In my last post about Satisfactory I mentioned that I was on the verge of unlocking Coal Generators. I had forgotten how much of a game changer and how important these are to the general progression of the game. You go from constantly needing to gather leaves and wood to generate power to having a self-sustaining source that doesn't need refueling. Feels very rewarding.
I need the power
Generating power and electricity can be a pain in Satisfactory. Early on you need to gather wood and leaves to burn in generators to create electricity. Every building you build requires energy so the total power consumption of your factory will increase rather quickly, meaning you'll need ever increasing quantities of leaves and wood. It becomes a pain real fast.
Luckily you won't have to live in pain for very long. Just a few hours into the game after completing phase 1 you'll unlock Coal Generators. As long as these are fed both water and coal they will produce energy for you without you having to run around to refill them all the time. Both coal and water are infinite sources as long as you find a water source and a coal deposit meaning you just have to start pumping and mining.
I didn't even waste a second setting up my first coal plant. I was lucky enough to find two coal deposits near a big lake which was just perfect. The coal deposits were normal quality deposits meaning they yield 60 coal per minute each. One coal generator requires 15 coal per minute to run at 100% efficiency. This means I have enough coal for 8 generators.
The water pumps will pump up 120 liters of water per minute and one generator needs 45 liters per minute to run at 100% efficiency. The math doesn't fully add up here so I set up an extra water pump just to be sure I have enough water running through my generators. All of this is of course symmetrically connected by pipes and conveyor belts. I'm never going to finish this game at a decent pace due to taking so much time to build everything neatly.
I now have a capacity of 1330MW in my power network. Time do explore what else I can unlock and start producing after completing phase 1. I know I can now start dabbling with steel. That will probably be useful for something.
All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.
It must feel really cool that you now have a new machine where you no longer have to spend so many hours of the game gathering the materials to generate energy, it has happened to me in other games where at first it is very annoying to gather so many materials over and over again, but having a constant source of energy that saves you the hard work, it is very cool.
It definitely helps being able to focus on building factories and not having to worry about power acquisition. Speeds up the game a bit.