Fred and Loathing on The Internet

Lazy Keyboard Factory Worker Not Putting In Enough Shifts

2024-Jan-28

The project manager for the big update has decided that the scope is too ambitious to spend anytime deploying what is usable into production. Dear readers, you will have to do with my written reports here in the prologue of each blog post. This delay is for good rather than acrimonious reasons. There is more content discovered that needs some back-end work needed to smoothly connect to Plotly-Dash. The first dashboard has been replicated and uses all the new back-end methods that makes each web call from the dashboard much more lightweight. The scope increase involves a lot of visual re-tweaking using the Dash objects in a list style of HTML design.

The video game Satisfactory deserves a second written missive hot on the heels of it taking up the review spot in the last blog post. What sets this game apart from most that I have played is the point of the game itself. Beneath the trappings of a first-person jumping, (now) shooting, driving exploration game, there is a puzzle game about putting together production units in the most efficient way.

I have what I call a ‘heavy inertia’ train of thought. Changing gears from playing a complex video game to performing some other task, like writing Python code, usually requires a few minutes before I get into the groove. This game is made up of tasks that remind me of how I think about the layout of my abstract code.

In the game I had reached the learning curve that starts to flatten out into mastery rather than learning the concepts. My haphazard and horizontally flat production lines are blooming into vertically integrated monstrosities of hanging, wall-attached, or floor penetrating conveyor belts.
I am going back and refactoring what I have built, which works but could be much more efficient. This process feels hauntingly similar to the website update.

When looking around the internet for tips about how to play the game I saw talk of creating a ‘factory’ that is autonomous, meaning it relies on an input and will output a fixed amount of the desired item. At first I poo-pooed this idea because executing blueprints did not sound like a creative process that would give me the same zest I had been getting from slapping together my ramshackle production lines that have their input and output ratios considered after construction. Usually adjusted by eye-balling the amount of resources backed up or an imbalance of backed up input materials.

My equipment is mostly exposed to the elements rather than neatly encased with walls and roofs. There is no weather in the game so there is no maintenance needed to protect my fabrication equipment from the elements. I have found that putting conventional structures like roofs and walls makes my world more populated, giving me a little help when I need quick visual guides of wear to point my roads.

The complexity of the items I need to build to reach the next level of producible items has also exploded. This has made me do some pioneering work in making pre-planned factories for early level materials, like screws, cable, or anything that can be made with a single resource type. I suppose eventually I’ll have to make these autonomous ‘factories’ and have them be able to enter an organized transit system. Right now I’m using two automated tractors to make pick-up and deliveries to two corners of my zones. I do have the ability to build trains but that most likely should be done after I see anything online about how to avoid common pitfalls.

Fluid dynamics are somewhat screwy in this game. That is one of the rare game mechanic complaints I have for version 8 of the early release version of this game. My last upgrade was the ‘rifle’ which gives the player a very familiar 15 round auto-rifle that I built to handle the large amount of predatory animals that hang around the closest bauxite deposit. Bauxite means my next refined metal will be aluminum. By the looks of all the precursor materials involved to just make an ingot, it looks to be wonderfully complex.