Auto quality upgrading

[spro123]

if you automate quality machines in the early game, you don't have much of that quality machine. so I propose that when a quality machine is made bots will automatically be sent to upgrade a lower Quilty machine.

[Muche]

Welcome to the forum.

That's how upgrade planner works. You set it e.g. to upgrade normal AM to uncommon AM, apply the planner to your base, and when you produce that uncommon AM and put it into a Storage/Passive provider chest, construction bots will take it and do the upgrade.

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[DavidEscott]

The upgrade planner is a bit of a pain to use for quality upgrades as you have to specify from what quality to what quality you want to upgrade for every single item that you want to upgrade. This can be a little overwhelming for the new player, and it is frankly boring to have to do.

Additionally the target is formally specified as a specific thing. If you specify that you want a common assembler upgraded to a legendary it will never place an epic assembler in that place even if one is available. It will instead stay common until the legendary is available, which seems silly. Epic assembler in that spot may not be my objective, but it is still an improvement towards my objective. Why not take the interim step?

I think it would be useful to have a more generic "improve this" kind of upgrade planner. If you tag a bunch of yellow belts with this more generic "improve this" flag it will put the best thing available in that spot, it might be red, it might be blue. Just depends on what is available in the moment, and it will keep trying to improve that item until it reaches the best belt you have researched.

Similarly if you tag an assembler, it might slowly walk through the quality levels as they are produced, and only untag it once it is upgraded to the highest quality you have unlocked.

This ends up being a bit more work for the bots, but removes some annoying grind work from the player.

[hoho]

An upgrade planner that could up-tier entities if none are set would be nice. Something like how we can set only the quality level for filters without specifying item itself

[Muche]

Also see Allow custom Upgrade Planners to generically upgrade Quality.

An issue with autoupgrades in two different axis (better entity vs. better quality) is it may be only partially ordered and not totally ordered.
Is normal prod module 2 better than uncommon prod module 1 because it has +6% productivity (vs. +4% productivity)?
Or is it worse because total production rate when taking its speed malus into account is 1.06*0.9=0.954 (vs. 1.04*0.95=0.988)?

[hoho]

the quick and easy solution would be to simply upgrade quality only if the upgrade planner has quality filters set/relevant keyboard key pressed. Otherwise have it work as it does currently.

[DavidEscott]

An issue with autoupgrades in two different axis (better entity vs. better quality) is it may be only partially ordered and not totally ordered.
Is normal prod module 2 better than uncommon prod module 1 because it has +6% productivity (vs. +4% productivity)?
Or is it worse because total production rate when taking its speed malus into account is 1.06*0.9=0.954 (vs. 1.04*0.95=0.988)?

I say punt on the issue, and let it work itself out. The only place it may cause problems is if I create lots of rare level 1 modules and put them in the factory, and then try to jump to legendary level 3 modules[*].

It is feasible that in such a setup the recycler loop for modules has one constructing ordinary quality level 3s to feed into the loop, and thus not having any need for level 1s of any quality; but it isn't that hard for such an individual to create such a loop so as to recover their existing modules and work. Moreover its probably more efficient to take a crack at making the quality level 2s directly and get two rolls of the dice... and if you don't want to bother with that recycling quality 1s gives you quality circuits which are generally useful.

So just wait until it becomes "strictly better." So Rare 1 modules might be replaced by >Rare >=1 or by >=Rare >1.

[*] it isn't likely to happen to belts because who makes quality belts; it likely won't happen with assemblers because MK3 is available around the same time as quality; its really only modules and some inserter situations.

[Muche]

I say punt on the issue, and let it work itself out. The only place it may cause problems is if I create lots of rare level 1 modules and put them in the factory, and then try to jump to legendary level 3 modules[*].

So just wait until it becomes "strictly better." So Rare 1 modules might be replaced by >Rare >=1 or by >=Rare >1.

[*] it isn't likely to happen to belts because who makes quality belts; it likely won't happen with assemblers because MK3 is available around the same time as quality; its really only modules and some inserter situations.

It seems to me you are basing your suggestion based on vanilla balancing (i.e. mostly strictly better versions), without taking into account how autoupgrading would work in the moddable design space.
To punt on the issue means to invite future bugreports due to unpredictable/undefined/unexpected behaviour.

See e.g. Does "Quality" Make Fusion Reactors Worse? for an example of context-dependent higher quality.

[DavidEscott]

It seems to me you are basing your suggestion based on vanilla balancing (i.e. mostly strictly better versions), without taking into account how autoupgrading would work in the moddable design space.

In the context of mods one can do anything. Good can be bad, up can be down, whatever. The game accommodates mods, but it isn't designed around mods.