TL;DR
I believe the UI should remind the player in some way that they can't craft an Epic or Legendary item just yet.What?
The only place in the game I've found which says what levels of Quality you have unlocked is in the research for Quality modules.I think there should be a way to see which levels of Quality you currently have unlocked in other places. For example:
- The buttons to select the quality of an item in a machine recipe selection screen or a logistic request screen could make it clearer which ones you have unlocked and which ones you don't. Quality is hidden from the interface until you research it if I'm not mistaken, so the Quality levels above what you've unlocked could be hidden as well, or have some different color and maybe a tip on them, until you unlock them.
- The text on the Quality modules could tell which levels are available.
- The hover info of a machine with Quality modules could change, showing the rates for higher levels of Quality of an item, since it's essentially the same probabilistic thing as outputs of a recycler or a centrifuge, although in a lot of places it would have either a lot of info or very small numbers so not the best option.
Why?
Personally I'm interested in this change because I spent hours on Fulgora waiting for a Big Electric Pole of Epic quality to get crafted so that it would have enough reach to connect to power from a neighboring island. I know I could craft it directly from recycling scrap with Quality modules but I felt I would be a bit overwhelmed having to deal with all the qualities at the start, so I crafted them with a quality module and recycled them. I suspected something was off since this didn't match the expected probability, but thought maybe I was just unlucky. Finally I decided to check the wiki and saw there's actually separate research for Epic and Legendary.So I think the problem is that the only place where you know which levels are unlocked is the research tab, and I may not be the only one who might just miss the dots on the Quality module research saying it's just Uncommon and Rare, or forget about this. You can unlock Quality very early but consider it not worth the effort at that point. So until then you're going to be looking at the alluring buttons for Epic and Legendary quality all the time in the UI, and you may also forget your limitations and get too excited about the idea of reaching these qualities when presented with good opportunities on Fulgora.
It's also somewhat confusing that the first levels of Quality are unlocked with the Quality module research, but the next tiers of the Quality modules don't unlock new quality levels, there is different research for that.