Friday Facts #375 - Quality

[mmmPI]

Say you have an iron gear assembler and a roboport assembler. A quality module in the roboport assembler is doing MORE THAN FOURTY-FIVE TIMES as much work when it's working as if you stuck the same module in the iron gear assembler. Even if it's idle 97% of the time, it's still better off in the roboport* assembler than in a 100% uptime iron gear assembler. (Once you factor in the red chips and steel that go into a roboport, the roboport assembler could be idle 99.9% of the time and still be a better use case for the module than the iron gear assembler.)

According to your approach, the reactor takes 8 second to build, therefore 1 assembly can build 7.5 per hour, meaning 1500 reactor during a 200 hour long game, and if you take 3% that still amount to 450 reactors. If you have legendary quality module, that still represent 25% that are legendary, so 112.5 right ?

I don't think the reactor loop to upgrade quality at the last step including an assembly that craft nuclear reactor with 4 quality module inside it will function 100% of the time. In normal game it's not something that is going to happen, and if it does, that's still means you have some "dead weight" of module not being in machine functionning 100% of the time for a longer game/ "at some point". think about the exoskeletons in the armor ? how much % of assembly in a normal game ?

And what about the personnal roboport ? maybe better place module in the recycler for them than in the assembly making roboport ? why compare with the iron gear assembly ?
Getting high quality intermediate is valuable because it's versatile, if you recycle robotframe, not only can you get easily the 2 different robots, but you also give yourself the ability to collect high quality lubricated engine, for the exoskeletons which saves you 3 loops, maybe more.

Sure robotframe are slow, but who cares ? that's in game time for the factory, what really matters is real life time for the player, setting 1 loop is faster than setting 3 loop if they are going to stay idle 97+% of the time

[computeraddict]

According to your approach, the reactor takes 8 second to build, therefore 1 assembly can build 7.5 per hour, meaning 1500 reactor during a 200 hour long game, and if you take 3% that still amount to 450 reactors. If you have legendary quality module, that still represent 25% that are legendary, so 112.5 right ?

You're still not thinking about it the right way. We're talking about production of infrastructure, not SPM. The question to ask is how long does it take to produce the infrastructure we want? We obviously can't make use of infinite amounts of infrastructure, so there's no reason to consider the case that it runs beyond what we want to produce. Quality is not a "run it forever" kind of mechanic. It's a "run it until the production run is finished" kind of mechanic. The thing to look at here is the time it takes to produce a single unit. Applying the modules to the production of reactors themselves, you get something very tame on the order of 8 seconds * C per reactor, where C is some constant based on the efficacy of the modules available and target quality. Applying the modules to the production of the reactor's components, you wind up with 13100 seconds * C per reactor (my previous math was a little off because I forgot to factor in the yield of concrete). As in, it's going to take 1638 times longer to produce the reactors you want by applying the same number of modules to the intermediate products. Would you rather finish a reactor per second or a reactor every 27 minutes? The answer is obvious. Even if you heavily parallelize your process it would take you less time to produce the modules from scratch, set up my setup for the reactors, produce more reactors than you could ever want, tear it all down, put it all in some other setup and produce a hundred of those than it would take for your idea to even be halfway through producing its first reactor.

I don't think the reactor loop to upgrade quality at the last step including an assembly that craft nuclear reactor with 4 quality module inside it will function 100% of the time. In normal game it's not something that is going to happen, and if it does, that's still means you have some "dead weight" of module not being in machine functionning 100% of the time for a longer game/ "at some point". think about the exoskeletons in the armor ? how much % of assembly in a normal game ?

It doesn't have to function 100% of the time to be a better use of modules. The value it generates when it runs depends on the recipe it's attached to multiplied by its uptime, not just on uptime. Same as a productivity module.

And what about the personnal roboport ? maybe better place module in the recycler for them than in the assembly making roboport ? why compare with the iron gear assembly ?
Getting high quality intermediate is valuable because it's versatile, if you recycle robotframe, not only can you get easily the 2 different robots, but you also give yourself the ability to collect high quality lubricated engine, for the exoskeletons which saves you 3 loops, maybe more.

Robot frames are a great case for applying modules only to end products. They take 20 times longer to process than the robots themselves, and the robots require additional inputs in the form of green or red chips. There is no reason to produce quality robot frames other than while upcycling robots. For the same number of modules you could have MORE than 20 times the quality robot production by applying them to the robot recipes themselves. And to boot, by applying quality modules to the initial robot frame production you are missing out on a potential 40-100% productivity bonus. That is the opposite of valuable. It's throwing away hundreds to thousands of resources per quality robot that you could save by just moving the quality modules to where they're more effective in the first place.

Sure robotframe are slow, but who cares ? that's in game time for the factory, what really matters is real life time for the player, setting 1 loop is faster than setting 3 loop if they are going to stay idle 97+% of the time

And in real life it will take days or weeks for you to see any payoff from the kind of thing you are suggesting. That's how inefficient it is. Like I said before, quality modules in a 99% idle roboport assembler are more time efficient than the same modules in an iron gear assembler. The math doesn't lie. Please take a minute to understand it. The human setup time (which for most things is ctrl+c, ctrl+v) is absolutely negligible compared to the amount of waiting it saves. To boot, your idea for bots to save setting up 2 loops involves setting up 3 loops: green chips, robot frames, red chips. And if your answer is "I just have one loop for each intermediate!" then I'll see you in 2060 when your factory produces its first legendary tier 3 module.

[mmmPI]

I agree that what you will want when first starting out on the quality journey is more high-quality quality modules. But making modules is slow. So if you only have enough high-quality modules for a few assemblers, an indirect approach is perhaps going to be more productive.

The satelittes idea is better than all i had in mind for faster ROI, in the"productive" area

But my experience of idle game told me that "faster" ROI is not the only thing, if you have to click every 2 second on your phone for the faster ROI, you would maybe choose the one that allows you to click only every 2 days for slightly less. Which is what is a motivation for me to consider finding an area that works all the time for minimum effort to set up, not only "faster" ROI but also guaranteed "ROI".

So if an indirect approach is more productive only for 10 minutes or an hour and then the other becomes faster, it becomes a personnal decision during the game rather than theorycraft to say which one is the "more productive" between 2 different chain of upgrade, and if it is worth the trouble to set up and deconstruct later or not.

There is also several variations that are not "taking only the max quality item", maybe because that's the specific area of roboport or substation or power pole that fits with a gird or a blueprint and doing it of higher quality is not desired, or something similar that will lead to recycling some items made "too high quality by accident". This could also happen at the recycler stage, where recycling Q2 roboport that failed to upgrade to Q3 would yield Q4 material, when Q3+ roboport are deemed "of no interest" given the particular blueprint.

The video from the FFF is collecting circuits from quality 3 4 and 5, the rest is recycled, maybe one could decide to use the Q5 for a specific purpose and the Q3 and Q4 for something else, leading to some unexpected strategy depending on the need of a particular game.

I think that's part of the theory craft complexity that is fun to test in practice, maybe the more productive approach is annoying to play for a person that would find it's more fun to be a little less productive and try out some other things, or try out the thing that sounds weirdly efficient, like mass recycling satelittes x) ( this was written without knowledge of the satelittes future receipe )

[mmmPI]

You're still not thinking about it the right way. We're talking about production of infrastructure, not SPM. The question to ask is how long does it take to produce the infrastructure we want? We obviously can't make use of infinite amounts of infrastructure, so there's no reason to consider the case that it runs beyond what we want to produce. Quality is not a "run it forever" kind of mechanic. It's a "run it until the production run is finished" kind of mechanic.

No i just disagree with your assertive assumptions that are not shared by all the players. The question that was raised is not only how long does it take to produce the infrastrure we want.

It's also how much time the human player will need to build it, how much space will it take, how ugly will it look, how boring and clumsy will it feel, how bad you would feel when placing legendary quality module in your night vision assembly machine, because you clearly want to have some high quality night vision and there is no other way than making a loop and recycling them until you get some high quality. It's of course impossible to imagine just having a pool of material of high quality somewhere and doing the rare items not with a recycling loop but from high quality material.

You seem to somehow consider only 1 particular way at looking at things and diregarding all other argument of ease of use or even math x) and telling me i'm not thinking about it the right way. There are plenty of way to consider things.

It is possible to recycle satelites to get blue circuit required for module in large quantity maybe ? if you do also this for assembly machine 3 you would get the high quality speed module too and recycling them maybe is going to be overall more interesting for a player because that would allow to make all modules from those material slowly with only 1 recycler, and not set up a recycling loop for all modules separatly as it would require an higher footprint for something that is not a "run it forever mechanic" why would you then want to finish as fast as possible and force you as a player to constantly keep the pace of expansion for things to be "worth it"?

I share the initial remarks that making a loop for everysingle item that one would want in high quality isn't necessarily the most optimal choice. No matter how you want to math and generalize things taking some example, it's not possible to apply it to every item in every situation and claim that's the only way of looking at it.

It doesn't have to function 100% of the time to be a better use of modules. The value it generates when it runs depends on the recipe it's attached to multiplied by its uptime, not just on uptime. Same as a productivity module.

Productivity module are generally used in things you use for science, which are consumed "endlessly", whereas as you said yourself earlier, quality module are not a forever thing, once you have 4 or 5 or 10 armors at some point your recycling loop for armor is useless and dead weight, forcing you player to do some ingame action like destroying it and reusing module somewhere else where they would be active or suffer the innefficencies. Whereas by not making a recycling loop for the armor you don't have this wasted dead weight.

You said correctly that the places where you get the faster ROI is the place where the most material is processed in the shortest amount of time. Then you said the amount of time is not infinite. Therefore one can disregard the time factor and consider only that module are best used where the most material is processed => Why would you build more than 4 quality module in a whole game ? you should just make 1 assembly and switch receipe, make 1 item, switch module to the recycler and so on. That's the "most money for your buck" , although it takes a little longer

And in real life it will take days or weeks for you to see any payoff from the kind of thing you are suggesting. That's how inefficient it is. Like I said before, quality modules in a 99% idle roboport assembler are more time efficient than the same modules in an iron gear assembler. The math doesn't lie. Please take a minute to understand it. The human setup time (which for most things is ctrl+c, ctrl+v) is absolutely negligible compared to the amount of waiting it saves. To boot, your idea for bots to save setting up 2 loops involves setting up 3 loops: green chips, robot frames, red chips. And if your answer is "I just have one loop for each intermediate!" then I'll see you in 2060 when your factory produces its first legendary tier 3 module.

I think this is not math, this is speculations, we have no idea about the cost of the recycling machine nor the time it takes to recycle things. You don't have to pretend explaining me something very complex, it's ok to like math and not apply them properly to a situation because we like math too much we don't look at the things we can't measure like feeling bored doing ugly loop for every single one item or missed an idea like recycling satelittes it happens all the time, please take a minute to understand that i've already look at the problem for hours and it's not a few assertives messages that seem to have angle of strategy not covered that will change my mind instantly.

There is no reason to produce quality robot frames other than while upcycling robots.

Maybe you didn't understand that i mentionned recycling the robot frame, not producing them of high quality, since recycling them allow for getting lubricated engine with which you can do exoskeletons without having to build a recycling loop just for the exoskeletons, since you can use recycler outside of a loop for only a single item. It also allow you to have battery of high quality for the armor battery, unless you want to setup a recycling loop for them too, it also allow to make 1 accumulator here and there to monitor power usage say on the spaceplatform, and you still have materials to make robot frame of high quality with productivity module if you choose to only use quality module in the recycler. All this with only 1 single recycler and 4 module ,that really depend on what you want ingame. But making a recycling loop for armor battery or nightvision "because it's the best use of module" acording to math sounds ridiculous and a mis-usage of math to represent what happens in game, obviously it's valuable to get high quality material. It was even written in the FFF literally !

Edit : to make it less confusing i'm explaining it more in details sorry if it's not so clear still, robot frame is required for science so you may want to "produce" them without quality module, and decide that some of them that are produced anyway will be recycled to provide material for some other item that you want in high quality but not in high volume to the point where making a whole loop for them feels a waste of time and space.

Edit 2: One can also mention how many steps of crafting there is to get finished product. If you use legendary productivity module on assembly machine you double the output compared to normal, if you take 2 step it's x4, x8 then x16 and so on. Leading to a huge amount of assembly required to process all that, only to keep a small fraction at the end.
Whereas if you increase quality early on, then you work with only a fraction of material, that double and double and double, requiring overall way less machine to achieve the same result in the same time.

[Axs1]

snip

I have made the calculations of the times to manufacture the solar panel, using the quality modules at the end of production was 10 times less than the time to obtain the legendary raw materials.

obtaining the legendary raw material can be used separately for continuous production with the possibility of expanding and thus while you make the desired legendary item, in the background you are obtaining the legendary ingredients for future use and thus do not stop the legendary production. Then the best of both sides would be taken advantage of

[mmmPI]

I have made the calculations of the times to manufacture the solar panel, using the quality modules at the end of production was 10 times less than the time to obtain the legendary raw materials.

obtaining the legendary raw material can be used separately for continuous production with the possibility of expanding and thus while you make the desired legendary item, in the background you are obtaining the legendary ingredients for future use and thus do not stop the legendary production. Then the best of both sides would be taken advantage of

How did you compute the time of recycling ? and the time to build the number of recycler ? We don't have nor the cost, nor the time to make a recycler, i suppose one can recycle satelites or personnal solar pannel if the goal is to obtain high quality solar pannel, this way you maximize the amount of material impacted by the smallest amount of quality module but if recycling time is function of the raw material of the item, it's not the same as if the recycling time is function of the time to craft the original item.

[Axs1]

I have made the calculations of the times to manufacture the solar panel, using the quality modules at the end of production was 10 times less than the time to obtain the legendary raw materials.

obtaining the legendary raw material can be used separately for continuous production with the possibility of expanding and thus while you make the desired legendary item, in the background you are obtaining the legendary ingredients for future use and thus do not stop the legendary production. Then the best of both sides would be taken advantage of

How did you compute the time of recycling ? and the time to build the number of recycler ? We don't have nor the cost, nor the time to make a recycler, i suppose one can recycle satelites or personnal solar pannel if the goal is to obtain high quality solar pannel, this way you maximize the amount of material impacted by the smallest amount of quality module but if recycling time is function of the raw material of the item, it's not the same as if the recycling time is function of the time to craft the original item.

For modules at the end of manufacturing, the bottleneck for solar panel manufacturing is the steel plate, use that time multiplied by the legendary manufacturing cost.

For the legendary raw material, the bottleneck is themselves, and since two types of raw materials need to be manufactured, it is twice as many quality modules that are needed.

time.ods

(17.37 KiB) Downloaded 34 times

[mmmPI]

Only legendary modules will be used
Iron plates and copper plates are considered raw materials
Productivity modules are used in any recipe that allows it
It is assumed that the time to recycle a product is the same time it takes to create it
The recipe for iron gears and copper wires is used to obtain the plates

this from the spreadsheet.

Those assumptions are not representing what will happen in a game, because if you consider "time" it is in relation of where you are going to place your "first" quality modules.

But then your math compare 2 full production chain already full of legendary module . This doesn't account for the time and resssources required to setup the 2 methods. How many assembly required for first method and for second method ? how much ressources and time to set up the 2 method ? You say the method requiring 50 times more machines is 10 times faster ? or the method requiring 10 times more machines is 10 times faster ? or both method using the same amount of machines have speed difference ? This changes a lot the interpretation of your results.

Another thing you can't account for is the price of 1 recycling machine, or the price of 1 quality module, which maybe cost more than the other module, this means the "cost in ressources" and "in time for factory" and in "time for player" is only speculation. It look like one method is 10 time faster, but one cannot estimate the cost to setup both method precisely.

Then you also have the problem of idle time. Which is heavy if you have dedicated recycling loop for not often used item that you still want of high quality like the armor, math you did assume the machines are functionning 100% of time, but this is not the case in practice for all machines, it's easier to achieve that on smaller number of machines that are feeding different chain of end-product.

Taking 1 example of "solar pannel" wouldn't be enough to compare the "methods". Because if you make a dedicated loop of recycling for solar pannel, presumably you want to have fast solar pannel of high quality, and you would do that faster recyling satelittes in a real game so a "third" method maybe would make more sense in that particular case.( the latest of your sentence, one can choose other receipe it is not "solar pannel" always the best because it's the "last" step, sometimes a receipe "after" like satelittes, or maybe a receipe "before" can be faster because more material is involved in less time due to the receipe.

But in the end it's still your personnal choice as a player, do you want to have the solar pannel first ? so you have energy to make more quality module ? or do you want the quality module first ? so that you can then build high quality solar pannel ? Maybe one way is faster but is of no interest in your game

[Axs1]

Only legendary modules will be used
Iron plates and copper plates are considered raw materials
Productivity modules are used in any recipe that allows it
It is assumed that the time to recycle a product is the same time it takes to create it
The recipe for iron gears and copper wires is used to obtain the plates

this from the spreadsheet.

Those assumptions are not representing what will happen in a game, because if you consider "time" it is in relation of where you are going to place your "first" quality modules.

But then your math compare 2 full production chain already full of legendary module . This doesn't account for the time and resssources required to setup the 2 methods. How many assembly required for first method and for second method ? how much ressources and time to set up the 2 method ? You say the method requiring 50 times more machines is 10 times faster ? or the method requiring 10 times more machines is 10 times faster ? or both method using the same amount of machines have speed difference ? This changes a lot the interpretation of your results.

Another thing you can't account for is the price of 1 recycling machine, or the price of 1 quality module, which maybe cost more than the other module, this means the "cost in ressources" and "in time for factory" and in "time for player" is only speculation. It look like one method is 10 time faster, but one cannot estimate the cost to setup both method precisely.

Then you also have the problem of idle time. Which is heavy if you have dedicated recycling loop for not often used item that you still want of high quality like the armor, math you did assume the machines are functionning 100% of time, but this is not the case in practice for all machines, it's easier to achieve that on smaller number of machines that are feeding different chain of end-product.

Taking 1 example of "solar pannel" wouldn't be enough to compare the "methods". Because if you make a dedicated loop of recycling for solar pannel, presumably you want to have fast solar pannel of high quality, and you would do that faster recyling satelittes in a real game so a "third" method maybe would make more sense in that particular case.( the latest of your sentence, one can choose other receipe it is not "solar pannel" always the best because it's the "last" step, sometimes a receipe "after" like satelittes, or maybe a receipe "before" can be faster because more material is involved in less time due to the receipe.

But in the end it's still your personnal choice as a player, do you want to have the solar pannel first ? so you have energy to make more quality module ? or do you want the quality module first ? so that you can then build high quality solar pannel ? Maybe one way is faster but is of no interest in your game

I am not taking into consideration the infrastructure, it is only the time to obtain a legendary item and I only use the solar panel, because it is easy to perform the calculations, it can be extrapolated to recipes that require more ingredients, for example, the nuclear reactor requires many ingredients, therefore, the amount of raw material is very large and obtaining said raw material in the highest quality requires an enormous amount of time, then you can know that if a recipe is very simple it is equal to or less than obtaining the material legendary cousin.

Regarding the time for infrastructure is a separate topic that would have to be covered separately, but you can say that the number of modules needed to match the production speed of legendary raw material with the production speed of the desired legendary item is much higher.

These are calculations that I can do, it's just that I won't get the results soon.

Edit 1: At the beginning of the production of high quality items, the best option is to place the quality modules directly on the desired item.

Edit 2: Regarding the assumptions, it is necessary to do so, because we do not yet have that data, but it can be assumed that if it is slower, for example, twice as much, we know that we need twice as many recyclers with their respective modules to equalize the calculations.

[mmmPI]

I am not taking into consideration the infrastructure, it is only the time to obtain a legendary item and I only use the solar panel, because it is easy to perform the calculations, it can be extrapolated to recipes that require more ingredients, for example, the nuclear reactor requires many ingredients, therefore, the amount of raw material is very large and obtaining said raw material in the highest quality requires an enormous amount of time, then you can know that if a recipe is very simple it is equal to or less than obtaining the material legendary cousin.

Regarding the time for infrastructure is a separate topic that would have to be covered separately, but you can say that the number of modules needed to match the production speed of legendary raw material with the production speed of the desired legendary item is much higher.

These are calculations that I can do, it's just that I won't get the results soon.

Edit: At the beginning of the production of high quality items, the best option is to place the quality modules directly on the desired item.

I understand the limitation of the method, for nuclear reactor, there is no receipe known as of now that uses it as an intermediate, which means 1 way of getting it ( from recycler) is not available, that leaves at least 2 ways : 1) crafting from high quality material, 2) crafting with quality module, but you can also combine them, maybe you will craft nuclear reactor with some Q2 and Q3 material in an assembly with quality module.

The time of infrastructure i don't think one can compute without the receipe to make 1 recycler, because maybe 1 method require 5 recycler and the other method only 1 to match the same speed. Depending on the cost of the recycler, it can dwarf or not the cost of the rest of the infrastructure.

I don't expect the recycler to be super expensive, but it's still an unknown variable, and so is the cost of 1 quality module, maybe those are made from tier 3 other modules, maybe from rare material from space that will be in the expansion the most important ressource player try to optimize, instead of iron and copper who knows

I also think it's ok not to find the "56" cost mentionned by the devs, because the video of the green circuit recycling loop posted in the FFF is quite special, it keeps only the circuit from quality 3 4 and 5. Which is a particular case that is not "all max quality" so your spreadsheet is a model of a different refining process i think.

In game i'm using https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RateCalculator this mod to math the ratios fast (very helpful for modded games with lots of new things). I hope something like this will still exist

[Axs1]

I am not taking into consideration the infrastructure, it is only the time to obtain a legendary item and I only use the solar panel, because it is easy to perform the calculations, it can be extrapolated to recipes that require more ingredients, for example, the nuclear reactor requires many ingredients, therefore, the amount of raw material is very large and obtaining said raw material in the highest quality requires an enormous amount of time, then you can know that if a recipe is very simple it is equal to or less than obtaining the material legendary cousin.

Regarding the time for infrastructure is a separate topic that would have to be covered separately, but you can say that the number of modules needed to match the production speed of legendary raw material with the production speed of the desired legendary item is much higher.

These are calculations that I can do, it's just that I won't get the results soon.

Edit: At the beginning of the production of high quality items, the best option is to place the quality modules directly on the desired item.

I understand the limitation of the method, for nuclear reactor, there is no receipe known as of now that uses it as an intermediate, which means 1 way of getting it ( from recycler) is not available, that leaves at least 2 ways : 1) crafting from high quality material, 2) crafting with quality module, but you can also combine them, maybe you will craft nuclear reactor with some Q2 and Q3 material in an assembly with quality module.

The time of infrastructure i don't think one can compute without the receipe to make 1 recycler, because maybe 1 method require 5 recycler and the other method only 1 to match the same speed. Depending on the cost of the recycler, it can dwarf or not the cost of the rest of the infrastructure.

I don't expect the recycler to be super expensive, but it's still an unknown variable, and so is the cost of 1 quality module, maybe those are made from tier 3 other modules, maybe from rare material from space that will be in the expansion the most important ressource player try to optimize, instead of iron and copper who knows

I also think it's ok not to find the "56" cost mentionned by the devs, because the video of the green circuit recycling loop posted in the FFF is quite special, it keeps only the circuit from quality 3 4 and 5. Which is a particular case that is not "all max quality" so your spreadsheet is a model of a different refining process i think.

In game i'm using https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RateCalculator this mod to math the ratios fast (very helpful for modded games with lots of new things). I hope something like this will still exist

Most likely someone will do the calculator.

In the example shown by the developers, the cost will be even higher, because they do not use Q3 and Q4.

Using recycling, FFF 375 dictates that it takes 56 times as many resources to craft legendary items as it does to craft their normal quality counterpart. However, independent testing by the community based on the numbers listed dictates a multiplier of 116, over twice what was specified in the FFF.

Source: https://wiki.factorio.com/Upcoming_features

Since there are different values and I do not have the way in which the calculations were carried out, I am left wondering if I have overlooked something and that is why my values do not match.

About the cost of 116 times, it must have been that they performed an experiment with the game (for those who have access) and released that data.

Edit: one here breaking his head and in the future friday facts clarifies everything and everything becomes easier

[mmmPI]

Most likely someone will do the calculator.

Well Raiguard who made the rate calculator mod now works for Wube, and so is Therenas who made the factory planner mod, they part of factorio staff on the forum i'd be surprised if there is no in-game tool

In the example shown by the developers, the cost will be even higher, because they do not use Q3 and Q4.

Using recycling, FFF 375 dictates that it takes 56 times as many resources to craft legendary items as it does to craft their normal quality counterpart. However, independent testing by the community based on the numbers listed dictates a multiplier of 116, over twice what was specified in the FFF.

Source: https://wiki.factorio.com/Upcoming_features

Since there are different values and I do not have the way in which the calculations were carried out, I am left wondering if I have overlooked something and that is why my values do not match.

About the cost of 116 times, it must have been that they performed an experiment with the game (for those who have access) and released that data.

Edit: one here breaking his head and in the future friday facts clarifies everything and everything becomes easier

There are other things happening in the FFF loop, for example there is one belt that carries away some of the copper wire and iron plate of "no quality" toward the north and we don't know what they become whereas in the spreadsheet it would be more natural to assume that every material coming out of the recycler is going to be reused in an attempt to craft the initial item in quality 5. Maybe that changes the way to model what is happening, which share of material goes through which loop.

I am rather confident that the "56" number is correct, due to it coming from devs who must have spent quite some time doing the balance and are experienced , and also are having all the informations , as you you say maybe players can't find the number because we are not aware of some mechanics. Maybe it is because players attempted calculations based on a model that is slightly different than what the splitters loop from the FFF are producing.

I still think it's interesting to see spreadsheets , because in game it will be possible to make such machines run it for several hours and count the results, as the ultimate way to make sure the spreadsheet is correct. Because when seeing spreadsheet sometimes it feels like 2 differents ways of processing are corrects they make sense, but they give different results and it's not easy to understand which one describe what happens in the game and which one is not and why.

Maybe also the number 56 is a mistake by the devs x) Maybe they put a random number to troll players and make them do probabilities exercice as a revision before the expansion
I would not break my head too much, i agree with your edit

[Axs1]

Share my spreadsheet on the cost of getting premium quality.

You can find the results for:

• Assembler with Quality and Recycler with Quality

• Assembler with Quality and Recycler with Quality(Old Version)

• Assembler with Quality and Recycler with Productivity

• Assembler with Quality and Recycler without modules

Spreadsheet

Quality - Cost.ods

(8.84 KiB) Downloaded 31 times

Note: Old Spreadsheet

Edit:

This is the new spreadsheet, here it contains the new method and also the old ones. The equations used in the new method are included.

Quality - Cost.ods

(29.85 KiB) Downloaded 34 times

Note: if you have any questions let me know

[Axs1]

Share my spreadsheet on the cost of getting premium quality.

You can find the results for:

• Assembler with Quality and Recycler with Quality

• Assembler with Quality and Recycler with Quality(Old Version)

• Assembler with Quality and Recycler with Productivity

• Assembler with Quality and Recycler without modules

Spreadsheet

The attachment Quality - Cost.ods is no longer available

Note: Old Spreadsheet

Edit:

This is the new spreadsheet, here it contains the new method and also the old ones. The equations used in the new method are included.

snip

Note: if you have any questions let me know

I have made several corrections to the spreadsheet, I have also changed the probabilities according to the data provided by the wiki: https://wiki.factorio.com/Quality

Here:

Quality - Cost.ods

(27.21 KiB) Downloaded 31 times

[mmmPI]

I have made several corrections to the spreadsheet, I have also changed the probabilities according to the data provided by the wiki: https://wiki.factorio.com/Quality

I have seen the spreadcheat, i was wondering how you got those number for module bonus as it seem different than what you did earlier so i started checking the wiki page and i found :

Optimal Module Usage

When using Assembling machine 3s with the goal of converting all input items to Legendary outputs, and feeding non-Legendary items through a Recycler with 4 quality modules (as recyclers can't take quality modules)

This is confusing x) on the FFF we can see quality module on recycler so i suppose it is impossible to put "productivity" in reycler.

It also says

It is also more optimal to improve quality on the lead-up to the target output item due to the recycler only giving back 25% of the input items, except for cases where the chosen item has a productivity research available, in which case looping through a recycler is optimal and has no added material cost (ignoring fluids).

Which is one of the debated question, but it doesn't show the math to explain.

If the quality modules offer 25% (Legendary 3s), use 2 of each module

This is said on the wiki page but is not happening on the spreadsheet i think, cost is shown as 137 with 2 of each the top module on each assembly and 4 quality in recycler. But using more quality module gives better result/ lower cost. But again there is no detail on this part of the wiki page, so it is difficult to compare why and at this point i wouldn't be able to tell which one will be the one in the expansion.

[Axs1]

here I have uploaded the spreadsheet update
viewtopic.php?p=596868#p596868

I have seen the spreadcheat, i was wondering how you got those number for module bonus as it seem different than what you did earlier so i started checking the wiki page and i found :

I found those probabilities on discord, and then I saw the link to the wiki on quality. They also showed tests with iron plates, they gave the quantity that was obtained of each quality and calculated the percentages to corroborate and they are indeed those of the wiki

This is confusing x) on the FFF we can see quality module on recycler so i suppose it is impossible to put "productivity" in reycler.

productivity is not possible in the recycler, I just didn't know at the time, but I still added it in the spreadsheet update.

Which is one of the debated question, but it doesn't show the math to explain.

I imagine it refers to at what point it is better to apply quality, that is, obtain the legendary ingredients first and then craft the final item or apply the loop in the final product. I did some calculations and no matter where you do it, the same is consumed, the difference is only the time

This is said on the wiki page but is not happening on the spreadsheet i think, cost is shown as 137 with 2 of each the top module on each assembly and 4 quality in recycler. But using more quality module gives better result/ lower cost. But again there is no detail on this part of the wiki page, so it is difficult to compare why and at this point i wouldn't be able to tell which one will be the one in the expansion.

In the new spreadsheet you can do it, I have tested the "optimal" configuration of the wiki and none offers better results than the 4 quality modules

[computeraddict]

In the new spreadsheet you can do it, I have tested the "optimal" configuration of the wiki and none offers better results than the 4 quality modules

I haven't gotten a chance to crack it open yet, but are you using Markov chains for the math or some kind of expected value substitution?

[Axs1]

In the new spreadsheet you can do it, I have tested the "optimal" configuration of the wiki and none offers better results than the 4 quality modules

I haven't gotten a chance to crack it open yet, but are you using Markov chains for the math or some kind of expected value substitution?

No, I have only used geometric progression.

I forgot to mention that I was finally able to get the value they showed on the wiki which is 116 times more expensive, but that was based on 250% quality strength, the real value is 248%, because they do not handle decimal values and truncate the value of each module remaining at 62% instead of 62.5%.

The 116 times cost only considers the materials you provide and does not include the materials returned by the recycler, so it is not the actual cost.

Link to the new spreadsheet:
viewtopic.php?p=596868#p596868

[Ranakastrasz]

Query. Can you use different qualities of raw materials, or do they have the be the same quality? And if so, what are you supposed to do with the occasional higher quality materials you can't match with others? Or does it use the lowest included quality, average, etc?

Do fluids have quality?

[Axs1]

Query. Can you use different qualities of raw materials, or do they have the be the same quality? And if so, what are you supposed to do with the occasional higher quality materials you can't match with others? Or does it use the lowest included quality, average, etc?

Do fluids have quality?

Can you use different qualities of raw materials, or do they have the be the same quality?
You can use raw materials of different qualities, but the item manufactured will be the quality of the lowest quality raw material.

What are you supposed to do with the occasional higher quality materials you can't match with others?
The recycler returns 25% of the recipe ingredients.

Do fluids have quality?
No, when using it, it is simply ignored