Ability to craft lower quality with higher quality

[quineotio]

There's literally no difference. The post-game in 1.0 was all about making the big number go up.

Not true. In 1.0 you probably have a bunch of tech still to unlock and have no infinite research when you hit the end screen, and you're probably still in your starter base. When I'd finished space age I had no tech left to unlock and my infinite techs were all at at least level 10. And in 1.0, expanding was relatively easy, whereas it takes much longer in space age (because you have to scale up 5 factories).

In 1.0 SPM was a meaningful measurement, but in space age it's meaningless - it goes up without you needing to do anything. And as I said above, in 1.0 you could build something to a set number, but in space age you can't because you keep getting higher quality and additional productivity. The only tech you get post end screen invalidates scaling, because you literally get the same result without any effort by just leaving your computer on.

[quineotio]

Your entire comment is extremely misguided, IMO.

"It makes infrastructural progression into a real problem with complex solutions, rather than being completely trivial like in 1.0."

No, the opposite. As I said in my initial post, I didn't need to scale AT ALL in space age. I upgraded my steel furnaces to uncommon and my inserters to stack and that covered me for the whole game. In 1.0 I needed to "add additional furnace stacks", which was a logistics problem - more stuff to move around. In space age, I set up trains right at the beginning and never had to touch them. If I'd wanted I could have "made number go up" much further without doing anything difficult.

"it actually makes the post-game harder because it's an additional system you have to solve in order to maximize the output of your factory."

No, it makes the post game take longer because you need to wait for all the quality items. The builds are actually easier, because you need less machines.

"It doesn't trivialize anything pre-victory either"

If the game is balanced around normal quality, and you have rare, then it's much easier, yes?

"If you're engaging with quality to any meaningful degree before the victory screen, you're probably just wasting time"

I agree, and this is one of the reason I think it's a dud system.

"quality is not trivial to work with"

Yes it is - you just set up some bots. It's very easy.

[nzer]

As I said in my initial post, I didn't need to scale AT ALL in space age. I upgraded my steel furnaces to uncommon and my inserters to stack and that covered me for the whole game. In 1.0 I needed to "add additional furnace stacks", which was a logistics problem - more stuff to move around. In space age, I set up trains right at the beginning and never had to touch them. If I'd wanted I could have "made number go up" much further without doing anything difficult.

You didn't need to "scale" at all pre-victory in 1.0 either. I know because I never did. I just set up a bus that I knew would be able to handle 45 SPM and plopped down monolithic science blueprints. Zero thought needed to be given to logistics, because the required output to "win" in a reasonable amount of time was absurdly low, even if you were doing there is no spoon. Maybe you'd throw down some rails if you were feeling cheeky, but you didn't need to, because two or three patches was more than enough to get you to the rocket.

The same is true in SA. Quality is so unnecessary to win that engaging with it at all is a waste of time if all you're trying to do is win. A fun waste of time for most people, but a waste nonetheless. I guarantee it took you more time to upgrade to uncommon furnaces than it would have taken you to just paste down another furnace array. You don't even avoid the logistical implications, you still have to handle the increased consumption and production of your uncommon furnaces.

No, it makes the post game take longer because you need to wait for all the quality items. The builds are actually easier, because you need less machines.

You are misunderstanding what Factorio's post-game is about on a fundamental level. You do not "need less machines" when your machines are more powerful, because the goal is not to hit some arbitrary level of output. People didn't build 1k SPM, 5k SPM, and 10k SPM factories in 1.0 because there's any special significance to those numbers, they built them because those levels of output required a factory roughly the size of what they wanted to build. If you multiply the outputs of all the machines by 10 people aren't going to sit around complaining that it's so easy to build 1k, 5k and 10k SPM factories, they're going to build 10k, 50k, and 100k SPM instead. And they're going to have to work harder for it, because in this particular analogy they have to engage with a whole new game system to get those fancy 10x machines.

Yes it is - you just set up some bots. It's very easy.

This could be said about literally everything in the game, both in 1.0 and SA. It's a completely unserious argument.

[quineotio]

[Moderated by Koub : Off topic]

[nzer]

[Moderated by Koub : Off topic]

[quineotio]

[Moderated by Koub : Off topic]

[Koub]

[Koub] Please behave, thank you.

[h.q.droid]

I think a simpler solution would be a "quality downgrader" that takes anything with a higher quality and changes it to a specified lower quality, like a recycler but with 100% output. That would also fix the usability problem of quality seeds / holmium ores / ice and enable less cumbersome upcycler designs when you have legendary chips overflowing but not enough uncommon / rare ones for upcycling foundries and stuff.

[Orum]

A quality downgrader would be wonderful, and probably the simplest and easiest way to handle this. Whatever the solution though, I've already run into a couple places where I really want lower quality versions of items over higher quality. Namely omnidirectional turrets when used on platforms, but also fusion reactors.

[StragaSevera]

I really struggle to understand why devs didn't comment on this issue already. It is such an obvious point of contention that even an explicit dismissal of a "working as intended, find a way to destroy your high-quality items if you don't need them" kind is nessesary.
Personally, I'm in big favour of the re-binning concept (a machine/belt/... that tears out the blue quality sticker and replaces it with a green one), but whatever is a decision, it needs to be announced for the health of the game.

[Muche]

I really struggle to understand why devs didn't comment on this issue already.

My guess is they were pretty much focused on fixing bugs until Christmas holidays. Now might be the time they start refocusing on what will be in 2.1.

[CensoredUsername]

I ended up having a discussion about the same issue (https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... on_or_why/) before finding this thread.

Anyway, my suggestion would be as follows: For inserters, when selecting a quality filter that covers a range of qualities, provide the option to coerce everything it picks up to the lowest quality allowed. So they can pick them up as high quality parts, turn them into lower quality parts, and then deposit them somewhere.

This makes logical sense. Down-binning a component isn't a manufacturing step. It's just deciding to treat a rare iron plate like an iron plate, because well, it is. This also avoids any problems in assemblers around needing many input slots for different qualities. It should probably have a clear icon in alt-mode to indicate that it is doing this, but aside from that it's simple. There's normally no use for inserters with quality ranges into production buildings right now, so it also shouldn't interfere with anything.

[Dixi]

This could be a nice change. For sample, currently I have to trash extra Uncommon plates, because I'm just getting too much of them, while I need mostly Rares and above.

Seeing 9+ pages of replies in this thread, I can assume that it's a really wanted feature.
But I have a feeling, that dev's decide to stop any improvements, except bugfixes, since none of proposals were implemented, afaik.

[Rancara]

So, When I was searching to see if anyone had already made a thread for the suggestion I had in mind (basically this one), I didn't find this thread, because different people often don't describe the same idea with the same title/subject line. So I wound up making a (mostly) duplicate suggestion. It has a couple differences, and is more thorough in outlining how it would work. But is mostly the same.

Most notable differences/points though are:
- I would allow the player to select ANY combination of allowed or disallowed ingredient qualities. Basically just put a check box next to each quality and let them choose any combination. Do anything less than a given quality if you want to save higher. Do anything greater than a given if you want a product of at least X-quality. Or even do some stupidly weird combination, like allowing common, rare, and legendary, but not uncommon or epic, if for some reason you want to.
- Have the interface dynamically add a row of input slots for each different quality that gets simultaneously inserted. If the total ingredients of ALL qualities inserted are sufficient, regardless of quality, run the recipe.
- Your objection, @myridium,

It seems like a good idea at first but it's no good to allow a probabilistic choice like that because the player can get around having to have a high quality expensive ingredient. They could dilute the odds with high quality chips and avoid supplying that high quality modular suit mk. 2, for example. Although, maybe there is a way to make this work if the ingredients are weighted by the total amount of raw ingredients (iron ore, etc) required...

is one I had already solved, using essentially your same solution. Not because I was thinking of or trying to solve that problem specifically, but simply because it just made sense to me that that's how it should work. I even went into much more detail on describing exactly how the probabilities of the product's quality would be calculated.

Here's a quote of the original post of the thread I made.
It's subject/title was/is "Multiple Qualities of Ingredients in Same Recipe".

TL;DR

Allow combinations of different qualities of ingredients to be used at the same time in a production machine, with more of higher quality ingredients giving higher chances of higher quality products, and the lowest quality ingredient being the lowest possible quality product.

What?

Instead of selecting a single ingredient quality when choosing a recipe in you production structures, allow combinations of allowed (or disallowed) ingredient qualities. This might sound impossible, but it's not. Here's how I currently envision it working (subject of course to refinement if people suggest better ideas or improvements on how to make it work):

Each item in game is assigned a "component amount value" (or CAV) that indicates how much of a product that that thing makes up when used as an ingredient. More complex items have a higher value than simpler ones, because they are made of more component materials. So, for example,
- Iron Ore is a very base level component. It would have a CAV of 1. (Or we could start at 10 or something in case other lower items get added later, but for now lets say 1).
- Iron Plate is made of 1 iron ore, and thus, also has a CAV of 1.
- Steel Plates are each made of 5 Iron Plates, and thus have a CAV of 5.
- Copper Plate, or course, would also have a CAV of 1.
- Batteries are made with 1 Iron and 1 Copper Plate. Their CAV=2.
...and so on and so forth.

Now, suppose I have a mix of different qualities of supplies for building myself some... lets say Cargo Bays... for a new space platform I'm building.
Cargo bays are made of/use the following components and sub-components:
- Iron Plate (1 CAV ea.)
- Copper Plate (1 CAV ea.)
- Cable (0.5 CAV ea.)
- Green Circuits (2.5 CAV ea.)
- Plastic (0.5 CAV ea.)
- Red Circuits (8 CAV ea.)
- Blue Circuits (66 CAV ea.)
- Steel Plate (5 CAV ea.)
- LDS (32.5 CAV ea.)
Total Materials for the C.Bay
- 20 Steel Plate (100 CAV @ 5 ea.)
- 5 Blue Circuits (330 CAV @ 66 ea.)
- 20 LDS (650 CAV @ 32.5 ea.)
= 1080 total CAV.

Now, lets say I tell my assembler to use any quality it can get. (Obviously, this means it will need an array of input slots, with a fresh row appearing for each separate quality that gets inserted. Clunky, I know, but lets run with it for now.) Inserters will grab ingredients of any quality available off the belt, so lets use a random number generator for this example to simulate a random mix of ingredients. And the results are...

Steel Plate: 3 comn (15 CAV), 4 uncomn (20 CAV), 4 rare (20 CAV), 3 epic (15 CAV), 6 legd (30 CAV)
Blue C.: 2 epic (132 CAV), 3 legd (198 CAV)
LDS: 3 comn (97.5 CAV), 2 uncmn (65 CAV), 7 rare (227.5 CAV), 5 epic (162.5 CAV), 3 legd (97.5 CAV)
Total CAV in Each Quality:
Common = 112.5 (10.416% of the total CAV that the C.Bay is made of)
Uncommon = 85 (7.87% of C.Bay total)
Rare = 247.5 (22.916%)
Epic = 309.5 (28.657%)
Legendary = 325.5 (30.139%)

Not a typically realistic distribution, I know, but it serves its purpose for this example.

As I'm sure you've already guessed, those percentages of the Cargo Bay's total component amount value are the base chances of getting a cargo bay of their corresponding qualities, BEFORE factoring in quality modules. After the quality of the product has been decided from components, any Q.modules would then have their chance to upgrade it further.

Some final notes/reviews on what this means:
- The lowest quality ingredient used would be the lowest possible product.
- The highest quality ingredient would be the highest possible product, unless quality modules are used.
- Input slots in production structures would have to be expanded to include a row for each quality. (The interface could grow these rows dynamically as more qualities are used, in order to keep things as simple as possible.)
- When selecting ingredient quality for a recipe, you would be able to specify any combination of qualities desired. (Say, for example, I could allow common, uncommon, rare, and epic, but leave legendary unchecked in order to save it. Or I could allow only the use of Rare or higher if I want the builder to pick out ingredients for products of at least that quality.)

Why?

Well, for starters, it immediately bugged me on my first playthrough when I discovered that this was impossible. It seemed so obvious. Like, "that's how it would work, so why doesn't it?"

With more experience, I realized the probable reason for why this ability wasn't made possible. The need to sort out qualities to avoid blockages provides a logistical challenge for players to have fun figuring out.

On the other hand though, I think other things could be gained from implementing such a system. The ability to mix qualities like this reminds me of one of the VERY BEST crafting systems that I have EVER encountered in ANY game. Period. By a WIDE margin. Namely, the system used during the mid-beta releases of a once great but now dead game called Firefall.

Factorio is not Firefall, and this feature would not turn Factorio's crafting system into Firefall's. Not by a long shot. Nor should it. But I still think there are some ways in which Factorio could benefit in similar ways from doing this similar thing.

Maybe that's just me, and other people wouldn't find this as fun as I think I would. Perhaps it would be better for me to go straight to making a mod that does this, instead of trying to propose it for the base game. Then again, I figure it's at least worth presenting with an open mind as a possibility. Constructive criticism will be valued and enjoyed.