Thanks a ton, this kind of feedback really helps motivate me to make more videos. These are the first videos I ever intended for actual public viewing and the support has been incredible.
This is by far one of the most helpful videos I've ever found on RU-vid. Thank you so much, really made my Satisfactory experience a lot better. I find myself coming back to this video pretty often.
Since you're like me and want as much walking room, one thing I did with my bus was leave the bottom row clear for crossovers. You end up losing a row of belts, but it leaves everything free for walking/driving down the bus. Thanks for the video!
You lose a belt, but just shift them all up one, right? 😅 A good idea though so you can still move around without getting stuck or needing to slide everywhere.
There is one CRUCIAL info he forgot to mention: the screws used for making reinforced plates are made directly from ingots (no need for iron rods). This recipe needs to be unlocked with some hard drive over the land
Hey thanks for this helpful video Dude! Fellow Kansas guy here, in Stafford County. Lots of really helpful ideas here. I just (finally) bought Satisfactory about a month ago, and have a "first try" game going to learn how to build end do everything in Satisfactory after years of Factorio, Dyson Sphere, Capt. of Industry, and a brief trip underground in Techtonica. Thanks again for this. Lots of helpful tips here!!
I have my main bus set up as a two loops stacked on top of each other. one loop distributed everything to the different factories with smart splitters and sends all overflow to a belt connected to a sink. The other loop gathers all products and excess components and puts them all back into storage. The main storage takes in items from two belts with programmable splitters and it sends all overflow to the sink. The idea was to make it kinda like the blood stream in your body where you have a mainline with a high flow rate and lower rank belts at the machine's inputs to make it efficient.
Gotta say, your way of speech alongside that cup of coffe totally gave me some american heavy-duty worker vibes. Like some kind of Big burly guy with a big mustache, explaining how the giant mining site behind him is responsible for supplying the nation with concrete. or something XD
Some good info in here thanks. As someone fresh to satisfactory with lots of factorio and DSP time behind my belt, I found many valuable tips in your video.
Hahaha! 10 minutes video - I expected you will say something like "This is a main bus, you build it like this and it's done". Instead you've explained the bus, the factory, the storage hub, some important concepts, some good building style... And it took you just above 10 minutes... The other streamers would probably make it a 10h series of sillyness, mistakes, thanking the sponsors, etc... You, sir, have my sub!
Even though I don’t like Main Busses in Satisfactory and stick to a more city-like designs with factories all over the map, providing each other with trains, I have to say: good work on the video! Very nice to watch!
Everyone's just touching this topic briefly. This is the depth I needed to fully understand the logistics and the reasoning behind this approach. Thanks, Studley, helped a lot!
That's definitely what I would do if I needed screws. I generally don't build my bus until I have enough alternates unlocked that I don't need screws but the steel screw recipe is def my favorite.
This is great video, thanks. I used main buses a lot in factorio and wanted to see how to best implement them now that i’m starting satisfactory (especially with the sink to consider).
Having smart splitters with overflow-setting is so much different to Factorio and makes a main belt so much more convenient. Also the sink helps, don't have that in Factorio
Nice video! That's very close to my setup except that I put two sets of main bus stacks side-by-side (without clipping them) and leave a gap of one belt to allow for lifts. Because I get double up the stacks, I only build 5 high and use the area where your 6th belt is to go above the belts to get items over the stacks if needed. In your setup, you get 24 lines. In mine, I get 40. It's something to consider.
I've considered that, but what scares me off of it is what if I have factories on both sides that need to pull from the same belt, and I only have room to connect to the splitter once? Now you have to find room somewhere else to make that extra split and it's just not nearly as clean and simple as being able to connect lifters to both sides of one splitter. In general I'm a big fan of compactness and neatness but if there was ever a place where having a little extra space to maneuver would be helpful, it'd be the main bus IMO.
@@StudleyKansas, yup, I get it. I have made mine work so far. For me, pulling wasn't the problem, it was putting back on (in my case, screws that you don't add anyway) and I only had tier 2 belts at the time. I was hoping the initial line would hold out until tier 3 or 4 belts so expansion wouldn't be a problem (yes, delusional for screws, I know!). I just put two Mergers side-by-side and ran the belt with a 90 degree turn to line it up. There's tons of room for mergers/splitters as long as you can accept the items getting added/removed from the belts within a couple meters of each other. Honestly, if I had planned better, this wouldn't have been an issue. I could also have just used a second belt but I was winging the layout and it was early in the factory's life so I didn't know how many items would be on this floor at the time. What I *DID* do was leave tons of space between the lines. Anyway, like I said, it was just an idea to consider.
love this, thanks. i've been struggeling with logistics and headaces because of item transportation for a while. this really helped me make everything more efficcient and less painful.
Like others have said, this is exactly the video I was looking for on how to make a good Main Bus. I'll try out something like this now. Thank you very much.
How in the hell do you only have 224 Subs. This is a great tutorial and your voice makes me feel like someone from Tombstone is teaching me. Please keep making these tutorials.
I made a crazy one about a year ago, it's 5 belts high and a total of 60 belts with it being in a BIG loop back upon itself. I put a container at the end of each production line and from the container to the bus. It took an excruciatingly long time as I didn't know about mods. I'm still running that world now.
Great video mate. I always do main bus designs as my brain is a little too small to be creative. Love the design and will incorporate the style into my U5 factory. Keep up the great content!
I feel the same way about the "brain too small" situation. A main bus just helps so much to neatly package all this game's complexity into little bite size pieces that I wouldn't want to play without it. I admire all these beautiful realistic looking architectural masterpieces that I'm seeing from others, especially since U5 hit, but that's just not in the cards for me. I have a decent head for numbers and automation, but zero for architecture or visual design concepts.
@@StudleyKansas Yeah I just have to remember what I'm capable of. I can relate to seeing all the architectural masterpieces and feeling left out. Guys like us are better off sticking to 1's and 0's.
Great video. I have some mental health problems at the moment that make many games, especially non-narrative games, overwhelming for me these days. This video was so clear and concise, without being obsessed with precision, that I think I could make it work to make a base that doesn't quickly become spaghetti that I can't control or keep track of, whilst not being a perfect megabase kinda thing. You mention a few QOL mods that only make the job way easier, not throwing in extra stuff I wouldn't need, and not to bus wire and screws. Things that might seem obvious, but definitely helpful. I've been watching loads of Satisfactory videos because I want to see a working base, and struggle with my own. They're always just too big in scope, complex, or precision obsessed for me to want to implement. Yours really was just easy to watch, clear and clean speech and audio (no other sounds like mouse clicks, endless filler words or sounds, or whatnot to distract me from the content), and the matter of fact but helpful nature was really a treat to find by accident. Videos like yours that aren't meant to be 'funny', or examples of behemoth projects, are sorely underrated for those of us who want to play these games but aren't necessarily up to the task of the large engineering scale and complexity these games can require. Some of us need the small scale stuff demonstrated, not how to build an international rail network, how to make our skyscraper look pretty, or how to make ten billion motors per second. We just want our factory to work without being a total spaghetti mess, or needing to be a masterwork of aesthetics. 😅
Great video! My friends and I play on a dedicated server and we hope mod support comes soon, that daisy chain mod looks so nice! Thanks again for the detailed and easy to follow info!
I sure will, thanks! I've started a new save and am going to cover the different stages of the game starting from the beginning. I think a lot of people are looking at this video and saying "Whoa, I'm not ready for that", so hopefully backing up a little bit and going into a little more detail will help people see that they can get a lot of use out of this earlier in the game than they think.
@@StudleyKansas awesome! I am following along building this bus in my new save but struggling with storage vs production. ex: iron plates, in the vid you say that the iron plates should go onto their own belt for production down the line, thing is you need a ton of iron plates early in the game for general building so the only way I have of storing them is to use the smart belt which once I also added iron rods to (for storage) clogged immediately. Is there a way around this?
@@BananaNationTV Hey sorry I didn’t see this till now. I personally find 20 per minute to be plenty for my personal iron plate needs, so in my video toward the end you can see I have one of each type of basic part being made and put onto the smart belt return line (plates, rods, screws, wire, cable, steel pipes). This is at 10:40 in the video. If you need more than that, you can split off from your main iron plate line and feed directly into your storage box, as I did with four belts (in my case, copper sheets, concrete, rubber and plastic) at 9:50.
Thank you for the video man! I'm having lots of fun with this game but I'm struggling to expand my factory. Hopefully in my next session I'll be much more organized with your help! 😁
You're welcome! This game can be a real headache at times and that's why I made this, to help others who struggled the way I did, so I'm glad you're getting something out of it. I plan to make more once I get back into Satisfactory but for now I'm enjoying other games. Have fun!
yeah its a game that can hang you up. One minute you will be having the time of your life, but then that next unlock and resulting production line seems like way too much work to create. I tried doing a bus like in Factorio but found it too much of a headache. I have been terrified of trying to make trains or trucks work along with my usual spaghetti. The trick I found is to demolish parts or all of your base using the satisfactory calculator save editor. This lets you keep your current progress along with all your produced items, and lets you rebuild things properly to a much larger scale than you originally did. So you can then take those 4 Pure Iron nodes with Mk 2 miners and OC them to double output, and connect 480/sec belts to each one and run each line to your large smelting factory. Then when you have 1920 iron bars you can make as many reinforced plates/modular frames/heavy frames as possible, all in one building. You can then build your copper and crystal factories doing the same thing. Use signs to label each factories inputs and outputs so you can plan your next factory that uses some of those parts you're producing. Once you break the game down in to chunks, and start making everything modular, it becomes much easier to keep a grip on what you're doing.
oh and work vertically as much as you can. That huge iron factory will only take up a 5x10 space if you plan it right, producing each item on a seperate floor. If you try to do multiple items on the same floor, you get confusing spaghetti real fast. Also try to remove screws from your production chains with alternate recipes. Screws suck.
thanks a ton i think this will be really helpful for me, i'm just trying to learn satisfactory, it's very different from the other factory games i've played so it's taking me a hot second.
Spaghetti has been the bane of my existence, great timing I am about to start to rebuild everything as I get to tier 3 on the Space Elevator. I would have loved more information on how you choose what to run on each of the 4 belts ?
Are you talking about the four belts shown at 9:59? If so, those were the only things on my bus that needed to be put in storage that weren't already on the smart belt, and they were too high-volume to be put on the smart belt. So, each of those items is on its own belt on the bus, and I put a splitter on each to keep the storage boxes full while also providing them to factories that need them further down the line. On a related note, at 10:39 you'll see some items that are also too high-volume to be put on the smart belt but still needed to be put in storage, and rather than run a dedicated belt for them I just had one constructor for each and dumped them all on the smart belt return line, this way they don't run all the way to the end of my factory and back, only a short distance from the constructors to the storage containers.
this is a very big stepping stone in my knowledge of understanding this, ty for this vid it really helps a lot. I love the under floor design though I wonder about how the items on the bus on how they are being processed around on the chain and going to there next spot but besides that u explained everything perfectly thanks for the help
I might make a video on a compact version of this if anyone is interested. I have a 4x4 mini bus that is one foundation wide and one wall deep. Not too difficult but it is tedious. I can make it more compact but it might look weird
It's pretty cool and convenient, and I unintentionally build myself a main bus in my last game, but in the end I really see no need for it tbh. The unlocked items to create in the end is limited, and all can be planned ahead (and some need their own factory), so after unlocking this golden mug for the first time you probably know what to do next game. But then again, that's my way of playing the game. A main bus is pretty cool to have. :)
one awesome thing you can do is run a single power line right down the middle of the bus line at the factory level and use the power switches before each line of production so you can easily switch off all reinforced plate production if you need to
That's a pretty slick idea, but since I started using the daisy chain mod I've sorta gotten hooked on the "no power poles" look, it's just so clean. If there were a way to incorporate the power switches while still maintaining the clean daisy chain look I may have to do that, because there are definitely times where it would be handy.
@@StudleyKansas It comes in great when you're trying to see if you need more of a particular item in your bus because the power flux will be very apparent and on its own graph on the power switch, also naming each line of production is mildly helpful
I'm coming to this game with almost 2,000 hours in Factorio, and wanted to see how other people did their main bus. Verticality really do make things different, don't it? I feel like Satisfactory is if Ark and Factorio had a son, but they sexually identify as Space Engineers.
same , in factorio you cannot add more lanes if not allocated space earlier but in satisfactory just add more lanes on top of it , ezy pzzy, vertical makes things different
Coming from Factorio and ARK I can only appreciate how convenient the building in this game is compared to ARK. I'd never thought of a smart belt since in Factorio there is no sink and also no overflow option on splitters. Pretty neat to and definitely a very good way to handle things.
Well I have a similar way of thinking, but I extended my version with TIERs. Means I have a main bus in every factory, that has one end product in it's focus. This way I build my whole world. Making factories for tier 1 first (or using it's components directly and solely to make a tier 2 product). In other words I don't have a main factory. I have tier factories, each with their own build and purposed manifolds and ofc main bus, but specialised. And I go vertical, always, more space, less stress.
Thank you so much for this, and hope to see more videos from you! In the past my most successful factory used a main bus, but I kept seeing notes online about the value of just having lots of small factories spread throughout the world instead of one megafactory. So when I restarted this round (because updates with fluids and all that broke my old designs), I started giving it a shot but I've been having a rough time of it, and having trouble scaling anything at all. I also had the bright idea of dumping every item in the world onto one belt and using smart splitters, but that broke pretty quick too lol. So I think it's back to the main bus design, and this vid was super helpful for that. And maybe I'll just have some small localized factories later on, wherever related materials just happen to find themselves close to each other.
Great video, and looking forward to more. A few suggestions for the next video, Id love to see a follow up on the factory itself. Id like to see for example why you dont have steel beams (im assuming alternate recipies)? When you fast forwarded, it was hard to see details of how some aspects might work (how you put the screws in the oposite end for example took a few key pauses/replays to figure it out). Perhaps have a slower fly over of your factory to see all the aspects come together. Also any other issues you had with the design and how you overcame them. Does the smart belt ever become overloaded?
Both of those solutions would work fine. You can also design your bus to have a few extra belts in case you run into this or some other unforeseen problem. Also, if you build an underground bus, you can widen it and add more lanes without having to tear down anything you’ve already built.
Looking at the mods you use: Why tf isn't at least half of this in the base game?! Just got back into the game when I read they added blueprints and holy sh*t the implementation is infuriatingly bad. Thanks for the video, opened my eyes what I need to get to enjoy the game.
I've been looking for a better way to organize my belts. This. Is. It. I've been building vertically for a few weeks now, but this opens some new doors for sure. Pre-planning has begun!
Stacking conveyors on a bus in Satisfactory is a serious mistake, unless your bus is only one belt wide. You're pretty much guaranteeing that your conveyor stacks will get in the way of adding or removing materials from the bus. You're also making it very difficult to see what is on individual belts within the bus. I tend to build busses that are one or two floors. On a given bus floor, belts are all at the same level, not stacked. Belts are adjacent to each other, 4 belts per foundation, rather than 1 belt stack per foundation. This is slightly less dense than a 6-belt stack, but much easier to use and inspect. Adding / removing items from the bus only becomes an issue if you're doing it very close to each other, less than a foundation's separation.
Thanks! Glad people are still getting value out of it. I have been playing other games since then and haven’t made it back to Satisfactory yet but I definitely will and I’ll have some new videos when I do!
Nice Video mate, I used the main bus system in my first and second world but decided against it in my latest because they take a long time to set up without mods and get quickly out of hand with large factorys. Building everything in one place also tanks the frame rate on slower PCs but it clearly has some positivs to it.
This video helped me a lot, thanks ! I just have a little question, I guess than other belts than the smart belt aren't supposed to have items at their ends, so do all the items on these belts have to be used ? Thank you again
