u/couq7

hey guys,
over time i have been asked multiple times about how do i even come up with the stuff i end up posting in the first place, so im making this compilation and sharing this post in hopes that this little showcase?/ insight? helps you in some way.
if you ever felt stuck or don't know where to start with a project when it comes to the "aesthetic" part of satisfactory, in my personal experience the best way is to always have a concept in hand, to kinda "guide you through", either by giving you some shape to build around or, if you want to, try to go for a 1:1 replica. it's useful for both exterior and interior design.
websites like pinterest or artstation are really really good for this.
when you look through these pictures, you will notice that although the end product in satis differs from what you see in the reference picture, the resemblance is clear. i chose these ones because i think they are the most straight forward examples where i try to recreate as much of the concept as i can.
in my case, a lot of times i end up "freestyling" some of this stuff, since you can't replicate part of the concept little details without sacrificing scale, the best example would be the little cables or tubes and pixel detail lights you see on most of these reference pics. for that my best tip as a vanilla player would be dont worry about it too much and try to play with the tools and tricks we have available now and what the game models have to offer (or dive into mods i guess, idk).
in case you haven't noticed, i play with the main purpose of building around immersion and atmosphere, while also having the factory/production aspect of the game integrated as well, for which i really hope if there is a 1.3, it expands on the design and architecture aspect of the game, just like 1.1 did. motion and small scale are.. still neglected in that regard, a lot of room to fill and improve.
blueprints are your best bet to have way more overall detail without going insane about worrying on every part of the factory, i find it way easier to add or think about details on a blueprinter where your size is limited (4x4,5x5,6x6) rather than going around a whole factory and thinking of specifics. if you explored my save you may have noticed that a lot of it is basically rooms made of blueprints like a lego set.

taking this approach honestly helped me a lot, so many times that if you saw more of my posts in the past or my youtube showcase, i cannot add more than 20 slides so this whole compilation is like not even half of it..

if you read all of this, i hope it helped you, if you have any questions feel free to ask, i tried to keep it simple and more of a overall tip post rather than going on these examples 1 for 1 and explaining them because in that case i would be typing for hours lol