# Sketch it, then plumb it

> Canonical source: [Sketch it, then plumb it](https://satisfactorybase.com/blog/2026-09-10-sketch-it-then-plumb-it)
> Language: en

Start a machine from its resource, sketch a factory without real supply, an interactive plumbing manual in the Wiki — and the running version now sits in the footer.

2026-09-10


## What's new

The Machine menu in the Planner now starts with **From resource**: pick a resource, filter the
recipes that use it, and the right machine lands on the canvas. Input nodes have a **Simulated**
switch, with a matching switch in the toolbar for all of them at once, so you can sketch a factory
before you have a single belt of real supply — a simulated input always delivers what you typed.
Overclocked machines and extractors show the power shards they need under the clock, every clock
field takes a small calculation instead of only a number, and "Show on the map" now actually
centres on the node. At the bottom of every node dialog you will find plain links to the Wiki page
of the building, recipe or item, wherever one exists, and typed amounts no longer run into the
"/min" behind them.

The **Load balancer** improvements we announced yesterday are live: ports are edited right in the
diagram, you can zoom or go full screen, and belts never cross where they don't have to. On top of
that, a rate the tool cannot accept jumps back to the previous value instead of leaving nonsense
behind, mode and direction are two one-row toggles, and Reset sits at the far left. New in the
Planner as well: the **Pipe Merger**, the fluid counterpart to the Priority Merger — it drains its
primary input first and tops up from the secondary, which finally makes recycled water in the
aluminium loop flow instead of showing zero.

On the **phone**, the Planner and the Map got a whole round of attention: the world and factory
header folds away, the hotbar is gone, the canvas controls sit at the bottom edge where your thumb
is, the map bar has a Layers button, icon zoom buttons and a round Connect button, the map sheets
open taller, and the factory list no longer scrolls sideways. iOS also stops zooming into every
input field you tap.

The **Wiki** has its first interactive guide: the **Pipeline Manual**, our adaptation of the
community's FICSIT Inc. Plumbing Manual, in English and German. Instead of a wall of text you get
calculators, animated diagrams and short knowledge checks about head lift, valves and why pipes
behave the way they do. And next to "Beta" in the footer you can now see which version of the site
is running — so when something looks off, you and we are talking about the same build.

## What we're working on

The Pipe Merger still needs its own build cost and should be inserted for you when you import a
factory that would need one. In the Load balancer we're teaching belts to run in tidy channels so
the drawings get calmer still. And because the new node dialogs only link to buildings that have a
Wiki page, we're writing pages for the buildings that don't have one yet.

## Why we changed it

Yesterday, signed-in players who opened their map got an error page for a couple of hours while
the rest of the site looked healthy — and our own checks kept saying everything was fine, because
they only asked the server whether it felt fine. The map page was announcing every file it might
need up front, and that announcement had grown so long that the servers in front of us refused to
pass it on. We trimmed it, and after every deploy we now open the real public pages, the map
included, rather than trusting a green light. The version in the footer comes from the same
lesson: when you report a problem, we want to know exactly which build you saw it on.