The cave-sizing challenge behind Satisfactory's Core Values expansion

Coffee Stain's upcoming Satisfactory expansion Core Values moves the factory underground, and that shift comes with a surprisingly tricky design problem: how do you build a cave that feels just right?

The core tension is what the team describes as a triangle — caves need to be big enough to build a meaningful factory inside, small enough to feel like an actual enclosed space, and visually readable enough that players aren't constantly lost. Hit any two of those and you risk losing the third. Conveyor belts are still in the game but are far less central than before, pushing players toward new logistics tools designed specifically for tighter underground layouts.

Satisfactory has built its reputation on vast open-world factory building across alien landscapes, so pulling the camera underground is a genuine tonal shift. Coffee Stain has always leaned into scale — the base game's maps are enormous — which makes the deliberate constraint of cave environments an interesting design inversion for the studio.

No release date for Core Values has been confirmed yet, but Coffee Stain is clearly deep in the design process, working through fundamental questions about how underground factory-building should feel before the expansion ships.