Friday Facts #375 - Quality

[FuryoftheStars]

What are you supposed to do with the occasional higher quality materials you can't match with others?
The recycler returns 25% of the recipe ingredients.

Or, seems we're talking about higher quality items here, store em till you can use em.

[Neutronium]

What are you supposed to do with the occasional higher quality materials you can't match with others?
The recycler returns 25% of the recipe ingredients.

Or, seems we're talking about higher quality items here, store em till you can use em.

Absolutely.

The best of what quality offers will come from the longer games using it. I'm sure I'll have stockpiles of all sorts of items of various quality, either to be used in later horizontal expansion, or for future quality runs once I have all of the other prerequisites of the appropriate quality as well.

[computeraddict]

What are you supposed to do with the occasional higher quality materials you can't match with others?

Don't produce them without a plan.

[Ranakastrasz]

What are you supposed to do with the occasional higher quality materials you can't match with others?

Don't produce them without a plan.

I mean both when you end up with a bad ratio of quality components, and moreso that there is a small chance of getting an even higher quality. If you are, say filtering off, say, green and red circuits for making high grade modules, but it's early so you only expect +1 quality, but end up with some +2 or even +3 circuits. Would they be useless, or could you substitute them in?

Quality, being random instead of deterministic like productivity, is way harder to plan for, unless you are already doing tons of it, because law of large numbers.

[Khagan]

If you are, say filtering off, say, green and red circuits for making high grade modules, but it's early so you only expect +1 quality, but end up with some +2 or even +3 circuits. Would they be useless, or could you substitute them in?

Up to you. Use them now, and sacrifice the extra level of quality that was a 'freebie' anyway; or as already suggested, stash them against the time when you will actively be wanting the better items.

[Ranakastrasz]

If you are, say filtering off, say, green and red circuits for making high grade modules, but it's early so you only expect +1 quality, but end up with some +2 or even +3 circuits. Would they be useless, or could you substitute them in?

Up to you. Use them now, and sacrifice the extra level of quality that was a 'freebie' anyway; or as already suggested, stash them against the time when you will actively be wanting the better items.

yep, But that is why I was objecting to the "dont overproduce" argument. You don't even have control over that overproduction past a certain point, and certainly don't have control over it tiering up twice, so I wanted to make sure there was a thing to do with items that got overtiered. The whole "This part's quality is too high, I actually can't physically use it as part of an inferior product, making it worthless" thing was my concern.

Sure, its probably a minimal issue, but eh, its not out yet, and that part wasn't clarified yet.

[FuryoftheStars]

If you are, say filtering off, say, green and red circuits for making high grade modules, but it's early so you only expect +1 quality, but end up with some +2 or even +3 circuits. Would they be useless, or could you substitute them in?

Up to you. Use them now, and sacrifice the extra level of quality that was a 'freebie' anyway; or as already suggested, stash them against the time when you will actively be wanting the better items.

yep, But that is why I was objecting to the "dont overproduce" argument. You don't even have control over that overproduction past a certain point, and certainly don't have control over it tiering up twice, so I wanted to make sure there was a thing to do with items that got overtiered. The whole "This part's quality is too high, I actually can't physically use it as part of an inferior product, making it worthless" thing was my concern.

Sure, its probably a minimal issue, but eh, its not out yet, and that part wasn't clarified yet.

The chances of "overtiering" are small, but applies to everything. So it won't take long to get enough "overtiered" items to make the higher quality product. Your end goal, ultimately, will be making everything (edit: quality related) as Q5, anyway, so it's never going to be "worthless". There's also nothing in place from preventing you from using it or recycling it anyway, either. So you have 3 options on what to do with it:

1. Use it
2. Store it
3. Recycle it

It's your choice on what you want to do based on your goals and preferences.

[Koub]

Your end goal, ultimately, will be making everything as Q5, anyway, so it's never going to be "worthless"

I doubt this is a viable strategy. From my understanding, the way quality is designed, it's meant to be used only on a very limited part of the factory, where extreme optimisation is crucial (stuff for the space platform, weapons and armor, ...). Everything Q5 is supposed to be overkill and a waste of resources for most things.

[Axs1]

For which items does productivity research apply?

[computeraddict]

Your end goal, ultimately, will be making everything as Q5, anyway, so it's never going to be "worthless"

I doubt this is a viable strategy. From my understanding, the way quality is designed, it's meant to be used only on a very limited part of the factory, where extreme optimisation is crucial (stuff for the space platform, weapons and armor, ...). Everything Q5 is supposed to be overkill and a waste of resources for most things.

It'll be interesting to see how quality interacts with productivity research. Might math out some hypotheticals later...

[Axs1]

Your end goal, ultimately, will be making everything as Q5, anyway, so it's never going to be "worthless"

I doubt this is a viable strategy. From my understanding, the way quality is designed, it's meant to be used only on a very limited part of the factory, where extreme optimisation is crucial (stuff for the space platform, weapons and armor, ...). Everything Q5 is supposed to be overkill and a waste of resources for most things.

It'll be interesting to see how quality interacts with productivity research. Might math out some hypotheticals later...

I think it wouldn't change much, it's like putting quality modules in the machines, with the difference that you can have 4 quality modules

[computeraddict]

It'll be interesting to see how quality interacts with productivity research. Might math out some hypotheticals later...

I think it wouldn't change much, it's like putting quality modules in the machines, with the difference that you can have 4 quality modules

There's a breakpoint where the marginal increase in productivity is outweighed by the benefit of using a different module. This can already be seen in miners with high levels of mining productivity, where speed modules become more attractive than a little extra productivity.

[Axs1]

It'll be interesting to see how quality interacts with productivity research. Might math out some hypotheticals later...

I think it wouldn't change much, it's like putting quality modules in the machines, with the difference that you can have 4 quality modules

There's a breakpoint where the marginal increase in productivity is outweighed by the benefit of using a different module. This can already be seen in miners with high levels of mining productivity, where speed modules become more attractive than a little extra productivity.

Mistake:
I think it wouldn't change much, it's like putting quality productivity modules in the machines, with the difference that you can have 4 quality modules

Since there is a 300% limit, for the late game, the productivity modules for the item that has the productivity research become useless.

although before it reaches the limit, I found that the most optimal thing is to use 1 productivity module and 3 quality modules

[FuryoftheStars]

Your end goal, ultimately, will be making everything as Q5, anyway, so it's never going to be "worthless"

I doubt this is a viable strategy. From my understanding, the way quality is designed, it's meant to be used only on a very limited part of the factory, where extreme optimisation is crucial (stuff for the space platform, weapons and armor, ...). Everything Q5 is supposed to be overkill and a waste of resources for most things.

Apologies for the misunderstanding, my intention here was in reference to everything that you make as a higher quality item, not everything everything (if that helps clarify it).

[husnikadam]

I feel like the new naming should address following issues:

1. Shouldn't imply any sort of chance, rarity or even gamble
2. All tiers should clearly define the tiers order
3. All names should be as short as possible as the terms will get used very frequently

Here I have come up with suggestions which comply with the naming requirements:

1. Normal
2. Improved
3. Refined
4. Exemplary
5. Perfect

I think it suits the game very well as calling items like that feels very natural and good: "Normal gears, improved chests, refined circuits, exemplary power poles, perfect armor". I wouldn't use term "advanced" as some items (f.e. red circuits) are named like that.

What do you think?

[Khagan]

Here I have come up with suggestions which comply with the naming requirements:
[...]
What do you think?

Go and add your vote at
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=108777

[MeduSalem]

Your end goal, ultimately, will be making everything as Q5, anyway, so it's never going to be "worthless"

I doubt this is a viable strategy. From my understanding, the way quality is designed, it's meant to be used only on a very limited part of the factory, where extreme optimisation is crucial (stuff for the space platform, weapons and armor, ...). Everything Q5 is supposed to be overkill and a waste of resources for most things.

I think It will be a viable strategy for an endgame base if you don't keep on expanding but instead if you have a certain target SPM in mind or something. If you keep on expanding then obviously it will be difficult to keep up expanding and at the same time replace things.

That said I looked at some crafting charts in my excel sheets the other day. And taking glimpses at the various FFs so far.

The crafting cascade basically acts like dice-rolls. The deeper the cascade, the more rolls you get.

With other words it is the easiest to get to Q5 on all the recipes that have many intermediate steps. The ones with a shallow cascade will be the most annoying ones. Stuff that only takes a plate or stone or something and has no further steps will be notoriously hard to roll in legendary quality.


The first priority however should be getting the quality of the quality modules (and its production chain) up of course. But on the way there you will still end up with lots of rejects you can put elsewhere. ^^


At least I don't think it is actually worth recycling items unless they are already in the highest item tier, but not the quality you want. But even then you might rather consider using them instead of immediately trashing them unless it is worse than everything else you already have.
One can always trash it later, but take advantage of the benefits now. ^^
At least 100% of crafting a new item is not much worse than if you throw 75% of the existing one down the drain; just that you kept the item and you actually have the benefits of it. An Epic assembler may not be legendary, but it still crafts faster than a normal one. ^^


That said maybe for some of the recipes that have few intermediate steps it might still be worth using the recycler until you get a decent quality output. They are fairly cheap enough that it might be acceptable. You could recycle a superfluous amount of concrete if you have tons of stone to get a chance to craft that legendary wall. ;P

But at least I wouldn't do it on a T3 module unless the whole factory is using Q5 ones already. Otherwise it would be an insane waste of resources & opportunity to use the module.

[usafphoenix]

Some ideas for Quality:

Underground pipes/belts: have longer range
Locomotives: more pulling power / acceleration / or max speed
Fuel: more accelerating power / higher energy density / increase to vehicle speed / reduced pollution
Rail: higher top speed for locomotives
Robots: faster "return to charger + charge rate" when battery depleted (or to put differently....HIGHER minimum robot speed when battery dead) ...rather than just "more battery". Faster "base speed" would also be an improvement over just "more battery"

beacons (option 1): higher efficiency broadcast of effects: base output amount is 50%...each tier could add 10-15% improvement of efficiency of modules in the beacons. as the current benefit of beacon quality is just "less power"....and the reasoned argument against that being any good is......just build more power. But...if beacons could output a higher QUALITY of their module's output...that would indeed give a strong case for using quality materials to craft beacons.
(uncommon: 60%, rare 70%, epic 85%, legendary 100%)

beacons (option 2): wider broadcast area. +1 tile per tier level.

[bnrom]

I'm really excited for quality!

I was wondering, will we have quality rockets? I.e. maybe if you build the whole rocket out of high quality parts it creates a quality rocket, which has more capacity?

And will we have quality trains? It would be nice if quality trains existed, e.g. with better fuel consumption/speed and more cargo

[spinba11]

I’ve seen people say that you can mix ingredients quality and the output will be the lowest, is that correct because I’ve skimmed the FF page and can’t see it? It would solve the issue that I’m having with the quality mod where I’m getting too much of one level quality ingredient and not enough of the same quality of another and it locks the builds up.