Balanced Mid-Game Portal

Once you finally unlock Portals in vanilla Satisfactory near the end of Tier 9, your use for them is nearly gone, since you're pretty much done with every major factory. In my experience, the bulk of the game happens after Tier 6, when you unlock Manufactures. In a 300 hour playthrough, easily 150+ hours of that is Tiers 6 through 9.

For now, it is unlocked in Tier 6 (Same Tier as Manufacturers), in its own Milestone. This will hopefully change to being in the MAM in the future. The Tier 9 version has been turned into an alternate recipe that uses pressure conversion cubes instead of Nuclear Pasta (see below for more info).

I have a ton of ideas how to implement better progression with Alternate Recipes at earlier or later tiers, entirely new Fuel types (Similar to Fuel > Turbo Fuel > Rocket Fuel) with new custom items. I have zero knowledge with UE5 modding, and unfortunately barely any free time to learn it. If you want to collaborate, please check out my #Team-Ups Thread in the Satisfactory Modding Discord Server (link below). My Discord username is Raikoh.

The goal of this mod:

• Grant access to Portals in an extremely limited "balanced" form, earlier in the game, at Tier 6.

What does "balanced" mean in this case?

• #### Extremely high power requirements
• Unchanged from Vanilla, partly because I don't know how to change them, but also partly to greatly limit the number of Portals a player will be able to use early game. A 1000MW spike to turn on, 250MW to run, plus a MW spike to teleport longer distances. Power Storage is highly recommended.
• #### Extremely high resource cost early game
• It is intended to be extremely inefficient compared to the Tier 9 Recipe (which is also slightly changed, see below). Each Portal requires 600/min of SAM to power (Somerslooped Manufacturer powers 2 Portals). These numbers may change, depending on feedback.
• ##### To not make Hypertubes obsolete
• A Portal or two early game is intended to connect sperate "bases" across the map, then use Hypertubes for medium to short distances.

Updated Singularity Cell recipe:

To produce 25/min SAM Fluctuators, it takes 600/min SAM. But 600/min is more than the 480/min Mk4 belts you'll have at the time. There are two solutions: Stick a single Somersloop in one of the Reanimated SAM Constructors, and you'll have enough. Or, extract from multiple SAM nodes. This is enough to power one Portal, or two Portals if you stick four Somersloops in the final Manufacturer. As you unlock Mk5 Belts and Mk3 Miners, you'll be able to make more Portals without having to resort to Somersloops.

Note: because Singularity cells are easier to make now, that makes the project part and Ficsonium it's used in much easier to make if you want. This issue is the main reason why I want to create new original fuel types instead of this solution.

Alternate: Dark Matter Singularity Cell recipe:

A common complaint is the base game recipe for Singularity Cells is too complex. The vast majority of the complexity comes from the Nuclear Pasta in it, so I reduced it down a step to Pressure Conversion Cubes. This only removes the Constructors and Particle Accelerators needed for the Pasta, but it might help take the edge off the difficulty of it. If I get enough feedback that it's still too much, I might reduce it down to Fused Modular Frames, and maybe reduce the amount of Singularity Cells it makes a little to balance it.

What's next?

See the .txt file in my #team-up thread in the modding Discord Server for more details

• Create two new thematic fuel types with new item Meshes(Translocation Shards and Spatial Processing Unit), to represent progression in perfecting a fuel source. The current version of that plan allows Portals to be made as early as Tier 3, but that will probably change.
• The Portal will dynamically switch to accept the fuel that is fed into it, just like Fuel/Nuclear Generators.
• Unlock Portals in the MAM, in a node that sits between Dimensional Depots and Alien Power Augmenters.

Translocation Shards Preview (Crystal texture is placeholder)