How to build great looking railways in Satisfactory, step by step.

So we're about a week into Satisfactory 1.0, and I'm guessing people are starting to set up their first rail networks. I've seen complaints about the rail building tools, but the truth is the game gives you all you need. My early access map had over 450km of rails, most of which closely followed the terrain. No mods were used for placing rails at all.

First, obviously, you need trains unlocked. Your life will be a lot easier if you also have the hoverpack. Rails carry electricity, and the hoverpack can connect to them just like power lines. If you don't have any rails at all, we're going to start with something like this. Note that the rails all start and end at the exact center of the foundation. This is critical. For now, stick with this spacing, with 2 rails on a 3 foundation wide platform. If you already have some rails built, make sure your starting point is straight, centered, and spaced correctly. I'll be starting with these rails. If you're starting from scratch, make sure to connect at least one of your rails to a powered train station so your hoverpack works.

Level 0: We're going to extend the rails in a straight line. This sounds trivial, but everything builds on this. Here it is, step by step. Decorate it how you like. If you need a different length than multiples of whole foundations, use the nudge feature or half foundations so your rails still end at the center of each foundation.

Level 1. Let's make a nice smooth curve. The key here is to only change direction at the center point of our guide foundations. Here, if you use nudge to adjust the length, you have to make sure to nudge an equal amount on the other side of the pivot. Here it is, almost as easy. Make sure the pivot foundation is centered correctly or the rails won't be lined up straight at the end. You can extend the guide foundations from the left, center, or right, depending on which helps you line things up best.

Level 2: Now we're going to change the slope. This is easiest with even numbers of foundations between supports, but you can get creative with nudges or half foundations to change the length. It can be tricky to get the slope perfectly smooth if you do, though. Nice and smooth, like the last one.

Level 3: Now let's do both at once. Unless I really need to use the left or right, I try to stick with the center foundation for this. It keeps the slopes of the left and right rails closer to the ramps, so you get less of a wobble when the train goes through. You probably already figured out how to do this based on the previous examples, but here it is anyway. You can't get the slope exactly the same between the inner and outer rails, so if you're picky, adjust the height of the center pivot to try to find a good middle ground.

Finally, when and how to get off the center of the foundation. Sometimes there's a tree, rock, or machine you just don't want to move in the way. You need to get around it, but the rails need to go where they need to go, and you've been careful keeping them centered on every foundation. Here we just need to create a couple of temporary guide rails to curve around the obstacle and get back where we started. Simple as that. There's plenty of room for creativity with this one. As long as you have nice, straight, centered pieces on each end, you can really mess things up in the middle and still be able to keep going with nice smooth curves.

Edit: By suggestion, how to connect back to the world grid, or any other rails that aren't perfectly aligned: Just eyeball it. Make a curve pointing in the general direction, and hook it up. Notice that in this example, I went a bit wide with the initial curve. This is to try to keep a nice smooth curve going, rather than the curve-straight-curve look I'd get if I pointed right at the world grid. It might take a couple of tries, and it might not be perfect, but you can get very close. That was my second try, the first was 5 degrees to the left and it wasn't quite as smooth.

With a little practice, each of these steps will take you under a minute, so you can cross the map quickly. With a bit more practice, you can combine those techniques to run the rails any way you want, like through narrow caves, with no trouble at all. Want to make a train spiral that wraps around an irregular piece of terrain? Curves and slope changes.

If you guys like this style of guide, let me know. I can do the same thing for intersection designs too.