Ban quality modules from asteroid crushers

[coffee-factorio]

If you operate off a platform, you quickly realize that you're up against a shortage of coal more than anything else. You might be watching for sunk cost fallacy specifically because a 120x240 meter platform is going to take 8 hours to make at 1 ips of foundation. Making that coal takes sulfur, so when you look at doing intermediate processes it is kind of like this:

* I could invest in what I do different elsewhere.

* I could reroll for a 1 in 40 rate that will give me a variety of materials. After the reroll it's going to get multiplied by 1.25 times a shower of ores at minimum. If the dev's allow the rocks coming back to occur more often then that 1.25 times is going up due to productivity modules and research.

* I could do different everywhere else and use this platform for transportation using normal quality LDS & Blue chips.

And the guns you put on are always running. You can void items but that could make a ups drain. Engine particles can make a UPS drain. But you have to be there, running a few platforms at once is going to be necessary because planetary science and something needs to go to the shattered planet. So you have to balance against multiple ships operating at once. And if you want to save on rocket launches, doing work on a platform immediately distributes all but a few items.

If it is perfectly balanced and the appearance of a mechanical advantage is only that, it's still happening in a place where the sunk cost fallacy can really hurt a player since they're investing a lot of emotion into their machine. If you do 120x240, why not do 180x360? If you make a mistake, do you what? Delete the surface and all the foundation on it? This is my opinion, don't pretend to know the dev's minds.

Legendary science has real advantages over normals with asteroids. Without asteroids, iron / ice throughput would become a bottleneck.

So you need that much SPM. In not modded Space Age. What for exactly? If this is your own goal then ok. If you see that as a gameplay mandatory that explain please.

I think the idea is that it motivates legendary science.

I think of it like this:
If you can't do a legendary science for 1 : 6 investment, all the other productivity multipliers happen evenly. So why am I cleaning this copper plate up if instead of being sloppy with quality I can do what I always did and hit 10+ips on a legendary plant?

As for the notion that ice or iron is the bottleneck... I mean that's kind of the issue with platforms right there. Ice you can get an interesting cycle off of on Aquilo by making it with ammonia, then recycling ice platforms. Granted, it isn't a component so you get it at a worse rate. But you can do it in bulk.

Iron has an interesting cycle with blue chips, and belts can be attached by a process that does quality from cradle to grave and at a rate that is interesting.

Sulfur is always somehow going to be painful because it's a catalyst.

[crimsonarmy]

Legendary science has real advantages over normals with asteroids. Without asteroids, iron / ice throughput would become a bottleneck.

So you need that much SPM. In not modded Space Age. What for exactly? If this is your own goal then ok. If you see that as a gameplay mandatory that explain please.

I think the idea is that it motivates legendary science.

I think of it like this:
If you can't do a legendary science for 1 : 6 investment, all the other productivity multipliers happen evenly. So why am I cleaning this copper plate up if instead of being sloppy with quality I can do what I always did and hit 10+ips on a legendary plant?

As for the notion that ice or iron is the bottleneck... I mean that's kind of the issue with platforms right there. Ice you can get an interesting cycle off of on Aquilo by making it with ammonia, then recycling ice platforms. Granted, it isn't a component so you get it at a worse rate. But you can do it in bulk.

Iron has an interesting cycle with blue chips, and belts can be attached by a process that does quality from cradle to grave and at a rate that is interesting.

Sulfur is always somehow going to be painful because it's a catalyst.

These are some really cool ideas. (For context: I have made a casino then got annoyed because of a bunch of small things and I am now doing quality some other ways.)

[Green Cat]

How about a different solution? A BEFORE you start the game, slider. Where we can ajust how much ridiculus gambling exist? You know, the thing that only people who play online games and other similar additions enjoy. After all, we paid to have access to quality yet it's behind a GAMBLING wall??????? Even the modul 3 has only a 25% increase vs moduel 2????? this is screeming they don't want people to have access to quality unless they gamble.

So, the ideea of the slider is simple. Default is default. Lower = lower chance. Higher = higer chance. As an exemple, at max, 2 legendary Quality moduel 3, will turn anything they create 100% into legendary. Again, this is if that slider is at MAX, and NOT default. Default remains the current version. I'm just suggesting this because it's simple not normal that we paid to get quality and it's behind a GAMBLING wall no one asked for.

PS for OP: just don't add Quality modules on crushers. Oh, you don't like that I'm telling you how to play the game? well that's exactly what you, and the devs did. But hey, quality is optional, we only paid for it so we need to use mods to fix it.

PS for Devs: Many of us know you got inspiered by WoW, a game we did not want to come to factorio. So, could you please do us all a favore and actually fix the Quality for the DLC?

Here are 5 exemples: A slider to get rid of gambling (aka what I wrote till now). Adding a tick box for enemies to have quality (tons of mods exist that do this, why it's not a default, i don't get it). A drop box that can change how many quality level exist. Aka the current 5 is default. And for us to be able to increase max 10? (I used mods, and I noticed a lot of stuff are hard cap at 10, and some, will get bugged). And the reason why I mentioned WoW: just because thoes are the terms used in Wow, can you please let us rename the "quality ranks" without us needing to add mods that might or might not mess up when used with other mods?

PS for anyone who says: just use mods. As I meantion, we paid for this, why is the solution to fix a paid DLC to use mods and not a vanilla standar game? Because as I mentioned over and over again, only add BEFORE start of the game tick box and slider. Default remains default, just let us ajust the values. And if this is a core vanilla thing, there is low to no risk of bugs or other issues when used with other mods

[crimsonarmy]

How about a different solution? A BEFORE you start the game, slider. Where we can ajust how much ridiculus gambling exist? You know, the thing that only people who play online games and other similar additions enjoy. After all, we paid to have access to quality yet it's behind a GAMBLING wall??????? Even the modul 3 has only a 25% increase vs moduel 2????? this is screeming they don't want people to have access to quality unless they gamble.

So, the ideea of the slider is simple. Default is default. Lower = lower chance. Higher = higer chance. As an exemple, at max, 2 legendary Quality moduel 3, will turn anything they create 100% into legendary. Again, this is if that slider is at MAX, and NOT default. Default remains the current version. I'm just suggesting this because it's simple not normal that we paid to get quality and it's behind a GAMBLING wall no one asked for.

PS for OP: just don't add Quality modules on crushers. Oh, you don't like that I'm telling you how to play the game? well that's exactly what you, and the devs did. But hey, quality is optional, we only paid for it so we need to use mods to fix it.

PS for Devs: Many of us know you got inspiered by WoW, a game we did not want to come to factorio. So, could you please do us all a favore and actually fix the Quality for the DLC?

Here are 5 exemples: A slider to get rid of gambling (aka what I wrote till now). Adding a tick box for enemies to have quality (tons of mods exist that do this, why it's not a default, i don't get it). A drop box that can change how many quality level exist. Aka the current 5 is default. And for us to be able to increase max 10? (I used mods, and I noticed a lot of stuff are hard cap at 10, and some, will get bugged). And the reason why I mentioned WoW: just because thoes are the terms used in Wow, can you please let us rename the "quality ranks" without us needing to add mods that might or might not mess up when used with other mods?

PS for anyone who says: just use mods. As I meantion, we paid for this, why is the solution to fix a paid DLC to use mods and not a vanilla standar game? Because as I mentioned over and over again, only add BEFORE start of the game tick box and slider. Default remains default, just let us ajust the values. And if this is a core vanilla thing, there is low to no risk of bugs or other issues when used with other mods

I think you misunderstand the fundamental point of quality. It isn't primarily gambling. Imagine if someone plays the lottery 1, 10, or 100 times, that's gambling. If someone plays the lottery 10,000, 100,000, or 1,000,000 times the randomness evens out (there are people who noticed unbalanced lotteries and made money off of it). The same is true in Factorio you can gamble with quality, but the main benefit is from when the scale is so large that the randomness doesn't matter.

As to the mods thing, you paid to have the DLC and very good mod integration with it. If something benefits everyone (or the vast majority of people) it should be in the base game, otherwise use the very well integrated modding system.

[Stargateur]

Go take a break

[Hurkyl]

Benefitting from 'unbalanced lotteries' happens rather frequently -- you just have to be the one running the lottery.

In the analogy, if someone views themselves as the gambler and not the casino boss in the analogy, they're building their casino wrong.

(unless that's specifically the experience you wanted and designed for it, I suppose)

[coffee-factorio]

How about a different solution?

We were talking about asteroid rerolling.
Consider starting a new topic on this in idea and suggestions.

These are some really cool ideas. (For context: I have made a casino then got annoyed because of a bunch of small things and I am now doing quality some other ways.)

It's a hard one for me because when I study it, it burns me out a lot. I'm glad you find some value in it. Be rather careful, I've yet to see better than item per minute rates on a lot of stuff, even if it works well. And the tradeoffs are usually really stiff in this system.

[mmmPI]

Benefitting from 'unbalanced lotteries' happens rather frequently -- you just have to be the one running the lottery.

In the analogy, if someone views themselves as the gambler and not the casino boss in the analogy, they're building their casino wrong.

(unless that's specifically the experience you wanted and designed for it, I suppose)

Yes exactly !

I heard that the devs have said they are banning quality modules for asteroid reprocessing. Have they said why they ultimately decided on it?

Was it really that it was "easier" to design? Or something about asteroids being too plentiful making this too good? Or because it's too good of a hook for getting quality plastic? Something else? Or have they not said at all?

For all i know it's a one liner 6 month ago by 1 dev on discord that mentionned the removal of quality module from asteroid reprocessing, and it was implied that it was too good in general from the context of the discusssion, but no precise explanations. Now at the release of space age, devs mentionned that such good system was a reward for players that went thru the effort of setting-it up. To me it shows things can still change ( maybe even in 2.2 ). And even then dev literally wrote : it's balancing that can be done by 1 lane of data, so i take that as "trivial to mod".

I know Wube always deliver on their announce, but here it might also be a personnal message from one dev taken out of context where some plans are conflated for an announce, or just one side of a more in-depth rebalancing is understood as the whole thing, maybe i've missed some other annouces too though !

[evandy]

If you don't like quality asteroid recycling, then I have a different challenge for you...

What is another way to get Legendary resources with fewer buildings? The entire design thrust of the quality system is to be able to do more with fewer buildings. So if you want to talk removing quality modules from the asteroid recyclers (A solution which takes a decent size & space to get usable throughput no less) - what is the alternative? I can beacon a foundry / EM plant / cryoplant / whatever to produce belts and belts of resources, so fast that they might need to be direct inserted into the next process. How can we produce quality metals/plastic/etc with a small footprint and a few machines. Feel free to require quality machines to do this - first do it slow, then unlock the better way is a common factorio meme afterall.

At the end of the day - stamping down a few dozen copies of an upcycler blueprint takes nothing more than ... 30 seconds, and real estate which is dirt cheap on vulcanis with the infinite raw materials so I never need to find a new ore patch. At least with asteroid recycling I have to design a new ship, around a new process, with different inputs, the potential for lockups and jams, and other interesting problem solving. Personally, I think that removing asteroid recycling would trivialize quality into nothing more than "stamp down N copies of the same factory."

You are, of course, entitled to your own opinion. But this is mine.

[factorio_player]

Instead of nerfing they should just re-add it as a late late game tech build. There's this guy on reddit that built some insane space platform. It'd be pretty sad if he got nerfed, tbh.

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... shattered/

Pretty sure he's not the only one

And tbh, it's kinda cool. Be silly to remove a fun mechanic from the game entirely.

Some grandfathering tech boost for pre-saved games would be neat-o if they do re-add it as a late game tech.

[factorio_player]

I think you misunderstand the fundamental point of quality. It isn't primarily gambling.

Yeah, I LOL everytime someone says 'casino'. I mean, wtf is my dopamine rush?? Lulz. Very lame casino.

If they had some mechanic where killing biters with a hand weapon dropped l00t, sure, that'd be casino. But quality, fr, is not casino, certainly not anymore than the 1% uranium processing is. it's just really expensive production

Just divide by quality, and that's how much you need to process before getting a product. Not a casino.

[Shirasik]

Just divide by quality, and that's how much you need to process before getting a product.

You mistook quality for productivity.

[Hurkyl]

I think you misunderstand the fundamental point of quality. It isn't primarily gambling.

Yeah, I LOL everytime someone says 'casino'. I mean, wtf is my dopamine rush?? Lulz. Very lame casino.

Then engineer it in yourself. Make a system where, say, you manually drop a Power Armor MK 2 into a chest, the system fetches the rest of the matching quality ingredients from storage, have it flash some lights while a Mech Armor crafts, and if you get a high quality craft, flash more lights even more energetically and maybe even play an alert to celebrate.

Maybe even set something up a similar system for dumping the lower quality mech armors you don't want as they recycle and maybe give you an armor back.

I do think the name 'Casino' is an apt metaphor for a factory where you profit from industrial scale random chance.

[CyberCider]

At least with asteroid recycling I have to design a new ship, around a new process, with different inputs, the potential for lockups and jams, and other interesting problem solving.

Do you even know what an upcycler is? Have you ever built one? All of these things are exactly what upcyclers deal with. Asteroid rerolling does also have them to a degree, but they are lessened. There are three different items and recipes, sure, but they all behave 100% identically. There is no split between ingredient and product, like in upcycling, and no ratio that must be maintained either. In this way, asteroid rerolling most closely resembles putting raw ore through a recycler.

At the end of the day - stamping down a few dozen copies of an upcycler blueprint takes nothing more than ... 30 seconds

Personally, I think that removing asteroid recycling would trivialize quality into nothing more than "stamp down N copies of the same factory."

Well, sorry to break the bad news to you, but… That’s everything in factorio . Everything is scaled via copy pasting, the design of the single cell is what determines complexity. And if you compare a single cell of upcycling to a single cell of asteroid rerolling, you will see a dramatic drop in complexity.

and real estate which is dirt cheap on vulcanis with the infinite raw materials so I never need to find a new ore patch.

Well, that’s a different problem with Space Age . This post is targeted only at one. Vulcanus is a complete mess, Space Age release should have been delayed a few weeks to make Vulcanus presentable. It’s so bad that it distorts the balance of the rest of the game around itself, like some kind of singularity . And I don’t expect that planet will ever be good, not without the help of mods. Making such drastic changes after full release is something developers try to avoid if possible, and for good reasons, so I don’t see it ever happening. But patching an exploit/oversight is very much within the scope of a post release minor patch, which is why I believe it can and should happen.

[evandy]

Do you even know what an upcycler is? Have you ever built one? All of these things are exactly what upcyclers deal with

Yes, yes, and you are 100% correct. Upcyclers do all of this - and there are plenty of places they are required. i.e. basically every single one of the planetary unique resources. There's no getting away from them. That's why I appreciate the fact that EVERYTHING doesn't have to go through an upcycler. That would be boring.

Well, sorry to break the bad news to you, but… That’s everything in factorio . Everything is scaled via copy pasting, the design of the single cell is what determines complexity. And if you compare a single cell of upcycling to a single cell of asteroid rerolling, you will see a dramatic drop in complexity.

Not so sure I agree with the first part of this - though it was absolutely true prior to quality and 2.0. But post-quality we can make machines that are more space/UPS efficient, with different speed ratios, making us design more new builds. Which is fantastic! We now have more options for how to design things than pasting down the same blueprints N times. Personally, I think the variety is an excellent result of the quality mod.

I do concur that an asteroid recycler is simpler than an upcycler. So what? Simpler isn't wrong - it's just simpler. But - and this is my point - it's NOT the same as an upcycler. I have the opportunity (should I wish) to design a new process to get basic resources in a unique way. This adds depth to the game, variety to the factory, and options to the player. And I'm building plenty of upcyclers anyways for the rest of the resources.

IMO, asteroid recycling isn't broken - it's a feature. If you want to talk about things that are broken, you could look at the LDS shuffle, or the 300% productivity on blue circuits. There's a very valid argument that those are broken. Though you have to put so many resources into research to get there, that it's only really available in the post post game, once you are scaling your factory really big. Personally, I don't find it an issue, but I can certainly understand the argument against them even if I don't concur.

I think you misunderstand the fundamental point of quality. It isn't primarily gambling.

Yeah, I LOL everytime someone says 'casino'. I mean, wtf is my dopamine rush?? Lulz. Very lame casino.

I laugh every time people talk about the asteroid recycling as gambling as an argument against them, as if an upcycler somehow isn't the same thing. Every use of quality modules is gambling - it's a random result that may (or may not) be what you want. If you don't want a casino, then you probably don't want to build an upcycler either, as it gambles even more!

[CyberCider]

Yes, yes, and you are 100% correct. Upcyclers do all of this - and there are plenty of places they are required. i.e. basically every single one of the planetary unique resources. There's no getting away from them. That's why I appreciate the fact that EVERYTHING doesn't have to go through an upcycler. That would be boring.

I don’t specifically want upcyclers to be the only quality method. If there were other quality methods that were interesting and well balanced, I would have nothing against them. Except the only alternative methods that currently exist happen to be asteroid rerolling and LDS shuffle. They’re not bad because they’re different, they’re bad because they’re broken. You agree with me on LDS shuffle, but you seem to compare it to blue circuit upcycling, which is something I don’t quite understand. I personally think there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s an upcycler like any other.

To be more concise, I’ll put it like this: I don’t want everything to go through an upcycler, I want everything to go through at least an upcycler. I wouldn’t mind seeing more quality methods, but I would consider the complexity of an upcycler to be the bare minimum. Any simpler than that (and still strong) would simply not be good imo. Because this:

I do concur that an asteroid recycler is simpler than an upcycler. So what? Simpler isn't wrong - it's just simpler. But - and this is my point - it's NOT the same as an upcycler. I have the opportunity (should I wish) to design a new process to get basic resources in a unique way. This adds depth to the game, variety to the factory, and options to the player. And I'm building plenty of upcyclers anyways for the rest of the resources.

Is where we seem to disagree. I think simpler is indeed wrong, if it’s strong. And asteroid rerolling certainly is strong. It being different has no inherent value to me, I need it to be interesting to design, which it is not. It’s not the same as an upcycler, it’s lesser. But its power is still comparable and in many cases superior, which I consider to be backwards, bad for the quality mechanic, and bad for the game. Just because some items need upcyclers built, doesn’t mean all other items are suddenly worthless enough to be produced with incredibly simple methods. That’s like saying only purple science should be produced via actual recipe, the others should be made of nothing but water. It’s different, it adds variety, you’ve already built production for purple so “there’s no getting away from it”. But would this change, all science packs except for purple being made of water, make the game better? I hope you agree that it wouldn’t.

Not so sure I agree with the first part of this - though it was absolutely true prior to quality and 2.0. But post-quality we can make machines that are more space/UPS efficient, with different speed ratios, making us design more new builds. Which is fantastic! We now have more options for how to design things than pasting down the same blueprints N times. Personally, I think the variety is an excellent result of the quality mod.

There is more variety in how you design, yes, but once every design is complete it still has to be copy pasted if you want to scale that process. I don’t see how anything is different in that regard.

[Hurkyl]

You agree with me on LDS shuffle, but you seem to compare it to blue circuit upcycling

With 300% productivity, the bonus items you get out of the craft exactly (on average) balance the loss you get from the recycler, so you get a 1:1 ratio between normal blue circuit inputs and legendary blue circuit outputs.

[mmmPI]

That’s like saying only purple science should be produced via actual recipe, the others should be made of nothing but water. It’s different, it adds variety, you’ve already built production for purple so “there’s no getting away from it”. But would this change, all science packs except for purple being made of water, make the game better? I hope you agree that it wouldn’t.

think simpler is indeed wrong, if it’s strong.

To me it sound more like the opposite, you have made your production line for all the sciences, and late game there's a new way that unlock to make purple science out of water. which is easier and stronger and different than the other methods, which acts as reward and increases the variety of viable builds. Not too dissimilar to how fusion power is "simple" yet very strong, potentially replacing all other source of energy in the "post late game", but you need to have started with other source of power.

You agree with me on LDS shuffle, but you seem to compare it to blue circuit upcycling

With 300% productivity, the bonus items you get out of the craft exactly (on average) balance the loss you get from the recycler, so you get a 1:1 ratio between normal blue circuit inputs and legendary blue circuit outputs.

I feel here it depends on how/why you use the LDS shuffle, if you use it to get quality LDS that's not "cheaty" to me and very similar to blue circuits, but LDS shuffle can also be used to generate easily quality steel or copper out of very little to no input with research, it's not just doing a 1=>1 upcycle, this i found much more un-balanced than the asteroid recycler. I wouldn't use a mod to re-introduce LDS shuffle if it's removed or altered, but i'd be tempted to do so for asteroid recycler depending on how the re-balance is handled, cuz even if it's not that hard, it involve some law of large numbers that i found are interesting to use in a puzzle.

[coffee-factorio]

You agree with me on LDS shuffle, but you seem to compare it to blue circuit upcycling

With 300% productivity, the bonus items you get out of the craft exactly (on average) balance the loss you get from the recycler, so you get a 1:1 ratio between normal blue circuit inputs and legendary blue circuit outputs.

I was wondering if I was the only person who realized this. I'm not sure it is well known that you can make a build before you do an LDS shuffle with some outstanding characteristics. It goes off at about level 13 productivity research instead too. But since it's being talked about more, I realized that it has actually been doable since December. The speed modules are not great though, they reduce the effectiveness of the build.

[mmmPI]

I'm not sure it is well known that you can make a build before you do an LDS shuffle with some outstanding characteristics.

The setup you linked is possible since release and is well known, but it makes little sense to claim you can do it before LDS shuffle imo.