Friday Facts #376 - Research and Technology

[mmmPI]

As for this current discussion, I think there's some sort of miscommunication going on. It appears that everyone participating agrees that this game, much like a lot of games, abstracts some concepts for the sake of the player and/or the developer. The idea that I believe Fury is attempting to express is that just because there are realistic grounds for a particular direction in design, doesn't necessarily mean it has to be replicated in some or even any way in a game.

Maybe there some miscommunication, but also some things WRONG were said :

No, irl, it is not realistic to expect highest quality everywhere, but that's because of finances, not because the manufacturing lines of the highest quality stuff can't actually output them that reliably. Finances are not a concern in Factorio seems you're building it all yourself with resources you mine/gather yourself. As for semiconductors, please see my findings above in this same post.

This hopefully is buried ?

Because for me it started like this :

I don't understand why you want to introduce a major RNG feature into a game that, until now, only had one very minor RNG thing in it, but whatever. It's obvious that, just like many of the other changes you all did, you're going to stick with it.

try to explain once including gameplay reason

But honestly, without reading the article and just going on your synopsis,

try to explain twice including gameplay reason

(I am sorry, but that's way too much text for me to deal with right now. )

try to explain third time including gameplay reason

I pretty much stopped reading at that point, sorry.

When finally

Reading through that more, though, it does feel like in many ways semiconductors are a bit of a gamble.

Took quite some time eh ?

[FuryoftheStars]

All I see are two ships passing each other in the night. Nothing of what you posted seems to mean anything except to you.

[mmmPI]

All I see are two ships passing each other in the night. Nothing of what you posted seems to mean anything except to you.

You can't understand what you don't read, maybe if you give it another try you would realize that it makes sense and was adressed to you but not only ?

There could have been in the game a notion of "low quality" or "defect" as a "scrap" mechanism that yield randomly bad product, there are mods like this ( and it is a redundant alternative propositions in the comments ) but i think the quality feature presented has more gameplay value, it's not something any mods could have done. The RNG is used not to punish player with "bad" product but to reward them with "better" ones. That i think is mostly for gameplay reason, and when seeing all the complain about the chance of getting a free goody sometimes i think it'd be worse with the random trash.

Robot attrition mod included in Space Exploration ( some bots have a random low risk of breaking apart and falling to ground ) comes to mind as something related that has some very strong detractors and many players don't see it as a problem or as something significant, which can lead to a disproportionnate negative feedback in a overly simplifed situation : only a few notice and hate it and flood the channel of negative feedback , while for most players it's a little nice addition that doesn't get all much attention and isn't even mentionned as something they like. ( this maybe can adress some of your other concerns about the 35 pages of discussions, and the weight that is given to a non-representative sample ).

In my perception the "quality" feature could be rated as something like 80% gameplay 20% realism, where really it's more symbolic, or abstract, than meant to represent exactly what happens in a process but if ones wants to nitpick it is possible to find situations where what happens in real life is like in factorio or the reverse i'm not sure at this point.

What makes me think this is a good thing is that i spent many times playing with many differents mods, it's often going to yield a more "niche" experience, that will make some player at the other end of the spectrum dislike it. Which is fine for a mod, you don't like it, you don't install it. However for a feature in a game, i think it really fits really well where it is placed. Optionnal as non-blocking, not-mandadory, not too early in game, adding so many equivalent of small QoL mods when considering all the different entities that receive a specific bonus. ( the more i think of it the more i think i over estimated the footprint of quality-producing part of the factory in average game).

[Nidan]

The "storm in a bottle" comment was from the previous thread, and it implied that the massive backlash was without merit because a lot of people were quick to complain about quality. Which wasn't a very a useful argument, it was rather reductive and addressed absolutely nothing about why any of it was supposedly mere hysteria as opposed to legitimate concern.

Still one could argue that the discussion is of limited value: Both FFF explicitly state that we didn't get the whole picture yet, but most of the discussion assumes we did. At least, that's my reading.

In fact, this FFF introduced one way to mitigate the resource cost of the recycle loop: The per recipe productivity allows us to ignore the recycler loss for that recipe, making it an obvious candidate for a loop once productivity hits 300%.

-------

I'll reserve my judgement on quality until I had a chance to play around with it. On my first read of the FFF I would have expected a normal/gaussian distribution, but I can see why the degrading half isn't there (it's a game). And the chances are also obviously gamified, at 10% (4 quality 1 quality modules 3) to 25% (4 q5 QM3) RNG becomes a non-issue.

[FuryoftheStars]

All I see are two ships passing each other in the night. Nothing of what you posted seems to mean anything except to you.

You can't understand what you don't read, maybe if you give it another try you would realize that it makes sense and was adressed to you but not only ?

There could have been in the game a notion of "low quality" or "defect" as a "scrap" mechanism that yield randomly bad product, there are mods like this ( and it is a redundant alternative propositions in the comments ) but i think the quality feature presented has more gameplay value, it's not something any mods could have done.

Sure, it could've been, but is not relevant to what I'm discussing or my complaints because it's something that's not actually in the game and is not something I'm asking for.

The RNG is used not to punish player with "bad" product but to reward them with "better" ones. That i think is mostly for gameplay reason, and when seeing all the complain about the chance of getting a free goody sometimes i think it'd be worse with the random trash.

Also not relevant to my complaints/discussions. I'm not complaining about RNG because of being "punished".

Robot attrition mod included in Space Exploration ( some bots have a random low risk of breaking apart and falling to ground ) comes to mind as something related that has some very strong detractors and many players don't see it as a problem or as something significant, which can lead to a disproportionnate negative feedback in a overly simplifed situation : only a few notice and hate it and flood the channel of negative feedback , while for most players it's a little nice addition that doesn't get all much attention and isn't even mentionned as something they like. ( this maybe can adress some of your other concerns about the 35 pages of discussions, and the weight that is given to a non-representative sample ).

Pretty sure I already addressed this, too: not relevant.

In my perception the "quality" feature could be rated as something like 80% gameplay 20% realism, where really it's more symbolic, or abstract, than meant to represent exactly what happens in a process but if ones wants to nitpick it is possible to find situations where what happens in real life is like in factorio or the reverse i'm not sure at this point.

Sure, but I'm only arguing "realism" as a counter to a "realism" counter, so that's not relevant.

What makes me think this is a good thing is that i spent many times playing with many differents mods, it's often going to yield a more "niche" experience, that will make some player at the other end of the spectrum dislike it. Which is fine for a mod, you don't like it, you don't install it. However for a feature in a game, i think it really fits really well where it is placed. Optionnal as non-blocking, not-mandadory, not too early in game, adding so many equivalent of small QoL mods when considering all the different entities that receive a specific bonus. ( the more i think of it the more i think i over estimated the footprint of quality-producing part of the factory in average game).

And that's your opinion. Mine is not the same.

So, as I said:

All I see are two ships passing each other in the night. Nothing of what you posted seems to mean anything except to you.

I think this is where this discussion between us should end, because it appears to be going nowhere.

--------------------------------------

In fact, this FFF introduced one way to mitigate the resource cost of the recycle loop: The per recipe productivity allows us to ignore the recycler loss for that recipe, making it an obvious candidate for a loop once productivity hits 300%.

I believe there are very few people against it because of resource cost. In fact, I've seen several suggestions that take RNG out while still keeping the increased costs.

[mmmPI]

And that's your opinion. Mine is not the same.

I'm glad you finally took the time to read it. hopefully you learned something about manufacturing defect in semi conductor production lane, and why introducing RNG is adding depth to the game for some people, and why that RNG system was made to be a bonus instead of a malus for other people. And why it's not really RNG in the end due to it being located in the mid late gamewhen you can scale things up to nullify RNG.

[Zaflis]

All I see are two ships passing each other in the night. Nothing of what you posted seems to mean anything except to you.

You can't understand what you don't read, maybe if you give it another try you would realize that it makes sense and was adressed to you but not only ?

There could have been in the game a notion of "low quality" or "defect" as a "scrap" mechanism that yield randomly bad product, there are mods like this ( and it is a redundant alternative propositions in the comments ) but i think the quality feature presented has more gameplay value, it's not something any mods could have done. The RNG is used not to punish player with "bad" product but to reward them with "better" ones. That i think is mostly for gameplay reason, and when seeing all the complain about the chance of getting a free goody sometimes i think it'd be worse with the random trash.

Robot attrition mod included in Space Exploration ( some bots have a random low risk of breaking apart and falling to ground ) comes to mind as something related that has some very strong detractors and many players don't see it as a problem or as something significant, which can lead to a disproportionnate negative feedback in a overly simplifed situation : only a few notice and hate it and flood the channel of negative feedback , while for most players it's a little nice addition that doesn't get all much attention and isn't even mentionned as something they like. ( this maybe can adress some of your other concerns about the 35 pages of discussions, and the weight that is given to a non-representative sample ).

In my perception the "quality" feature could be rated as something like 80% gameplay 20% realism, where really it's more symbolic, or abstract, than meant to represent exactly what happens in a process but if ones wants to nitpick it is possible to find situations where what happens in real life is like in factorio or the reverse i'm not sure at this point.

What makes me think this is a good thing is that i spent many times playing with many differents mods, it's often going to yield a more "niche" experience, that will make some player at the other end of the spectrum dislike it. Which is fine for a mod, you don't like it, you don't install it. However for a feature in a game, i think it really fits really well where it is placed. Optionnal as non-blocking, not-mandadory, not too early in game, adding so many equivalent of small QoL mods when considering all the different entities that receive a specific bonus. ( the more i think of it the more i think i over estimated the footprint of quality-producing part of the factory in average game).

There has been many concerns lately that the quality feature adds more RNG to the game, what you suggest would not only add more RNG, it would force it to every part of the game! What are you trying to solve with this? Robot attrition was another "masochistic" move to add annoyance to bots, most people dislike it or even disable that in SE.

[mmmPI]

There has been many concerns lately that the quality feature adds more RNG to the game, what you suggest would not only add more RNG, it would force it to every part of the game! What are you trying to solve with this? Robot attrition was another "masochistic" move to add annoyance to bots, most people dislike it or even disable that in SE.

I meant that the actual quality feature UNLIKE the robot attrition, is not "masochistic" which i can understand is something that people hate in RNG, as the current shown quality feature is only giving a random goody.

I think it is one of the reason why the quality feature was made this way, to mitigate the perceived downside of RNG, while still getting the depth it generate.

[Mendel]

The most annoying/grindy part of Factorio for me has always been the act of plopping miners to a new resource field as old ones dry out.

Besides the excelent answer from Tertius, check this possibilities:
1- At game start, adjust map settings for maximum Richness (600%) for each ore type.
2- If that is not enough, you can check Resource Spawner Overhaul, by orzelek.
3- Alternatively, use a mod to get infinite resources, there are several in the mod portal. For example Infinite Resources, by sonaxaton (including in description several links to other similar mods).
4- Another mod that you might want to check is Outpost Planner for 1.1, by ChucklesTheBeard. This mod allows you to automatically blueprint a mine over any entire or partial ore patch depending on different settings, to adjust it to your liking, including miners, belts / bot boxes, power poles, and miners.
5- Above all, you always could use infinite chests (from the map editor or from a mod), to allow you to get fun focusing on the parts of the game you like more.
6- You also could get more fun in multiplayer, distributing tasks depending on what each player likes more.

I hope one or more of these ideas help you.

Thank you. Those do help, and in fact number 3 helps a lot, I did not know about that one!
Just for the **** of it though, I figured I would throw some ideas around.
Maybe there could be an infinite resources tech for the end game, which would make ore fields deplete less somehow or give a minimum size for a field into which it can deplete to... and this would improve somehow with more research.

Or maybe there could be something a bit like infinite chest but less cheaty... some kind of resource generating energy to mass transforming box that would consume huge amounts of energy to give a really small amount of resources... but this would be a constant small trickle and would get better with higher level tech and would be somewhat scalable especially with late game power generators.

Kind of like I would want "free" resources as a reward for reaching very late game so that I wouldn't have to keep expanding that much if I didn't want to.

But yea, I hope that infinite resources by sonaxaton mod will be space age compatible eventually because I will really want to try it out with that.

[FuryoftheStars]

Maybe there could be an infinite resources tech for the end game, which would make ore fields deplete less somehow

The mining productivity research already does this. That additional ore bar that appears after first researching the productivity tech and pops out an ore each time it fills? That's free ore. It doesn't take from the field.

In fact, that's what "productivity" in this game is: free outputs. Everything you use productivity modules in gives you a free output without using resources. As such, these are most effective in end stage products (especially the rocket silo). You could (potentially) use the productivity modules in your miners so they're even better at that, though I suppose it may be debatable if sticking with speed modules may still be better, but it's ultimately going to depend on you, how many fields you have going, what your demand is, etc, etc.

That's also the affect these productivity researches the devs mentioned in this FFF will essentially have.

[Qon]

Seasoned veterans make mistakes too. W

That's what I said. Are you replying to agree?

Sometimes it takes a fool's perspective to see the bigger picture. Though here, it's more like a sea of dissenting opinion, in which case you'd best be ready to defend creative decisions as a designer. I just don't think quality as it stands is a hill worth dying on.

Sometimes, sure. But mostly not. I would need something to indicate that, we don't follow fools in the off chance they stumble and fall into a hole finding gold.

And kovarex was ready and did defend his decisions and his reasons. And they won't die on the quality hill, because they won't die. The vocal misguided minority of players that think some RNG is the end of the world will be proven wrong once they actually try it. Or some quit in a blip and the player base just grows even if it didn't suit their taste then there are others who will understand it.

[Qon]

There might be issues with the Quality system that might arise that I can anticipate. I don't know since I can't playtest it yet so I'm not going to whine about it. But it would be interesting to have a discussion on deep gameplay impact and to drop the surface level discussion of names and RNG which don't matter.

I'm not sure that the construction of high quality items adds any worthwhile gameplay.

(looping recycling and sorting)
A bit too self-contained and easy to solve once and for all. If recycling worsened quality and didn't allow quality modules then we could be "forced" (to reasonably efficiently achieve legendary end products) to have quality consideration in the whole chain that produces legendary items. It would start with T2 plates to produce T3 chips for T4 rocket modules to make T5 spiders etc. I'm not saying just forcing only this way would produce good gameplay though. The part about adding sorting everywhere doesn't seem very compelling, and you would need quality modules everywhere. But what I do think is that it is more of a step in an interesting direction. I don't want unique recipes for every quality and for every item in the game either. But I think the mods that do add a lot of complicated recipes have a small part right. Scaling quality with the complexity of the whole production supply chain seems a bit more compelling.

Suggestion/Idea:

What I could see working is something like "quality ingredients", for each tier. It can be fluids and items and maybe other things like heat as well. They aren't "added" to the recipe prototypes for each item, but the assemblers will accept these additional ingredients anyways.

I'm adding names here for the quality tiers not because I am suggesting these names for the names sake, but because it makes sense with the suggestion:

• Regular
• Clean (made by supplying water or steam to the assembler)
• Heat-treated (supply heat via heat pipe to the assembler)
• Liquid cooled (supply cooling fluid, which has it's own production challenges to make, as additional ingredient to assembler)
• Nano-restructured (supply new nano bots item as additional ingredient to assembler, nano bots are also hard to produce)

Liquid cooled makes most sense on things like chips maybe. The point isn't the exact details here, my suggestion is to add to all recipes the same "quality improving" additive (which can have an interesting and difficult way to produce) to improve quality, and the highest tiers would need all steps in succession for their whole supply chain. The recipe prototypes don't need their own extra ingredient, it works with all items modded or not without modifying the recipes. And maybe you can have different "quality additives" for different types of items, like intermediates or final products if you want.

Drawback: you can't get items with low amount of processing steps, like basic belts, to highest quality tiers. Regular ore can make cleaned plates which can make heat treated gears which can be used for liquid cooled basic belts. Without higher tier ores you can't get higher tier plates. Also if something requires both plates and rocket control units then the cleaned plates limits the product to being heat-treated tier. But that problem can be ignored or maybe worked around some way with how mixed quality ingredients are treated.

And maybe you can improve 2 quality by tiers at once if you supply the ingredients at once as well.

This means an item that creates highest quality tier items is logistically much different and quite a challenge to design. But lower tier items (like cleaned) "only" require that you add water pipes everywhere. This might be a bit too much hassle, the idea could be tweaked, please focus on the general point and come with improvement suggestions of the details after the general system is ironed out or at least discussed somewhat.

To note: I think this would make bulk production of highest tier items less resource demanding than the current one since the process should give high yield as a benefit for consuming extra ingredients and complicating the production. The resource demand for the extra ingredients for quality might be about equal to the amount needed to produce the actual items, making a complete factory for Nano-restructured/Legendary only consume like 2x the amount of resources as a "regular" quality one, compared to 56x for Legendary in the FFF. So the output of highest tier items will be much higher which means you will be able to use highest tier everywhere. But only if you can deal with that much more complex supply chains.

Quality production recycling might lead to odd distribution issues.

Maybe it won't. But it's seems like it would be kind of weird of doing the same recycling at the end of every production chain everywhere. And if you want quality tier X everywhere because it is worthwhile to support it, is it going to be interesting to make these higher qualities? They can be made everywhere since they don't require any additional input (unlike my suggestion) but they take space that you might not want to give up. But it seems a bit silly to ship product that you can "easily" produce at use location (planet), but that might get annoying if you are going to have to recycle loop. And is it worth the logistics of shipping legendary assemblers and modules by rocket? The current quality system seems like it could be too annoying to deal with everywhere for all products, but not hard enough that it is an achievement you want to dedicate ONE location for that then sends out units to the other planets. My suggestion above would make quality improvement more like regular Factorio gameplay, instead of (what seems to me at current moment) an annoying an not very interesting addition as far as actual production goes. The quality system as described by Wube might make gameplay more interesting by requiring a larger factory that consumes more resources, but the re-circulation loop itself doesn't seem to make the factory building more interesting.

A minor one

is that I don't personally really enjoy tiers of machines as it is already. I don't think we should only have one tier of assembly machines and belts etc (though I've considered self limiting to that for my own enjoyment). But I've stayed away from mods that add additional tiers of production machines and logistics that just scale numbers without interesting mechanisms. The interesting part of a megabase is mostly how to build greater factories when the machines can no longer be sped up further. Simple multipliers on everything don't make for interesting logistics puzzles, it just gives you higher numbers without actually requiring more from the factory designer. The logistics of massive trains and buses just disappear with infinite capacity belts and assemblers. But the quality system doesn't give infinite improvement so maybe it won't hurt. And numbers going up isn't necessarily bad. We will probably still see amazing scale of entities anyways. It's a bit weird to have multiple ways to upgrade machines. Not as clean. But that might be interesting, to have more paths to consider and balance, a puzzle in itself which way to upgrade is most efficient and how much effort to put into that before the gains level off instead of just placing more.

Quality poles, radars and turrets seem like just an improvement. I could enjoy quality radius improvements of lamps and roboports as well.

[Mendel]

Maybe there could be an infinite resources tech for the end game, which would make ore fields deplete less somehow

The mining productivity research already does this. That additional ore bar that appears after first researching the productivity tech and pops out an ore each time it fills? That's free ore. It doesn't take from the field.

In fact, that's what "productivity" in this game is: free outputs. Everything you use productivity modules in gives you a free output without using resources. As such, these are most effective in end stage products (especially the rocket silo). You could (potentially) use the productivity modules in your miners so they're even better at that, though I suppose it may be debatable if sticking with speed modules may still be better, but it's ultimately going to depend on you, how many fields you have going, what your demand is, etc, etc.

That's also the affect these productivity researches the devs mentioned in this FFF will essentially have.

Productivity gives more product from the ore field but it still depletes to 0 eventually. What I meant is some kind of research that would make the fields to only deplete to less yield but never dry up completely after researched, and even more research would keep the yields slightly less low still. Something like the miners would just dig deeper or something.

[Qon]

Are you missing the point on purpose?
Yes not everyone reads all 35 pages before making their post. But you don't have to be that extreme to see that naming is commonly talked about.
Also you don't have to be that extreme about limiting the copies to one single time. You are just exaggerating because you have no argument.
Just read a few posts or pages, if something trivial has been talked about 7 times already then consider if you adding an 8th post on it really adds much value to the discussion or not.

It doesn't matter how many times it's already been said. If you also agree/disagree, then you should (be allowed) to voice your opinion on it. If you have a question about something, absolutely agree they should read through some of it first. But if it's simply a statement of agree/disagree, maybe throwing in their 2 cents of an alternative, then that's perfectly fine and they shouldn't be expected to read through it and silence themselves if it's already been mentioned several times.

Whatever arbitrary number you want to pick for the point where people shouldn't post any further (1, 7, or 100) simply cuts off further discussion/expressing of opinion and thus is not helpful to gauge how much something is actually liked or disliked.

I never said that you shouldn't be allowed to post if someone else already had done so. Just read the part you quoted me on again.

Yes it gets "cut off", but it's just the spam we lose. There's no discussion that is cut off if we remove duplicate replies. Instead the discussion would improve since the posts actually discussing anything wouldn't be drowned me "I also hate the new thing I don't understand"-flood.

A thread like this is basically never helpful to gauge how much something is actually disliked. Up to like 7 posts maybe, but then making it an order of magnitude or two more doesn't really show that the opinion is more widely held, just that it motivates some people to post about it more. And what motivates people to post comments the most isn't a good way to gauge how important or valid the topic is. It's just emotional garbage reaction to misunderstood feature. Some people just rage post when they see "Legendary" and "RNG" because they don't like lootboxes but they lack the capacity to understand why they dislike them and how the reasons
don't apply here.

I'm not saying that everything they do is perfect, I'm not saying being better at games design always makes you get the 100% superior design idea every single time. I'm just saying that they are better at it (overall) and have actually tested it and also understand the system so 35 pages of mostly low quality posts don't indicate that Wube should change anything. The argument made by coppercoil was that the quantity of pages of responses should change Wube's opinion on their design.

And yet they can still get it wrong and the fact that we have 35 pages of discussion, regardless of "quality", should be an indicator to review to be sure. And there have been changes they've made to the game before that they thought would be good but due to subsequent discussions they reverted or changed further. So this "point" you were trying to make about how the discussions were a waste of time "because the devs know what they're doing better than the players" is invalid.

No my point isn't invalid, 35 pages is basically the same as 2 pages if gauging by quantity. And I'm sure quality system will be improved from player feedback at some point. But doing it before players have understood and tested it is just the game designers being held hostage to the lowest common denominator opinions. That kind of developer doesn't have the balls to try something so different, wouldn't make Factorio at all in the first place. "35 pages!" is not a good argument, it's not an indication to review. And definitely not now.

[Tricorius]

Still one could argue that the discussion is of limited value: Both FFF explicitly state that we didn't get the whole picture yet, but most of the discussion assumes we did. At least, that's my reading.

In fact, this FFF introduced one way to mitigate the resource cost of the recycle loop: The per recipe productivity allows us to ignore the recycler loss for that recipe, making it an obvious candidate for a loop once productivity hits 300%.

Hey woah! Wait a minute. It’s like you actually read all of the recent FFFs and are considering a reasoned response.

We’ll have none of that here, mister! None of it.



It’s weird though, it’s almost like the new infinite productivity research and a 300% cap is there to help make quality eventually get better over time as well, as you shift some productivity modules to quality ones and now don’t lose the productivity in exchange.

It’s almost like we may see a bit more of the picture each week for … oh … I dunno … another 49 or so weeks.

It’s almost like maybe they have solutions to a lot of the concerns ALREADY in the freaking code. Ready for us to rejoice bitch about when given their time to shine fester.

[mmmPI]

What I meant is some kind of research that would make the fields to only deplete to less yield but never dry up completely after researched, and even more research would keep the yields slightly less low still. Something like the miners would just dig deeper or something.

Maybe something like this ? :

A not cheaty infinite ore mod. Adds ore patches that appear when ore fields are depleted that can be mined with a pair of advanced mining drill to upgrade mining outposts and provide source of expensive but steady infinite ore.
Adds an high tech infinite ore mining from rare deep core cracks spawned in the world that require heavy refining.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/vtk-deep-core-mining

[FuryoftheStars]

Maybe there could be an infinite resources tech for the end game, which would make ore fields deplete less somehow

The mining productivity research already does this. That additional ore bar that appears after first researching the productivity tech and pops out an ore each time it fills? That's free ore. It doesn't take from the field.

In fact, that's what "productivity" in this game is: free outputs. Everything you use productivity modules in gives you a free output without using resources. As such, these are most effective in end stage products (especially the rocket silo). You could (potentially) use the productivity modules in your miners so they're even better at that, though I suppose it may be debatable if sticking with speed modules may still be better, but it's ultimately going to depend on you, how many fields you have going, what your demand is, etc, etc.

That's also the affect these productivity researches the devs mentioned in this FFF will essentially have.

Productivity gives more product from the ore field but it still depletes to 0 eventually. What I meant is some kind of research that would make the fields to only deplete to less yield but never dry up completely after researched, and even more research would keep the yields slightly less low still. Something like the miners would just dig deeper or something.

Ah, ok, I understand better what you wanted to achieve. I doubt we'll ever see that in vanilla, but searching the mod portal for "infinite resources" or just "infinite" I'm sure will yield a bunch of results.

-------------------------------------------

Yes it gets "cut off", but it's just the spam we lose.

I disagree with you on that, but there's no sense in getting into another dragged out discussion.

[AvengerStar]

It’s weird though, it’s almost like the new infinite productivity research and a 300% cap is there to help make quality eventually get better over time as well, as you shift some productivity modules to quality ones and now don’t lose the productivity in exchange.

It’s almost like we may see a bit more of the picture each week for … oh … I dunno … another 49 or so weeks.

It’s almost like maybe they have solutions to a lot of the concerns ALREADY in the freaking code. Ready for us to rejoice bitch about when given their time to shine fester.

It's almost like they should've fronted with that mindset (the idea that it seems strange now but it'll make sense in the grander context) instead of leaving the playerbase to endlessly speculate about a seemingly out-of-left-field addition.

Remember that the quality mechanic was once considered to release with 1.0, without the supposed additions that give it better meaning or make it generally more practical. There's little current indication here and there that the expansion gives quality broader purpose than present day vanilla, and for the most part that only seems to be related to the spaceship with its limited footprint (meaning you'd want the best of the best machines that you can reasonably get for them).

Perhaps this will change as time passes. But that's no cause to dismiss concern about what is currently presented, as for all we know for sure, this is the extent of it.

[Tricorius]

It's almost like they should've fronted with that mindset (the idea that it seems strange now but it'll make sense in the grander context) instead of leaving the playerbase to endlessly speculate about a seemingly out-of-left-field addition.

They did. Feel free to go reread the FFFs. It’s in there a few times.

I mean, here’s a quote from the Robot Intelligence FFF:

Another nice use of this is that we can use the roboport requests to remove certain robots from the network. Perchance we had some mod with higher quality worker robots, we can request the low quality ones and remove them with a filter inserter, over time removing the worse robots from circulation.

They even gave us a PREVIEW concept before they even introduced quality. I think they’ve thought through the feature quite a bit. When I read that my thought was “sweet, maybe we will get a new tier or two of bots”. I didn’t think we would get 5 (and an easy way for modders to push that quality up even higher). But I like quality WAY better than having ten new tiers of everything cluttering up the recipe lists and UIs.

Trust me, if they have been resolving merge conflicts caused by it for over a year; they believe strongly that it’s an overall improvement to the game. Merge conflicts are a terrible dance with the devil in no moonlight.

Remember that the quality mechanic was once considered to release with 1.0, without the supposed additions that give it better meaning or make it generally more practical.

You’re assuming a lot here; the main reason it wasn’t pushed into 1.0 may very well have been “we’ve recognized we need a larger set of changes to help this mechanic be fun, we don’t have time to put those into 1.0, so we will build it all out for release in 2.0”.

Your guess is as good as mine. But that is a common reason to push a feature into the future.

Perhaps this will change as time passes. But that's no cause to dismiss concern about what is currently presented, as for all we know for sure, this is the extent of it.

But obviously, since items have a chain of steps to produce them, every step has the potential to increase the quality of the intermediate products. With different approaches, and possibly different machines or other ways to improve the productivity of the process (tease of some future FFF content), the cost can be brought lower, but it will always be pretty expensive to get the best stuff.

The very next FFF introduced the new infinite productivity research which over time will allow you to maintain productivity bonuses and ADD quality modules to take advantage of both mechanisms (productivity and quality drives closer to the probabilistic models instead of RNG). The VERY next FFF. I think it’s pretty safe to say many future FFFs will also impact quality, directly or indirectly.

It’s almost like people are choosing to not read the entire FFF content. Maybe because it would get in the way of holy outrage?

[FuryoftheStars]

Again, though, it isn't the Quality mechanic in and of itself that some are "bitching" about. It's the way it was implemented.