Satisfactory: Logistics, the Chainsaw and Base Building

Satisfactory machines in neat grid-aligned rows on a foundation platform

Part 4 of the Satisfactory beginner walkthrough. Previous: Your First Automated Factory. Series overview.

Finishing Tier 0 changes how you progress. The HUB’s fixed six-step ladder is done; from here the HUB Terminal hands out buildings and recipes through Milestones, grouped into Tiers you can tackle in any order. Finishing Tier 0 opens the first two (Tier 1 and Tier 2), so you’ve immediately got a spread of milestones to chase however you want. This guide covers the three I went for first, in the order I did them, because that order makes a point: early on, you chase whatever milestone fixes the thing slowing you down most.

Logistics: Splitters, Mergers and Lifts

By the end of Tier 0 your first factory is a knot. Belts run one-to-one, outputs back up, and there’s no clean way to feed one ore line into three smelters or gather three constructor outputs onto one belt. Logistics is the fix, and it’s the first milestone I went for.

Satisfactory Tier 1 Logistics milestone screen, rewards Conveyor Splitter, Merger, and Lift Mk.1
Logistics costs 150 Iron Plates, 150 Iron Rods, and 300 Wire, and hands you the tools that turn belts into a network.

The payout is the trio that makes a real production line possible: the Conveyor Splitter (split one belt to up to three places), the Conveyor Merger (combine up to three belts into one), and the Conveyor Lift Mk.1 (run a belt straight up or down instead of sprawling it across the floor).

Satisfactory milestone-reached reward pod, ADA noting belts can now merge, split, and lift
Milestone reached. Splitting, merging, and changing height is the difference between a tangle of one-to-one belts and an actual line you can grow.

The Chainsaw and Solid Biofuel

Somewhere past a dozen machines, power turns into a chore. You’re still on Biomass Burners (Coal is a couple of tiers off), so every generator has to be hand-fed with leaves, wood, and Biomass. A dozen machines burn through that fast, and the foliage near your base thins out quickly, so each gathering run takes longer and comes back emptier. Foraging by hand stops keeping up.

That’s the problem Obstacle Clearing exists to solve, and it solves it from both ends at once.

Satisfactory Tier 2 Obstacle Clearing milestone, unlocking the Chainsaw and Solid Biofuel
Obstacle Clearing (500 Screws, 100 Cable, 100 Concrete) unlocks the Chainsaw and the Solid Biofuel recipe, plus three inventory slots.

The two rewards are the two halves of the fix. The Chainsaw upgrades how much fuel material you can gather; Solid Biofuel upgrades how far each unit of that material goes (it burns far longer per unit than raw Biomass).

That 500-Screw cost is worth pausing on. You don’t hand-crank 500 screws; this is the point where you set a Constructor to churn them out in bulk, and you’ll want that screw supply anyway, because the Chainsaw itself takes a lot of screws to build.

Crafting the Chainsaw at the Equipment Workshop in Satisfactory
The Chainsaw is equipment, so it’s built at the Equipment Workshop, not the Crafting Bench: 5 Reinforced Iron Plates, 25 Iron Rods, 160 Screws, and 15 Cable.

Once it’s built, the Chainsaw earns its keep immediately. It runs on Solid Biofuel (the same fuel Obstacle Clearing just unlocked) and fells trees in bulk. More useful than the trees is its area harvest: it vacuums up whatever ground growth is nearby (shrubs, fallen branches, foliage, mycelium and mushrooms), all of which feed straight back into Biomass. One pass replaces a dozen hand-picks.

Using the Chainsaw to harvest wood and leaves in bulk in Satisfactory
One cut: +18 Wood, +54 Leaves. Burn a little Solid Biofuel to run the saw, harvest a lot of fuel material fast. The loop nets out well ahead, and the foraging grind is over.

Base Building: Foundations and the Grid

The other thing a dozen-machine factory needs is order. Milestones so far have you dropping machines straight onto the ground wherever they fit, and it shows.

A sprawling early Satisfactory factory of machines placed on bare grass
The factory at this point: it runs, but everything sits at whatever height and angle the terrain allowed. Fine for now, a headache to expand.

Base Building is the milestone that fixes that. It unlocks Foundations (1m, 2m, and 4m), Ramps, and Basic Walls: a flat, grid-aligned surface to build on so machines sit in clean rows and belts run in straight lines.

Satisfactory Tier 1 Base Building milestone, unlocking Foundations, Ramps, Walls, and a Lookout Tower
Base Building (200 Concrete, 100 Iron Plates, 100 Iron Rods) unlocks Foundations, Ramps, Basic Walls, and a Lookout Tower.

Grid-snapping sounds minor and isn’t. A foundation grid is what makes belt and pipe routing predictable, lets you line machines up edge to edge, and gives you something to build a second floor on later. It’s the difference between a factory you can keep adding to and one you eventually tear down and redo.

Laying foundations is quick once you know one trick: press R to switch build mode to Zoop, and you place a whole row in a single click instead of one square at a time.

Placing a row of foundations at once with Zoop build mode in Satisfactory
Zoop mode (R to toggle) lays a run of foundations in one action. Hold Ctrl for snap mode, scroll to rotate.

With a platform down, machines snap to the grid. Worth knowing when you place them: the build hologram colors the ports (green for input, orange for output), so you can see which way a belt has to run before you commit.

Placing a Smelter on a foundation grid, green input and orange output ports lit
A Smelter snapping to the foundation grid. Green is the input side, orange the output. Line your belts up accordingly.

Do that across the line and the same factory reads completely differently.

Satisfactory machines in neat grid-aligned rows on a foundation platform
Same machines, on a foundation grid: rows lined up, belts straight, room to extend. This is what Base Building buys you.

One reward here is easy to overlook among the foundations: the Lookout Tower. It’s cheap, and useful when you head out exploring: a quick way to get a bird’s-eye view of the terrain, and a safe spot to climb to if a hostile creature comes after you.

Belts under control, fuel sorted, and a proper platform to build on. That sets up the real jump in output: the Assembler, mass production, and the Space Elevator that ends this getting-started run.

Keep going: the walkthrough overview lists every part of the series in order.