Ban quality modules from asteroid crushers

[Stargateur]

Can you please explain how space casinos are just cheating in items? It's a good method, but it isn't simple to set up and doesn't give all that much return on investment.

Sorry but HOW IT IS NOT SIMPLE TO SETUP, you have almost ZERO logistic challenge with this, you are in a space platform so just need to drop item on planet, rss are just asteroid coming at you, and setup the loop crusher to upgrade quality is trivial. And I could mention space platform blueprint are the most trivial thing ever, no need to plug anything, copy paste done. HOW THAT HARD TO SETUP ???? You don't even have to make efficient setup, just copy paste as many as you need. I'm so feed up with this, do all peoples try to manipulate fact in 2025 ? Is this the world we live in now ? Just gaslighting everything ?

BTW, here some numbers https://dfamonteiro.com/posts/factorio- ... recycling/, I read somewhere on reddit this method is WAY better than the rest

[MeduSalem]

Honestly, if some people would just stop with their "need more challenge" elitism and trying to force it on other people, that would be better for everyone.

Most people arguing against the asteroid crushing method or LDS or whatever other method here probably haven't realized yet that according to Steam statistics even after 9 months only a small fraction of people ever even made it to Aquilo because Space Age is already a trip the average player will never finish because there are so many grindy and challenge for the sake of challenge parts that people lose their interest half way through. So they will never even see a single legendary item either way. So who do you even want to balance this for. For the illustrious circle of elitists to make each others lives more miserable? ^^

So let people have a rest. If anyone made it this far as to even unlock legendary quality, then let them do it however they want. If they want to do it in a more deterministic/resource sparing way, then let them. They earned a rest from the grind.

If you are hardcore and want it to be more difficult, then make it more difficult for yourself, but don't impose your sense for challenge on other people. Not that there would be much more challenge with the standard way of going through the recycler upcycling and copy & pasting that one dozens of times for each item. It is only a test for your patience if you can endure it. If you want that masochism because it makes you feel more achieved, then do it.

Also as a side note, if people have issues with other people looking for shortcuts, then maybe, just maybe, this is a sign it was not a good implementation of the quality mechanic anyway. (it really wasn't, a probabillity based system in a sandbox base builder where you want to improve and expand in a deterministic fashion had no point other than make it more grindy).

[Stargateur]

And so I will repeat myself, don't come on balancing sub forum for saying such non sense thing. Feel free to create a thread saying "Factorio doesn't need balancing" but here in this thread it's completely off topic and not an argument.

[MeduSalem]

And so I will repeat myself, don't come on balancing sub forum for saying such non sense thing. Feel free to create a thread saying "Factorio doesn't need balancing" but here in this thread it's completely off topic and not an argument.

It is an argument, whether you like it or not. And I will say whatever I want and I don't give damn about people like you trying to silence others just because you don't like what others have to say.

[Stargateur]

It is an argument, whether you like it or not. And I will say whatever I want and I don't give damn about people like you trying to silence others just because you don't like what others have to say.

I try to silence you now ? How ? No it's not an argument cause you could copy paste it on every post in balancing subforum. Your point is "don't balance game". Well, wonderful we really progress.

The only real point useful thing you say was it's very tedious to do quality with other ways. And I can agree with that. But, you could also do a very simple loop that upscale raw material into legendary one, it's very simple, but very costly. Again the problem with asteroid up-scaling quality is it's a LOT better than the rest. And so need balancing, buff other way, nerf a way, whatever but like you said "this is a sign it was not a good implementation of the quality mechanic anyway". Personally I don't like current quality system.

See that arguments that talk. What you said was mainly just useless things.

[MeduSalem]

I try to silence you now ? How ? No it's not an argument cause you could copy paste it on every post in balancing subforum. Your point is "don't balance game". Well, wonderful we really progress.

If you write that others should stay out of the balancing thread only because they obviously think there is no need for excessive balancing, then yes. That is trying to silence someone who has the opinion that a change in the balancing is not necessary.


Anyway, I think that way because it is a sandbox base builder game. Not a competitive online shooter where people may legitimately cry because one gun deals more DPS than another.

Who cares if some other people take a shortcut with the quality grind. If you feel bad about it then just don't use the method. If you feel compelled to use it only because it is more efficient, then use it. It is no biggie. If you can only play the meta because it is meta, then that is a total "you" problem.

But at least let people do whatever they want. Because as said, I feel people deserve a break from the grind after they get that far.

[Stargateur]

If you write that others should stay out of the balancing thread only because they think there is no need for excessive balancing, then yes. That is trying to silence someone who has the opinion that a change in the balancing is not necessary.

No I said, you should do it ANOTHER THREAD. And no I didn't say this exactly, you never talk about "excessive balancing" before too. Well, no need to read the rest, that blatant manipulation, Bye.

[MeduSalem]

No I said, you should do it ANOTHER THREAD.

I won't. xD

Well, no need to read the rest, that blatant manipulation, Bye.

Fine with me. Likewise. ^^

[crimsonarmy]

Can you please explain how space casinos are just cheating in items? It's a good method, but it isn't simple to set up and doesn't give all that much return on investment.

Sorry but HOW IT IS NOT SIMPLE TO SETUP, you have almost ZERO logistic challenge with this, you are in a space platform so just need to drop item on planet, rss are just asteroid coming at you, and setup the loop crusher to upgrade quality is trivial. And I could mention space platform blueprint are the most trivial thing ever, no need to plug anything, copy paste done. HOW THAT HARD TO SETUP ???? You don't even have to make efficient setup, just copy paste as many as you need. I'm so feed up with this, do all peoples try to manipulate fact in 2025 ? Is this the world we live in now ? Just gaslighting everything ?

This is a good summary of why it is nontrivial.

- Building a larger space platform drew my attention to how poor my platform-building infra was. Suddenly I start to notice how expensive grabbers, crushers, platform foundation, etc. are and how inadequate my Nauvis silo capacities are, and all the ensuing problems with scaling that infra up - something that merely *importing* from other planets doesn't exercise.
- Pre-Aquilo, the only scalable power source in space is nuclear. Sure, maybe I've already got the infra for sending nuclear fuel to space / other planets, but unlike fusion, I need way more water in space now! And if I run out, I don't just travel a bit more slowly like with thruster fuel - my space platform death spirals! Meanwhile non-casino quality setups get to piggyback off of their planet's power supply, and endgame ships don't have the water problem!
- Time for me to actually need beaconed efficiency modules (I have adequate efficiency module production, of course?)
- Wait, I need a lot of water but oxide asteroids are really rare near Nauvis! Now I need separate asteroid reprocessing specifically designed to get one type (and it should stop when it has enough, unlike the casino reprocessors!)
- Okay medium space platform growing pains aside, time to build the asteroid cycler. Just copy paste, simple right?
- [Optional] Get bothered by the existence of idle crushers and learn dynamic recipe setting (if you don't do this, scale your platform-building infra even more!)
- Oh hang on you're telling me if I just blindly fill the belt with asteroids the reprocessors won't be able to put asteroids back on it and the whole system will jam? And the jam will eventually back-pressure the oxide asteroids for my power supply, death spiraling the entire platform?
- Okay a simple splitter to get half-full belts solves the above. Now to scale it up and - whoops - you're telling me if the quality outputs back up, I get the exact same jam? Okay, better invent a way to FORCE the reprocess loop to only partially fill each lane no matter how full the input or output belts get (maybe applying Gleba learnings!). No, loop-input-priority splitters won't stop jams if the output backs up, sorry. Bonus points for doing it without inserters!
- Wait, this asteroid rate is pitiful! Time to scale up! Okay, now for the first time I have to think about speed vs width tradeoffs in asteroid rates. As I scale it wider, this is also the first time I've needed more than a minimal amount of fuel production - now I need to redesign my basic-ass fuel plants!
- Of course, you're also optimizing the crushers at the end of the quality chain to switch to the more efficient, single-resource recipes if the secondary resource's output is satisfied, right? More circuitry!
- And what about re-rolling those final-quality asteroids if-and-only-if the main resource for that asteroid is backed up too? More circuitry!
- And now I get to think about which route should I run this ship on long-term? On the one hand, Aquilo has bigger asteroids. On the other hand, the two planets with the most space for spaceport and downstream quality infrastructure are Nauvis and Vulcanus, and neither connects to Aquilo. More decisions!

BTW, here some numbers https://dfamonteiro.com/posts/factorio- ... recycling/, I read somewhere on reddit this method is WAY better than the rest

The data you provided in that link is quite interesting but doesn't disprove my point. Casino is strong but hard to set up.

Wherever you read that on reddit was wrong: LDS and blue circuits are 100% efficient (though requiring recyclers at the end lowers the amount of raw ingredients you get) and battery upcycling is ~2.3% efficient (I can't be bothered finding the exact value; it's a bit higher than casino) (these are also buildable on planets and more space efficient so the designs can be smaller and simpler). They probably only considered worse upcycling methods: pure recycler loop, assemblers with quality modules, etc.

Should LDS shuffle and blue circuit upcyling exist as they are now? The answer is no debatable. Those are the things that are unbalanced with quality (especially LDS shuffle granting infinite copper and steel).

[Shirasik]

Read whole thread. All in all whole thread is arguing about quality-dedicated setups. After you have built all you need all that quality fuss is a deadweight development areas. I have one question: where do you all put that many legendary items to?

[crimsonarmy]

Read whole thread. All in all whole thread is arguing about quality-dedicated setups. After you have built all you need all that quality fuss is a deadweight development areas. I have one question: where do you all put that many legendary items to?

Who is this a response to?

[Shirasik]

Read whole thread. All in all whole thread is arguing about quality-dedicated setups. After you have built all you need all that quality fuss is a deadweight development areas. I have one question: where do you all put that many legendary items to?

Who is this a response to?

To everyoune who has solid opinion on the matter. IMHO after you've built all you need there is no point in quality production lines anymore because for science old productivity modules in buildings + speed in beacons is just faster and way more resource efficient.

Plus all cheese I saw here is about iron, copper and coal and their derivatives. Iron is infinite since you discovered any planet other than Nauvis, copper is infinite since advanced crushing is researched and coal is infinite since rocket turret is researched. Yes. Literally infinite. Whole discussion is about conversion ratios like one setup has x% efficiency and another has y% efficiency. Being multiplied to infinity, both x% and y% yields infinity so all of them are equal.

Do you guys have any "cheese" for infinite legendary uranium, tungsten and holmium?

[crimsonarmy]

Read whole thread. All in all whole thread is arguing about quality-dedicated setups. After you have built all you need all that quality fuss is a deadweight development areas. I have one question: where do you all put that many legendary items to?

Who is this a response to?

To everyoune who has solid opinion on the matter. IMHO after you've built all you need there is no point in quality production lines anymore because for science old productivity modules in buildings + speed in beacons is just faster and way more resource efficient.

Thanks for the clarification. Also I totally agree with you on this. I think the idea is that getting the legendary items to make that requires a lot of legendary stuff. Hence why you would want getting that to be balanced.

Plus all cheese I saw here is about iron, copper and coal and their derivatives. Iron is infinite since you discovered any planet other than Nauvis, copper is infinite since advanced crushing is researched and coal is infinite since rocket turret is researched. Yes. Literally infinite. Whole discussion is about conversion ratios like one setup has x% efficiency and another has y% efficiency. Being multiplied to infinity, both x% and y% yields infinity so all of them are equal.

Completely agree that the thing being measured isn't really the important part. The idea is that fraction of normal quality to legendary quality is a good approximation of how much effort per legendary item.

Do you guys have any "cheese" for infinite legendary uranium, tungsten and holmium?

No. That's why having a better method for the base resources is interesting, so just making another upcycling build isn't the best solution.

Also super minor and irrelevant: no Oxford Comma.

[Stargateur]

The data you provided in that link is quite interesting but doesn't disprove my point. Casino is strong but hard to set up.

You didn't at all answer any of my points. And that a terrible very long text that doesn't give any good points to say it's hard to do space casino ship.

- Building a larger space platform drew my attention to how poor my platform-building infra was. Suddenly I start to notice how expensive grabbers, crushers, platform foundation, etc. are and how inadequate my Nauvis silo capacities are, and all the ensuing problems with scaling that infra up - something that merely *importing* from other planets doesn't exercise.

That not anything special about space casino platform difficulty. It's just... scale up nauvis.

- Pre-Aquilo, the only scalable power source in space is nuclear. Sure, maybe I've already got the infra for sending nuclear fuel to space / other planets, but unlike fusion, I need way more water in space now! And if I run out, I don't just travel a bit more slowly like with thruster fuel - my space platform death spirals! Meanwhile non-casino quality setups get to piggyback off of their planet's power supply, and endgame ships don't have the water problem!

Irrelevant to space casino ship, that apply to all ship.

- Time for me to actually need beaconed efficiency modules (I have adequate efficiency module production, of course?)
- Wait, I need a lot of water but oxide asteroids are really rare near Nauvis! Now I need separate asteroid reprocessing specifically designed to get one type (and it should stop when it has enough, unlike the casino reprocessors!)
- Okay medium space platform growing pains aside, time to build the asteroid cycler. Just copy paste, simple right?
- [Optional] Get bothered by the existence of idle crushers and learn dynamic recipe setting (if you don't do this, scale your platform-building infra even more!)

Okay... that like not points

- Oh hang on you're telling me if I just blindly fill the belt with asteroids the reprocessors won't be able to put asteroids back on it and the whole system will jam? And the jam will eventually back-pressure the oxide asteroids for my power supply, death spiraling the entire platform?

dead spiral You just need one part of you ship to do basic space plateform need, and a separate part that only do casino. That like... very simple to do. On back presure Kovarex process is way harder to setup correctly with belt.

- Okay a simple splitter to get half-full belts solves the above. Now to scale it up and - whoops - you're telling me if the quality outputs back up, I get the exact same jam? Okay, better invent a way to FORCE the reprocess loop to only partially fill each lane no matter how full the input or output belts get (maybe applying Gleba learnings!). No, loop-input-priority splitters won't stop jams if the output backs up, sorry. Bonus points for doing it without inserters!
- Wait, this asteroid rate is pitiful! Time to scale up! Okay, now for the first time I have to think about speed vs width tradeoffs in asteroid rates. As I scale it wider, this is also the first time I've needed more than a minimal amount of fuel production - now I need to redesign my basic-ass fuel plants!
- Of course, you're also optimizing the crushers at the end of the quality chain to switch to the more efficient, single-resource recipes if the secondary resource's output is satisfied, right? More circuitry!
- And what about re-rolling those final-quality asteroids if-and-only-if the main resource for that asteroid is backed up too? More circuitry!
- And now I get to think about which route should I run this ship on long-term? On the one hand, Aquilo has bigger asteroids. On the other hand, the two planets with the most space for spaceport and downstream quality infrastructure are Nauvis and Vulcanus, and neither connects to Aquilo. More decisions!

bla bla bla bla, nothing interesting. I don't get it that your argument for saying it's hard to do ? seriously ? When I wanted to try out how its works I design a space casino ship in like few minutes.

I will quote someone from reddit that almost said the same thing than me:

Space platforms provide their own resourcing completely disconnected from your base. So no need to nuke open another lava pit or find a mine somewhere. No need for any logistics to get calcite there for molten metals. No need for extra train traffic or even pipes to get the molten metals and coal where they're needed. It just falls from the sky.

Even better, it builds itself. Space platforms don't need exotic off-world resources. Everything that goes into them is found in space. So as you get more legendary resources from them, you can build more legendary platforms to do more asteroid cycling and get more legendaries even faster. Sure, you can't make legendary QM3s with just asteroids, but legendary QM2s are really good. https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... stly_only/

[Shirasik]

The idea is that fraction of normal quality to legendary quality is a good approximation of how much effort per legendary item.

Overall fraction follows quality modules' stats and amount of module slots in production line. Recycling (both asteroid conversion and recycling in recyclers) allows to insert as many extra steps as wished creating virtually infinite amount of module slots at a cost of material loss.

Now, how do you measure effort?

[crimsonarmy]

I do have responses here for everything you say, but they all boil down to "why is this strictly better than battery upcycling (or similar)?" They both require increasing planet-side infrastructure (raw resources for upcycling, space platform components and rockets). One is just more interesting because it is different.

The data you provided in that link is quite interesting but doesn't disprove my point. Casino is strong but hard to set up.

You didn't at all answer any of my points. And that a terrible very long text that doesn't give any good points to say it's hard to do space casino ship.

It just says it is strong. That isn't in dispute.

- Building a larger space platform drew my attention to how poor my platform-building infra was. Suddenly I start to notice how expensive grabbers, crushers, platform foundation, etc. are and how inadequate my Nauvis silo capacities are, and all the ensuing problems with scaling that infra up - something that merely *importing* from other planets doesn't exercise.

That not anything special about space casino platform difficulty. It's just... scale up nauvis.

Yeah? You can also scale up a planet and do upcycling there.

- Pre-Aquilo, the only scalable power source in space is nuclear. Sure, maybe I've already got the infra for sending nuclear fuel to space / other planets, but unlike fusion, I need way more water in space now! And if I run out, I don't just travel a bit more slowly like with thruster fuel - my space platform death spirals! Meanwhile non-casino quality setups get to piggyback off of their planet's power supply, and endgame ships don't have the water problem!

Irrelevant to space casino ship, that apply to all ship.

And now you need to deal with it for your huge upcycling setup.

- Time for me to actually need beaconed efficiency modules (I have adequate efficiency module production, of course?)
- Wait, I need a lot of water but oxide asteroids are really rare near Nauvis! Now I need separate asteroid reprocessing specifically designed to get one type (and it should stop when it has enough, unlike the casino reprocessors!)
- Okay medium space platform growing pains aside, time to build the asteroid cycler. Just copy paste, simple right?
- [Optional] Get bothered by the existence of idle crushers and learn dynamic recipe setting (if you don't do this, scale your platform-building infra even more!)

Okay... that like not points

Yeah. It's an example of problems you can run into when making the casino.

- Oh hang on you're telling me if I just blindly fill the belt with asteroids the reprocessors won't be able to put asteroids back on it and the whole system will jam? And the jam will eventually back-pressure the oxide asteroids for my power supply, death spiraling the entire platform?

dead spiral You just need one part of you ship to do basic space plateform need, and a separate part that only do casino. That like... very simple to do. On back presure Kovarex process is way harder to setup correctly with belt.

I agree with you here (these are just from another message earlier here).

- Okay a simple splitter to get half-full belts solves the above. Now to scale it up and - whoops - you're telling me if the quality outputs back up, I get the exact same jam? Okay, better invent a way to FORCE the reprocess loop to only partially fill each lane no matter how full the input or output belts get (maybe applying Gleba learnings!). No, loop-input-priority splitters won't stop jams if the output backs up, sorry. Bonus points for doing it without inserters!
- Wait, this asteroid rate is pitiful! Time to scale up! Okay, now for the first time I have to think about speed vs width tradeoffs in asteroid rates. As I scale it wider, this is also the first time I've needed more than a minimal amount of fuel production - now I need to redesign my basic-ass fuel plants!
- Of course, you're also optimizing the crushers at the end of the quality chain to switch to the more efficient, single-resource recipes if the secondary resource's output is satisfied, right? More circuitry!
- And what about re-rolling those final-quality asteroids if-and-only-if the main resource for that asteroid is backed up too? More circuitry!
- And now I get to think about which route should I run this ship on long-term? On the one hand, Aquilo has bigger asteroids. On the other hand, the two planets with the most space for spaceport and downstream quality infrastructure are Nauvis and Vulcanus, and neither connects to Aquilo. More decisions!

bla bla bla bla, nothing interesting. I don't get it that your argument for saying it's hard to do ? seriously ? When I wanted to try out how its works I design a space casino ship in like few minutes.

I will quote someone from reddit that almost said the same thing than me:

Space platforms provide their own resourcing completely disconnected from your base. So no need to nuke open another lava pit or find a mine somewhere. No need for any logistics to get calcite there for molten metals. No need for extra train traffic or even pipes to get the molten metals and coal where they're needed. It just falls from the sky.

Even better, it builds itself. Space platforms don't need exotic off-world resources. Everything that goes into them is found in space. So as you get more legendary resources from them, you can build more legendary platforms to do more asteroid cycling and get more legendaries even faster. Sure, you can't make legendary QM3s with just asteroids, but legendary QM2s are really good. https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... stly_only/

This is true but not relevant as battery production can be beaconed (so way fewer building are needed).