Quality killed this game for me

[Tertius]

I went to college for something similar a long time ago. I studied stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma (Note, this Wikipedia article doesn't correctly ascribe this process to Japan, where it originated in the early/mid 20th century*). No manufacturing process is 100%. If anything, the addition of Quality has made Factorio much more realistic (and more interesting).

*Note note: You can see some of this Japanese --> American manufacturing knowledge transfer dynamic, portrayed relatively accurately, in the funny movie Gung Ho. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung_Ho_(film).

So how can this help us creating legendary foundries, asteroid collectors and quality modules? Blueprint please.

[NineNine]

All of my quality stuff is pretty boring. I just run it the stuff I want to upgrade through a recycler. I sort the pieces coming out of the recyclers based on Quality, and send the pieces back into an assembler/em plant of corresponding Quality. I let the Legendary stuff pile up in a red chest. No circuits. Sorry, I don't know how to post blueprints here.

The difficulty isn't in how to make the Legendary stuff. The difficulty is in how to make the infrastructure to make enough of the raw materials to make enough Legendary whatever. I think it's a really fun game mechanic. A lot of thought was put into how they made it, that's for sure.

[mmmPI]

It's ok if you don't see it the same, though, i am telling you that to me it is the same, in both case i deal with probabilistic result thanks to law of large numbers. Do you refute the possibility that it can be done by other player or are you insisting on your refusal/inability to do so ?

U235 probabilities aren't example or quality probabilities because once you have a fixed number of U235 you can switch to guaranteed result recipe without any probabilities involved.

I am going to conclude that you are insisting on your refusal/inability to understand that probabilistic results can be as easily dealt with be them uranium processing or qualities.

]Just to clarify: do you suggest to use 30k copper, 17k iron and some oil products worth rocket to void couple hundreds of items? Instead of putting all of that into research from the beginning.

No i am just telling you that there exist more than 1 method to achieve the thing you deemed impossible as another player mentionned too.

Whatever players wants to upgrade into quality have to be upgraded into quality. That's clear?
Believe whatever you wish to.

I believe what you tell me when you say you don't see situation where quality cannot be replaced by productivity i just think your view are limited. You at the same time explaining that quality ammo can be replaced by more ammo, and acting like it's absolutely necessary that everything can be upgraded into quality. It sound ridiculous. I can upgrade anything in quality, showed a setup, but for you that seem to have trouble to use it and complain on this thread i thought it would be better if you do not put your objectives too high and choose more cleverly what you want to upgrade.

I thought the example of the number of leg in the mech armor is easy to understand comparaison.

You were explained only that you don't need ammo above common quality because you have other options to manage with what you have so your ammo example isn't valid.

No-one explained that, it's just you who wrongly claim it's the case. If you as you say have other options to manage your ammo, that just make your previous point more stupid to me. But really both are, because it's easy to see the benefit of quality ammo to increase damage on same surface.

I don't know what you called infinite mass production

Simple. Have some factory that uses quality probabilities. It has input belt lines for raw resources and output belt lines for production. The only internal buffers are internal belts capacity. As Nauvis-tech-only factory, it can't void any items. Now apply infinite resources to input belt lines and extend factory uptime into eternity. Will it stop working due to item clogging or not?

Show me a design that doesn't work, to compare with mine so i can understand what is the problem you face in your hypothetic case.

So how can this help us creating legendary foundries, asteroid collectors and quality modules? Blueprint please.

I think understanding probablities is useful, but claiming to know them a bit less x)

[mmmPI]

I can't show you how to recycle before the recycler but i can post picture of setup that makes it so you don't need to manage delta of quality items with Nauvis tech only.

- You have to start at Gleba to get the advanced meteor processing and coal synthesis

Ahh !

I agree in that you are explaining a valid way to upcycle quality, although it doesn't use "only nauvis tech", and isn't "recycling" as in breaking apart something that could get locked.

That's why i didn't edited the last sentence when i mentionned it in previous post ^^

Even with just the tech from Nauvis, this will give you a stable source of iron ore. You'd have to make the quality copper and coal elsewhere, but that's still doable. You could balance the whole thing by matching the iron ore production to the copper ore prod. and burning the excess coal. This will let you produce every basic item.

I don't disagree, it's another valid way to increase quality of things before recycler is unlocked, it is also very well possible to increase quality of things by using lava to get rid of undesired low-quality. There are overall many ways to do so. I only posted one ^^

[mmmPI]

All of my quality stuff is pretty boring. I just run it the stuff I want to upgrade through a recycler. I sort the pieces coming out of the recyclers based on Quality, and send the pieces back into an assembler/em plant of corresponding Quality. I let the Legendary stuff pile up in a red chest. No circuits. Sorry, I don't know how to post blueprints here.

The difficulty isn't in how to make the Legendary stuff. The difficulty is in how to make the infrastructure to make enough of the raw materials to make enough Legendary whatever. I think it's a really fun game mechanic. A lot of thought was put into how they made it, that's for sure.

It is understandable to me that most players would know how to use probablity in a way that doesn't look like gambling but automation of little incertainty in the result, pretty standard process, but it seem to be beyond the reach of the understanding of some other players so maybe you should try and learn how to post screenshot or blueprint so we can compare how it's done with a recycler and without them ?

[Shirasik]

Yeah, yeah, no one can understand your infinitely wide, academic, magically wise and applicable to anything view of things. You keep saying what others can't understand you yet this never helps them to understand you, how surprising.

[mmmPI]

Yeah, yeah, no one can understand your infinitely wide, academic, magically wise and applicable to anything view of things. You keep saying what others can't understand you yet this never helps them to understand you, how surprising.

I just posted this setup to ilustrate my point about how to make quality things on Nauvis, using science as a void for material of lower-than-desired- level of quality. I don't understand your problem with it. It seem fairly good illustration that its possible to do.

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Copy blueprint

[mrkev]

You won't get a balanced source of quality resources from that, because red science needs 2iron and 1 copper. The 2 tier copper line fills up and then it starts underproducing.

[mmmPI]

You won't get a balanced source of quality resources from that, because red science needs 2iron and 1 copper. The 2 tier copper line fills up and then it starts underproducing.

This is easy to manage though, if you want balanced copper and iron from that, just pass half the iron through the modules furnaces

you can get "no" underproducing with additionnal beacon too, to keep the iron running 2x faster while not changing the ratio of output.

Edit : The most robust way to do is probably to wire the inserters that feed the furnaces with quality modules to the chest that contain the "rare" material, this way you can create quality on demand on the perfect ratio you need

[Martynka]

For me, the problem with "quality" is that high-quality items can be crafted directly from high-quality materials. Once we build the first meteor enrichment platforms, we gain almost unlimited access to all types of items. This completely kills the sense of progression and makes using mid-tier quality items — between basic and legendary — essentially pointless.
I wish someone with the skills (unfortunately, I don’t have them) would create a mod that removes all quality-tier raw materials and recipes from the game. In such a version, the only way to obtain a legendary machines would be to craft it directly in the assembler using "quality" modules. In my opinion, this would make progression much more interesting and give real purpose to using machines of intermediate quality levels.
As I mentioned, the quality leap that happens after building the spaceship and starting to break down Light Composite seems like something the developers didn’t anticipate. That knowledge completely ruins the immersion for me. I have almost 3k hours, mostly in factorio 1.0.

[mmmPI]

For me, the problem with "quality" is that high-quality items can be crafted directly from high-quality materials.

This is the exact of opposite of what other players complained about, must be very hard for the devs to find a common ground , because if you can't craft high quality items from quality materials , it removes all purpose to high quality material and leaves the player only 1 possibility : trying to get a lucky roll at the last step of production.

This completely kills the sense of progression and makes using mid-tier quality items — between basic and legendary — essentially pointless.

For you maybe, but if one play longer games where gleba isn't reached before 200 hours or so due to ennemy or added complexity then players are stuck with the lower level of quality for long time, and really feels the progression.

Wouldn't it be worse if all the material of high quality were rendered useless because they couldn't be transformed into a quality product ? How would that make the progression feels if when you have legendary material you realize they can't be used ?

I wish someone with the skills (unfortunately, I don’t have them) would create a mod that removes all quality-tier raw materials and recipes from the game. In such a version, the only way to obtain a legendary machines would be to craft it directly in the assembler using "quality" modules. In my opinion, this would make progression much more interesting and give real purpose to using machines of intermediate quality levels.

Hey it's never too late to learn something new !

As I mentioned, the quality leap that happens after building the spaceship and starting to break down Light Composite seems like something the developers didn’t anticipate. That knowledge completely ruins the immersion for me. I have almost 3k hours, mostly in factorio 1.0.

There are several posts on the forum about this were devs indicated the opposite actually, they were/are aware of it existing, and said it was sort of reward for getting that amount of research, that the "leap" happens after you have acces to Vulcanus and Gleba so you have access to infinite amount of ressources anyway and are quite advanced in the game. ( differents posts, different reasons, same logic , as far as i'm aware ).

I think it can help you for Aquilo, but if you take time to set it up before getting there, you set up for "epic" and not legendary, thus adding a step to the progression ladder.
If you wait till Aquilo to set this up, yeah you're at the stage where quality upcycling is what the game offers with bigger number, so you're rightfully using a smart recycling strategy is what i read as devs answer. I remember well this because you have written almost exactly the same words as i used x)