Quality-Science is not a real thing, compared to productivity

[TheRailmaker]

As we know, science of highter quality (QS) gives you an additive 100% muliplier on the research value.
10 science of quality 4 are the same like 40 science of quality 1.

The idea of making QS looked interesting at first, but in almost every case, productivity modules outclass the benefit of QS by a lot. The % of free output is just more, than the % of better quality. Doesn't matter if on science production itself, or ingredients. (yes, Q2-Q5 with thier values considered )

Since the 4 planets don't care about pollution and have free power anyway, the major disadvantage of red modules at start is lost. And with speedbeacons actually working against Quality, the endgame scaleability dies as well.

Maybe on yellow science you could use Quality on the ingredients, because two of them can reach the 300% productivity cap (blue chips, LDS) by research. But robot frames are hard to quality up, and that's so deep in the lategame, that you'd rather take the UPS from additional speedmodules instead. :/

I guess the simplest way to address this problem would be to increase the multiplier of the sciencevalues from QS. What do you think ?

[computeraddict]

Green, military, and purple science have direct uses for quality as their ingredients don't accept prod modules.

Electromagnetic science has some potential for quality as quality modules are the best module choice for scrap recyclers, and the only productivity sacrifice would be in making quality holmium plates to build quality superconductors and supercapacitors, but presumably you're doing something to make quality holmium plates anyway.

I'll have to check on the mechanics of recycling Agricultural science, but you might be able to do something like upcycle it while no research for it is running.

[CyberCider]

Why should quality science be "a real thing" anyway. This is a case of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should". Just like quality ammo and quality belts.

[TheRailmaker]

Why should quality science be "a real thing" anyway. This is a case of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should". Just like quality ammo and quality belts.

To enable more, divers types of playstyle ?

This is a case of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should".

Who is saying that ? To me, its not.

[TheRailmaker]

Green, military, and purple science have direct uses for quality as their ingredients don't accept prod modules.

Can you show me a build of them with ~100 science value produced per second? I can hardly immagine making this without gooing for speed modules. :/

[computeraddict]

Can you show me a build of them with ~100 science value produced per second? I can hardly immagine making this without gooing for speed modules. :/

For green science you'd need 50 assembler 3's making inserters and ~11 foundries making belts (using only 4 quality modules in the foundries to keep ratios balanced). You could drop that to 23 and 4-5 by using legendary speed 1's in single legendary beacons, losing 5% of a potential 25% quality. This would get an extra ~20-30% effective productivity.

Might work?

[TheRailmaker]

[/quote]

For green science you'd need 50 assembler 3's making inserters and ~11 foundries making belts (using only 4 quality modules in the foundries to keep ratios balanced). You could drop that to 23 and 4-5 by using legendary speed 1's in single legendary beacons, losing 5% of a potential 25% quality. This would get an extra ~20-30% effective productivity.

Might work?
[/quote]

Sry, but i do not consider red or green science a real science. It takes a fraction of the building ammounts compared to purple or highter science.
i wanted a build for them

[computeraddict]

Sry, but i do not consider red or green science a real science. It takes a fraction of the building ammounts compared to purple or highter science.
i wanted a build for them

Yeah but I don't know those off the top of my head

I did a bunch of math by hand with a calculator, then realized I'm an idiot and forgot purple science crafts 3 at a time, and built a spreadsheet instead. At which point I found out that purple science doesn't have the worst building count requirement out of the basic sciences because of electromagnetic plants, and instead grenades for military science do! I also bumped the calculations up to 60,000 SPM (1000/s) because 6,000 SPM wasn't really granular enough to see differences well. One thing I did notice when mathing it out is that speed 1's are a lot cheaper than speed 3's, and beaconed quality setups want to use speed 1's as they have the best speed per malus of any of the speed modules.

[TheRailmaker]

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I just had a look at some scenarios, and stay with my point.
Even if you get the full +20% output based on quality, its not worth, to build >FIVE times the buildings.

The module costs alone of all theese quality modules take time to payoff

[computeraddict]

I just had a look at some scenarios, and stay with my point.
Even if you get the full +20% output based on quality, its not worth, to build >FIVE times the buildings.

The module costs alone of all theese quality modules take time to payoff

If you look at my module count table the most interesting column comparison is probably the 8 beacon Quality setup versus the 12 beacon speed-only setup. It's 3x the building count, only about double the beacon count, buuuuuut, the modules in the beacons are less than 1/16th the cost of the modules in the speed-only set up because they're tier 1's. And you still get a healthy 10% boost in effective material efficiency.

Edit: Oh, you were testing with speed 3's in your beacons. Don't do that. The extra benefit isn't worth 150% bigger quality penalty.

[TheRailmaker]

Edit: Oh, you were testing with speed 3's in your beacons. Don't do that. The extra benefit isn't worth 150% bigger quality penalty.

But we talk midgame to engame here.
Basic Speed 3 with Q3 beacons is an option by then.

[h.q.droid]

Beacons multiply the quality penalty too, so a legendary speed 3 in a legendary beacon cancels out a legendary quality 3, which hurts a lot. When upcycling it's generally better to have only one legendary speed 1 in beacons affecting quality things.

Quality science is profitable when you recycle almost-used-up science to restore their capacity. They haven't fixed that yet I think?

[computeraddict]

But we talk midgame to engame here.
Basic Speed 3 with Q3 beacons is an option by then.

Somehow I missed that speed modules give the same speed% per quality malus regardless of tier. Weird. But you definitely get a lot more speed per malus as speed module quality goes up, so it's not worth testing without legendary speed modules.

Redoing the math with a single legendary beacon with two legendary speed 3's in it, you can get a 16.3% effective productivity increase for 4x the number of crafting buildings over 12 beaconed setups.

And you might think, "4x the buildings means 3x more modules!" but you'd be wrong! Because of the insane savings on putting fewer speed modules in beacons. The marginal cost of every 12x speed beaconed building is fairly high compared to the marginal cost of every single beaconed quality machine, which is only 4.25 modules per machine. And the cost of building more of the machines themselves is offset by needing fewer beacons.

It's... a lot closer to parity than it seems at first glance.