Satisfactory Tiers, Milestones and Space Elevator Phases

Three progression systems run in parallel and people routinely confuse them. Sorting out which is which makes the whole game legible.

The three systems

Tiers and Milestones come from the HUB. You pay materials, you unlock buildings and recipes. This is the main line of progression and it is entirely under your control.

Space Elevator Phases come from delivering large quantities of specific parts to the Space Elevator. Completing a phase unlocks the next tiers. This is the gate between sections of the game.

MAM research is a separate tree entirely, fed by things you find in the world — hard drives, slugs, Mercer Spheres, plants. It unlocks alternate recipes and most of the mobility equipment. It is not gated behind tiers, and skipping it is the most common self-inflicted handicap.

The relationship: milestones unlock buildings, phases unlock milestone tiers, MAM unlocks options that make everything else cheaper.

In multiplayer, all three are shared

Milestones, phases and MAM research are properties of the save, not of the player. One person unlocking a tier unlocks it for everyone.

This has a practical consequence worth agreeing on early: hard drive scans offer a choice of alternate recipes, and that choice is permanent for the world. Whoever happens to be at the MAM makes a decision for the group. Decide who is doing research before someone picks the option nobody wanted.

Phases are the real pacing mechanism

Each phase asks for large quantities of increasingly complex parts. The pattern is consistent: a phase wants something you are already making, plus something you are not yet set up for.

The mistake is treating a phase as a shopping list to fulfil by hand-crafting or by draining storage. Phases are sized to require a production line, and building that line is the actual content. A phase that looks impossible usually means the intended response is to automate the missing part rather than to grind it.

Practical approach: when a new phase opens, look at what it wants, identify the one item you have no line for, and build that line. The rest usually follows from stock you already have.

Unlock order that avoids dead ends

The ordering that keeps you unblocked:

Early — before anything else, get conveyor and miner upgrades. Belt and extraction capacity constrain everything downstream. A tier spent on logistics pays for itself immediately.

Do the MAM in parallel, not later. Blade Runners, the Parachute and the Zipline all come from MAM chains, and they change how the early and middle game feel. So do the alternate recipes that cut ore consumption substantially.

Unlock storage and buffers early. Being able to stockpile is what lets you take on a phase without stalling your factory.

Do not rush the tier that unlocks a new resource until you have the logistics to handle it. A new ore type with no belt capacity to move it is not progress.

Where people get stuck

Waiting on a single part. Almost always a logistics problem rather than a production one. Check whether the machines are actually supplied before adding more of them.

Ignoring the MAM until late. Then discovering that alternate recipes would have halved the ore requirements for the last two phases.

Building exactly enough for the current phase. The next phase wants more of the same things. Building with headroom is cheaper than rebuilding.

Hand-crafting phase requirements. It works and it takes hours. Automating takes less time than you think and the line keeps producing afterwards.

Tiers unlock buildings, not capability

A distinction worth internalising: reaching a tier does not make your factory better. It gives you access to buildings that could make it better if you build them.

It is entirely possible to be several tiers ahead of your actual production, with unlocked machines you have never placed. That is not a problem, but it does mean tier number is a poor measure of progress. What matters is how much of your factory is automated and how much you are still doing by hand.

Checking what a milestone actually gives you

Before paying for a milestone, look at what it unlocks rather than at its tier number. Some milestones are transformative — the first belt upgrade, the first storage container, blueprint access. Others unlock decorative variants you may never place.

When materials are tight, order by what unblocks your current bottleneck, not by tier sequence. The HUB lets you pick within a tier, and there is no penalty for taking the useful one first.

Building for the phase after the one you are on

Every phase asks for more of what the previous one asked for, plus something new. That pattern means a line built to exactly satisfy the current requirement will be undersized for the next.

The cheap version of planning ahead is not building double capacity. It is leaving room: extending the foundation platform past the last machine, running the belt with spare throughput, and putting the manifold on the side where you can add to it. None of that costs meaningful materials, and all of it turns a rebuild into an extension.

The expensive mistake is building a beautifully packed production block with no space around it. It works perfectly until the moment you need one more machine.

When to stop and consolidate

There is a point in most playthroughs where progress slows, and it is usually not because the next phase is hard. It is because the factory has grown into something you can no longer reason about.

The signals are recognisable: you cannot remember what a belt carries, you have several half-finished production lines, and you find machines that stopped working some time ago without you noticing.

When that happens, the productive move is to stop unlocking and spend a session on maintenance. Trace and label your lines, finish or dismantle the half-built things, and check that every machine you built is actually running. A factory you understand progresses faster than one that is merely larger.

Common mistakes

Treating MAM as optional. Three mobility items and every alternate recipe live there.

Confusing tiers with phases. Milestones cost materials at the HUB; phases cost deliveries at the Space Elevator.

Grinding a phase by hand. Build the line; it keeps producing afterwards.

Measuring progress by tier number. Automation coverage is the real measure.

Forgetting research choices are shared in multiplayer. Agree who scans hard drives.