[Genhis][2.0.15] crafted biter nests lose quality when not fed then recaptured

[dragon_gawain]

tl dr

Crafted biter nests of quality become common if not fed and revert to being normal biter nests, and are then recaptured. Only tested with a rocket turret shooting the capture bot rocket.

full story

I crafted some captive biter spawners and was fortunate enough to get some of quality (2 uncommon nests to be precise).
According to the factoriopedia, they should craft faster at higher qualities, which is a desirable trait.

My issue occurred when my Gleba supply ship got delayed a bit too long and my uncommon captive nests became normal biter nests. I then had 2 uncommon 'wild' biter nests. Since I was off planet at the time, I had my logistic bots place down a rocket turret and load it with capture bots, and was promptly confused/disappointed when I watched the uncommon wild nests become common captive nests.

Other random information that I think is probably irrelevant:

• Both turret and capture rocket were of common quality.
• The game had been running for many hours without being closed when I discovered this. (I did not close the game, reopen it, and test in an editor world. I'd like to think that this doesn't matter though)
• The crafting stats (number of eggs the nest produce) got reset (which makes sense to me).

I do highly appreciate the fact that my laser turret wall did just destroy the nests though! Thanks for making it so that reverted captive nests don't get targeted by turrets (other than a rocket turret with a capture bot rocket).
Thanks as always for all your hard work on the game! Greatly enjoying it!

[Genhis]

Thanks for the report. Currently, the capture robot quality is what matters, but this is being changed in 2.0.19. So an uncommon spawner captured by a normal quality robot will be uncommon, and a normal quality spawner captured by an uncommon quality robot will be normal.

[ividyon]

Thanks for the report. Currently, the capture robot quality is what matters, but this is being changed in 2.0.19. So an uncommon spawner captured by a normal quality robot will be uncommon, and a normal quality spawner captured by an uncommon quality robot will be normal.

Would you possibly consider a more forgiving duality where a higher-quality robot will upgrade a spawner, but a lower-quality robot can capture a higher-quality spawner and retain its quality?

The incentive to craft higher-quality robots in the early stages of pre-Aquilo biter capture was quite nice. You had to capture a wild spawner, so you brought a better robot to create a higher-quality slave for your initial steps with biter egg technology.

[Genhis]

It was considered, but for balance reasons we decided to do it this way. It could still change in the future as we play with this a bit more. One of the alternatives to make quality capture bots useful was to enforce that an uncommon spawner could only be captured by an uncommon or higher quality robot.

[xor50]

I'm confused by this change.

Makes sense for recapturing lost nests, but... how do you even get a quality one in the first place now? Quality capture bots now don't do anything, any nest you capture is common, losing it and recapturing keeps it at common.

Seems nonsensical except if I'm missing something.

[Gloweye]

This does severely delay when you can get quality captive spawners - after Aquilo instead of Gleba.

Since the placement is already inconvenient, it doesn't sound odd to me that you can at least so something to ease that a bit.

[Necandum]

I'm confused by this change.

Makes sense for recapturing lost nests, but... how do you even get a quality one in the first place now? Quality capture bots now don't do anything, any nest you capture is common, losing it and recapturing keeps it at common.

Seems nonsensical except if I'm missing something.

There's a tech to build them later.