[2.0.20] Silo throughput doesn't scale with quality

[Milo_Thatch]

Rocket launch period comparison

silo throughput.jpg (337.35 KiB) Viewed 1461 times

What did you do?
Using /editor, I compared silos of different qualities, to plan for a big base.

What happened?
Quality silo, quality beacons and quality speed modules don't seem to increase the throughput of the silo.
A legendary silo will work faster and wait longer, until the animation finishes.
Throughput seems to be capped at one rocket capacity every ~27 seconds.
This cap is reached a bit too easily, with three normal speed beacons, in the worst case scenario of four legendary productivity modules.

What did you expect to happen instead? It might be obvious to you, but do it anyway!
After reading fff-405, I knew rocket throughput would be increased, but I assumed legendary items would all scale production until endgame. Now they feel like a possible waste of resource in certain conditions. I want Kovarex's silo setup from fff-417 to be as fast as it looks, if possible.

[Nemoricus]

You're limited by the animation speed here, and I don't think the developers will change it.

[Milo_Thatch]

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I don't want to increase the already crazy throughput of a rocket silo (2222 SPM).
If possible, I'd like for that throughput to be only achievable with everything legendary. That would make quality progression feel much more rewarding.

[Nemoricus]

So you would want people's existing set ups to be made worse? I don't think that would be a good experience, since the basic silo is already slow as it is.

I also think that this would be getting into Ideas and Suggestions territory at that point, since the current throughput limit isn't a bug.

[computeraddict]

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I don't want to increase the already crazy throughput of a rocket silo (2222 SPM).
If possible, I'd like for that throughput to be only achievable with everything legendary. That would make quality progression feel much more rewarding.

The only way you could do that would be a monstrous nerf to either the baseline performance or to the quality scaling performance... At which point it would be even worse to scale it with quality instead of just going wide.

[Loewchen]

Nothing about this describes a bug.

[Milo_Thatch]

Some legendary items being useless feels like a bug to me. A noob trap that you can't compute from the available info. Especially something as vital as a rocket silo.
There must be ways to avoid changing the minimum speed while still increasing the throughput over the entire crafting speed bonus spectrum.
We're only one month after release, some people will figure this out months from now. At the very least I have to mention it.
I'm sure the megabasers will recover quickly.

[Loewchen]

Make a suggestion: viewforum.php?f=6

[Milo_Thatch]

Understood, thank you.

[Theragus]

Hi, sorry for the revival of old post!
I encountered this particular strange behavior too and this was the closest post I found to this.
I agree with the mods that this is not a bug but "intended behavior." The Animation Speed is the limiting factor here, which the devs already discussed in an FFF and won't be changed because it would look awkward.

But I also have to agree with Milo_Thatch here in the point that how Rocket Silo Quality currently works is "dubious" and "misleading" at best.
Rocket Silos very quickly (for instance, with 4 beacons) cap out to the point where the animation speed becomes the limiting factor, at which point any further crafting speed upgrades through modules or "Quality" does not contribute to rocket throughput.

Quality as a mechanic should make the player feel like they are rewarded with something when they craft a higher-quality item so that there is an improvement to their factory throughput or efficiency.
But here it quickly gets to the point of not offering any upgrades to the player at all, at least until he realizes that beacons and modules are much more resource-efficient and "easier" than farming quality rocket silos, which are not cheap to craft, to begin with.
The Player is offered this path until he realizes that making anything else (beacons and modules) is much cheaper and more efficient than farming quality silos, so there is a question whether silos should scale with quality at all. This issue only gets worse as you research more rocket part productivity.
In Editor mode, I tried this behavior and if you have around 150% productivity bonus, legendary rocket silos do literally nothing better than epic rocket silos, because of the limiting animation speed.

Therefore, scaling the crafting speed with quality is "New Player Trap" worthy at best and downright useless at worst.
It provides a solution to a non-existent problem.
I'm going so far as to even say that this "intended behavior" has not been thought out at least once in its current form, at least for silos.

Just for completeness, I wanted to propose a different, less intrusive solution, which I'm also gonna post on the Ideas Forum: just remove the crafting speed quality scaling on rocket silos completely.
It doesn't break > 95% of the existing setups since it doesn't touch the base speed of rocket silos at all since, as described, most players will quickly realize that rocket silo crafting speed after a certain point (which is VERY early) is literally useless.
At worst, a few setups are made slightly slower but don't really affect throughput that much.

Most importantly, it doesn't lead players down the path of "I do get an improved item through quality", which, as described, in most cases does not.
It would lead the player to place more rocket silos, which is the correct solution in the first place to "fix" the animation speed problem.

However I strongly believe that this will quickly be moved to the "Won't fix" section because of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality.
Although I do believe it does more harm than good in its current implementation.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED Talk, and have a good day!

[Muche]

Ideas & suggestions topics that look relevant: 122910 Silo throughput should increase with quality, 118785 More Exciting Quality Effects.

[Visione]

I personally think that it's oke if it is not so affected by beacon's and speed. It's fine if not everything in the game needs 8 to 12 beacons around it with speed modules to be of full potential in end-game. I would however love it if the quality of the rocket silo would increase the animation speed of reloading the rocket into the platform. (And not affect the animation speed of the launch it self.) This change to me seems to be a balanced one, and a reason to grind out legendary rocket silo's. It will increase throughput a little bit, but I honestly think that's fine for the work you put in grinding out legendary silo's for mega bases.