World

"You’re on an uncharted alien planet, so try to be careful, don’t go alone if you don’t have to, and use protection! Who knows what kind of organisms have made this place their home? Or who knows what awesome treasures you’ll find?"

- Caterina Parks's assistant Steve

Satisfactory takes place on a single world (or "map"). The map is hand-crafted and features no procedural generation. The land mass is 30 km2 (or 5.4 km x 5.4 km). There are multiple biomes present in the world including deserts, forests, lakes, grass fields, mountains and caves. The landscape cannot be deformed or changed in any way, nor terraformed. There is no changing weather in the world, however there is a Day/Night cycle, and the fog thickness can change throughout the day. Although some machines visually emit smoke or smog, there is no concept of pollution.

The world also contains creatures for the engineer to encounter, several of which are hostile.

The playable world (in-game referred to as "your FICSIT designated sector") is a part of a planet called MASSAGE-2(A-B)b in the binary star system of Akycha.

Starting areas
The player can choose one of four locations to start in: the Grass Fields, Rocky Desert, Northern Forest or Dune Desert. The pros and cons of each starting area have been reviewed in these videos:
 * ImKibitz - May 7th, 2020 - Satisfactory Starting Location Area Guide + Tips! (Update 3)
 * MaxTheCatfish - July 19th, 2020 - Satisfactory Starting Location Comparison and the BEST Base Location in the game!

Grass Fields
Ideal for first-time pioneers The first viable building location FICSIT had found, standing out because of its open and relatively flat fields. Considering the distances between mining locations, building outposts and/or large transportation lines may be necessary eventually.
 * Terrain flatness:★★★★★
 * Biomass: ★★★☆☆
 * Resource amount: ★★★☆☆
 * Resource diversity: ★★★☆☆

Rocky Desert
Suitable for first-time pioneers The textbook example of a FICSIT-approved building location, with balanced resources, space, and distances. Additionally, it is very close to the sea, making water an easy commodity.
 * Terrain flatness:★★★★☆
 * Biomass: ★★☆☆☆
 * Resource amount: ★★★☆☆
 * Resource diversity: ★★★★☆

Northern Forest
Good for more experienced pioneers A lush building location with many height differences and a few open areas, challenging conventional building and planning methods. Despite these challenges, it caught our eye due to the richness of its resources.
 * Terrain flatness:★☆☆☆☆
 * Biomass: ★★★★★
 * Resource amount: ★★★★☆
 * Resource diversity: ★★★★★

Dune Desert
Recommended for advanced pioneers Initially considered too risky, further investigation has convinced us that this area is viable for building with its large, open spaces and plentiful mining locations. Foliage and water locations are rare and contained, making initial power set-ups challenging.
 * Terrain flatness:★★★★☆
 * Biomass: ★★☆☆☆
 * Resource amount: ★★★★★
 * Resource diversity: ★★☆☆☆

Biome list
According to the Map that appeared in one of the Developer's Highlights and other resources, there are 21 named biomes, 4 of which are the starting areas: Grid size is exactly 1.024 x 1.024 km (128 x 128 foundations). Grid numbering starts with X:0, Y:0 from the south-west corner.

There used to be two separate biomes that have become parts of other biomes: Savanna → Rocky Desert and No Man's Land → Grass Fields.

Caves
The Satisfactory world is filled with more than 52 caves. The 5 largest and most important caves are listed below. Stingers are common and appear in nearly every cave.

Void

 * The void refers to any area that is not covered by natural terrain beneath.
 * If the engineer reaches the bottom surface of the void, i.e. by falling into it, their health will start to decrease at 5HP/sec, and, after reaching a certain Z-value, dying instantly.
 * The world is surrounded by a combination of the water body and the void.
 * There are several void openings in the world.
 * The bottom surface of the entire world consists of the void. It can be observed if the engineer happens to 'clip' through the terrain or by navigating below the world through the edges.
 * Two of the common methods to navigate around the void are flying with the Jetpack and by building Foundations.

Mountains
There are a lot of tall mountains in the game. The tallest terrain is located at the North of Rocky Desert. It is a rock pillar, standing 488 meters high above sea level, or Z:470m. It contains one of the four uranium nodes, this one being impure.

Sea

 * There are 2 seas in the world; One bordering the North and West sides of the map, and one on the East side. Both sea levels are set at Z:-18, as such 18 meters above sea level will be referred to as '0 meter' high.
 * There is a small void in the North East where the North sea visually flows into the void with a waterfall, however the entire area is swimmable and Water Extractors can be placed there.

Traversal
Regardless of where you are in the world and what parts of it are loaded, your factories and vehicles will continue to run.

Players are discouraged from exploring off the edges of the map by a lack of resources and collectibles. If a player continues out of pure curiosity, they will go out-of-bounds, and begin taking about 5 HP per second in damage. Unlike the poison gas, the out-of-bounds damage can be blocked by piloting a vehicle (which will then take the damage instead). Buildings can be constructed as normal in the out-of-bounds zone. The border at the East side of the map can cause instant death. (See below)

World size

 * The world size is roughly 5.4 km x 5.4 km as mentioned officially. However, this refers to the land mass of the "island", or the playable world. The actual world size, including the void and the sea, is 7.972 km x 6.8 km.
 * This translates into 996.5 x 850 foundations.
 * Engineers take damage beyond Z:-244 m (underground) and Z:1997 m (sky), measured on the foundation the engineer is standing on.
 * It is not measured whether the z-axis border is at a uniform height.
 * Engineers can further build out 100 meters beyond the death border while staying within the border. Buildings are not be damaged by this border, but vehicles (that can be damaged) are.
 * The theoretical build-able area is 47.112 km and volume is 105.578 km.
 * On the x-y plane, it takes at least 736127 Foundations to cover up the entire build-able area.
 * The tallest factory building in-game is the AWESOME Sink with 24 meters high, and the slimmest foundation is 1 meter high. This means at least a 89-floor factory can be built, each housing at least a Sink.
 * The tallest building of any category in the game is the The HUB which has a height that goes to the skybox. You cannot build anything above the borders for the HUB because the FICSIT Freighter needs access to the open sky to deliver resources to unlock new milestones.
 * If The HUB is covered by foundations above, its freighter will clip though it during launching and landing animations.
 * The 'death border' is not a cuboid. On the x-y plane, it is polygon shaped: a square with two triangles removed from the SE and SW corners. The triangle removed from the SE is larger.
 * The border along the East side can cause instant death, while the remaining edges only reduce the engineer's health at 5 HP/sec. When standing near a vertex of the map border, the damage rate is doubled as the engineer receives the damage from 2 map borders at the same time.
 * Surrounding the damage border (marked blue) is the instant death border which is located at some distance beyond that, it is located at all sides including the z-border.

Day and night cycle
One day on Massage-2(A-B)b lasts for 50 real-world minutes, the nighttime is 5 minutes long and the daytime is 45 minutes long. Both the Sun and the Moon rise in the North-West and set in the South-East. There are also several other planets that can be seen hovering on the background of the sky.

As the Sun or Moon move, the shadow of the Space Elevator sweeps around the world, no matter how far the land is from the Space Elevator. This can potentially be used as a sundial.

Gravity

 * The world's gravitational acceleration is measured to be about 11.85 m/s² (slightly stronger than Earth's).
 * Despite the stronger gravity, engineers can jump higher and farther in the game.
 * When falling from a height, engineers quickly reach the terminal velocity which is 40 m/s (downward).
 * Most creatures, except Stingers, can receive fall damage due to gravity.

Tips

 * The selection of a starting zone does not limit the scope of a pioneer's exploration and expansion. A pioneer can both explore and expand their factories and transportation systems into all the biomes available in the new game selection screen.

Trivia

 * Internally, the x, y and z coordinates are measured in centimetres (cm).
 * The large mountain, visible in the backdrop to the south-west-west, is an accurate resemblance of the real Mount Matterhorn.

History

 * Patch Closed Alpha 4: Northern Forest starting area introduced.
 * Patch Closed Alpha 2.1: Grass Fields is again unlocked.
 * Patch Closed Alpha 2: Rocky Desert starting area introduced. Grass Fields locked.
 * Patch 2018-10-11: Grass Fields starting area and Southern Forest introduced.