The last time I was in Foundry I had successfully deployed a set of robots to the space station, effectively trading them for a set of cookies. For an EA game, there was a decent amount of content present but obviously there was a pile of tweaking to go. Those generally fell into 3 prioritized categories: Balancing, Content, and Quality of Life.

Update 1 was released and had all that with cables and connectors.

• Cable system was added that allows some remote logistical control on conditions. Cool in that you can set up backup generators to only work when main power is down, or lights to only drain at night. There’s a lot here that has no meaningful purpose to my gameplay though, or perhaps I haven’t see it.
• Lot of liquid balancing, which pretty much non-existent.
• Liquid cargo ships, which only has a practical value for Fracking.
• Improved information panels that you can access. The way loaders are constructed often prevented using any interface. It’s a whole lot better!
• Resource nodes can be set to 0-infinite. I personally think that this issue is so foundational to the game identity that any fix here is going to be broken. “Finite” resources are not a bad thing, its that the logistics + material requirements to build mining operations are a right pain due to the 3D world design. After the initial nodes are exhausted, you need to dig to get to the next one, and get power to the bottom level. Taking 30 minutes to build a new mining op, then the logistics to transfer the material to another location is simply too painful. So as it stands now, set it to infinite. Get blueprints or an improved experience to build a mining node, and they can then resort to finite durations.
• More decor pieces. Rant below on this.
• Lasers for world destruction and belt upgrades.
• Massive optimizations. Truly impressive improvements to FPS.

There’s a survey out now to help prioritize the dev work, which is nice to see from an engagement perspective. Main items are:

• Trains. I get the concept, but not seeing how it can co-exist with the current large-scale transport items.
• Blueprints. Sure, I guess. A production building with loaders in/out would be nice QoL, but not super pressing right now.
• Pressure Mechanic. Think of it as a timer of sorts to make you take a decision in a given timeframe. Factorio has alien attacks. DSP has the Dark Fog. I personally dislike having PvE if only because balancing it is such a right nightmare.
• Exploration. Maybe for customization? I get how it’s applied in Satisfactory (Sommersloop, Mercer, Hard Drives, etc..) but I don’t see how it’s relevant here. I can’t see how this works with procedurally generated worlds.
• End Game. Well… there isn’t really one right now so yeah, this should be top of pile.
• Unique Features. Creating robots is damn cool. The pieces are there for something more complex. This should be the end game focus.
• Performance/Usability. These are the same thing to me, and akin to polish. Yes, but not at the expense of others.
• More content. I don’t understand this one in relation to the End Game / Unique Feature portion. Do we need more types of power? More liquid options? Should we have production chains with surplus material? Disposal chains? Maybe?

Now for the decor rant, which I sort of hit on with Techtonica. While I don’t get the same joy as others when it comes to designing a pretty factory, I do find some fun in the process. For me to reach that phase however, I need two things to be true. 1) Decor is a low friction activity. 2) Decor is mean to be long-lasting.

Low-friction works in Satisfactory because you don’t need to store walls, you just have a bunch of plates and concrete on you that can quickly create walls in-game. Foundry and Techtonica require you to create the decorations before placing them, in an inventory that has limited storage. You want to build a factory, you will need a solid 50 inventory slots dedicated to all the various material types AND have all the pieces pre-constructed. Did I mention there are dozens of decor pieces? You’d need a separate decor factory just to create them, and have restricted storage to not blow through thousands of base materials. The only option currently is to manually create them, one at a time. I understand these are engine limitations and it would require a significant amount of design work to resolve. Contextual menus that use “foundation” or “lighting” in various amounts would address this, but as long as we have “conveyor belts” and “conveyor slopes” for inclines, I don’t think there’s an actual way to address this.

Long-lasting means that I would maintain a factory for a given duration. I’ve been over how mining ops are temporary by nature, so this isn’t really an option. The main factory portions are 3D and unless using a bus, hard to coordinate for long-term stability. The Space buildings are gigantic and frankly impossible to decorate.

The larger challenge for Foundry is finding an identity in the current mess of factory logistics games. The “unique” hook of generating robots seems like it has potential, and it looks cool, but in the end is just another virtual thing you create. Procedurally generated content should benefit from the concept of “infinite” or at least near infinite. The tools present now do not allow it, and to get there requires a major rethink of how logistics functions at their core. In a practical example, it takes 3 seconds to build 1 section of Mk1 conveyors, which moves things at 160/minute. DSP’s equivalent belts take 1 second to build 3 items (9x faster) and transport 360/minute (2.25x faster), making it 20x more efficient.

The good news is that it appears Foundry devs are extremely open to feedback and are not under a time crunch (at least publicly). There are a lot of good bones here, just needs some clearer vision of what the game wants to be, and then the design decisions can align. Potential!