Ability to disable the quality tier skip mechanic

[Galadedrid]

As it stands, the consensus among players and streamers appears to be that the optimal strategy for quality is to ignore it entirely until you unlock legendary - which in effect means that intermediate quality tiers are largely pointless when building at scale. There are exceptions, such as just trying to knock out some uncommon power poles or get lucky with a rare mech armour - but in the overwhelming majority of cases the intermediate qualities might as well not exist.

I suggest this is largely because of the tier-skipping mechanic - which means a build that reliably upcycles an item to rare breaks instantly as soon as you unlock epic (and legendary) qualities and machines and filtered inserters become clogged with the new tiers of items.

As it stands, every build more complicated than a single assembling machine dumping items into a chest has to account for the whole range of potential quality outputs right from the start, or run into the "everything breaks when you research epic" situation.

An option to lock quality improvement to a single tier at a time would admittedly simplify the process, but it would also make it actually worthwhile to take the time to set up production lines for rare items and commit to using stuff like rare substations everywhere, since unlocking epic in that scenario involves adding to the end of the production chain and not scrapping everything involving quality on every planet and rebuilding it all from scratch (then again at legendary).

I appreciate there are lots of people whose only interaction with quality is "hope to get luck with rare mech armour," but there are plenty of other people who would prefer to use it pretty much everywhere before the game is almost over.

[Khazul]

I really am not sure what it is you actuall

I suggest this is largely because of the tier-skipping mechanic - which means a build that reliably upcycles an item to rare breaks instantly as soon as you unlock epic (and legendary) qualities and machines and filtered inserters become clogged with the new tiers of items.

As it stands, every build more complicated than a single assembling machine dumping items into a chest has to account for the whole range of potential quality outputs right from the start, or run into the "everything breaks when you research epic" situation.

Builds don't break when you unlock higher qualities if done properly.

If this is a problem for you, then I question how you are going about it (bad filtering?) if I have understood your post correctly. Or is the problem that you cant use quality items in a non/normal quality recipe?

Also I havn't seen streamers saying don't bother with quality until legendary is unlocked. The ones I have watched use it from the outset. Passively initially, then more actively as and when it makes sense.

[Galadedrid]

I really am not sure what it is you actuall(y want)?

An option, mod setting, or interface which allows me to enforce a 1-level quality shift maximum for any crafting process.

Builds don't break when you unlock higher qualities if done properly.

Yes, if you design the entire setup with legendary in mind from the outset the problem doesn't exist. I acknowledged that. The problem is that designing such a system at the stage where you've just unlocked uncommon and rare is cumbersome, wasteful and leave you open to stalls anyway when your planned buffers overfill - all of which is a direct consequence of the specific "lucky" chance to have something improve two or three tiers in one go.

Or is the problem that you cant use quality items in a non/normal quality recipe?

No, the problem is my iron patch feeding into recyclers sending rare ore to rare furnaces to make rare stuff falls over flat as soon as I unlock epic quality because one tenth of the rare ores become epic and gum up the system. Fixing this by filtering at the output as you would if you were in fact cycling all the way up to legendary is certainly possible, but then it becomes yet another "Just do it on Volcanus" process so you pitch the "lucky" epic ore into the lava and not have it break every two minutes thanks to a filled buffer chest.

Also I havn't seen streamers saying don't bother with quality until legendary is unlocked. The ones I have watched use it from the outset. Passively initially, then more actively as and when it makes sense.

Oh certainly in the first playthroughs people were doing mad nonsense like mining quality scrap then recycling it with more quality then sorting and storing all qualities of all items which they ended up never using and discovering that none of it was useful since they didn't have a sufficiently regular supply of any *particular* quality of any given item to support a proper production line anyway.

The better-planned second tries are using quality consciously in specific places, not just building up a giant stockpile of 100,000 rare iron gears.

[Tinyboss]

The problem is that designing such a system at the stage where you've just unlocked uncommon and rare is cumbersome, wasteful and leave you open to stalls anyway when your planned buffers overfill - all of which is a direct consequence of the specific "lucky" chance to have something improve two or three tiers in one go.

You don't have to design your system with legendary in mind. Just build what you want, and filter items that are higher quality than you've built for (e.g., "> rare") into a buffer. Then nothing breaks when you unlock epic. And at that stage, epic is very...rare...to get, let alone legendary.

If your buffers are filling up, craft them down into something more dense, like gears, steel, or circuits. If that's filling up, then how is it not worth an additional production line at that point?