Friday Facts #375 - Quality

[mmmPI]

3) How will the chance be calculated if have to input parts with different quality levels?

3) You can't input different quality items. You select a specific recipe. Watch electronics production video.

I rewatched it, and i got fooled by the bottom left recycler which uses different quality as input, but not at the same time, it seem like it can switch receipe, but i'm now convinced my previous comment was wrong on this

[MazorNoob]

As you are ultimately arguing on a topic of your original first post, I'll reply to it instead of trying to convince you that it is indeed a proper defense to say it's optional against some delusional players who can't figure out common sense.

I'll give you more arguments to consider, all in terms of opportunity cost.

1. Even if a feature is optional, it has a knock-on effect on all future features simply because it's there. Any other idea for quality tiers like poor quality machines needing maintenance and repair, or explicit new "advanced semiconductor" items with actual quality binning will not be implemented because they are too similar to the mechanic that's already there. In short, a bad mechanic that's optional prevents implementation of similar but better mechanics just because it's there.

2. Even for unrelated features, their interaction with the quality system will have to be taken into account. What if a new item has to be nerfed in its common version because its legendary version would be OP, or if the higher tier version allows for things impossible to do with the old one (say, a hypothetical "CPU" item having more space for instructions)? Or if a new production chain cannot be made too complex because its mixed-quality version causes too much of a mess? Every feature, no matter if optional, will have to be considered for interaction with other features, and the quality system affects a good chunk of logistics already.

3. There is more than one way to play Factorio, and this feature caters to exactly one of them. There is a big "the factory must grow" crowd, the one that focuses on UPS, SPM, 12-beaconing, tier 3 modules, x-y trains, direct insertion, n-lane railways and so on. That's fine. These people want to push factory efficiency to the limit no matter the cost, and the new feature caters to them.
But that's not the only way to play the game. The other way is the "lazy bastard" or "Zachtronics" way that maximizes automation over all else. This way doesn't care that much about UPS, but it cares about the factory building and regulating itself to the greatest extent possible. A "factory must grow" player would rather lay down rails and factories himself or with a spidertron because it's better UPS to not have bot networks everywhere. The lazy bastard would design a self-replicating city block setup that would deliver all the needed factory components on its own without him needing to lift a finger. For this player, the quality feature brings in next to nothing. No new exciting opportunities to automate, just one more factory block to add to existing city blocks.
Which is where the issue of this feature comes in. It might be optional, but it's a clear red flag from the dev team that one way of playing the game is preferred to another. This discourages one of the crowds by virtue of the feature just existing and having taken attention from what they consider Factorio to be about.

[Loewchen]

A few common questions/misconceptions:

• You only produce higher quality items if you use Quality modules
• Output is at least of quality of the input or better when using QM
• If your input is of mixed quality the lowest quality counts, higher items give no benefit
• Higher quality machines do not produce higher quality items
• Fluids are lost when recycling
• Recycling does not work for items produced in furnaces or chem plants
• Different quality items do not stack in inventories

[Brathahn]

quality.png (256.43 KiB) Viewed 3360 times

[CureSafaia]

To the people who use the "it's optional" defense.

Playing the game is optional.

While the system being optional is a good thing for the player experience, it does not mean that it's not part of the experience for players who don't like it.

I actually even think that such system needs to feel optional otherwise would be detrimental to the general user experience as it would make the game needlessly complex with no longer a reward as it would be the normal progression. And in that regard it's fine here.

However it does not mean that the system will not be part of the experience for player who don't like it, it will, there is a huge incentive to go the quality route as it massively improve a lot of things, even today, the productivity modules and beacons are optional and has a fairly strong efficiency incentive especially after the rocket launch. But the quality system is even stronger because it does not simply allow you to produce more but to get things you cannot otherwise, and that's why I don't see many people will choose not to do it, they will force themselves to use it to get the epic gear even if they don't like it.

I have seen many subtier game designers using the "it's optional" excuse for needlessly grindy and generally bad mechanics introduced in games, when in fact the incentive is even more a thing to think about. And here the incentive is so strong it is about the same as being forced, imo.

Right now I actually like the system, it's part of an expansion and I am happy the game will feel new and different again, otherwise I would just keep playing SE, but I need to know more or play it to be sure it actually is good. But most importantly, while it is fine to discuss it here, let's stop using the "it's optional" excuse, because while it needs to be, it being is not an argument.

[Losash]

I'll give you more arguments to consider, all in terms of opportunity cost.
1. Even if a feature is optional, it has a knock-on effect on all future features simply because it's there.
2. Even for unrelated features, their interaction with the quality system will have to be taken into account. What if a new item has to be nerfed in its common version because its legendary version would be OP,

Future features? What is coming in the next year is essentially Factorio 2, and it is in the development for how long now, 3 years or more? And you already want Factorio 3 or what? Upcoming update may be the last one ever. And developers said they had large playtests and quality system is perfectly mature and in balance with everything else.

3. There is more than one way to play Factorio

Then play without this feature, gosh, what is your problem? Don't use quality modules and you won't even notice other types of items exist.

There is a big "the factory must grow" crowd, the one that focuses on UPS, SPM, 12-beaconing, tier 3 modules, x-y trains, direct insertion, n-lane railways and so on. That's fine.

Again, leave this feature alone for people who can play properly and go big. If you play without beacons, modules, quality, bots or whatever - that's your choice, which is not taken from you by the developers.

because it's better UPS to not

Do you, a player who wants to play "in a wheelchair", really start to theory craft about UPS optimizations..?

For this player, the quality feature brings in next to nothing.

...Every game feature MUST bring something to your "wheelchair gameplay"? What..?

but it's a clear red flag from the dev team that one way of playing the game

I'm about to go mad because of this thread.

[CureSafaia]

Dude, leave the forum if it affects your mental health like that. You are not even contributing to the conversation with this message, you are just attacking the guy.

[mmmPI]

I'm about to go mad because of this thread.

Ah be careful, that happened to me to be a bit too adamant about some point, and i was getting into personnal attacks, and i got a temporary ban to think about my attitude

[ilikegoodfood]

hey hey humans calm down ! x) the purchase decision is a personnal one, i'd rather hope people buy it if there is things they like in it, but i can understand someone not wanting to buy it, even if there is stuff they like, because they think there is mostly things they dislike, it make perfect sense not to buy a game if there is only 1% you like.

Thank you for being the voice of reason.
If a person doesn't like the majority of a game or expansion, they don't buy it. If a person doesn't like a game or expansion, they don't buy it. That's simply how purchasing decissions work, and that decission is personal.

EDIT: Striked because the person I was refering to was not, in-fact, a dev. I missread their user name. Apologies for the mistake.
On a different note, the all caps yelling by the developer comes across, to me, as extremely unproffesional.
I get that it's extremely hard, even hurtful, to have this large of a negative reaction to something you have loved, and worked on for that long (I've experienced it on a much smaller scale), but yelling at the many people raising reasonable concerns is not the solution, even if some of them have missunbderstood part of the concept.
In my personal opinion, the yelling only serves to validate their concerns, create new concerns, or to further raise tensions in an already tense discussion.

As for some common misunderstandings I am seeing:

• Only machines with Quality Modules have a chance of higher quality outputs.
  If you don't put a quality module in a machine, and the input is of a fixed quality, then the outputs will also be of a fixed quality (that of the lowest quality input). Mining outposts will never produce mixed qualities by mistake, and you won't accidentally get a higher tier power pole trapped in your blueprint.
  Therefore, unless you build multiple zones of different quality tiers, and try to supply them ad-hoc with any-quality filters, logistics is completely uneffected.
• Because every machine will always output items with quality equal to the quality of it's lowest quality input, you don't need quality upgrades at evert step of a procduction line. You only need to boost the quality in a few key places.
  This could be at the end of a production chain, thus effecting only that one output.
  It coul be at the very beginning, turing all base recources into whatever teir you want, and thus all following machines will output that same tier.
  It could even be on a branch from a lower-tier bus, giving a focused zone of high-tier items.
• Once reseaching the modules, you gain access to the bottom three tiers. The fourth and fith require research later on.
  You could handle this by ignoring quality until you have finished teir five research, and then max what you want. You could also have a set of designs for teir 3, using those either everywhere, or only on new planets, ships and bases that you then go to, and then a second set for tier 5.
• Inventory management is no worse than having new Mk numbers, except that it can apply to everything if you choose to set it up that way.
  If you only use quality tiers after getting to tier 5, then you simply swap everything in your inventory and logistic from one to the other. If you don't build quality modules, then it has no effect whatsoever. If you have a tier 1, 3 and 5 zone, then you will need to have malls for each zone, and a means of swapping what you are carrying between zones.
  The ability to save and load logistics request setups would help with this, and may have already been implemented. We don't know yet.

I think these are the most common misunderstandings that I saw when I read through the thread yesterday.
Hopefully this post helps clear up some of the missunderstandings should anyone come back to the thread and happen to read it.

[ilikegoodfood]

As for the things I do and don't like, it's a pretty short list:

• I very much like that the different machines have different quality bonus effects.
  I would like to see this further extended to include trains (acceleration for engines, cargo space for wagons), and underground belts and pipes (max length).
• I think there is an argument for reducing the tier count to three, 1 for base, 2 for tier 3, and 3 for tier 5, as I personally suspect that that is how most players will end up using the system. I'm not particularly bothered either way.
• I somewhat dislike the chance-driven upgrade loops, instead possibly prefering quality recipes, direct cost increases, crafting-time increases, or internal failure rates.
  Selecting an assembly machine, setting it to make iron gears, then setting it to quality 3 (2 if the tier count is reduced), and seeing the iron replaced with steel, results in entirely new logistics puzzles, but it would also require some higher tier intermediates and materials, which is more cost and complexity.
  Ultimately, the loop is farely simple, and only needed in a few places, so I'm not that bothered.
• Oh, and the names and icons, but those seem placeholder and are incredibly simple to change.

I am making this post not to rag on the idea further, as I think it has merit, but to make clear what my personal likes and dislikes are, which my previous posts did not.
It has a very strong cool factor with the machine-specific bonuses, and only some, to me, minor downsides in its current form.

[Brathahn]

On a different note, the all caps yelling by the developer comes across, to me, as extremely unproffesional.

Stop posting blatant lies!
Where did this happen? Provide a link.

[Kronus_Aero]

Overall this seems well implemented, I just really don't think it's necessary. I'm not convinced this adds any modicum of skill to building a more efficient factory, rather it seems to add more busy work. The idea of producing enough supplies to build an optimal megabase in this system sounds horrifying, and I don't think "you can just choose to not engage in this system" is really accurate if things like productivity and speed modules affected by it to such a comical degree. (going from 40%-100% productivity bonus per assembler is absurd).

[FuryoftheStars]

Losash,

You want to discuss a topic? Then discuss it.

Stop with the personal attacks and insults.

[Frantic Fanatic]

Hang on, this is introducing byproducts without them actually being byproducts. .... Clever.


Fake edit: it also doesn't help whenever I see the word "Quality" by itself I hear it in the Pointy-Haired Boss's voice along with "Synergy" and "Integration."

[silver27]

1st. Names are obviously is a placeholders.
2nd. How to control the Quality? If you cannot restrict upper or lower limits to quality then it may become a mess worse than sushi spagetti belt.
Quote from the post: "I always wanted to extend the part of the game where you have to balance the vertical and horizontal growth..." How exactly Random variation of 5 tiers of quality extends vertical/horizontal growth balance strategy? If only consistent way to control quality is from simple stuff jump straight to top tier best of the best Legendary wooden power poles when you may tune down number of tiers or never use it. I can get the idea of dedicated high quality production facilities but its looks like "all or nothing approach" which is weird.
3rd. Yes i'm a noob. I barely able to launch a rocket, making temporary setups for temporary setups, mess up all of the ratios and not realizing it until it is painfully obvious. At later stages of the game my factory is weird painful mess and i cannot rebuild it or even redesign it because i'm afraid what it would be so much pain for slight improvement. At mid-late game i just wait until my dying monstrosity do its job until i get bored.
So if Legendary Assembly machine could make at least one requisite for its recipe (like green chips straight from copper and iron plates) then it may be really good and helpful for me. But if quality only affects base stats then i don't think i gonna need that.

[mmmPI]

Thank you for being the voice of reason.

On a different note, the all caps yelling by the developer comes across, to me, as extremely unproffesional.

I'm not sure i'm qualified but if that's my temporary title, i have to say that i do not remember any dev yelling in caps , and still i i'd rather have unproffesional honest communication adressed to me, than very profesionnal corporate lies with smiles

Best being an argumented answer such as yours i suppose since that provoke further discussion

Inventory management is no worse than having new Mk numbers, except that it can apply to everything if you choose to set it up that way.
If you only use quality tiers after getting to tier 5, then you simply swap everything in your inventory and logistic from one to the other. If you don't build quality modules, then it has no effect whatsoever. If you have a tier 1, 3 and 5 zone, then you will need to have malls for each zone, and a means of swapping what you are carrying between zones.
The ability to save and load logistics request setups would help with this, and may have already been implemented. We don't know yet.

There are still things like biters attacks your zone tier 5, and when your repair it, stuff from many different quality (recycle-ready) ends up spreading around or just when moving such high quality facitlity around, or designing them, removing that underground belt filled, that's a fast way to clog inventory that happens with mods having many many items. And i hope too devs have thought of ways to handle it. ( having it invisible and not greyed out before the research is one thing that indicate it was a concern i think. )

I think instead of tier 1 3 and 5 zone, there will be (i will try ) production lanes where one can upgrade all the assembly, or production lane designed once tier 3 is available, and those would have all the power poles of tier 3 and the rest of tier 1 , or play the game to unlock tier 3 substation and roobotport, and from then transition to make a cityblock style using those.

I think it can also means that you have some areas for producing things, maybe version A and B next to each other, and one can remove and redo version A once there is enough material of high quality available while keeping B functionning. Say for furnaces, you have 6 lanes of funarces , 3 for A and 3 for B and once there enough high quality furnaces in chests, A or B gets to be redone using the more space efficient blueprint. I think it gives incentive to not think of the factory as a static construction but rather as something more organic, that grow in both horizontal and vertical direction.

I think of making area to produce high quality material, probably not on the original planet, but ship all the finished product used to build in the same area, or at least the material of high quality and have a place where all the different degree of quality are next to each other, in my mall, so that i could pick up some super assembly tier 3 quality 5 but only the quality 2 substation because my blueprint uses those. Designing those areas again make me think of the clogging inventory. But i like the idea that a "good" blueprint is one that is made to evolve over the course of the game like modular rather than one that is ploped down at minute 10 and that gets filled during the rest of the game.

I still think that most of the consumed ressources will be of no quality grade, thinking if quality is optionnal, science will still be the main ressource sink and not REQUIRE any, but i like the idea of being able to build super dense, supercharging an area with 12 beacons filled with quality 5 speed module 3 ? yes please i'd like to try that, maybe i'm not going to use it as my all-the-time-furnaces-end-game-goal-perfect-blueprint , maybe i'll stick to regular low quality things most of my games, i don't know the expansion yet x), but i sure WANT to try that, and i can't imagine amongst all the things there won't be a few items that i will prefer to have in higher quality for my later game, like well trains x) i like trains world as mid-way between peaceful and vanilla, but i suppose the deathworld player will have a particular attention at the ammos turrets and equipments. I'm not using many bots in my bases, but i'm usually using a lot the personnal robots, so i like the idea of producing only quality 5 construction bots, and quality 1 logistic is fine for satelites.

Because every machine will always output items with quality equal to the quality of it's lowest quality input, you don't need quality upgrades at evert step of a procduction line. You only need to boost the quality in a few key places.
This could be at the end of a production chain, thus effecting only that one output.
It coul be at the very beginning, turing all base recources into whatever

I fully agree, i was thinking about recycling iron plate, but yeah it's not allowed, probably that would be too easy to just do it at the beginning of the chain once, but i still have in mind the idea to try to have it as early as possible in the chain. And that the area of "production" for high quality have to be localized, whereas some buildings of high quality could be used "everywhere" like substations.

Also noting that fluid are lost during recycling process, i'm curious if it mean that coal becomes now an unlimited ressource, since oil is and you can make plastic from the simple receipe, recycle it and get a coal ? sounds fun

[kirkbauer]

A few common questions/misconceptions:

• Different quality items do not stack in inventories

I think you are missing a big opportunity with this last one. A lot of people are concerned about how this will affect trains, chests, and especially your inventory. Perhaps there are other things coming to address this, but if not, I have a suggestion for you. Especially for inventory, although I think it could be applied elsewhere.

A simple setting on the entity (e.g. inventory, cargo wagon, etc) to enable/disable nesting of quality. If you enable nesting, the items are stored in mixed stacks and there is no indication of quality (or perhaps an indicator that the quality is mixed). This way, your cargo wagon, or your tool belt, can still carry just as much as before.

If you uncheck that, then everything splits into separate slots, space permitting. So if the entity is full when you uncheck it, nothing will happen until space frees up, then entities will split into various rarities.

With this system, a train can carry mixed quality items and you can sort it out at the destination station, for example. Or, if I'm carrying items in my toolbelt and I don't care about rarity, it doesn't mess up my inventory slots.

As a bonus feature, if you click to select an item from a mixed-rarity stack, it could pop a small menu showing the rarities and counts and you could select 'all' or one specific rarity.

[MazorNoob]

Future features? What is coming in the next year is essentially Factorio 2, and it is in the development for how long now, 3 years or more? And you already want Factorio 3 or what? Upcoming update may be the last one ever. And developers said they had large playtests and quality system is perfectly mature and in balance with everything else.

Which in turn is an even stronger reason to dislike this "optional" feature. If there won't be much more of Factorio, then why would I be okay with the bad feature that is implemented at the cost of something better that I would like?

Then play without this feature, gosh, what is your problem? Don't use quality modules and you won't even notice other types of items exist.

Because I'm also part of Factorio's audience and if the update caters to the part of the audience that's not mine, I have no reason to buy the expansion. Opportunity cost.

Again, leave this feature alone for people who can play properly and go big. If you play without beacons, modules, quality, bots or whatever - that's your choice, which is not taken from you by the developers.

Do you, a player who wants to play "in a wheelchair", really start to theory craft about UPS optimizations..?

...Every game feature MUST bring something to your "wheelchair gameplay"? What..?

What is wrong with you? The whole idea of that long-winded third point was to sell the idea that Factorio has more than one valid playstyle, and that stuff like roboports, blueprints, circuit networks and all that lend themselves to fun, Zachtronics style automation puzzles. This is completely emergent and I love it about Factorio. Instead you immediately attack that playstyle calling it "wheelchair gameplay", as if there was one sacred way to play Factorio and it was grinding max throughput for dozens of hours no matter what.
No, it's not. The whole discussion around the holy grails of optimizing for UPS, direct insertion, 12-beaconing and now quality farming is unhealthy and myopic. Especially UPS which REDUCES the options you have for the sake of competing with your CPU instead of the game. It's like MMO or MOBA addicts claiming that their specific brand of meta or no-lifing is the only "REAL" way to play the game and everyone else are scrubs.
Factorio is a sandbox and there's more fun stuff to build in that sandbox than just digging the biggest pit you possibly can. And when the devs give me an excavator so I can dig even deeper pits, I have all the reasons to complain and ask for tools for making better castles instead.

[Losash]

I guess my main mistake was to seriously try proving to delusional people that they are delusional. Fighting windmills, happens.
Oh, I've tried discussion. I've posted arguments. I've explained the system to those who couldn't read it from the blog post. I've explained that it's not intended to be used in science packs production. I've responded to people, pointing out that they don't know themselves what do they want, that they contradict their own statements. Told them that it's just a one of many upcoming Expansion systems, not even a major one.

What I've got in response? Even more delusional posts came into the place. Complete madness. I won't even decompile latest replies in quotes. To all of you here is my new suggestion: make your own game where every feature is exactly made for your own specific gameplay style.

To the devs my latest TLDR: change names and upgrade icon resolutions, everything else is fine.

Goodbye to this mad thread. Oh, +1:

quality.png

[EvanT]

Different qualities do not stack. So what?

I would say that any assembly line which puts products of different qualities in the same box has a sorting problem. If you want quality to happen you have to put in the modules. And why would anyone bother with less than the current max quality? So basically anything else would be recycled or go into science (assuming sience is not affected by quality).