Friday Facts #375 - Quality

[MeduSalem]

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.

As I understand it will not always be the lowest quality output if you mix ingredient qualities.

The quality modules inside machines will affect how high the chances are to get a better quality item produced.
But the ingredients you input themselves also affect the chances for getting a better quality item.

So if you mix different quality ingredients you will still get some quality items out, but not as much as you would if they would all be the same quality.

I think the only thing that is guaranteed is that if all ingredients are the same quality then the quality of the output item cannot be lower than the quality of the input was.

[Loewchen]

As I understand it will not always be the lowest quality output if you mix ingredient qualities.

Without quality modules you will always get the quality of your lowest ingredient.

[MeduSalem]

As I understand it will not always be the lowest quality output if you mix ingredient qualities.

Without quality modules you will always get the quality of your lowest ingredient.

Is that written somewhere already? ^^

Anyway if that is the case and how it will work then I will blatantly say that it is stupid because it bares any logic of what the average player expects to happen.

Because imagine you have a recipe with 5 ingredients, and 4 of them are legendary quality and only 1 is base quality. If what you say is true then the entire output is base quality just because you don't have a quality module in the final assembler. ^^

The more logical result should be that the result should be a weighted distribution between the lowest and the highest quality ingredients. At least that is what I would expect as a result. If it is a good result, is debatable, but at least it is what I would expect.

[Nemoricus]

I find it quite reasonable to say that you're limited to the worst of your inputs. A chain that has all high quality links except for one weak link isn't a high quality chain.

Put another way, you get quality by committing to quality, not by cheaping out on one component or another.

[spinba11]

If I’m making a legendary gear will the inserter pickup any Quality iron that goes by, meaning if I actually want a legendary gear I can only let legendary iron go down the belt (there’s no quality modules in the assembler).

[Loewchen]

If I’m making a legendary gear will the inserter pickup any Quality iron that goes by, meaning if I actually want a legendary gear I can only let legendary iron go down the belt (there’s no quality modules in the assembler).

You will be able to filter by quality.

[Sickc]

There should be a low quallity that gives debuffs. That way not upgrading also slows you down and provides low quallity ofcourse it could also cost less so there would be a use for it if you have space and need something crafted in bulk. Guessing the quallity averages out with a chance of higher or lower quality to pop out when crafting so if you fail to update early production endgame items would go down a quallity or two just because the intermediates where made with low quallity items and assemblers. The values for qualities will probs be changable with mods so it dosent have to be changed in the main game.

[Ranakastrasz]

Query.
Can you mix quality levels in a recipe, not in the sense of t1 gears and t0 copper/iron plates, but in the sense of t0 and t1 gears? As in, you have a classic green circuit assembly setup, with quality modules in the copper wires. Does there being t0 and t1 copper wires mean it can't properly feed the green circuit maker?

Suggestion. Use the average of each input component type's quality, and average those with all the input slots, to determine the effective base quality. So mixing a few quality components in will give better results, but not as good as using all quality components.
- so a green circuit made with Q0 iron plate and q2 copper wires would be treated as having quality 1 inputs. A green circuit made with Q0 iron and 2 q0 and 1 q1 copper wire would be (0+((0+1)/3))/2= 0.17 base quality, meaning 1/6 of the time it would act like t1 compinents we're used, but the rest would act as though t0 components.
This way you can, and probably want to filter out quality components, but if you just place them in your existing layouts it won't jam and will still give value.

[FuryoftheStars]

Query.
Can you mix quality levels in a recipe, not in the sense of t1 gears and t0 copper/iron plates, but in the sense of t0 and t1 gears? As in, you have a classic green circuit assembly setup, with quality modules in the copper wires. Does there being t0 and t1 copper wires mean it can't properly feed the green circuit maker?

Suggestion. Use the average of each input component type's quality, and average those with all the input slots, to determine the effective base quality. So mixing a few quality components in will give better results, but not as good as using all quality components.

My assumption is yes, because they don't have different recipes for each quality tier of input ingredients.

That said, it has been said somewhere (I don't think here on the forums other than by moderators) that mixing quality tiers will use the lowest quality ingredient as the base tier.

[usafphoenix]

suggestion for repair packs:

While repair packs essentially lasting longer is cool... i think it's more useful if repair packs would repair damage at a quicker speed. Think legendary repair packs can be used by robots at perimeter defense to repair walls more quickly, reducing the time robots are out making repairs. Since everything with quality "has more health/durability" the "specialness/uniqueness" of the repair pack isn't really....unique. Unless: a higher quality repair pack restores health FASTER than a lower tier pack.

[hecktarzuli]

My main beef is the graphics. They are nice and simple, but I really don't like how they poison the beautiful graphics in the game (and yes I also wish alt-mode was more integrated into the graphics somehow too).

I'd rather see a single colored dot, or maybe just colorize the object instead.

[husnikadam]

Could you make it such that lamps get +1 or +2 lighting range per quality level please?
It is anoying to build big powerpoles at their max range while keeping the space between them properly iluminated

[spinba11]

Is is possible to update the bit about beacons because quality now effects more than just how much power they use.

[JoshuaJosephson]

Please make the quality modules have White lights on top to indicate the tier.

Blue has Blue lights
Green has Green lights
Why doesn't Red have Red lights and
Why doesn't White have White lights?

[adam_bise]

Are minimal quality indicators an option?

I typically play with alt mode enabled. The quality indicators are a bit loud on the screen. Could we have an option for single colored dots as indicators?

Thanks.

[Yuki_Nagato]

TL;DR

A method to making items of different quality stack together for easier management and lower mental tension: use sub-menu to select stacked item quality.

Problem

Quality mod is my most anticipated 2.0 feature, I was worried they won't stack since first FFF. Making them not stack together is a reasonable design because you don't want stacking them break their quality, but this arises a few problems:

• Items of different quality take more slots;

• which gives the player more *unfun* management issues and mental tension.

• And many similar item icons just with different quality color will be an eye-sore.

Solution

1. Just let them stack together in one slot;
2. then we have to deal with quality problems:

To keep different quality, just remember count of each quality in one stack, and show them separately when players click (or hover) on this slot: bring up one sub-menu to select specific quality.

This design has a comforting working example: Stardew Valley has items of four qualities, that don't stack and works similar of Factorio. A mod just named "Stack Quality" implements the above design and it works like a charm： https://www.curseforge.com/stardewvalle ... perimental
Note that this mod is for Stardew Valley 1.5, while now the default branch is 1.6.8.

As for using different quality: we already have one design to manage quality, by letting the player set quality requests.

This design can be used on more places like:

• set a hotbar slot level quality preference;

• let player use preference even when using inventory items, so that they don't need click on sub-menu every time.

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into the quality announcement discussion : Please wait for the feature to be released and tested before making standalone suggestions to change something that's not out yet.

[JohnyDL]

doesn't look like anyone's brought this up but with quality assemblers, does this mean there's going to be overrides on productivity for some items?

Generally speaking, the quality assemblers giving a small boost to the productivity of all recipes is a unique and powerful bonus but....

Fluid Barreling is going to be broken with productivity, even 1% productivity, barrel then unbarrel in a loop and a little fluid and 1 barrel can become as much fluid and as many barrels as you like with only a time cost, and it's relatively scalable. I know you've accounted for this with uncrafting but I think it needs to be thought about for all recipes

I'm not sure if this is the only infinite loop but I've seen mods that have had to forgo productivity on entire recipe chains because 1 element in that chain would have this sort of feedback loop. I think bobs or angels has cryocoolant as a recyclable recipe ingredient. It'd be nice if a given output could be marked as productivity restricted/immune both in Vanilla and Modding while allowing the rest of the recipe to benefit from this additional boost.

It might be 'okay' for the barrel loop to produce a small amount of extra fluids but making more barrels is nonsense (or may cause issues especially if people design closed barrel loops)

[HunD34TH]

doesn't look like anyone's brought this up but with quality assemblers, does this mean there's going to be overrides on productivity for some items?

Generally speaking, the quality assemblers giving a small boost to the productivity of all recipes is a unique and powerful bonus but....

Fluid Barreling is going to be broken with productivity, even 1% productivity, barrel then unbarrel in a loop and a little fluid and 1 barrel can become as much fluid and as many barrels as you like with only a time cost, and it's relatively scalable. I know you've accounted for this with uncrafting but I think it needs to be thought about for all recipes

I'm not sure if this is the only infinite loop but I've seen mods that have had to forgo productivity on entire recipe chains because 1 element in that chain would have this sort of feedback loop. I think bobs or angels has cryocoolant as a recyclable recipe ingredient. It'd be nice if a given output could be marked as productivity restricted/immune both in Vanilla and Modding while allowing the rest of the recipe to benefit from this additional boost.

It might be 'okay' for the barrel loop to produce a small amount of extra fluids but making more barrels is nonsense (or may cause issues especially if people design closed barrel loops)

https://lua-api.factorio.com/latest/typ ... yst_amount

[Tertius]

Fluid Barreling is going to be broken with productivity, even 1% productivity, barrel then unbarrel in a loop and a little fluid and 1 barrel can become as much fluid and as many barrels as you like

I guess the devs are intelligent enough to make sure that no more fluid can be taken out of a barrel than was put in.

In general, productivity in Factorio is the abstraction of optimizing the production process. It's not to create items out of thin air, it corresponds to real processes in the real world. And for barreling in and out fluids in the real world, it's simply impossible to get more than was put in. So it is implemented in Factorio 1.1, and I'm quite sure it will stay this way in Factorio 2.0.