Friday Facts #375 - Quality

[Daxo]

I'm really having a hard time wrapping my head around why this feature is eliciting such a divided response. It's bringing a very commonly accepted feature from countless other modern games and causing factorio players to think about how to deal with automating it. Having to do the math around if it's even worth it to automate it. It adds complexity and also some interesting decisions that will need to be made.

And on top of that, it's completely optional? If you don't want to play with quality just.... don't?

[OdinEidolon]

It's awful, this is factorio, not some shooter with equipment rarity. If I cannot disable this """""""feature""""""" entirely, I will not buy the expansion.

You appear to have missed the fact that Quality is entirely optional and there is no need to ever make a higher Quality item. They even state in the FFF that they've played entire games to completion without using any thing to do with Quality.

It says that it will be "invisible". What I don't understand is whether I'll get the items with different stats regardless or not.

[DracoVonnhound]

Loved the mechanic, the scrapping and all but the naming... It feels like i am opening loot boxes on some generic games. Some better, engineering-fitting names would sound so much better and fit into factorio.

[Tricorius]

I love it.

And I can't wait to build my first fuel quality optimization loops.

I hope there is an achievement for taking out your first legendary behemoth biter.

[Nosferatu]

It says that it will be "invisible". What I don't understand is whether I'll get the items with different stats regardless or not.

You only get higher quality items if you have quality modules in your machine.

[Frantic Fanatic]

I just don't think the concept and Factorio go together. The whole point of Factorio is mass automation, and the quality occurs from inventing better MK machines and concepts, not random chance.

Having a random chance to craft a better quality item is fine for an organic craftsman refining their trade, but factory assembly arms and machines are only as good as the engineering, coding, and maintenance put into them. If anything, quality would be a thing that goes down over time due to the degradation of assembly machines, not up, and it definitely would not be up to random chance.

The problem is, degradation of machines is something very few people want and any solutions I try and come up with for increased quality either adds recipe complexity, copies MK versions of machines, or is just a linear quality science research.



Edit: Also, yes, the names and icons need to change, but the icons look like placeholders, and I'll assume the names are too.

[Gnark]

This is awesome.
Will add great tool for my futur mega factory, great new challenge to mass produce quality.
Those who don't like it, can just ignore it ...

Will ores have quality ?
Will plate be recyclable ? (I suppose if they have quality)

The reclycler seems to gain from quality of the item you put in to get better original ingredients.

[OdinEidolon]

It says that it will be "invisible". What I don't understand is whether I'll get the items with different stats regardless or not.

You only get higher quality items if you have quality modules in your machine.

It's a shame they wasted development time for such a "feature" but if it's really optional then all is good.

[Philip017]

Mining drills deplete resources slower.

now i wonder what does this mean?
does the mining drill have better productivity?
does it mine slower by producing less ores?
maybe some combination of both so it mines slower, but still produces the same number of ores, just that the one that is normally free from productivity, getting an extra ore, is instead not mined.
perhaps the wording can be improved.

[POPISowyNumer]

Me no like it
Me no like it very much

From the names, through the RNG mess of the system involved, to the implications on the gameplay

The expansion isn't yet released and I am already waiting for a mod that will un-dumdum this concept

[morsk]

I'm really having a hard time wrapping my head around why this feature is eliciting such a divided response. It's bringing a very commonly accepted feature from countless other modern games and causing factorio players to think about how to deal with automating it. Having to do the math around if it's even worth it to automate it. It adds complexity and also some interesting decisions that will need to be made.

And on top of that, it's completely optional? If you don't want to play with quality just.... don't?

It looks like some trauma / disgust reaction to loot crates, even though it's not really a loot crate if it's free and automated. The names aren't helping. I like it because I appreciate what it's adding alternatives to. Current optimization is always to skip middle steps in logistics, and use max beacons. The Space Exploration mod goes so far as to nerf the beacon to stop this. The item quality will mean choosing which middle steps to do quality increase in, but others are still the stupid 12-beacon everyone's addicted to, so there's a combination.

[Zaflis]

I also have 1 favorite mod currently, Recipe Tweaker:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/recipe-tweaker

It's perfect for the increased machine speeds and productivity. This lets me alter gear recipe for example from
2 iron plates -> 1 gear in 0.5 seconds
into
20 iron plates -> 10 gears in 5 seconds

And same for other basic quick ingredients and all in a nice UI. I imagine i'll keep using it still with the new expansion. Just watching flashing progress-bars is not really great in tracking how it operates, nor fill/take out machine inventory in time. With slower time you know much better if there was or was not microsecond production pauses.

Now that i think about it, the problem probably stems from too small amount of items that assemblers make in the output, and also take to input.

Also i absolutely like the new features mentioned! Naysayers can just not use quality modules if they don't want them.

[Tricorius]

It's a shame they wasted development time for such a "feature" but if it's really optional then all is good.

You have like 50 more FFFs before you should make that call. I expect this is foundational to a lot of the new stuff going into the expansion.

Do you choose between a slower space platform that gathers its own fuel or do you preload it with high quality rocket fuel and let it get there faster?

There are so many optimizations that this base system might unlock.

How many times have people whined about solar panels not putting out enough power? Well, now you have five tiers of them automatically. And if that isn’t enough power you can burn tier five nuclear fuel cells in a tier five nuclear reactor.

I think they just opened up Factorio in ways we can hardly imagine.

[Splitframe]

I am a little torn, but ready to try it out.
In our world there are also quality differences, so it would make sense that higher quality parts are able to produce higher quality products that perform better.

The only thing I don't like are the names. They are too "MMO / World of Warcraft" where I think you got the inspiration from
since it's rather close to the Dragonflight profession system.

I would suggest "Shoddy, Normal, Good, Excellent, Pristine" or something similar.
Maybe consult some ISO Standards to look how they name it.

[vonflare]

Initially upon reading the post my feelings were mixed, but after thinking about the implications in terms of multiple bases on different planets I can see it being a compelling mechanic. I 100% agree that the names are terrible though. Should be something that fits in better with Factorio, like
Iron Plate
Improved Iron Plate
Superior Iron Plate
Precision Iron Plate
Perfect Iron Plate

or something. These aren't magic weapons in an RPG, they're mechanical parts...

[OdinEidolon]

It's a shame they wasted development time for such a "feature" but if it's really optional then all is good.

You have like 50 more FFFs before you should make that call. I expect this is foundational to a lot of the new stuff going into the expansion.

Do you choose between a slower space platform that gathers its own fuel or do you preload it with high quality rocket fuel and let it get there faster?

There are so many optimizations that this base system might unlock.

How many times have people whined about solar panels not putting out enough power? Well, now you have five tiers of them automatically. And if that isn’t enough power you can burn tier five nuclear fuel cells in a tier five nuclear reactor.

I think they just opened up Factorio in ways we can hardly imagine.

If it will be so important in the expansion then I'll will not buy the expansion.

[grandexar]

I enjoy playing the mods Factory Levels and Hero Turrets which reward you for using your machines over time. Factory levels makes your machines craft faster and have higher efficiency for each item you craft, and hero turrets increases your turrets’ power and range and speed based on total damage done.

The quality upgrade process feels similar, but more intentional. You get rewards for playing the game normally (almost… you have to add some new modules) and you can focus on those upgrades and really automate them, or just call it a nice surprise and play normally.

With factory levels I like to craft a really fast recipe with just one machine to get it to level up really early. Then I craft my most critical recipes with it the rest of the game!

With hero turrets it rewards me for not letting my turrets get destroyed, especially in high combat zones. And I can cheese it by not destroying the biter nests near the turrets I want to get upgraded.

Can’t wait to buy the expansion, I keep playing expecting my bots to be smarter ever since I read the last update… can’t wait to check out Quality!!!

alternate names:
* Crude/Fine/Refined/Optimized
* Weak/Supple/Flexible/Strong
* Impotent/Semipotent/Potent/Omnipotent

[AkBKukU]

This really must be a joke way of introducing the recycler right? The implications of RNG attributtes to every item in the game would cause massive cascading problems. All production planning and blueprints would be useless except for the max level.

We have made it so that quality is 'invisible' in the game until quality modules are unlocked

Items in the game already have a metric that makes me question how this works. Damaged items stack differently in your inventory. The way it is phrased makes it seem like it would still be active in the background, but presumably different quality items don't stack over each other and you could see two partial stacks. You could potentially have 10 partial stacks of items with different quality and damage levels.

Think about that though, 10 different classifications of a single item. For most things it would only be 5, but it still would cause problems. Trying to fill a chest with a single item would have multiple types of stacks going into it.

But the biggest problem would be trying to plan production. Can a blueprint have an "any" quality attributte applied? What happens if you made a blueprint with one RNG building that is better withought knowing it. Worse though would be trying to create a production chain that is suddenly imbalanced because one of the buildings is faster or produces more stuff.

This game is all about understanding mechanics and planning for them at the high level. This is completely counter to that idea. This must be a joke, but I made an account to post this on the chance that it isn't because this would be an absolute nightmare.

[morsk]

I am a little torn, but ready to try it out.
In our world there are also quality differences, so it would make sense that higher quality parts are able to produce higher quality products that perform better.

The only thing I don't like are the names. They are too "MMO / World of Warcraft" where I think you got the inspiration from
since it's rather close to the Dragonflight profession system.

It is an exact copy of WoW, which we know the lead dev played. However the very small number of people noticing this means it's probably not a good match here. There looks to be enormous hate of loot crates in the world, and reminding people of loot crates is a bad idea.

[grandexar]

It's a shame they wasted development time for such a "feature" but if it's really optional then all is good.

You have like 50 more FFFs before you should make that call. I expect this is foundational to a lot of the new stuff going into the expansion.

Do you choose between a slower space platform that gathers its own fuel or do you preload it with high quality rocket fuel and let it get there faster?

There are so many optimizations that this base system might unlock.

How many times have people whined about solar panels not putting out enough power? Well, now you have five tiers of them automatically. And if that isn’t enough power you can burn tier five nuclear fuel cells in a tier five nuclear reactor.

I think they just opened up Factorio in ways we can hardly imagine.

If it will be so important in the expansion then I'll will not buy the expansion.

They said it’s optional, but I think you’ll enjoy the quality mechanic once you try it. It’s like playing normally but you get some upgrades for free sometimes. And you can chase quality if you want or just accept it as a random bonus.

If you think about it too hard, the whole science crafting and consuming mechanic is weird, what’s the real life equivalent? But it makes the game fun.