Ability to craft lower quality with higher quality

[Tinyboss]

Y'all have to know that any total overhaul of quality that takes several page-long posts to describe, even before the guaranteed problems are discovered by playtesting, is never going to happen, right? The only suggestions that will be implemented at this point will be small, self-contained changes that make a clear and limited improvement to the system as it is.

I feel like it is kinda reductive to tell people that their suggestions (in particular on an ideas and suggestion board) are not worth having because it seems like they aren't going to happen.

There is plenty of value in suggestions that may never get implemented. I for one enjoy learning things and seeing different viewpoints on the same features/concepts; and I imagine modders likewise may find inspiration in suggestions that developers might pass over.

And likewise just because a feature is delivered and changing it might shake up a lot of foundations, doesn't mean there isn't some great unrealized potential to be squeezed out of said suggestions. A massive suggestion for an overhaul might accidentally illuminate some obvious path to greatness that someone else might have simply glossed over; or reveal some sort of hidden issue that slipped under the floorboards.

I think we should generally be encouraging people to voice their genuine ideas more instead of scaring off folk who lack the confidence because they are afraid of confrontation or afraid of their ideas being shot down; but maybe that's just me

Your point is well taken. My bad.

[BlueTemplar]

Speaking of (relatively) small changes :
How about allowing quality downgrade through the already existing effect of speed modules ?

[Syriusz]

It feels like the game right now is focused too much on exponentiation of growth. The solution to issues with quality is to make 100x more of everything and upcycle what you do not want. While it is nice for those that want to get into mega? giga? bases as soon as possible, it doesn't feel right for players that don't play 100s of hours every month. And even then, some people may not enjoy that fast of a growth. It may feel natural for devs that play late game of 2.0 for months, but not for many players.
I feel same for demolishers for example- they are extremely difficult until you get uranium cannon shells with certain dmg upgrade, after that small demolisher melts if attacked from back. Just like that, one upgrade for dmg and from very hard, it becomes trivial. The answer for small demolisher is not some clever design, it's just to grind faster for physical dmg upgrade, and for medium and big, just get a railgun, you won't need to fight them before that anyway. And then, you don't even need defences on Vulcanus.

So, my point is, that I wish that at least there would be mod for this, because once I finish vanilla game, I doubt I will enjoy or even be able to make such growth with mods. But I doubt there is easy, efficient way to do this with mods.

[BlueTemplar]

You mean for late-game epic and especially legendary qualities ?
Because for uncommon and rare qualities, getting machines with more module slots, inherent productivity, and higher tier modules (themselves of better quality) is achievable by mid-game and helps a lot without having to scale production x100.
(Some of this of course comes from these machines having higher speed, but it's somewhat tempered by the slowdown from quality modules.)