Have quality seeds grow quality plants

[animexamera]

TL;DR

Make quality seeds plant quality crops

What?

(This is a better version of the thread viewtopic.php?p=639555#p639555)
E. g. receive uncommon Yumako from uncommon Yumako seeds.

Why?

It just makes sense that better seeds should do something. It would also be in line with the bacteria, were you can also grow quality bacteria into quality bacteria.
Let us build huge high quality farms on Gleba!!!

[Tinyboss]

One concern is that once you get a few quality seeds, you have unlimited quality fruits and more quality seeds forever.

Quality bacteria are currently balanced by the need for a constant stream of quality consumables in addition to the bacteria themselves. Although this suggestion would also trivialize that.

[ividyon]

I would also be happy if quality seeds would simply lead to a tree bearing more fruit.

[Henour]

One concern is that once you get a few quality seeds, you have unlimited quality fruits and more quality seeds forever.

Quality bacteria are currently balanced by the need for a constant stream of quality consumables in addition to the bacteria themselves. Although this suggestion would also trivialize that.

If growth time would go down, but yield per tree as well with quality you could get more (or the same amount of fruits) per plot, but avoid the problem of having a cycle of infinite quality seeds.

But it's not the most intuitive things so probably won't happen.

[erronius]

Right now getting higher quality fruits is difficult on Gleba. Essentially the only effective way to do this that I have found is "upcycling" normal fruit, i.e. putting it into a recycler with quality modules until it comes out at the quality you want.

TLDR: Increase options for quality fruit. Preferred method: quality seeds generate quality fruit.

The problems with the current situation:

1. It feels bad that quality seeds are basically good for nothing. "Ooh, I just got an epic Yumako seed, what do I do with it?" -> Burn it. Yes, higher quality seeds can be planted like normal but since they don't stack with normal seeds and they don't do anything special, you are just adding complication for no benefit.

2. Gleba feels like by far the hardest/least rewarding planet to get serious amounts of quality. On Fulgora, it is relatively easy to put quality mods in miners, and then upcycle that quality scrap to get all kinds of quality items (LDS, blue chips, etc) which can then be further upcycled. On Vulcanus, you have basically infinite resources and can just dump the stuff you don't want (not to mention the amount of high quality copper you can get from making LDS from a couple quality plastic).

3. There is literally no benefit to quality Agriculture Towers other than that their health increases. They're also one of the only production buildings that you can't put modules in (understandable to some extent as they work in a different way).


Detailed suggestions:

1. Simple - quality seeds generate quality fruit, end of story. When a quality seed is planted the tree will grow normally and the harvest result is quality fruit.

2. More complex - quality seeds planted by a quality Ag tower generate quality fruit. This would be more complicated and would make quality work in a way that it doesn't work elsewhere, so this is maybe questionable, but it would make generating quality fruit a BIT more of an investment than just the 1st approach.

3. If the above suggestions feel too easy (though again, compared to what's available on other planets I think they would be on par), then allow modules in Ag towers. (This could also be done in combination with above). This would provide an additional logistic/sorting challenge and be a bigger investment that the player needs to defend.

I'm aware that there is already a mod that goes in this direction: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/quality-seeds . The reason I think this should be part of the core game is similar to the reason the biolab was added; even after that addition, Gleba feels like the longest walk for the shortest drink of water out of the initial 3 new planets.

[Nemoricus]

My problem with this idea is that it would likely take the situation from being perhaps a bit too difficult to trivializing getting quality on Gleba. Once you have even one Q5 seed, plant it, process the fruits to seeds, get more Q5 seeds, plant again, and before you know it you've got entire fields of Q5 plants putting out Q5 produce. From there, you could trivially get Q5 of anything that can be derived from fruit.

[angramania]

Gleba is bad for quality because of combination of spoiling mechanic and current silly(full rocket of single item) interplanetary logistic. Your idea will not help to solve this problem. Instead it leads to even more silliness - everything will be legendary on Gleba, which just kill idea of rarity of quality.

[erronius]

OK, the "everything would be legendary once you find the first legendary seed" is an issue I guess. It ties into the whole loop of the planet which isn't really my favorite mechanic in the first place. I still think the simpler solution of allowing Quality modules in Ag towers would offer a good alternative way than just "more upcycling". Overall I like the quality system a lot, in part because there are often many ways to do it, depending on your goals. It is at its most boring and frustrating when there is only one way to do it, AKA upcycling.

Edit: Another potential solution/limitation could be that the quality trees would yield a smaller amount of fruit to the point where it's not sustainable as a loop. If it only produces 25 or 20 fruit, it would take a lot of legendary prod modules to make that a positive loop. Again, it just feels really discouraging that quality seeds (like quality holmium ore) are somehow worth less than normal quality, in effect.

[DeadMG]

Additionally since you can turn fruits into flux, this would meean way more supply of legendary plastic/sulfur and copper/iron ore, which is probably not desirable. I'd maybe like some better quality fruit options but it's definitely a risky area. Quality modules in the agri tower may be nice but not too much

[Ranakastrasz]

Could make it so that the yield partly benefits. Like legendary seeds yield normal fruit, but though a 100% quality boost so 90% uncommon, 9% rare, etc.

25% boost per quality tier.

[bountygiver]

Or make quality seeds just grow faster, can be simplified to plants start with a certain amount of growth already based on quality. (To match the 30% bonus per tier, it would be uncommon -> legendary as skipping these amount of growth progress: 23/37.5/48/60)

[Ranakastrasz]

Or make quality seeds just grow faster, can be simplified to plants start with a certain amount of growth already based on quality. (To match the 30% bonus per tier, it would be uncommon -> legendary as skipping these amount of growth progress: 23/37.5/48/60)

O_O I like that. Along side a faster spinning+Extending harvester. Higher density of production is possible that way.

[waterBear]

You suppose the same thing affects fish breeding or bacteria cultivation? If you allow quality recipes for things that make themselves, then it becomes trivial to make infinite legendary items of that kind if you just get enough to start the reaction. Quality modules are not allowed for fish breeding, so the same thing applies there - the only way to get legendary fish is recycling w/ quality modules. This bit me when I wanted to make a quality spidertron.

[moonunit1234]

I registered on this forum just come here and say you SHOULD get quality fruit from quality seeds. Upcycling literally everything on Gleba is not fun. Thats Fulgoras mechanic. I do not need to make high quality overgrowth. I need high quality fruit and I am not going to mega base to get more than 50 an hour.

[erkki772]

If seeds would plant quality fruits, then only balanced option would be no seeds from quality fruits. Or less % per quality, so it wouldn't go positive. Legendary fruit would be like 0.5% seed per fruit

[Swannicus]

Made a forum account just to post this; Quality Seeds make Quality Tree which have a chance to produce Quality Fruit.
For example uncommon seed would produce an uncommon tree, the uncommon tree when harvested would have a 10% chance for each fruit to be uncommon, if not then it would be common.
Rare tree could do the same with 10% rare and 90% common, or it could be a cascade of probabilities.
IE Legendary tree could go 10% legendary fruit, 10% epic, 10% rare, 10% uncommon, 60% common.
Numbers are of course subject to balancing changes but this would provide a similar logistical challenge to other quality loops with a bit of Gleba flair and prevent you trivially making purely legendary products. It would be cool to have a legendary jellynut vineyard, protected by only the best with decorative concrete patterns surrounding the defensive perimeter.

[erronius]

I like the idea of a quality tree either providing a chance at quality fruits or a smaller amount of fruit. I think the idea of it splitting qualities (here's 20 regular, 20 uncommon, 10 rare) is probably not workable because of the output slots of the machine.

It's just a #feelsbad moment when you have epic and legendary seeds and you realize they are literally worth less than normal, similar to holmium ore (which IMO is another thing that could be fixed).

[Swannicus]

No need to split qualities per tree. Just the whole tree has a chance to output fruit of equal quality or lower. This also introduces a very large variance in numbers of quality fruit for farms until you get to very large farms/factories which is another interesting logistical problem on Gleba since most factory setups on Gleba break if they go dry. Could actually be worthwhile to have one factory that changes all its recipes between quality levels via circuits based on incoming fruit quality.

[SutiituS]

I feel that having some better way of accessing better tiers would be Gleba's theme. You get better quality research from there anyway.

Right now I feel Gleba has no reward like the other planets, instead it's a net negative you just have to deal with. Really, the most you'd get is high quality plastic, rocket fuel, sulfur, iron, and copper. You could even make it a bit of a logistic nuisance for soils.
Vulcanis has L I Q U I D with incredibly fast processing, Shocky lightning place has a lot of your late-game items. You can make a pretty simple upcycle at Nauvis for basic resource quality. Gleba is just there, at least in my eyes.

Edit here: Just had a lil idea that may help with the balance in Gleba. Make the microorganism dudes unable to raise in quality. Now you can get quality seeds/plants easily, but you won't be able to produce any quality iron/copper there.

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into an older thread with the same suggestion.