I just saved the day with 100x elevator parts and it was BRUTAL
I just completed my latest playthrough, this time at 100x elevator parts. I have saved the day around 30 times with my previous 2 runs being 10x parts so I thought I was prepared, but 100x is a different ballgame. It took me 298 hours to finish. By comparison, my normal 1x runs take me 45-60 hours and my two 10x runs took 110 and 91 hours so it was quite a bit more involved. Obviously the biggest difference is the sheer volume of production that you need to make in order to make your deliveries in a reasonable time, especially in the early game. Normally when I'm playing there's a point where I say to myself "well, I could build some more production for [elevator part] but it would take me a couple of hours and by that time my current production will have made enough parts so what's the point?", with 100x parts the answer is always "no, you have plenty of time to build more production". I started in the Grass Fields just for the sheer volume of nodes close together, but I maybe should have built my main base somewhere else or rerolled the random nodes because I didn't get a great distribution. I had everything I needed for production but not enough of the base metal nodes (iron, copper) and way too much bauxite, crude oil and SAM.
Here's some settings and stats and some thoughts on each phase:
Game Mode Settings:
Elevator Deliverable Multiplier: 100x
Power Consumption Multiplier: 1x
Recipe Cost Multiplier: 1x
Node Randomization: Random
Node Purity: All Pure
Start Biome: Grass Fields
Gamplay settings:
I mostly use the default gamplay settings. I do have arachnaphobia mode enabled and also have "Keep Everything" enabled on death crates. I only died once in this 100x run and that was early in the parachute/rebar gun phase so I don't think the latter setting has much effect on gameplay.
Stats:
Hard Drives: 71
Spheres: 145
Sloops: 106 (all of 'em!)
Slugs: 231 blue, 165 yellow, 118 purple == 1240 [slooped] power shards
34 km of vehicle paths, 42 truck stations, 5 fluid stations, 13 Tractors, 7 Trucks, 4 Fluid Trucks
68 km of train track, 15 trains, 17 stations
Phase 1:
Requirements: 5000 smart plates
Finish Time: 14:27
Not that much different than 1x. I made probably double my normal production, normally I am building refplate with 120 iron ore and rotors with 120 ore but this time had a few different factories doing those amounts. I built my initial base and elevator in the central grass fields. I built expansion factories in the south grass fields and on the nodes above the western dune forest "coal hole".
Phase 2:
Requirements: 100,000 smart plates, 100,000 versiframes, 10,000 automated wires
Finish Time: 66:44
This is where the big numbers of 100x really start to hit home. In order to reach production numbers that would finish in this year I was forced to expand out quite a bit. I built larger bases in the south grass fields and the coal hole and built new full-stack bases along the west coast of the Rocky Desert (Alexandria/Cairo base).
The new vehicle paths really pulled a lot of weight in this phase. Normally I don't do much truck stuff because trains are right around the corner in phase 3 and I don't need a ton of distributed production to get to them but with the huge spelevator requirements I had to build a lot bigger than normal and use trucks for logistics. The new paths make trucks a lot more like one-car trains. I wrote a post critical of this a few months ago (https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/1s7c7y5/testing\_the\_12\_fluid\_truck\_and\_pathing\_system/) but I have warmed up to the new functionality since that post. I was correct in that post in saying that it's a huge pain in the ass to lay vehicle paths without a hoverpack but what I hadn't realized when I wrote that post is that truck routes now have the benefits of train tracks as well. That is: once they are laid you now have a logistics network to that point. You can add new truck routes off the main route to other bases, you can add more trucks, you can plop a station on the existing path, it's just a lot more flexible. With the old system every truck route was a one-off affair and if you needed to add a station you needed a completely new route - now you can just piggyback off of existing routes. This makes creating an extensive truck system much more doable than in the past. My truck routes stretched from the south grass fields all the way to the northern rocky desert and was reliably delivering elevator parts throughout the whole phase.
This phase normally takes me about 10 hours but at 100x it took me around 50 hours. It's just really difficult to build big and/or vertical with only the parachute. At least with the jetpack I can jump onto something high to build, with the parachute I have to build ladders/ramps to get up my buildings and placing anything is just a huge pain in the ass.
I unlocked most of the MAM during this phase, there was plenty of time to collect all the items in my immediate neighborhood. The only research I want that isn't unlocked by this point are items gated behind plastic or aluminum production.
For power I built coal plants at several different locations. I also put geothermal generators anywhere I could find a geyser reasonably close to my power lines. At the end of the phase I had 22 bioburners, 64 coal burners and 5 geothermal plants.
Phase 3:
Requirements: 250,000 Versiframes, 50,000 ModEngine, 10,000 Adaptive Control
Finish Time: ~114 hours
This phase was the real grind. Modengines and ACUs aren't too bad but 250k Versiframes nearly broke me. Most of the phase was spent building more and more versiframe production. I started a new full-stack base in the Northern Forest (Endor Base) and ran rail lines up the west coast and across the rocky desert into the forest. I have a jetpack now so building stuff is a little easier, but still difficult compared to the hoverpack. I have oil power now so have deployed several new fuel power plants at locations with crude. I ended the stage with 40 fuel gens and I'm up to 15 geothermal gens.
Phase 4:
Requirements: 50,000 AssDirector, 50,000 Magfield, 25,000 Thermal rockets, 10,000 Pasta
Finish Time: 218:15
Didn't feel as grindy as phase 3 but took me longer, around 100 hours to finish this phase. The parts just have much deeper supply chains so there is a lot more time spent building up the production, plus these parts produce really slowly. The part that gave me the most issues was the AssDirectors - normally that's my first thing done but this time it's what I was waiting for to finish the phase despite making them at 3 different locations. To prepare for Pasta I added extensive rocket fuel power plants. I added 2 new full-stack bases, BFE base (not quite full stack, no quartz so no computers) in the Desert Canyons biome and Yemen base in the Dune Desert. I am making magfields at Endor base but waaay too many (trying to use all the versiframe production from the previous phase) - I set up materials for 100/min and only built half the final factory and still finished them before anything else.
Phase 5:
Requirements: 100,000 Pasta, 100,000 BioSculptor, 25,600 AI Expanders, 20,000 Balltastic Warp Drive
Finish Time: 298:00
Phase 5 normally feels like a victory lap and it still does, just takes a lot longer than usual. Most of the phase was spent adding new copper powder sources and building more power to make Pasta. I added a new base at the Dune Desert western oasis that makes Ballistic Warp Drives. I added a truck route from Endor to BFE so I could import RC units and make Pasta at BFE. I ended up with 12 pasta/min from that base and around 25 from my main base. As usual for me with this stage, pasta took the longest to make. I was done with the other parts well before hitting 100k pasta.
Overall, I had a lot of fun but it did seem to grind on at times, particularly early game when it's so hard to build or explore. I'm not used to being in the parachute phase for that long. I'm liking the new trucks more and more, certainly better than the old system. I don't know if I'll do another 100x run, 10x might be the sweet spot for me. Although it would be interesting to see if doing a more modular base approach would be better than building up from ore at each major base site.