Ability to craft lower quality with higher quality

[Tinyboss]

Y'all have to know that any total overhaul of quality that takes several page-long posts to describe, even before the guaranteed problems are discovered by playtesting, is never going to happen, right? The only suggestions that will be implemented at this point will be small, self-contained changes that make a clear and limited improvement to the system as it is.

I feel like it is kinda reductive to tell people that their suggestions (in particular on an ideas and suggestion board) are not worth having because it seems like they aren't going to happen.

There is plenty of value in suggestions that may never get implemented. I for one enjoy learning things and seeing different viewpoints on the same features/concepts; and I imagine modders likewise may find inspiration in suggestions that developers might pass over.

And likewise just because a feature is delivered and changing it might shake up a lot of foundations, doesn't mean there isn't some great unrealized potential to be squeezed out of said suggestions. A massive suggestion for an overhaul might accidentally illuminate some obvious path to greatness that someone else might have simply glossed over; or reveal some sort of hidden issue that slipped under the floorboards.

I think we should generally be encouraging people to voice their genuine ideas more instead of scaring off folk who lack the confidence because they are afraid of confrontation or afraid of their ideas being shot down; but maybe that's just me

Your point is well taken. My bad.

[BlueTemplar]

Speaking of (relatively) small changes :
How about allowing quality downgrade through the already existing effect of speed modules ?

[Syriusz]

It feels like the game right now is focused too much on exponentiation of growth. The solution to issues with quality is to make 100x more of everything and upcycle what you do not want. While it is nice for those that want to get into mega? giga? bases as soon as possible, it doesn't feel right for players that don't play 100s of hours every month. And even then, some people may not enjoy that fast of a growth. It may feel natural for devs that play late game of 2.0 for months, but not for many players.
I feel same for demolishers for example- they are extremely difficult until you get uranium cannon shells with certain dmg upgrade, after that small demolisher melts if attacked from back. Just like that, one upgrade for dmg and from very hard, it becomes trivial. The answer for small demolisher is not some clever design, it's just to grind faster for physical dmg upgrade, and for medium and big, just get a railgun, you won't need to fight them before that anyway. And then, you don't even need defences on Vulcanus.

So, my point is, that I wish that at least there would be mod for this, because once I finish vanilla game, I doubt I will enjoy or even be able to make such growth with mods. But I doubt there is easy, efficient way to do this with mods.

[BlueTemplar]

You mean for late-game epic and especially legendary qualities ?
Because for uncommon and rare qualities, getting machines with more module slots, inherent productivity, and higher tier modules (themselves of better quality) is achievable by mid-game and helps a lot without having to scale production x100.
(Some of this of course comes from these machines having higher speed, but it's somewhat tempered by the slowdown from quality modules.)

[Syriusz]

You mean for late-game epic and especially legendary qualities ?
Because for uncommon and rare qualities, getting machines with more module slots, inherent productivity, and higher tier modules (themselves of better quality) is achievable by mid-game and helps a lot without having to scale production x100.
(Some of this of course comes from these machines having higher speed, but it's somewhat tempered by the slowdown from quality modules.)

That's kind of my point. Sure you can get some upgraded modules in mid game, maybe some armour, but even then it probably is still easier to 100x production and upcycle if you want any quantity or more complex items.

[BlueTemplar]

Easier, maybe, but x100 sounds to be a LOT more tedious / boring too ! (Not to mention slower.)

Also :

[...]

Without it I think everyone will inevitably split quality off the main belt and handle it within its own loop. As a result "recycler loops" are going to be about the only way anyone is likely to work with quality. your main factory builds in bulk with normal quality, and you take from that feed to up-cycle desired products into higher quality versions of the same.

Or possibly another minimum quality you decided on :

Now that I'm nearing Epic and Aquilo research, I'm considering to just put upcyclers near drills (or similar) so that normal quality stays confined there and never even enters the rest of the factory (except for fluids of course).

(Will still have to deal on the mining site with rare+ separately though, and yeah, for a factory that never ever blocks, this also involves upcycling and eventually wasting the overflow from the highest quality you have unlocked.)

Upgrading your whole production chain like this desperately needs some better tools though :
Upgrade recipes with Upgrade Planner (Quality !)
Allow custom Upgrade Planners to generically upgrade Quality

[Speadge]

But if it would also have to consider the input qualities to determine an average quality then things get complex for every single item that is crafted. Every single time it would have to calculate a new probability depending on the combination of ingredient quality, further deluded by the quality modules and their quality. It effectively turns a calculation that can be done once currently into one that would needs to be done a bazillion times. I think that might cut somewhat into performance too.

I think if u chose a recipe, it should be possible to "ignore the quality tier of higher items" and just consider them the grad as the recipe is.
so no calculation for an average. just treat them as beeing the grad as the recipe is. even for quality rolls

[Drundia]

This one would be especially useful for recipes that convert solid ingredients into liquids. You get the same Holmium solution, but can't mix ores for it.

[DefGie]

In some ways the down-binning concept makes a lot of sense, but even as someone who thoroughly botched early quality production I'm not a fan.

The "problem" these ideas are trying to solve seems to be the intentional challenge the game presents. Perhaps the challenge is a little bit too hard and some rebalancing could be appropriate, but the problem that my factory locks up when my quality output backs up is a problem for *me* to solve. By design (as far as I can tell). Converting quality ingredients to lower-quality simply by routing them through the right belt requires basically the same (near-zero) level of player engineering as having assemblers accept mixed-quality input, because it's a simple splitter priority to only do this when there's excess quality.

One fool-proof way to access quality without lockups is to not rely solely on machines with quality modules to produce your non-quality goods. Use splitter priority to keep the quality-ed machines running as much as possible but keep other machines for backup. This obviously doesn't maximize your rate of quality goods. And depending how you ratio it you either get some throttling when quality backs up, or have some idle machines when you have demand for quality. But to me it seems like... If you think it's fun/rewarding to optimize, then optimize; if you want a simple solution then settle for the limitations of a simple solution. Maybe there's a design flaw in that the most complex setup is also the most obvious to pursue?


Obviously there's a lot of opinion in all this and we'll never get everyone to agree on the perfect degree of challenge. There are a few changes that I think might be good. I picked one thread on quality balance to mention these in, to me quality balance seems like more of a complete topic than single specific changes to it.


A little bit related to down-binning, if we had a way to place ghosts (including via blueprint) for entities quality >= X (construction robots would prefer the lowest quality available), this would empower some automation in the "use what you have" side of quality. Maybe I want rare bulk inserters to interface with my trains, and as intermediates I'm producing regular and fast inserters with quality. Figuring out where using an uncommon inserter over a common fast inserter will save me a buck isn't worth the trouble, but anywhere I only want a basic inserter, an uncommon one will certainly work. This kind of quality substitution simplifies consuming the quality finished products that I create, including ones that I might create to dispose of surplus quality ingredients, but if I opt-in to producing quality ingredients I will certainly confront the logistics of managing mixed outputs. And it's already possible to do this substitution by hand if I monitor my stock of different quality levels, but I think most of us would agree a manual solution is not what Factorio is about.

Small extension of the above, a third option to place ghosts for quality <= X (qualty = X is the default and first option), preferring the highest quality, would expand on the ability to "trash" surplus this way. Most obviously, surplus quality iron/gears could be routed to produce transport belts and the output placed interchangeably with common belts. Putting other surplus into stuff you only need common is more of a balancing act.


Next, I think it might be better if quality could only jump one tier (has someone else suggested this yet? It seems fairly obvious to consider). For instance, producing from common ingredients with 2% quality would have 98% chance to output common, 1.8% chance to output uncommon, 0.2% chance to output rare, and 0% higher quality. This would cut back on future-proofing to worry about as far as how my early quality setups will behave when I unlock epic quality. Since this would be a small nerf to high-quality production, other quality percentages (the value of a quality module or the % chance of skipping one tier) could be lightly buffed to keep recycling loops as effective.


Since one existing (limited) way to dispose of surplus quality ingredients is converting them into either science packs or ammunition rounds, and then using these up, I do think it would be nice if labs/turrets would be capable of buffering an alternate input (alternate quality, or alternate ammo tier) so they operate continuously when available input is mixed. This would be a significant systems change but not much of a rules change from the player perspective, just removing a janky inefficiency in a setup that does work.


Lastly, since epic quality research uses agricultural and not electromagnetic science, maybe this research could additionally unlock the recycler? I'm not that confident it's strategically valid to try to use epic quality without the recycler.

[dragon_gawain]

Interesting thoughts DefGie!
My own opinion on quality has changed a bunch from what I’ve said in my previous posts in this thread, and I am slowly coming to enjoy it the way it is. By viewing things as logistical challenges, I can apply my factorio engineering skills to solve them!

Multiple qualities of ammo in a turret is already a suggestion: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=118868

I find the idea of limiting the number of levels quality can jump intriguing, but I think that’s best left for a mod as the current system is more intuitive IMO.

[AssaultRaven]

In some ways the down-binning concept makes a lot of sense, but even as someone who thoroughly botched early quality production I'm not a fan.

The "problem" these ideas are trying to solve seems to be the intentional challenge the game presents. Perhaps the challenge is a little bit too hard and some rebalancing could be appropriate, but the problem that my factory locks up when my quality output backs up is a problem for *me* to solve. By design (as far as I can tell). Converting quality ingredients to lower-quality simply by routing them through the right belt requires basically the same (near-zero) level of player engineering as having assemblers accept mixed-quality input, because it's a simple splitter priority to only do this when there's excess quality.

For me, the author of the down-binning mod, it's not about the degree of challenge, it's that the nature of the challenge immediately prompts me to ask, "wait, why can't I just...?", and the game not having a good enough answer, which is one of the many ways that a video game can feel "gamey" in a negative sense.

As an example in the opposite direction, I've also chosen to play my current save under a self-imposed "no quality modules in recyclers" rule, which also feels wrong.

[sp55aa]

I don't want to accidentally waste legendary item to make a normal item

[DefGie]

For me, the author of the down-binning mod, it's not about the degree of challenge, it's that the nature of the challenge immediately prompts me to ask, "wait, why can't I just...?", and the game not having a good enough answer, which is one of the many ways that a video game can feel "gamey" in a negative sense.

Fair enough. For what it's worth, I singled out your idea because I think it's the best version of the basic goal of the thread. The overall thrust of the thread seems (by my read, anyway) to be people see a problem and are looking for a solution, rather than see a solution and think it feels unnatural that it's unavailable. The problem as articulated by one individual somewhere several pages back: "I spent a long time building a branch of my factory to make higher quality modules and was really proud of it only to find when it backed up, my entire factory came to a screeching halt". I did something similar and then said, "Well, I guess that was rather optimistic."

Anyway, it's cool that the game has a decently robust modding facility and we can create these modifications when we prefer a different way to play the game, I just don't support adding the down-binner to the standard game because from my perspective it would basically take something away. It would be interesting to brainstorm how the logistical challenge could feel more natural, without simplifying it, but I don't have any seeds for that conversation right now.

[MRDGH2821]

Since one existing (limited) way to dispose of surplus quality ingredients is converting them into either science packs or ammunition rounds, and then using these up, I do think it would be nice if labs/turrets would be capable of buffering an alternate input (alternate quality, or alternate ammo tier) so they operate continuously when available input is mixed. This would be a significant systems change but not much of a rules change from the player perspective, just removing a janky inefficiency in a setup that does work.

I like the idea of having 2nd assembly/production line in 1 assembler with its own progress & productivity bar, but this feels like having 2 assembers occupying same 2d space.

Additionally if i understand your idea, the assembler will buffer alternate quality & craft it only when previous craft is done after sufficient ingredients are in

[DefGie]

Well the distinction between labs and assemblers is that the behavior of labs already does allow them to consume science packs from a mixed-quality supply. This is because they don't have a recipe (i.e. configured with a specific quality level) and they only consume one science pack of each type at a time, rather than consuming stacks. That's why buffering in labs I would see as more of a QoL than a rules change. The same is true of turrets like I also noted above, and actually of furnaces producing iron or copper, or lithium (I think that's a full list, but I'm looking ahead on parts of space age tech tree so could easily have missed something). Steel or stone brick production can get jammed if there's less than a recipe but more than 0 loaded, and the belt is full of other quality levels.

Well, as I trace out these lines I do start to feel like I'm painting myself into a corner of really just endorsing an arbitrary behavior. But as of right now I still endorse it.

I guess assemblers could be made to behave similarly to furnaces in terms of, if the machine has one ingredient of any quality it will wait for a full recipe of that quality, and not accept any other type of inputs - But the target quality is not part of the recipe setting. I'm not sure anyone's interested in that idea, it wouldn't allow crafting lower quality with higher quality and would be pretty hard to capitalize on besides maybe in the simplest recipes.

[AileTheAlien]

since epic quality research uses agricultural and not electromagnetic science, maybe this research could additionally unlock the recycler?

I don't think it would be possible to play Fulgora without the recycler, so you shouldn't lock it behind Gleba's research (for epic quality). If you could dump excess materials into the deep-oil ocean, then the recycler could probably wait. But IMO, the machine that looks like an electromechanical device doesn't make much sense to use Gleba science.

Converting quality ingredients to lower-quality simply by routing them through the right belt requires basically the same (near-zero) level of player engineering as having assemblers accept mixed-quality input, because it's a simple splitter priority to only do this when there's excess quality.

IMO, the 'engineering' you need to do to handle quality as it exists right now isn't really fun. You just calculate in your head (or spreadsheet if you want accuracy), what percentages of your items each level of quality will have based on your assemblers and modules, then round up so you have a bit of excess of assemblers to handle the five flows. Repeat that same process for every intermediate item, at each sub-factory that produces (and consumes) them. Dump any excess you might have into logistic-robot crates, until you have time to fix your over-supply / under-demand of any specific quality/item. Or recycle it, if you've gone to Fulgora. Or throw it into the lava if you haven't!

Down-binning is an 'easy' solution, but only if you don't care about wasting materials. Like, it's basically a slightly cheaper version of throwing items into lava or the (non-moduled) recycler, because you're just getting a small fraction of your materials back. It helps avoid headaches, but you still need to put in the work to handle all the quality levels properly, if you want to maximize the amout of high-quality output you have.

[quineotio]

I think quality is a dud system overall.

By FAR the easiest way to produce quality is with bots, and I find this boring. The alternative is entirely new production lines for every quality, or a bunch of recyclers eating everything you don't want. It multiplies the complexity of producing things when all I really "need" is a small number of quality items for personal stuff and space platforms, and some modules. Anything more than that is a chore (entire factory redesign) and by the time I'd be ready to engage with it fully I've already finished the game, and by the time I've finished the game I'm already well into the infinite researches so what's the point?

The fun of the original game is working around the constraints, and quality removes them. The biggest factory I ever built in 1.0 produced 4K SPM. I had more than that at the end of space age, and I was still using steel furnaces, and I didn't expand my production AT ALL for the entire game. It feels like cheating.

The thing about quality is it makes it basically impossible to build for a set target - unless you go full legendary, or unless you want to rebuild your factory over and over again as the quality goes up. So it's like - you build a factory that produces quality, then you rebuild with quality, and repeat this until you're full legendary, and six weeks later you're producing 1 Million SPM that you don't need for any purpose whatsoever. It's the definition of tedium.

And then there's the useless quality items, like ice and holmium ore. I was going to set up quality production on Fulgora, but this just made me quit. So... I have to have a separate machine for every quality of ice, and every quality of holmium ore, even though it produces the same output? Are you kidding me?

The post victory screen in 1.0 was fun, but in space age it's pure vanity. Quality is like a post game challenge that removes the challenge - but you get it early game before you have the tools to engage with it properly. I WANT to play factorio, but since finishing space age I haven't been able to think of any reason to do so (and I've been to the shattered planet twice, in two different ships). The more I think about it, the more I think that quality only makes the game worse, and if I ever play again I'd be tempted to not use it at all.

My suggestion would be to do away with quality modules entirely and make quality items require different recipes. At least then it'd be fun to redesign your factory. And do we really need 5 different tiers of quality for EVERY item? What's the point of legendary mech armour exactly? Legendary portable fusion reactor? I beat the game with normal quality armour and portable fission reactors. Seems to me you could have two tiers of quality and it'd be fine - or maybe a third tier that can only be made in a quality machine - or maybe certain normal recipes require quality machines.

Either integrate the system properly into the entire game or remove it entirely. The idea that it's this optional thing you don't need to engage with poisons the design of the whole game, because you need to balance around not having it, which makes the game trivial when you have it.

[DefGie]

I don't think it would be possible to play Fulgora without the recycler, so you shouldn't lock it behind Gleba's research (for epic quality). If you could dump excess materials into the deep-oil ocean, then the recycler could probably wait. But IMO, the machine that looks like an electromechanical device doesn't make much sense to use Gleba science.

I didn't say *move* the recycler unlock to epic quality. The idea was, if you unlock epic quality before going to Fulgora, maybe you've still earned the recycler. This would be similar to how heat pipes, boilers, steam turbines can be unlocked either by nuclear power research or by visiting Gleba.

[nzer]

The post victory screen in 1.0 was fun, but in space age it's pure vanity.

There's literally no difference. The post-game in 1.0 was all about making the big number go up. The post-game in SA is also about making the big number go up. SA actually does this way better than the base game, specifically because of quality. It makes infrastructural progression into a real problem with complex solutions, rather than being completely trivial like in 1.0.

Your entire comment is extremely misguided, IMO. Quality is intended to be another carrot for megabasers to chase, and it serves that goal well. Not only does it not "trivialize" anything post-victory, it actually makes the post-game harder because it's an additional system you have to solve in order to maximize the output of your factory. It doesn't trivialize anything pre-victory either, because 95% of the difficulty in winning the game is in figuring out the systems, not in scaling up production. It's trivial to just copy-paste another furnace array if you need more steel, or whatever. If you're engaging with quality to any meaningful degree before the victory screen, you're probably just wasting time, since quality is not trivial to work with and is completely unnecessary for winning the game.

[Tinyboss]

IMO, the 'engineering' you need to do to handle quality as it exists right now isn't really fun. You just calculate in your head (or spreadsheet if you want accuracy), what percentages of your items each level of quality will have based on your assemblers and modules, then round up so you have a bit of excess of assemblers to handle the five flows. Repeat that same process for every intermediate item, at each sub-factory that produces (and consumes) them. Dump any excess you might have into logistic-robot crates, until you have time to fix your over-supply / under-demand of any specific quality/item. Or recycle it, if you've gone to Fulgora. Or throw it into the lava if you haven't!

If you insist on producing all items at all available quality levels at all times, (and have the ratios right!) then sure. That's kind of an extreme goal, though. I think most players target specific items. For example, setting aside commonly used components like plates, plastic, and circuits, to fill needs for higher quality items as they arise. And/or they use recycling loops.

I agree with you that the thing you describe would not be fun. Thankfully there's also no good reason to do it!