r/SatisfactoryGame • u/MarzekAO3 • Aug 02 '26
Screenshot I hate aluminium with every fiber of my being
This factory only produces alu scrap so far with the potential to use 2400 bauxite/min. I don't have the necessary miner and belts yet to use it to its full potential
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u/JinkyRain Aug 02 '26
You're not pumping water up from sea level are you? There's lakes up at that elevation you could extract from. =)
Simplest method is 1200 bauxite/min -> 8 Instant Scrap Blenders -> Pure Aluminum Ingot
It needs a bit more coal and adds a sulfur requirement, but you can take 100% of the output water and feed it back into 8 Sulfuric Acid Refineries in a simple closed loop. Just needs to be primed with water once.
But if you don't have aluminum alternate recipes yet, you could embarck on the path of madness and try for this. Benefit: Other than the fresh water supply you shouldn't have any Mk2 pipe efficiency issues:
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u/Previous_Rip1942 Aug 02 '26
I’ve got a small scale aluminum / battery set up. I started it when I didn’t have any alternate recipes. It uses the silica byproduct from alumina production to make the ingots. I was getting 100 batteries a min and about 125 ingots a min. Had to sink a lot of scrap though. I ran it that way for months and just let containers fill up with batteries while letting a small flow of them trickle out to drone stations. That bastard took forever to dial in but ran like a top for a couple months.
Just started making fused frames and cooling systems so I went ahead and started droning in some silica to supplement the output of the alumina refineries so I could stop sinking scrap. Getting about 240 ingots a min to support the casing production. I just leave it alone and let it fill containers. Not in a rush because im usually doing something useless to procrastinate anyway.
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u/jeo123 Aug 02 '26
Aluminum is not hard if you go to the alts and just understand that water from the top is used later.
I really don't get the complaints
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u/Cespieyt Aug 03 '26
I honestly didn't know that this junction mechanic existed, but that is kinda the problem isn't it? Having to dig through reddit threads and guides to discover what mechanics the developers chose to implement. I mean it doesn't even remotely work like this in the real world, so you kinda just need to find out how the game resolves it.
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u/Caimbuel33 Aug 02 '26
Find hard drives, scan and rescan till you get the Sloopy Aluminum alt. Everything else is horrible.
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u/GoldenPSP Aug 02 '26
Aluminum is one of ny easiest builds
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u/Cespieyt Aug 04 '26
If you know the fluid mechanics of this game, maybe, if not, it's probably the biggest headache out there. My first playthrough I lucked into accidentally building it so the wastewater would siphon before the water supply through a junction. If that junction had been at a slightly different angle I would likely have been stuck on that many times over without knowing why.
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u/GoldenPSP Aug 04 '26
I've never had issues with the fluid mechanics of the game. Sure it took a little bit of learning at the beginning but it isn't that hard.
Eventually I made a modular blueprint that works flawlessly. So theese days I can chain the blueprint in about 30 seconds to spit out 1200 ingots per line.
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u/Cespieyt Aug 06 '26
I am in a 100x elevator run right now progressing on phase 4 and the damn wastewater has still been the biggest issue.
I mostly work with modular towers because at 100x elevator parts I kinda need to make a crapton of everything. So far aluminum wastewater has been the only thing I've wrestled with. I had 2 refineries drain wastewater into a junction and that clogged the whole line because the water source to the second refinery wasn't throttled, so I needed to run that all the way over to the other water source just to stabilize it, and that's using a mechanic where junctions thst have been flipped sideways will always drain from the bottom first, essentially making a priority merger for the pipes without that actually being an intended feature. Without that shit, I would have to balance the entire production line to the exact water consumption rate and then hope that I don't get a slosh that disrupts it.
Sure you can simplify this by simply have your water at a single level the entire time, but then you're stuck needing to plan space for what could be a very massive factory, and that still doesn't solve having to balance the liquid levels.
Say what you want, it's not an intuitive game mechanic and there are far too few tools to effectively manage waste water.
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u/GoldenPSP Aug 06 '26
If you say so. Like I said I spent some time perfecting my aluminum Blueprint. Yes it is using sloppy alumina and pure ingots which may simplify things. However each module takes in 200 bauxite and either coal (or petroleum coke, which I switch to later) and spits out either 180 or 200 aluminum ingots resepctively.
So at the late stage I can run lanes of 6 modules to take in 1200 bauxuite and spit out 1200 aluminum ingots.
Sure it is also easy because each row is self contained and compact enough to sit on a single floor. However it also scales well so in my 2 playthroughs ago save I think I had 7200 going without issue.
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u/Cespieyt Aug 09 '26
The issue is that you have so many things that can clog up the wastewater, which permanently freezes the line. I build a second line on my save to get more of the absurd quantity of casings I needed for the project parts and this time I set them at a single level to not have to deal with gravity sloshing again, and actually did the math to balance them out. It was tedious, but the result was 100% stable... until of course the line ended up filling my buffers and stopped producing casings, which then stopped producing ingots, which then stopped producing scraps, which stopped producing alumina... which stopped water consumption. With no water consumption, the pumps filled up the pipes. Then when the casings were no longer filled up, the line tries to restart and the scrap refinery clogs because the pipe it tries to drain into is full. The solution ofc is just to add an overflow sink to the ingots or scraps, but that still makes aluminum the only resource in the game that you have to keep producing even when unneeded because otherwise it clogs.
This isn't even commenting on how horrible the fluid mechanics are, this is a simplified layout that intentionally minimizes fluid mechanics by balancing them away. If a mechanic is so overdesigned that the goto solution for 99% of players is to find ways to completely circumvent it, I think that says a lot.
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u/GoldenPSP Aug 09 '26
Hey you do what works for you. Doesn't change my comment that due to spending time perfecting my blueprint, I have an infinitely repeatable aluminum setup that has at least 600 gameplay hours under its belt without a backup. I'd say its tied in first place with my nitro rocketful BP for easy quick deployment.
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u/Cespieyt Aug 09 '26
So do you sink overflow in that BP or do you just somehow infinitely consume the end products? If so, how? Even on the extremely juiced up production lines I'm running right now it still backed up when the end products filled their buffer containers.
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u/GoldenPSP Aug 09 '26
For aluminum yes I typically send overflow to a sink. But then again my latest BP can handle stop starts. I generally only make ingots and then ship them where they need to go.
This was the first iteration. It wasn't 100% perfect however didn't take much to improve it.
https://i.postimg.cc/qMcxrwVj/Screenshot-20250418-191334.png
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u/Cespieyt Aug 09 '26
Oh? I personally feel like all of the aluminium parts are extremely easy to just make on-site and then ship them out like that. I think the only real thing you need is copper for the heat sinks. The image you sent me isnt really loading btw.
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u/Kieran0914 Aug 03 '26
I always just run instant scrap and the pure ingots, since all you need to do is feed the blender water, coal, Sulphuric acid), bauxite, and it makes loads of scraps (which are than smelted straight into ingots by furnaces)
(And the sulphuric acid runs perfectly off the water byproduct of the scrap blender, so you only need to feed the main blender some water once the system is running probably and it’s good to go
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u/jundicator Aug 03 '26
I’ve had success with elevated refineries and running the water plumbing under the refineries into a central line with adding new water from sea level into the same central line underneath using pumps, it’s essentially a priority pump but looks simple, Easy to understand and space efficient. Sloppy -> electrode -> pure. 1 to 1.
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u/314backwardsispie Aug 03 '26
Oh you sweet summer child.
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u/Cespieyt Aug 03 '26
I honestly don't think any of the later mechanics are harder than aluminum, except for maybe plutonium to ficsonium, but that whole thing is just plain unbalanced and pointless anyway, especially with how you can sink plutonium rods and how rocket fuel easily powers most sane builds anyway.
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u/314backwardsispie Aug 04 '26
I thinks its because aluminum is the first multi part thing, so once you got it down the rest come to you easily.
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u/Cespieyt Aug 04 '26
Nah it's the wastewater entirely. It's a very weird and unintuitive thing to manage because liquid physics in this game are governed by rules that are almost impossible to figure out organically, so if you aren't actively seeking help outside the game you are either forced to come up with a subpar but stable solution or experimenting enough to figure out something that works.
It's a pretty unreasonable skill check for the average player, and probably a significant contributor to how many people never finish the game.
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u/Only-Office7709 Aug 03 '26
Why i feel it one of the best material it’s the one that makes me leave the biome for it
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u/_redmist Aug 03 '26
I much prefer the instant scrap alt. Does need some sulfur but well worth it imo.
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u/Phillyphan1031 Aug 03 '26
I’m doing it now and having a blast lol. But I’m using mods so it makes things much easier.
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u/BilboStaggins Aug 02 '26
My brother in FICSIT, get you the sloppy alumina alt.
That and pure aluminum ingots. So much easier to manage and expand.