TL;DR
In order to improve the accessibility of the quality feature; what if a crafting machine could just handle each quality as an independent independent parallel recipe with its own storage and progress?WHAT? (PROBLEM)
I have dabbled in and out of various topics discussing Quality for a little while now and I've seen a few patterns cropping up between all of them that I decided to dive into a little bit more.Several threads are discussing the ability to mix and match quality components with different rulesets involved:
116817 , 117524 , 123000 , 122734 ,
A common theme here is that there seems to be a desire to insert higher quality components into lower quality recipes. Some solutions want to simply lose the quality; some want it to be preserved somehow by contributing to the end product quality. But why is there so much of a desire to add this functionality? Well I think this (rather old) thread at this point highlights it somewhat nicely: 119448
To break it down a little bit the core problem can be described as the following:
The need to treat higher quality items as contaminants acts as a deterrent to engaging with the feature fully and adds an accessibility cliff to users who want to fully engage with the feature (since the entire factory has to be tooled in order to handle adding it to anything more than end products.
The easiest way to deal with the above issues currently is to basically just turn your entire base into a bot base and forgo using belts to transport anything more than common materials. However, I am of the opinion that anything bots can do belts should be able to do just as well; the choice to use bots should be a different solution with its own pros and cons, not the obviously better one.
WHAT? (SOLUTION)
So why not add my feedback to these other threads? Well, my solution is different from the ones I've seen so far even if they try to address similar problems..Originally I shared a similar viewpoint that a solution to the above would be to just let higher components mesh with lower recipes in some way or another; however at 3AM while lying in bed I found myself dwelling on some comments made about how overhauling the quality system would be prohibitively difficult; likewise another comment about how the idea of losing quality items to low quality recipes was a removed feature was also bouncing around in my head.
And then I got hit with a sudden epiphany. Why does the interaction have to be complicated? Why do you have to actually lose the items outright? What if instead of each machine having to select the exact quality it works on, what if instead it's just a filter on what qualities the machine /CAN/ work on?
What if the machine just had two separate parallel recipes it could accept? No special inventory system, no special mechanics for handling things. Just two separate storages and production bars... Something like:
- Draft 1
- 12-02-2024, 15-14-58.png (91.68 KiB) Viewed 146 times
This first draft interface assumes that the crafting machine can operate on each recipe in parallel; however if we want to maintain existing game balance (one machine per recipe; doing two in one is illegal). We would want an interface that makes it obvious that only one can operate at once:
- Draft 2
- 12-02-2024, 15-15-28.png (84.15 KiB) Viewed 146 times
- Draft 3
- 12-02-2024, 15-15-41.png (85.35 KiB) Viewed 146 times
Priority would be given to higher qualities in this configuration. So if a machine could work on rare or uncommon, it will start with rare until that is exhausted.
You may also notice checkboxes next to each recipe/quality in both views. This is basically the way to set a machine to only attempt to craft certain qualities and not accept ingredients for other ones. This is here such that existing factories still function exactly how they did before (with machines being set to only do common or only do uncommon, etc). It lets you fine tune what machines are allowed to craft what.
Okay so what about existing factory setups? Wouldn't this make them obsolete? No actually and here's why: Productivity modules. If you have an assembling machine accepting all rarities, you are restricted on how many productivity modules you can slap into it. So if you want your legendries with 4 productivities instead of 4 quality modules (duh) you would have to have a separate machine setup for that explicitly. Or if you want your purples to have a split of productivity and quality, etc etc.
WHY?
* Quality is now more approachable and accessible because the overhead to getting into it fully is lower initially.* Interface for dealing with quality is more simplified, since machines can just default to doing all the things.
* Existing builds that promote separation of components are still optimal because they can optimize quality modules with productivity modules better than other setups.
* Separation of components with belts is a lot more feasible than before meaning bot strategies are not dominant here.
* Existing functionality (inserters, circuit conditions, etc) can basically operate exactly how they did before.
* Moddability to potentially allow one assembling machine to work multiple recipes??? No idea but could be neat.
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