How to upcycle?

[Khagan]

50% boost per stage for 3 stages (you are not receiving boost for normal and legendary quality) is 1,5^3 = 3.375 and 3.375/4 = 0.844, which is still less than 1.

That's 50% relative boost per cycle, not per successful quality raise, and you average multiple cycles for each level.

[Hurkyl]

More legendary iron plates for given input resources and factory space.

This i think can be interpreted differently for players, i consider that iron can be infinite from space, and already legendary, so really the "per given input ressources" is not what i think about in my design consideration, i'd be considering the mentionned setup in the case of Vulcanus upcycling, so iron would be coming from lava, and calcite potentially from space or mined but would be very low on the consideration, it's "infinite too".

But then any setup that is sufficently "bigger" will also produce "more", just double the size of the smaller one otherwise .... x)

"Requiring fewer resources" has knock-on effects beyond just raw resource counts.

Sure lava is infinite, but you need the foundries to process the lava and into molten iron and whatnot. So if your design requires fewer resources, that translates into fewer foundries needed to do that processing. Or conversely a particular number of foundries will be able to sustain greater production.

I may be misremembering, but I thought you had introduced this particular dimension to the discussion, or at least something that would directly relate to factory space required, which is why I phrased things that way.

[mmmPI]

"Requiring fewer resources" has knock-on effects beyond just raw resource counts.

Sure lava is infinite, but you need the foundries to process the lava and into molten iron and whatnot. So if your design requires fewer resources, that translates into fewer foundries needed to do that processing. Or conversely a particular number of foundries will be able to sustain greater production.

I may be misremembering, but I thought you had introduced this particular dimension to the discussion, or at least something that would directly relate to factory space required, which is why I phrased things that way.

Ressource part
You can have 2 different build that produce each 12 legendary iron plate per second with the exact same number of foundries and pumps, but one would consume 50 lava per second as input, and the other one 200 lava per second as input.

You could think, oh the first one is much better !

But maybe the setup that consume 50 lava per second cost 1 million iron to make because of all the module, and the other setup that consume 200 per second has barely any module, so it cost only 50K iron to make.

If you are a megabaser, or optimizing UPS, or playing a 10000 hours game you will go for the setup that cost 1 million probably, because SPM is a goal, you invest into it until the very last moment when you achieve it, but if you try to get just a legendary armor to actually use it in game, not as a trophy at the end, i think the setup that cost 50K is recommended, even if it means that one pump and one foundry that make the molten iron are working slower and more often and are worse for performance.

Factory space requirement
Factory space requirement in itself doesn't mean all that much to me but can be seen as a shortcut for "cost of the build" or "ease to deploy", if you need 12 foundry to get started it "cost a lot" it's a "large build" but you may have a build that "cost more to setup" while being smaller, because using higer quality material.

There is a "limit" to how dense a build can be, and generally the "denser" the better, because it means in the same amount of space that can fit a limited amount of machine you produce "more", but there is also a trade off here, because in a real game you may not be willing to pay 10 times the price to have a setup that takes 10% less "space". But as a megabaser, you don't see necessarily it as "space" but as "number of machines" and it can translate as "performance".

For the foundries you can have a build that is "very cheap" because nothing is of high quality, it would be "not dense", you avoid paying ressources to incease in quality, because you "pay" with space, it can be good for some purpose, like "playing fast", but not for others like making the most SPM out of one's computer.

[Hurkyl]

"Requiring fewer resources" has knock-on effects beyond just raw resource counts.

Sure lava is infinite, but you need the foundries to process the lava and into molten iron and whatnot. So if your design requires fewer resources, that translates into fewer foundries needed to do that processing. Or conversely a particular number of foundries will be able to sustain greater production.

I may be misremembering, but I thought you had introduced this particular dimension to the discussion, or at least something that would directly relate to factory space required, which is why I phrased things that way.

Ressource part
You can have 2 different build that produce each 12 legendary iron plate per second with the exact same number of foundries and pumps, but one would consume 50 lava per second as input, and the other one 200 lava per second as input.

That you would not have the exact same number of foundries and pumps is the entire point.

The point about picking the production chains and recycling steps to reduce the resource requirements is that it has a very strong correlation with reducing the number of foundries you need to build to get the same results.

[mmmPI]

No the point was explaining to you why the input in ressources doesn't matter when using something infinite with a simple example to illustrate.
If you think the example is not realistic, it doesn't matter either, the point is the same.

[Hurkyl]

No the point was explaining to you why the input in ressources doesn't matter when using something infinite with a simple example to illustrate.
If you think the example is not realistic, it doesn't matter either, the point is the same.

Responding to "You generally need fewer buildings if you need to process fewer resources" with "Let's hold the number of buildings fixed and hypothesize about varying other things" is not the win you think it is.

[mmmPI]

Responding to "You generally need fewer buildings if you need to process fewer resources" with "Let's hold the number of buildings fixed and hypothesize about varying other things" is not the win you think it is.

It's not a matter of winning, it's a matter of explaining to you why when people use "it's better" or "it's superior" without precising in what it's ridiculous.

( you said "generally", so try to imagine , it's not that hard , just picture a non general case, i'm sure you'll managed, but otherwise it's ok just know that it's possible).

If you have a setup that's only ""better"" in "less ressources moten lava consumed" than another setup, then you have in practice optimized a useless metric because lava is infinite.

If you don't understand the example or how it's possible or think the point is "winning" it's a shame i think.

[Hurkyl]

Responding to "You generally need fewer buildings if you need to process fewer resources" with "Let's hold the number of buildings fixed and hypothesize about varying other things" is not the win you think it is.

It's not a matter of winning, it's a matter of explaining to you why when people use "it's better" or "it's superior" without precising in what it's ridiculous.

( you said "generally", so try to imagine , it's not that hard , just picture a non general case, i'm sure you'll managed, but otherwise it's ok just know that it's possible).

If you have a setup that's only ""better"" in "less ressources moten lava consumed" than another setup, then you have in practice optimized a useless metric because lava is infinite.

If you don't understand the example or how it's possible or think the point is "winning" it's a shame i think.

Do you think we are considering such an edge case? Is there a point to bringing this up? Was there some reason to try and rebut the observation that consuming less molten lava means you need fewer pumps? And it directly corresponds to producing less molten iron/copper, which means you're using fewer foundries running those recipes? And so on?

The context was even discussing, say, that if you could change the end of your upcycling chain to get 25% more product for the same inputs, it means that you can multiply the rest of the production facility by 0.8 and still reach your production target.

[mmmPI]

Do you think we are considering such an edge case?

No that's only you who get stuck on the example of setup because you don't seem to understand how module works, when the point is just explaining to you that a setup that consume "less infinite ressources" than another one is not very smart metric to optimize. Regarding your definition of "you achieve superior result" i asked what do you mean by superior, and i thought saying "consume less ressource" is useless, you say "knock on effect means less machines" ,but no that's not even true all the time, you are wrong both time.

It's fairly obvious that you can "consume less ressource" by adding both speed and productivity module to machine, so the ouput is roughly the same, but the input has been reduced while the speed stay the same, you get a setup that cost more, and if you do that to save on infinite lava, you're just making a mistake, that's my point. It's obvious and there is no need to fake not understanding it.

[Hurkyl]

Do you think we are considering such an edge case?

No that's only you who get stuck on the example of setup because you don't seem to understand how module works, when the point is just explaining to you that a setup that consume "less infinite ressources" than another one is not very smart metric to optimize. Regarding your definition of "you achieve superior result" i asked what do you mean by superior, and i thought saying "consume less ressource" is useless, you say "knock on effect means less machines" ,but no that's not even true all the time, you are wrong both time.

It's fairly obvious that you can "consume less ressource" by adding both speed and productivity module to machine, so the ouput is roughly the same, but the input has been reduced while the speed stay the same, you get a setup that cost more, and if you do that to save on infinite lava, you're just making a mistake, that's my point. It's obvious and there is no need to fake not understanding it.

I'm stuck? You're the one who keeps talking about the merits or lack thereof of productivity modules in Foundries using recipes with lava as input.

Is that really what you think I've been talking about this whole time?

[mmmPI]

I'm stuck? You're the one who keeps talking about the merits or lack thereof of productivity modules in Foundries using recipes with lava as input.
Is that really what you think I've been talking about this whole time?

I maintain my first post on this topic :

This sounds like a paradox and maybe is a hint on how to resolve your questions, what do you need ? how can it feel pointless if you are getting what you need ? Do you have "arbitrary need" ? do you WANT quality ? and more importantly why ? because the way to upcycle are different if you want say mass production of substation or beacons or a full space ship and full armor , or you plan a megabase and you "need" almost everything in quality.

• 1)At least the way i understand it, if you want certain specific items like substation or beacons, it's easier to make dedicated loop for those items.

• 2)If you want a full spaceship or a full armor, you want a bit of many different material, but not in mass production, you don't really need recycler you can have a few % of your machines dedicated to this, or a specific small quality subfactory switching receipe that backs up when nothing's needed.

• 3)If you want most everything in high quality, you will probably use different methods that are only available/making sense with advanced infinite research in productivities area and try to have the raw ressources of high quality for fully legendary production lane.

If there is really just one or two ways then why ask which is the best approach ? I think there are countless ways to effectively create high quality items. But they all have requirements / trade-off or are best suited to certain goals and situations.

Even in the little breakdown i mentionned there are different possibilities, i understand more the feeling of being lost than the 2 'paradox' i quoted. Some of the "efficient techniques" to me involve getting the asteroid in high quality, it's efficient because it's "infinite ressources" and doesn't require a lot of footprint/investement ressources for the parts ; compared to on-planet factories they are also easy to duplicate.

But spaceship cost UPS, compared Vulcanus lava, which can also be used to get infinite ressources, and with the addition of calcite potentially from space, stone too, and those provide easy way to get high quality materials if you use certain receipe recycling like low densisty structure or undergroud pipes. Though you may have a bottleneck by the landing pad if your science is already in the million per hour or so x).

Those methods are available for "very late game" "postgame" or "mid game" depending on the playstyle i would say. They correspond to different ways of approaching the 3) because i think that may be what you have identified as the one or two best ways to do.

But it's also possible to have "some machines" alongside your whole factory like 1 furnace out of 12 or the 17th when you really needed 16, with quality modules in it, reading a chest that take away the "lucky-quality-thing" you get from the rest of the factory ; and not working when the chest has a decent buffer of "rare" or "uncommon".

Then at the circuit level. If you get half a chest of iron plate copper plate steel and circuits , of "quality level 3" this way, you are able to make certain item from "quality material" ,to be sure to have them, like the personnal armor or weapons or other things that are not produced in high enough quantity to hope to get them if not from material already "quality".

It's "efficient" because there is no recycling involved, and you get access to "what you need" "when you need". It can "evolve" during a game if you add some recycler loop for certain item, It's a bit up to each players i'd say to choose where to invest, i know many players goes for the exoskeletons as the first item for which they use recycler loop, often manually or bot fed, as a side production in their factory. I know others don't because they use a lot more remote view. If you start by recycling 1 item like exoskeletons, and you already had some quality material from machine with modules but no recycler ( on nauvis), it can combine, you now get access to "lubricated engine" and "blue circuit" from your recycler loop for exos alongside the other quality material from furnace or EM plant to maybe start a dedicated line for thrusters or beacons, bot/manually fed. ( combining the (1) and (2) from previous answer).

Conclusion :

How to upcycle depend a lot on what you want to have and when, the mass production method are only available late game, they involve producing raw ressources at high quality. Some players consider the game as "finished" by then , others the game as "only starting". Thus it's hard to advise a particular setup without more information on "what do you need ?" and "when ?". Hopefully i provided explanations on the second part for why i think it's important to answer those question before thinking of the actual design, beause there are options to choose from that would work to different degree. I think having an idea of the different ways that exist allow to plan better the strategy over the course of a full game, to only focus on quality when necessary without over investement or postponing it forever, but it's a delicate balance to anticipate our own needs during a game and choose the design that match best.

And this one :

Ressource part
You can have 2 different build that produce each 12 legendary iron plate per second with the exact same number of foundries and pumps, but one would consume 50 lava per second as input, and the other one 200 lava per second as input.

You could think, oh the first one is much better !

But maybe the setup that consume 50 lava per second cost 1 million iron to make because of all the module, and the other setup that consume 200 per second has barely any module, so it cost only 50K iron to make.

If you are a megabaser, or optimizing UPS, or playing a 10000 hours game you will go for the setup that cost 1 million probably, because SPM is a goal, you invest into it until the very last moment when you achieve it, but if you try to get just a legendary armor to actually use it in game, not as a trophy at the end, i think the setup that cost 50K is recommended, even if it means that one pump and one foundry that make the molten iron are working slower and more often and are worse for performance.

Factory space requirement
Factory space requirement in itself doesn't mean all that much to me but can be seen as a shortcut for "cost of the build" or "ease to deploy", if you need 12 foundry to get started it "cost a lot" it's a "large build" but you may have a build that "cost more to setup" while being smaller, because using higer quality material.

There is a "limit" to how dense a build can be, and generally the "denser" the better, because it means in the same amount of space that can fit a limited amount of machine you produce "more", but there is also a trade off here, because in a real game you may not be willing to pay 10 times the price to have a setup that takes 10% less "space". But as a megabaser, you don't see necessarily it as "space" but as "number of machines" and it can translate as "performance".

For the foundries you can have a build that is "very cheap" because nothing is of high quality, it would be "not dense", you avoid paying ressources to incease in quality, because you "pay" with space, it can be good for some purpose, like "playing fast", but not for others like making the most SPM out of one's computer.

I believe if your answer to that is along the line of :

"Requiring fewer resources" has knock-on effects beyond just raw resource counts.

"You generally need fewer buildings if you need to process fewer resources" with "Let's hold the number of buildings fixed and hypothesize about varying other things" is not the win you think it is.

I believe you have missed the point.

I may be misremembering, but I thought you had introduced this particular dimension to the discussion, or at least something that would directly relate to factory space required, which is why I phrased things that way.

That's why i'm "explaining" = telling you more in details the meaning of what i said, if you disagree on it, it's your opinion or your choice, but if in your word it look like you're misunderstanding things i could have said while refering to them, it make sense to me to try and explain more.

[Hurkyl]

I jumped in when three of you were discussing the relative merits of constructing legendary pipe to ground versus underground belts in terms of things like the loss of material when recycling down to the production target. Well, two of you were discussing it and you didn't seem to get what they were talking about.

Which I was trying to explain.

Did you you think I was talking about things like productivity modules for lava processing recipes this whole time?

Well, I guess it doesn't matter. If you aren't actually interested in that concept, I'm not going to force it.

[mmmPI]

Which I was trying to explain.

I believe your explanation attempt unfortunatly didn't account for the recycler using a the recipe for underground pipe that isn't the one that use molten iron when choosing the material for the output. Which lead to you "removing your comment".

But i believe, one problem at a time, that it wasn't the only thing, that was incorrect.

Another one was that you seemed to follow the same simplistic reasonning that there could a be a setup that would give "superior result" and you didn't precise superior in what. So i asked, when i read your answer about "fewer ressource input" and "lower number of machine" combined in the definition of "superior setup" i felt it was like reading someone thinking the superior potato is the biggest and heaviest, and you are presented with the biggest potato, but also with another one that happens to be the heaviest, it's not as big but more dense.

You can even say some people think the superior potato is the tastier, and they go for the best in UPS , or the fastest build to setup and get all the achievements.

In all those cases, it's "pointless" to try and make "the superior setup" to "upcycle iron" because the definition of "superior setup" is inconsistent.

Did you you think I was talking about things like productivity modules for lava processing recipes this whole time?

Well, I guess it doesn't matter. If you aren't actually interested in that concept, I'm not going to force it.

I believe before talking about any "design" for "upcycling" it's important to clarify what the goals of the upcycling are. I believe otherwise it would be like listening to someone telling you about his quest to search for the best potato, and you have no idea what the best potato is for that person is and that person ask you what is the best potato ? and you're like , in salad ? or in fries ? do you mean the healthier from a nutrient point of view ? or for the soil and eco-system in general ? because you want to try and open up the perspective.

And you get : No i'm looking for the best potato ? is it this one ? what about this one is it the best potato ? this one is rounder, rounder potato are smaller so it is better in general. Ah but no potato is perfectly square so your example telling me the shape of the potato doesn't matter for the taste is just a niche case.

I'm not interested to discuss the next particular potato on the list with you because it appears to me a discussion where you only seek to "win" or "be right" about some particular kind of potato you've thought of or made that would be the superior one.
This at first and then "how your definition of what is the superior potato is valid according to you."

I am going to try and explain why i think it's a mistake to other players, but i am ready to accept that i may not have the skill to explain it to every player or you in particular.

[Hurkyl]

Fine. If you want to continue the discussion....

I believe before talking about any "design" for "upcycling" it's important to clarify what the goals of the upcycling are. I believe otherwise it would be like listening to someone telling you about his quest to search for the best potato, and you have no idea what the best potato is for that person is and that person ask you what is the best potato ? and you're like , in salad ? or in fries ? do you mean the healthier from a nutrient point of view ? or for the soil and eco-system in general ? because you want to try and open up the perspective.

A standard you clearly failed to live up to before going on about underground pipes.

But normally, you infer from a person's explanations of their choices what things they might be trying to achieve: e.g. I make an inference that you valued some form of efficiency from your talk about how quickly the recipe runs, likely for the translation into concrete results like getting more product from a build or using a smaller build to reach a production target or some other variation.

So I reply, basing my understanding on that inference, talking about another aspect of the problem that could impact those results, and trusting the reader to see if and how it would apply to their situation, as well as making a prediction of how things will turn out. And ranting about how dare I make a prediction about the results without first making the discussion more precise.

As opposed to, say, pretending I'm talking about things as banal as crafting molten iron from lava with productivity modules.

And ironically, the rule of thumb I was pushing even supports your pet idea in the large: getting bonus resources out of the craft/recycle chain loop is a super beneficial to have in a production chain. It was only ideas about optimizing the end of the chain where the alternatives might be preferable.

[mmmPI]

Fine. If you want to continue the discussion....

No no , look i said :

I'm not interested to discuss the next particular potato on the list with you because it appears to me a discussion where you only seek to "win" or "be right" about some particular kind of potato you've thought of or made that would be the superior one.
This at first and then "how your definition of what is the superior potato is valid according to you."

I am going to try and explain why i think it's a mistake to other players, but i am ready to accept that i may not have the skill to explain it to every player or you in particular.

And ironically, the rule of thumb I was pushing even supports your pet idea in the large: getting bonus resources out of the craft/recycle chain loop is a super beneficial to have in a production chain. It was only ideas about optimizing the end of the chain where the alternatives might be preferable.

Naaa my "pet idea" is that it's up to the user to identify their need in a particular game and choose an appropriate setup for this amongst different that were optimized for different purpose.

It therefore makes no sense to say something is "super beneficial" without more precision, because something beneficial for UPS may be detrimental for fast deployment in a game and vice versa.

[Tertius]

Could you please return to the topic of this thread, which is "how to upcycle?"
It's not "you said this" "no I said that". I really don't care about who said what. Not at all.

I care about how to upcycle things.

[mmmPI]

Could you please return to the topic of this thread, which is "how to upcycle?"
It's not "you said this" "no I said that". I really don't care about who said what. Not at all.

I care about how to upcycle things.

Let's try and not make fake equivalence

I took time to put up some general thought that i still believe is correct, but feel free to point mistakes, that's what i did when i thought other people said incorrect things, anyone is free to give advice but not every advice is a good one that's the point of the discussion isn't it ?

This sounds like a paradox and maybe is a hint on how to resolve your questions, what do you need ? how can it feel pointless if you are getting what you need ? Do you have "arbitrary need" ? do you WANT quality ? and more importantly why ? because the way to upcycle are different if you want say mass production of substation or beacons or a full space ship and full armor , or you plan a megabase and you "need" almost everything in quality.

• 1)At least the way i understand it, if you want certain specific items like substation or beacons, it's easier to make dedicated loop for those items.

• 2)If you want a full spaceship or a full armor, you want a bit of many different material, but not in mass production, you don't really need recycler you can have a few % of your machines dedicated to this, or a specific small quality subfactory switching receipe that backs up when nothing's needed.

• 3)If you want most everything in high quality, you will probably use different methods that are only available/making sense with advanced infinite research in productivities area and try to have the raw ressources of high quality for fully legendary production lane.

If there is really just one or two ways then why ask which is the best approach ? I think there are countless ways to effectively create high quality items. But they all have requirements / trade-off or are best suited to certain goals and situations.

Even in the little breakdown i mentionned there are different possibilities, i understand more the feeling of being lost than the 2 'paradox' i quoted. Some of the "efficient techniques" to me involve getting the asteroid in high quality, it's efficient because it's "infinite ressources" and doesn't require a lot of footprint/investement ressources for the parts ; compared to on-planet factories they are also easy to duplicate.

But spaceship cost UPS, compared Vulcanus lava, which can also be used to get infinite ressources, and with the addition of calcite potentially from space, stone too, and those provide easy way to get high quality materials if you use certain receipe recycling like low densisty structure or undergroud pipes. Though you may have a bottleneck by the landing pad if your science is already in the million per hour or so x).

Those methods are available for "very late game" "postgame" or "mid game" depending on the playstyle i would say. They correspond to different ways of approaching the 3) because i think that may be what you have identified as the one or two best ways to do.

But it's also possible to have "some machines" alongside your whole factory like 1 furnace out of 12 or the 17th when you really needed 16, with quality modules in it, reading a chest that take away the "lucky-quality-thing" you get from the rest of the factory ; and not working when the chest has a decent buffer of "rare" or "uncommon".

Then at the circuit level. If you get half a chest of iron plate copper plate steel and circuits , of "quality level 3" this way, you are able to make certain item from "quality material" ,to be sure to have them, like the personnal armor or weapons or other things that are not produced in high enough quantity to hope to get them if not from material already "quality".

It's "efficient" because there is no recycling involved, and you get access to "what you need" "when you need". It can "evolve" during a game if you add some recycler loop for certain item, It's a bit up to each players i'd say to choose where to invest, i know many players goes for the exoskeletons as the first item for which they use recycler loop, often manually or bot fed, as a side production in their factory. I know others don't because they use a lot more remote view. If you start by recycling 1 item like exoskeletons, and you already had some quality material from machine with modules but no recycler ( on nauvis), it can combine, you now get access to "lubricated engine" and "blue circuit" from your recycler loop for exos alongside the other quality material from furnace or EM plant to maybe start a dedicated line for thrusters or beacons, bot/manually fed. ( combining the (1) and (2) from previous answer).

Conclusion :

How to upcycle depend a lot on what you want to have and when, the mass production method are only available late game, they involve producing raw ressources at high quality. Some players consider the game as "finished" by then , others the game as "only starting". Thus it's hard to advise a particular setup without more information on "what do you need ?" and "when ?". Hopefully i provided explanations on the second part for why i think it's important to answer those question before thinking of the actual design, beause there are options to choose from that would work to different degree. I think having an idea of the different ways that exist allow to plan better the strategy over the course of a full game, to only focus on quality when necessary without over investement or postponing it forever, but it's a delicate balance to anticipate our own needs during a game and choose the design that match best.

[Tertius]

Inspired by this thread, I'm now trying to get into upcycling all the various components required for a mall that's intended to produce legendary items in the end.
I'm currently at circuits. I'm trying to bootstrap from zero quality items, but every tech unlocked and stable production of every normal-quality item.

Blue circuits are one of the crucial items. My approach is to do this on Vulcanus. Just uses calcite (mined) and normal plastic bars (from a coal liquefaction-based process, or perhaps imported from Gleba). Create normal blue circuits with productivity bonus and speed beacons in electromagnetic plants.

Then recycle/upcycle (4 quality modules) and craft again in EMP (5 quality modules, intrinsic productivity with my current research +160%) up to epic, and recycle all blue circuits up to epic. Yields legendary circuits with ratio green:20, red:2, blue:5.

I do a similar approach with the foundry recipe for low density structures. Yields legendary low density structures:10, steel:8, copper plates:112 and plastic bars:21. Should I need more low density structures, I would cast them with the legendary plastic bars from this process.

I also designed an asteroid upcycling platform. It yields legendary copper ore, iron ore, sulfur, carbon. Then legendary coal, plastic bar, low density structures and also profit from plastic bar productivity and low density productivity in this line. Seems to yield more low density structures but less copper. Recycling the resulting low density structures would give more copper.


Are these acceptable approaches? Do you recommend something better for the circuits? I did blue circuits directly to profit from processing unit productivity as well as from plastic bar productivity. And about low density structures, I'm not decided to go the platform way or create them on the ground.

Planned next is a quality module upcycler for legendary t2 quality modules. The t3 modules are postponed for when I expand to include holmium-based stuff.

The first productive items I want to create is for the platforms: solar panels, accumulators, asteroid collectors, thrusters.

I'm not decided how to create electric engine units. Directly upcycling asteroid collectors doesn't seem to be efficient, since there is no productivity bonus involved. Instead, I think about creating a loop for electric engine units with creating them with productivity modules in the assembler and quality modules in the recyclers.
Or is it better to build a recycling loop for the big mining drill and use its upcycling 'byproducts" that include the electric engine unit? Would profit from the 50% productivity bonus of the foundry.

[mmmPI]

Are these acceptable approaches?

To me "yes" ! But beware most of them are acceptable, there isn't strict rules against any method, them being acceptable to me doesn't mean anything more than "it will eventually achieve the result you made them for".

Do you recommend something better for the circuits?

Make them in Fulgora it's better because it's more fun !

I'm not decided how to create electric engine units. Directly upcycling asteroid collectors doesn't seem to be efficient, since there is no productivity bonus involved. Instead, I think about creating a loop for electric engine units with creating them with productivity modules in the assembler and quality modules in the recyclers.
Or is it better to build a recycling loop for the big mining drill and use its upcycling 'byproducts" that include the electric engine unit? Would profit from the 50% productivity bonus of the foundry.

Better in what ? in doubt, i'm assuming i'm free to choose again here It's much better to make them on Gleba from legendary bacteria, because it rhymes, and you get a unique recipe for lube that most player will only use to make lame robots on Gleba, but clearly making legendary bots on Gleba is better in the fun department , and you're already setup to make the legendary capture bot rocket !

An additionnal reason is the poetry ! You know how bees are made of flowers somehow ? because pollen is how they make food and you are what you eat ? Well Gleba is harvested with bots in my world, and bots can be made of plants ! So they would be mechanical bees !

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Edit :

It's efficient because it is 100% from plants it's infinite ressources, with 0 inputs that can run out, it will generate infinite amount of legendary bots ( and capture bot rocket).
Maybe it's not efficient for UPS or number of machines per output, or cost of the infrastructure for output per minutes, or "size" of the infrastructure, i'm not sure which metric players value at this point, that's why i think the most important is to be (super) precise in your goals or objectives and choose a method that can achieve them accordingly !

If you have "legendary material" like circuits and iron or steel, you can make legendary engines and bots straight from legendary materials, using productivity module everywhere possible, and you can have "legendary raw material from Glebacteria" how isn't that the "better" method ?

[Hurkyl]

Blue circuits are one of the crucial items. My approach is to do this on Vulcanus. Just uses calcite (mined) and normal plastic bars (from a coal liquefaction-based process, or perhaps imported from Gleba). Create normal blue circuits with productivity bonus and speed beacons in electromagnetic plants.

...

Are these acceptable approaches? Do you recommend something better for the circuits? I did blue circuits directly to profit from processing unit productivity as well as from plastic bar productivity. And about low density structures, I'm not decided to go the platform way or create them on the ground.

IMO the plastic requirement is the limiting factor here. The productivity bonus on the blue circuit recipe is likely significant enough to greatly outperform any other means where legendary plastic comes through red circuit products, so I think the most competitive alternatives would have to be

• LDS upcycling using the foundry recipe, should you need the additional LDS's or the copper/steel by-products
• You have plastic coming from your asteroid upcycling operation

There's also the option of running plastic through a recycler directly. That's super lossy, but I can imagine circumstances conspiring to make that preferable.

My current thinking is that if you do have an alternate quality plastic source that it would be better put towards superconductors than blue circuits, but it would depend on your needs or if you prefer a different method of getting quality superconductors.

I'm not decided how to create electric engine units. Directly upcycling asteroid collectors doesn't seem to be efficient, since there is no productivity bonus involved. Instead, I think about creating a loop for electric engine units with creating them with productivity modules in the assembler and quality modules in the recyclers.
Or is it better to build a recycling loop for the big mining drill and use its upcycling 'byproducts" that include the electric engine unit? Would profit from the 50% productivity bonus of the foundry.

At the risk of stating the obvious... have you considered crafting them from your legendary iron product, steel, and green circuit streams?