Opportunity cost and bulk measures fit here, so math talk a bit.

JIT (Just In Time) is a delivery method that focuses on anticipating needs in highly complex production chains. The automotive industry is a perfect example of this. A manifold has a dozen steps to create, and the first one takes place months before it’s actually going to be used. Assuming a stable logistics chain, JIT ensures you have only what you need, when you need it. Saves overhead and unnecessary storage costs..

Saturation is a delivery method that quite simply fills up the storage containers as the production chain is simple and volatile. An ice cream shop is an example, where the product can stay frozen for an extremely long period of time. One rainy day you sell nothing, the next sunny day you have a run on double chocolate. This allows for stock protections, but does have a cost for storage. For smaller items, this is less of an issue. Larger volumes – issue.

For what it’s worth, Amazon uses the saturation model. Next day delivery of a pair of shorts only works if they have them in the giant warehouse after all.

Factorio

For the wide majority of the game, Factorio uses saturation methods. ‘Fill a belt’ as it were, and when the belt looks empty, fill it some more. There’s very little math involved in the raw material processing, aside from knowing how many machines it takes to fill a belt. Vanilla Factorio had mini-factories, but that’s long gone now. You build big, and you fill that box at the end. Stack inserters broke the older model.

DSP

Also a game that focuses on saturation as mini-factories have very little benefit. Even with the best belts, you’re going to need to stack items. It’s maybe 10 seconds to build a line of 30 smelters that will produce a hundred or more plates. It’s meant for scale.

Satisfactory

While I prefer saturation, or perhaps simply more accustomed to it, Satisfactory is designed for JIT. A full belt feeding a dedicated crafting station will put out a pittance of material. This gets worse and worse as you build more complex items. There’s a reason there are offline tools to help you figure out the math on production chains. Heck, powering a basic Nuclear plant takes nearly a thousand raw items per minute.

Saturation works if your goal is simply progression. The challenge is that you need bulk material in order to unlock specific research / space elevator tiers. While a production chain will only ever use 1 Nuclear Pasta, you will need a collection of 100 to meet a given milestone. If you only apply JIT, you’ll never have that extra 100. Now, if you use the basic tools, such as a 48 stack container, you’re wasting storage. The balance here isn’t super clear, so your mileage may vary (I put in a mod to reduce storage, I set it to 5 stacks per container). The end result for progress is that you visually see a belt is full, and have minimal storage for when you need to unlock something new. You’d be surprised at how few machines you actually need.

If your goal is aesthetics and end-game scaling, then JIT is the only way to play. A nuclear plant takes 240water per minute, which is 2 extractors. If you want 40 nuclear plants.. well 80 extractors. It’s a pain enough that you don’t want to build 200. (It’s also 10 supercomputers per Nuclear Plant, and the base creation rate is 2 per minute. So 40 nuclear plants = 400 supercomputers = 3.5 hours of base crafting.)

Note: Don’t build nuclear plants for power, build them for looks. Rocket Fuel plants are a good 90% more efficient.

Basic Materials

The exception to JIT is for basic materials: Iron Ingots, Copper Ingots, Concrete, Caterium Ingots, Plastic, Rubber, and Aluminum. Trigons and Diamonds too, but that won’t matter much by the time you unlock them. Saturate the crud out of that stuff, it’s simple enough to do and in the case of Copper Ingots, you are going to need way more than you ever thought.

Sommersloops & Power Shards

This part messes up the math. Sommersloops double the output of a machine – it costs no extra resources but does require substantially more power. Power Shards increase the output of a machine, up to 2.5x the amount, for a commensurate amount of intake materials + power. Combine both, and you get 5x the output for 2.5x the input. What’s neat in Satisfactory is that you can set the output to a math formula, and it automatically resolves – like 3.5/2 will set itself up to 1.75 just fine. When you’re building a unique factory for say, a Thermal Propulsion Rocket, you’re going to see a lot of weird math. Having flexibility in and out is a must.

Note: I consider power ‘free’ past a given point. A simple rocket fuel plant can give you 50GW+. Power Shards are also free, but only once you reach tier 9. Until then, you need to harvest slugs in the world… still, it’s quite easy to have 300+ by the time you unlock nuclear. You’ll need 240 of them for a Rocket Fuel plant.