Critical Path

Critical Path

> Multiplayer: Critical Path works in single-player and multiplayer, including dedicated servers. The host measures the factory and sends the report to joined clients, so everyone sees the same answer - labelled as the host's reading.

Quick links: What is it? • The three tabs • Should you install? • Controls • Wiki • Source • Issues • Discord

🆕 What's new in 1.0.2

Critical Path is rebuilt for Satisfactory 1.2.4. Opening the panel with the previous build after the August 11 game update could change every clockable machine to 1%. Version 1.0.2 is built against the current game and leaves machine settings untouched.

• One difficult network no longer blanks the whole report. When one transport network cannot settle on an answer, only that network is marked unknown. Every other line keeps its measured result.
• Clearer diagnoses. Critical Path now distinguishes a line that is built but not reaching its consumers, a line drawing from stored parts, and an item that must be collected from the world instead of manufactured.
• Safer refresh. Pressing REFRESH waits until the click finishes before rebuilding the panel, preventing a crash caused by discarding rows while the game was still drawing them.
• More honest BALANCE results. Objective parts waiting for delivery are recognized as intentional stock, the list describes its factory-wide scope accurately, and configured but idle machines no longer trigger a false partial-scan warning.

Full detail in the changelog.

🧭 What is Critical Path?

Production planners are excellent at designing factories. Save-aware web tools can inspect a factory you already built. Critical Path occupies a different niche:

What is stopping this objective, in the factory that is running right now?

Press F10 and it reads the live world - machines, recipes, clocks, inventories, belts, pipes, splitters, storage and vehicle routes - then shows your current Space Elevator phase and HUB milestone side by side, with the reason each outstanding part is not finished.

Because it runs in game, changing a recipe, restoring a connection, adjusting a clock or repairing a line is reflected on the next refresh. No saving, uploading and re-reading somebody else's snapshot.

Critical Path is read-only. It never builds, dismantles, configures or moves anything, and it stores nothing in your save. It is deterministic - the same save produces the same answer - and no AI model is involved at runtime.

It is a Finalomega Labs mod and it is standalone: it does not require, and does not interact with, any other mod.

📊 The three tabs

PATH - what is stopping each objective part

Expand any part to walk its dependency chain down to the deepest cause. Blockers are attributed to a specific machine, not to the product, so you are sent to the thing that is actually wrong rather than the thing that looks wrong. A machine that is unpowered and unfed and clogged reports all three, rather than only the first condition the game mentions.

It also catches the failure people miss most often: a machine fed by a full belt that still starves, because the item at the head of that belt is something it cannot use and nothing behind it can pass. Critical Path names the offending item instead of reporting a vague shortage.

PLAN - an ordered build sequence

Steps are grouped by dependency depth, so everything inside a step is independent of everything else in it and step 1 is always buildable today against what you already produce. Each item states what it is for individually.

Research that gates a later part appears as its own numbered Unlock step, in order - including the case where one milestone unlocks both a part and an ingredient that part needs, so the second production line is not a surprise after you finish researching.

BALANCE - what each line needs, and what is actually flowing