grid makes sense. Maybe if building main roads across country, keep the main trunk on grid, if you want. But it is a fundamental myth and mistaken perceived risk-benefit to go off grid, arising from ignorance about how to seamlessly merge roads. We've all been there, it's fine. But you see, it's really painless to do, simply a matter of using painted beams in freeform mode to align foundations. The results are typically quite good, barely perceptible. Can also be used to align vertically. Once you get the hang of it, you won't have fears about roads going off grid anymore, because you'll always be able to splice back on grid for factories. Then you can focus attention on getting roads to hug terrain to look more natural. For best results, use roads with a curb to hide the occasion imperfect edge.
I use 30 degree curves on my rails to get around obstacles, and after that it's 2 more curves to get back on the grid at a right angle, or a curve back to continue straight
@@somearthlingyeah consistent angles work great. I prefer just doing 45* because you can build directly on foundations at 45* and then smoothing the gaps is super easy
Endpoints on the grid. The roads and tracks between them can bend in any way you like.
bless you total, I was about to tear my hair out with making good looking rail foundations, but this has restored my sanity
What I did for the continued curve was I did three normal curves using the method you're showing, then for the fourth foundation I used a half foundation. So I would use the blueprint the second time and just nudge it until it clipped fully with the half foundation, then I'd delete the half piece after placing the blueprint.
Definitely some tips I'll be using in my current build 😎 for the first time I'll be using tractors and trucks, then trains eventually. Megafactory builds do not like my PC 😂
If you load a blueprint, to add to a currently being worked on blueprint, and your current one is replaced with the loaded one.. build a 2nd Blueprint Designer. The loaded blueprint will appear in the 1st one built and allow you to work in the 2nd
TIL about half-meter nudging. Goddamnit.
Also, super-helpful technique for curve continuation.
I just unlocked the blueprinter! What wonderful timing
I don't think you missed any hotkeys to open directly to blueprint designer. This is a common complaint on the QA site that got ignored or keeps getting bumped for more critical features, like ADA Snark. To learn how to really use blueprints, pobkac, the mad scientist, black wizard, and 'Pob Ross' of blueprint design in Satisfactory. He has a fairly organized naming convention :) but no icons or categories, so yeah, that's certainly 'fun'. But understandable to keep pace with his stream style. Organization is an exercise for the user. Example: pobkac has pioneered the use of extending beyond the bpd to rapidly make very large prints, like, he recently mentioned one of 6km long ... the world map is only 7.5 km squarish, so yeah.
Yeah, I feel like its the one area of the game where the UI is still in development. Like, it works; but it's lacking the polish that the rest of the game developed over its EA. Kinda like it was the first workable version and it just hasn't been updated yet. I've got faith they'll get it though.
However, having blueprints auto-connect may be too complicated or finnicky. That would require adding hooks or "interface points" that would need to behave differently depending on what's around that interface point. That's relatively easy in something like Shapez where things are always on a grid, and always on a plane; like each side only has 12 junctions. It's a lot nastier when there's hundreds of possible hook points, things might not be square, and the game is designed to have pipe/belt segments. I'm fine without it though; making blueprints where you just have to connect power, and block inputs/outputs to things that are already placed/positioned is so much easier.
The bluieprint manager is one of the least intuitive UI elements in the game.
1. You and Nilaus are legends.
2. I love Satisfactory. I've only played Factorio more than Satisfactory but soon this will change.
3. The devs have done a brilliant job of designing the world the manufacturing systems, the machine designs and everything in between. That's why I have played it for more than 2,000 hours already.
4. BUT ... here is the BUT ... The user interface sucks. Just look how the UI has been done in Dyson Sphere Program (DSP). It's brilliant. Satisfactory MUST MUST MUST learn from it.
5. Coming back to your point in the first 30 seconds of this video: The Blueprinter interface as a subsystem of the the whole UI simply sucks. Again the devs should see how simplified blueprinting in DSP is and learn from it.
3:20 Why did they have to make the directory folders so unintuitive? I spent ages trying to drag and drop to organize blueprints into folders and it refused to work. There's no instructions anywhere and on Discord no one ever answers the question how do you get it to work?
Hopefully I can repeat what you've done here next time I play. It's not super clear what steps to take to get blueprints organized into folders.
I haven't tried this in 1.0 yet, but before that at least it was a good idea to never mess with the directories from the BP designer itself and always do it from your build menu instead. There are things that are fussy and don't really work right in the designer that are easier the other way. Once you get that hang of it it's not too bad, but I agree it's pretty rough.
I had the same problem. The solution was that for each new categorie you have to create at least one under-categorie for it as well for drag and drop to work. I believe he also says this in the video.
Watched a few of your videos over the years. Can I suggest a updated video main bus that is compact, has high transport capacity and does not clip when adding splitters or mergers. Also a storage area that connects to it seamlessly and can distribute those stored resources to other machines. Bonus points for including a logistics floor to hide the belt work and to feed the materials up from below... plus timestamps please!!
The curved blueprints are hella helpful man
Wonder if there's a elevated posibility as well
Does anyone know why the signs usually default to upside down when placed on a wall? I thought it was just me until I saw the same thing happen in this video :D
I know that I mostly just turn them into lights so it doesn't matter, but it's still annoying.
CSS said it's a minor bug.
According to this video, it sound like it's not high priority for now: /watch?v=Ry2q-O5JdTE&t=96s
Super helpful in my 1st playthrough, thankyou! The only question I have (unrelated to blueprints) is how to deal with elevation? I get the "building out with a dummy foundation" that you can then delete, but if a cliff is coming up, is it just a case of building some sort of "going up" blueprint you can then stack? Thanks again for the videos you've put out for 1.0. They've really helped me.
Man I wish I had tested these out ages ago. Didn't try it in EA and in 1.0 have not tried it until now but WOW what I was missing not trying these out! Would have made things so much easier and faster hours or minutes to set up an entire factory rather then days!!!
One thing I'd like to see included in these if there's a trick for it is getting train tracks to lay nicely flush with ramps. I can't seem to get them to behave at any of the 3 grade options.
Very helpful! Thanks very much!
Satisfactory weekend for sure 🤙🙌
Thank you! Appreciate what I do!
Great VODs learning a great deal of excellent tips and tricks from ur chl thank you. Just one question when u create a blueprint and save it can u also delete that blueprint in the designer? I can't seem to see how.
Can you do one about ramps? I had issues snapping ramps for train BPs to existing rail BPs. Mostly on going down. But just in general it wasn't very intuitive.
I came to ask the same thing. I don't know where yall are building flat roads but everything I ever need is slanting up and down....
It's a right pain, can't wait for mods to work again, infinite nudge for the win as it has vertical nudging.
@@JoannaHammond yes, I miss this mod a lot.
Good video, you have these bp's somewhere we can download ??
Mr. Xclipse, have you uploaded any of your BPs to sharing sites like satisfactoryblueprints? If not, would that be something you'd consider doing? I can see how it might be antithetical to your goal of teaching us to fend for ourselves, but I think your mind is better attuned for designing builds that are both functional and nice to look at.
He has them available to patreon supporters
I want to become an expert at this blueprint building. I hope you can hold my hand TotalXclipse
I haven’t been able to find a solution for blueprinting long road ramps. What I want is a repeatable middle section so I can build my climbing or descending road to any height. But I can’t get them align and continue from each other. Would love some suggestions there!
I've been waiting for your train curves video for a while now! How'd you do those cool A-frames on your rail in the rocky desert?
Nudging really was a revolutionary feature
Oh, so good! Thanks so much for this!
Any tips for sloped to straight blueprints? Im making an all in one highway with power tower, tube, rail and road but the ramps up and down are a pain to line up with the straight sections especially as sometimes the blueprints just have a half meter wide gap all around them for no reason
The most annoying thing is when you open the blueprint menu and pick a blueprint too close to the blueprint designer it somtimes loads that blueprint into the designer which is super annoying if I've spent like 30 minutes making a blueprint and haven't saved yet.
Only way to fix that for me is reloading the game...
No blueprint shortcut drives me nuts considering how useful they become if you start building a world bridge or larger factories with different repeating machines or load balancer arrangements. Need a mod just for this lol.
You can make it easier by creating categories, then switching the dismantle tool to "blueprint", when in this mode the middle mouse buttom makes you sample the blueprints, and you can cycle through them with 'E', and they'll cycle in the same category.
This way you can build more often without opening the menu
@@Cadulto I have not tested this myself but shouldn't it be possible to just add a blueprint to your hotbar?
@@KnoppersPolizei it is
@@Cadulto nice at least for me it sounds like the best and easiest way. Thx for answering.
KnoppersPolizei@@KnoppersPolizei yes you can bind it and rotate through the subcategory, it's very handy
My issue is after I made the curves as BPs, I still can't make my belts follow them. Is this only for train tracks? Or do I have to do one platform at a time belts, BP that, and then apply to my builds? I'm gonna try that...
How did you combine the lights with the low barrier?
How do you curve you’re traintracks into you’re curved foundations ? Because it doesn’t aline with me when i have a long curve ( i use the same technique as you to make curved foundations ). Or do you also add them to the blueprint?
One thing I find annoying about blueprints is setting up the belt directions. Usually I like all the belts pointing in the same direction, but sometimes due to space constraints it makes more sense to have the belts alternate directions. Perhaps there's some strategies I'm overlooking.
please drop the next playthrough vid asap because im basically using it as a guide as i go along because im new :D
Watch LGIO to see how NOT to play, but also, to see that even doing it dirty can still work out just fine. X'D
Hello,
ich have a question. I tried making a curved foundation ground for my train. But it did not work well. The curve of the train track was to high for 10 degree and to low for the 5 degree curve and ended on the midways on the edges (either outer or inner) of the foundations when i try to place it in the middle of the next straight way. So i gave up on a foundation based track and just made it with pillars, but i would love to have them on foundations. Could you make a small video about how you place your train tracks on your curves so they are aligned to the middle of the curves? That would be great.
Thanks in advance
Whenever I change the angle of the second foundation, there is a minimal offset at the bottom left corner. I have the feeling that a much finer movement of the foundation is possible in your video. Am I doing something wrong? 😞
Newer player here. I built a prefab conveyor tower to hold the conveyors for bringing resources into my factory. I then cut off pieces of the prototype into modules of the tower for more flexibility. However, the bp that is the top of the tower kept a large vertical offset even though there is only air under it, is there a way to fix that?
Is there a guide for trains because i am first time going in to it at 1.0 and I have some problems with on trach with no loops on the line and also with some signals
there are a few if you search 'train guide in satisfactory' , but your best bet is to ask, a lot of people here have done a lot of train track design and we could probably help.
Do you have any tips for belts and hypertubes going up ramps? Using 2m ramps and there's always this ugly bump. The merger/splitter trick doesn't work as well now and it's a massive headache. I don't know how they didn't sort this for 1.0
My most annoying part for blueprint is we should be able to toggle protection for dissembling it
You almost covered something but not quite and no one talks about, when making roads or track foundations, how does height off the floor of the BP designer affects how they will snap together? People claim to put foundations below the snap point to give the BP something to snap to, but it never seems to work for me.
I ran into the issue that If you create a blueprint but don't assign a category or subcategory it defaults to undefined. But then I decided to create a category and sub category. But I was unable to remove the original blueprint from undefined category. I saved and closed window but no matter what did, it never removed the original undefined blueprint.
This was exactly my problem. I had the same blueprint in Undefined category, than I moved it in "good" category. Now I had same blueprint in two categories. Don't copy my next procedure: I removed blueprint from Undefined. It is gone also from good one. It looks like in good one was only reference to blueprint in Undefined.
Let's Game It Out just did a 1.0 video.... I would love to see your take on it.... it made me nauseous.... could imagine your reaction, lolol!
I felt sick to my stomach and loved it. Just like having none of the fun of drinking and gone straight into hangover.
@Warp9pnt9 ......nailed it lol!
The storage box on the blueprint maker is not bugged, it doesn’t show until there is items in it
My nudge is way more then that what you are doing, is it a mod you have or? ( is CTRL + H to go into nudge mode and CTRL hold it to do lesser nudges. ) SEcond question! THe light Blueprints! when i do the EXACT same thing, my lights are placed like a few cm off the object..
how are you nudging down when making that curve? I cant seem to figure out how that is being done
There is no vertical nudge. He placed a few foundations beneath for the bp to sit on. He pulled the blueprint towards us using the down arrow while nudging.
@@Warp9pnt9 at 10:34 it shows him dropping the block down while it is above, he doesnt seem to be doing it by the normal method of putting it at the end of the block, so I am asking if how because it looks like he is nudging it downward
@@Tolastun it looks like once he built the first foundation he then looked at the corner of it, you would then might need to ctrl+mouse scroll to rotate the 2nd piece, then he nudged it over the first piece towards its edge, built it, then he snapped on the third piece underneath the 2nd and then deleted the 2nd piece
@@Tolastun He's pointing at the bottom of the side of the higher foundation which lets you build one underneath it. He's just doing it very quickly and smoothly.
I don't know any I needed to see a tutorial to remind me to use blueprints when building turns. All my roads are just 90deg angles right now 😅😅
i have problem when i whant to place blueprint that i just made it seays a file for this blueprint is mising what that means ?
Why does it feel like TotalXclipse will make a video about anything except for the next installation of his let's play right now? These are all great, but damn you're making us wait man haha
Honestly, I would have preferred the Mk. 3 Blueprint Designer should have replaced the Mk. 1 and be the only Blueprint Designer. Having 8m a side locked behind advancement feels like unnecessary artifical difficulty.
All I could think about when seeing the Mk. 2 and 3 was Square Cube Law and how much time would be saved with just Mk. 3's.
Lots of locked things are just dumb. Like extracting water is more difficult than oil (water node) and the blueprint MK3 in tier 9 is just crazy.
Next time I just unlock everything from the start
Meh, personally I wouldn't call it artifical difficulty. To me it's just an incentive for progression, just like all the other items that are locked behind the tiers or MAM research such as parachutes -> jetpacks -> hoverpacks or tractors -> trucks -> trains. You might as well label all those progression trees 'artificial difficulty' and do away with them too. Even though it can be inconvenient at first, I get great enjoyment out of working toward those secondary goals.
That said, I get it, if you've been thru multiple playthroughs that stuff can really be a chore for some. It's a sandbox game after all, play it the way you want to play it.
So, using your Curve technique to make 5° curves, i cannot make it align with another worldgrid foundation once it reaches the full 90° turn. If you or anyone else has a solution, please let me know, because I've been trying to make the alignement occur with multiple different techniques for... 6-ish hours now?
There are a lot of things that I’d add to the game, but honestly I just want cooler lighting options…
One thing I found with blueprints, they are not saved in your save file. I moved from one PC to another and all of my blueprints were gone when either using the save file from the cloud or the save file moved by USB stick.
I made blueprints for 4x4 foundations but cannot snap them to the world grid, the snap button and build mode options do absolutely nothing... Am I missing something? Foundation blueprints seem useless at this rate.
One subject I'd love to have a video about is the bigger picture of inter-factory design: how do you plan your resource flows between factories? Is every factory built with the explicit purpose for its output to go to one other factory, or can you set up a many-to-many system with trucks or trains ferrying some intermediate to multiple secondary factories?
The question I have is after you use a bunch of those 5 degree bends to achieve a 90 degree turn, are you still on world grid?
Nope - but if you use my merging tip from the recent build tips, providing you're at the right vertices, you can perfectly merge back to the grid 🙂
@@TotalXclipse Pointing at another video as youve done in the video above and in this comment, is unhelpful. And will get more and more unhelpful as time goes by.
Try to imagine In a couple of years or more, how much meaning "look at my recent video" will have.
Yes I'm going to go look anyway, but good lord: links are a thing :/
@@SimonPeel That's fair - however I responded to the comment on the day it was posted, so for that particular person it would be helpful. Just not to people who come by at a later date surely?
@@TotalXclipse Sure, but there's only one of him. There are potentially 171K (or more?!) subscribers in the future looking for answers.
All I'm saying is think about the future of your content, not just the present.
Maybe I'm also saying, whern you say in a video that there will be a link below and there isn't.... grr. But mostly the first thing.
The present is for now. The future is forever.
@@SimonPeel if I say the video is linked below - most of the time it is (sometimes I forget) - but if it isn't then let me know and I can link it.
But most people don't realise that since the change from youtube a few months ago, if you click the description and scroll to the bottom the linked videos are there. Beneath the transcript. For example this video includes the Easy curves explainer as I mentioned in the video as well as a guide on managing liquids and the first episode of my new lets play.
The subcat/directory bug is a pain.I have to exit and reload to get them to list properly.
I would like to be able to sample blueprints buildings (MMB) to copy and build more, or be able to zoop blueprints.
just add a road featur like rail solves all problems lol, a little archaic that you still have to do that, just drag a road way like a ail? so simple
Did they update something, or change something? I have been playing with blueprints for roads/tracks and curves, following your guide, and I can't get them to line up or snap to each other for the life of me. Hours making stuff wasted.
It would be nice if it was possible to combine blueprints with each other, such as 4x4+4x4, which would give one 4x8 blueprint on which to work.
I cannot get the continued curve to work i don't understand why
Should be a specific “snap point” piece you can add to any blueprint for east snapping. I’ve tried and tried and tried but no matter how i build my blueprints they never snap together and even when i nudge it’s slightly off. Completely ruins everything great about having blueprints to save time.
Something you did not mention but is the most annoying thing about blueprints to me:
Every time I want to edit a previously made Blueprint, the Save Directory gets reset to Undef/Undef.
It's so annoying to have to set the directory every single time I want to edit and re-save a blueprint..
Why does the game not just use the directory it's already in when loading, I don't get it. So many UI/UX nightmares in this game, it's not even funny anymore.
UX nightmare is a stretch
What can you do when its a turn and an incline...
Factory scaling for plebs please.
Wait, the island is open now??
Yup, they moved the world border and it's all inbounds now!
Blueprint organizing works now? It doesn't until .... now?
How to do a Hexagon shape with walls ?
There's no need for a "continued curve" variant if you rotate the first segment of your original curve.
Blueprint MK3 is so stupid high to unlock so every next playtrough I will just unlock everything
1:00
"4"
Blueprints would be fantastic if they didn't crash the dedicated server and corrupt the save every time anyone tries to use them. :\
How do you DELETE a blueprint in-game?
If you are trying to delete a building made out of blueprints, enter deconstruction mode and press the "change mode" button to enter blueprint mode. You can now delete entire blueprints instead of just the parts they are made of.
If you are trying to delete the blueprint itself, press the gear icon while editing your blueprints organization and select the delete option.
Could you please share your blueprints
nice very nice
I wish the best of luck to Satisfactory. But honestly they should just delete the blueprints and start over.
Their choice to put the 6x6 in tier 9 is just silly, their choice to not have vertical nudging is just silly. Can't wait for mods to be fixed then we can have a bigger BP designer and vertical nudging again.
You keep showing 5 and 10 degree curves but you have yet to show a sharper curve. I have been trying to make a 45 degree curve for ages, will you please show how to do much sharper curves like 45 degree please...
Road Barriers can be used to make 45 Degree turns, just look at any older video about making turns. You will end up with a very tight curve: Straight, +11.25 Angle, +11.25 Angle, And then your final is at 45 degrees.
Not exactly sure how the 5 degree ones perfectly line up for trains. Is there a trick to how many foundations of the curve out you go to make each segment? No matter what, the curve of the track never seems to actually line up that well with the underlying foundations and looks wonky. Or is it just a matter of "still janky, but better than the 10 degree"?
hmmmm helpful
The lack of bird view and easy click and point blueprint or copy / paste is the main thing preventing me to be able to play this game :(
You can copy paste blueprints actually. When in dismantle, hit R to switch Blueprint mode. Then click the pipette button (typically middle mouse button) on the blueprint.
Turn on fly mode in the advanced settings.
@@WednesdayTheClove I think they mean you can't make blueprints out of already existing structures.
wait there's a cheeky mk3 as well? :o
The fact that isn't not obvious in the game that belts and pipes don't connect from print to print wasted hours of my time. This is bullshit that needs to be fixed.
I got 3 minutes into the video and already lost interest, you didn’t show what’s possible and the first thing you did was show a blueprint I’d never use.
I know you put a lot of effort into this video but you put your weakest foot forward and showed a niche use that 90% of people will never use as your first example.
blueprints are broken. the UI is terrible beyond belief. and most importantly, you can't place a template blueprint into the designer as a starting point! which means you have to REBUILD EVERY blueprint from ZERO. not a time saver at all.
Nice you dont explain which Buttons we have to press…. What a waste oft Time
The game handles blueprints ALL WRONG. Should be done in game, NOT in a space limited building. So stupid.