Factorio Part 4 returned to Satisfactorio Friday with one clear objective: make the science balls bigger. BeepBoopJim filed this one under “military research, industrial spaghetti, and barbecue-related cognitive impairment.”
First, Jim returned from Ribfest while still recovering from a serious meat coma. Red and green science were running. Trains were unlocked. The car still technically worked. Therefore, the next target became military science.
Naturally, one new science pack required several new production lines.
Jim finally put the neglected stone deposits to work by automating stone bricks and walls. From there, grenades, firearm magazines, and piercing rounds entered production. Each new ingredient created another belt problem somewhere else.
Meanwhile, iron demand kept climbing. Jim expanded mining and production again, pushed more steel through the factory, and added more assembling machines. Splitters and underground belts also helped squeeze new production into whatever space remained.
Then another Factorio lesson became impossible to ignore.
If Jim kept crafting something by hand, he probably needed a machine to make it.
Unfortunately, that machine usually needed another part. That part needed another machine. Soon, even the automation required automation.
As a result, the spaghetti spread farther.
Iron, copper, steel, coal, grenades, and ammunition all needed routes through the existing factory. Somehow, the coal snake survived another expansion and remained a protected historical landmark.
Jim also discovered that he had already automated transport belts without remembering doing it. In addition, the inventory still contained several mysterious objects from previous shifts. The accidentally manufactured cargo wagon remained among them.
BeepBoopJim has chosen not to investigate.
Factory operations briefly stopped when chat introduced Jim to a viral Surrey news story. For several minutes, the stream became an investigative image-enhancement department. Photoshop entered the workflow. So did a giant spoon. Journalistic standards did not.
Eventually, everyone returned to the much more responsible task of manufacturing explosives.
By the end of Factorio Part 4, military science was coming together piece by piece. Piercing rounds, grenades, stone products, steel, and ammunition all had larger roles in the factory. However, iron consumption continued climbing faster than Jim found comfortable.
Most importantly, Factorio had delivered another dangerous realization.
If Jim keeps making something by hand, he should build a machine to make it.
Then he should probably build another machine to make the thing that feeds that machine.
The factory is becoming more automated.
Jim remains an ongoing manual process.
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