coffee-factorio wrote: Wed Jun 18, 2025 7:03 pm You're going to post an image of a gigantic plastic refinery that uses perhaps the least efficient upcycle practical?
I already did to show there was many working method possible, it illustrate that it makes no sense to have the approach you had when quoting me about the best setup.
It should be obvious to you know, because that's also written in the link you posted too, that efficiency in ressources and cost of the setup are opposite ,targetting one decrease the other and vice versa, and as such it was fairly obvious from the get go that you were saying wrong things when considering the "best" setup without considering they all have trade-off based on what players choose to value in their game.
Anyway, that doesn't make your failed setup any better right ? It's still going to fail and clog, no matter what i post on this forum to illustrate other ways that actually works.
Typical noob trap , that's when try to copy something you don't understand, you compare your failed setup to the original one that was posted, maybe allow me to project, because you feel targeted with critics that weren't adressed to the setup you copied, so you may feel it's personnal.coffee-factorio wrote: Wed Jun 18, 2025 7:03 pm We've already taken criticizing things for producing limited sets of items off the table because NineNine's build runs enough to solve beginners problems.
But no not all , your setup is just a failed copy, it was mentionned many times, you need to have the ability to add or void material outside of the loop, which is possible to do with the requester chest on the setup you attempted to copy, but not on your version, which is necessarily going to fail everytime for reasons that were also explained many times and in detail !
I can also repost the explanations that you seem to have missed :
If you see anything wrong that you want to point out, feel free, as i did when you posted wrong reasonning about how the mining bonus is what make Vulcanus good at upcycling, or when you said Fulgora is surface limited on late game, or when you misused math concept , or when you posted setup that do not work and pretended they do.mmmPI wrote: Sun May 11, 2025 12:54 am
- 1)At least the way i understand it, if you want certain specific items like substation or beacons, it's easier to make dedicated loop for those items.
- 2)If you want a full spaceship or a full armor, you want a bit of many different material, but not in mass production, you don't really need recycler you can have a few % of your machines dedicated to this, or a specific small quality subfactory switching receipe that backs up when nothing's needed.
- 3)If you want most everything in high quality, you will probably use different methods that are only available/making sense with advanced infinite research in productivities area and try to have the raw ressources of high quality for fully legendary production lane.
If there is really just one or two ways then why ask which is the best approach ? I think there are countless ways to effectively create high quality items. But they all have requirements / trade-off or are best suited to certain goals and situations.
Even in the little breakdown i mentionned there are different possibilities, i understand more the feeling of being lost than the 2 'paradox' i quoted. Some of the "efficient techniques" to me involve getting the asteroid in high quality, it's efficient because it's "infinite ressources" and doesn't require a lot of footprint/investement ressources for the parts ; compared to on-planet factories they are also easy to duplicate.
But spaceship cost UPS, compared Vulcanus lava, which can also be used to get infinite ressources, and with the addition of calcite potentially from space, stone too, and those provide easy way to get high quality materials if you use certain receipe recycling like low densisty structure or undergroud pipes. Though you may have a bottleneck by the landing pad if your science is already in the million per hour or so x).
Those methods are available for "very late game" "postgame" or "mid game" depending on the playstyle i would say. They correspond to different ways of approaching the 3) because i think that may be what you have identified as the one or two best ways to do.
But it's also possible to have "some machines" alongside your whole factory like 1 furnace out of 12 or the 17th when you really needed 16, with quality modules in it, reading a chest that take away the "lucky-quality-thing" you get from the rest of the factory ; and not working when the chest has a decent buffer of "rare" or "uncommon".
Then at the circuit level. If you get half a chest of iron plate copper plate steel and circuits , of "quality level 3" this way, you are able to make certain item from "quality material" ,to be sure to have them, like the personnal armor or weapons or other things that are not produced in high enough quantity to hope to get them if not from material already "quality".
It's "efficient" because there is no recycling involved, and you get access to "what you need" "when you need". It can "evolve" during a game if you add some recycler loop for certain item, It's a bit up to each players i'd say to choose where to invest, i know many players goes for the exoskeletons as the first item for which they use recycler loop, often manually or bot fed, as a side production in their factory. I know others don't because they use a lot more remote view. If you start by recycling 1 item like exoskeletons, and you already had some quality material from machine with modules but no recycler ( on nauvis), it can combine, you now get access to "lubricated engine" and "blue circuit" from your recycler loop for exos alongside the other quality material from furnace or EM plant to maybe start a dedicated line for thrusters or beacons, bot/manually fed. ( combining the (1) and (2) from previous answer).
Conclusion :
How to upcycle depend a lot on what you want to have and when, the mass production method are only available late game, they involve producing raw ressources at high quality. Some players consider the game as "finished" by then , others the game as "only starting". Thus it's hard to advise a particular setup without more information on "what do you need ?" and "when ?". Hopefully i provided explanations on the second part for why i think it's important to answer those question before thinking of the actual design, beause there are options to choose from that would work to different degree. I think having an idea of the different ways that exist allow to plan better the strategy over the course of a full game, to only focus on quality when necessary without over investement or postponing it forever, but it's a delicate balance to anticipate our own needs during a game and choose the design that match best.
I believe it can help players to spot what is a failed setup for recycling, and also flag people's whose arguments are non-sense.
( unlike quality agricultural tower ). Maybe after the electromagnetic plants ? but that would mean returning back to Gleba ..... 
