"Quality" almost single-handedly ruined my love of the game, here's how I pushed through that mental block

[Kyralessa]

Next time when I visit a restaurant I'll tell them that I don't drink beer and I don't like that they have beer on their menue. Sure, I could just not order it, BUT it feels like that beer is staring at me

Really, you want an option for optional stuff ??????

To be fair, the Quality mod is required for Space Age. You can't just turn it off and still play the Space Age expansion.

However,

• Nothing forces anybody to research it.
• No item gets any quality modifiers until quality is researched.
• I don't think quality is required to finish the game.

So the only negative from ignoring it is that the quality research items are listed in the research list forever.

[jodokus31]

Next time when I visit a restaurant I'll tell them that I don't drink beer and I don't like that they have beer on their menue. Sure, I could just not order it, BUT it feels like that beer is staring at me

Really, you want an option for optional stuff ??????

To be fair, the Quality mod is required for Space Age. You can't just turn it off and still play the Space Age expansion.

However,

• Nothing forces anybody to research it.
• No item gets any quality modifiers until quality is researched.
• I don't think quality is required to finish the game.

So the only negative from ignoring it is that the quality research items are listed in the research list forever.

I read, that he likes to have a different way to get stronger stuff.
In that case, I would also propose adding a mod for more tiers to mitigate the loss of better quality buildings.

[andystrangelove]

...

[andystrangelove]

Same here. I’ve been thinking about starting a new playthrough of Space Age, but the whole quality thing just puts me off. Even though I don’t have to use it, it feels like a broken mod I can’t uninstall. When part of the joy of Factorio is making your factory run perfectly and elegantly, having this awkward system sitting in the background just nags at me.

It feels unpolished and out of place, thematically and mechanically. Factorio for me was fundamentally “research = better stuff,” and quality sidesteps that with it's gambling mechanic. There’s also the opportunity cost: I love the new buildings, so instead of having quality for essential endgame progression (especially in space), I’d much rather see proper Tier 2 versions of turrets, asteroid collectors, and so on. And for things like inserters, just make their speed researchable.

It’s one mechanic too many, and a very widely impacting one, which shows in all the inconsistencies and exploits that have cropped up since. And ridiculous things like legendary mech armour with a dozen legendary exoskeleton, which just breaks immersion. (Honestly, allowing multiple exoskeletons instead of tiered upgrades was always a bit silly.)

And then there are stacked belts. I initially liked the idea, but it also feels... wrong. It’s too big a leap. We already had a clear mechanic for belt throughput—speed. Suddenly being able to quadruple yellow belt throughput for almost no cost feels like cheating.

Unrealistic, maybe, but I’d love to see 2.1 make quality an optional, standalone mod and rebalance the game accordingly.

Next time when I visit a restaurant I'll tell them that I don't drink beer and I don't like that they have beer on their menue. Sure, I could just not order it, BUT it feels like that beer is staring at me

Really, you want an option for optional stuff ??????

Everything about a game is optional so I'm not sure what point you're making. Besides, quality is a required part of Space Age, both technically but more importantly it's part of the designed gameplay experience and meaningfully impacts the end game in a way that I don't enjoy. Your restaurant analogy would be more accurate if all the deserts had hair in them.

[andystrangelove]

Next time when I visit a restaurant I'll tell them that I don't drink beer and I don't like that they have beer on their menue. Sure, I could just not order it, BUT it feels like that beer is staring at me

Really, you want an option for optional stuff ??????

To be fair, the Quality mod is required for Space Age. You can't just turn it off and still play the Space Age expansion.

However,

• Nothing forces anybody to research it.
• No item gets any quality modifiers until quality is researched.
• I don't think quality is required to finish the game.

So the only negative from ignoring it is that the quality research items are listed in the research list forever.

It's not required to finish the game but your space platforms are going to suck big time with only level 1 collectors, engines, and turrets. Which is why I think it was required in the first place.

[Hurkyl]

Next time when I visit a restaurant I'll tell them that I don't drink beer and I don't like that they have beer on their menue. Sure, I could just not order it, BUT it feels like that beer is staring at me

Really, you want an option for optional stuff ??????

To be fair, the Quality mod is required for Space Age. You can't just turn it off and still play the Space Age expansion.

However,

• Nothing forces anybody to research it.
• No item gets any quality modifiers until quality is researched.
• I don't think quality is required to finish the game.

So the only negative from ignoring it is that the quality research items are listed in the research list forever.

It's not required to finish the game but your space platforms are going to suck big time with only level 1 collectors, engines, and turrets. Which is why I think it was required in the first place.

I'm always flabbergasted how much emphasis people put on quality collectors. My own experience is even with the common ones, I'm still voiding more asteroids than I actually use.

And find quality turrets to be actively worse than common ones, outside of a few specialized situations: wider range usually makes it harder to place them where they are both effective and do not waste ammo shooting at asteroids you'd rather let fly past. There are some situations where the range is an advantage, but it's not the norm.


So, in my games, I don't find it worth spending extra effort on quality collectors and actively avoid quality turrets.

[coffee-factorio]

I'm always flabbergasted how much emphasis people put on quality collectors. My own experience is even with the common ones, I'm still voiding more asteroids than I actually use.

And find quality turrets to be actively worse than common ones, outside of a few specialized situations: wider range usually makes it harder to place them where they are both effective and do not waste ammo shooting at asteroids you'd rather let fly past. There are some situations where the range is an advantage, but it's not the norm.


So, in my games, I don't find it worth spending extra effort on quality collectors and actively avoid quality turrets.

I'm about a month behind on videos because there's some things like this where I'm going "wait... does this hold up at all if you benchmark it?" And when I game that out, I usually run into a point where if I make a hot take, I'm getting into a nasty philosophical argument about something that's valid for... 20-40 hours as I play the game; at some stage I'm running it.

That's being seen from the point of view where someone wins the game in 100 hours then spends 900 more hours in their year on everything else.

The point where it starts to make sense is at a point in the game where a player can dispose of the asteroids in a way other than tossing them, which starts at Fulgora with a recycler but is practical at Vulcanus with rerolls.

There's a few things where the idea doesn't in some way put you into a really nasty positional war. Quality turrets only makes sense when you don't have to replace damaged ones but do need the extra range constantly. It isn't impossible to make that happen, but without investment in things that are unrelated to quality it just doesn't make sense.

[Hurkyl]

My own experience is even with the common ones, I'm still voiding more asteroids than I actually use.

The point where it starts to make sense is at a point in the game where a player can dispose of the asteroids in a way other than tossing them, which starts at Fulgora with a recycler but is practical at Vulcanus with rerolls.

I guess my point was kind of lost -- the idea was since I'm already collecting too many asteroids and need to dispose* of them, it is counterproductive to go out of my way to collect even more asteroids.

*: I usually design in a way where backpressure fills up the collectors and they simply stop running all together, especially when rerolling becomes available so I can ensure my buffer is never short on one type

There's a few things where the idea doesn't in some way put you into a really nasty positional war. Quality turrets only makes sense when you don't have to replace damaged ones but do need the extra range constantly. It isn't impossible to make that happen,

I think the situation I've most commonly seen where it would be useful is when a quality turret in the middle of a platform can cover both sides to provide defense in orbit (but the platform is too wide for a common turret). So, for example, it would allow for a wider 'needle' type design if your main constraint on width is a simplified defense.

[coffee-factorio]

The point where it starts to make sense is at a point in the game where a player can dispose of the asteroids in a way other than tossing them, which starts at Fulgora with a recycler but is practical at Vulcanus with rerolls.

I guess my point was kind of lost -- the idea was since I'm already collecting too many asteroids and need to dispose* of them, it is counterproductive to go out of my way to collect even more asteroids.

*: I usually design in a way where backpressure fills up the collectors and they simply stop running all together, especially when rerolling becomes available so I can ensure my buffer is never short on one type

It isn't lost. I'm in the same position you're in till I get really specific tech combos and make something that's unique to a task. And before that, usually I'm spending as much power on a set of arms as if I just shot up two cheaper parts. And whatever I do, I need a six gun set on the ship or it isn't going to survive till I get utility science online.

Crushers and beacons it's different. Engines it's... interesting. I'll tell you when I know if it's different or not. Give me two or three weeks.

[meganothing]

Everything about a game is optional so I'm not sure what point you're making.

Huh? Playing a game itself is optional. But to finish or advance in a game many things are not. For example paltforms are not optional in space age. Assemblers are (probably) not optional.

But many other things are, like trains (in classic) or spidertrons. If I don't like trains or spidertrons and don't want to use them, do I need an option to turn them off?

Besides, quality is a required part of Space Age, both technically but more importantly it's part of the designed gameplay experience and meaningfully impacts the end game in a way that I don't enjoy. Your restaurant analogy would be more accurate if all the deserts had hair in them.

"designed gameplay experience"? The spidertron is as well, right? And it is optional and easily ignored. What do you want to tell me here?

About the end game impact:
I have seen and tried out the blueprint of a platform that reaches the shattered planet and farms the resources there: https://factorioprints.com/view/-OCUFzHRL2Ytcc0bMD0Y

As the description says it uses a few uncommon and rare items but they are not mandatory! That alone tells me that quality is actually provable optional

Even if those few items were mandatory, a similar ship could be made 2-3 block wider to make space for doubling of any production buildings or turrets that are uncommon or rare right now which would even give a boost there. Now 2-3 blocks means that ship will have a lower top speed (which isn't used when traveling to aquilo or the shattered planet anyway, it has to slow down) and take say 65 instead of 60 minutes for a full roundtrip

If those 5 minutes per roundtrip would really matter to you, you could simply build 2 of them. Where do you get the materials for building that second ship from? Simple, from all the stuff you saved because you did not do the wasteful quality upcycling. Or you could let the ship only do the trip to the shattered planet (where it would have the same speed) and build a smaller fast ship for the deliveries to nauvis.

(Granted, the platform I want to design myself eventually will look definitely worse and waste more space than the blueprint above (which surely has seen a ton of iterations). As a consequence it will have a lower top speed and be less efficient. Still, I don't expect it to be leagues behind or not work at all. I haven't heard of a minimum speed you need. And I can always make up for less speed and efficiency with more platforms.)

[crimsonarmy]

Assemblers are (probably) not optional.

To remove the "probably:" assemblers are required to craft engines which are required for chemical science which is required to beat the game. Now the question is what is the minimal number of crafts done in an assembler?

[dabalciunas]

If there's one thing that my particular brain worms will not allow when building; it's waste. Raw materials used imperfectly, wasted space, idle machines at peak load, excess power usage; it's all gotta go. Productivity modules will be crammed into every space they can and efficiency beacons at every corner. So coming back to play Space Age and deciding to continue on with my old save I quickly got to work making some tiny ships, just barely fit to fly between planets and didn't have too much trouble setting up equally compact factories capable of making the new materials, machines, and sciences. Time is infinite after all, so to me even a minimum output design is good enough so long as it's perfectly efficient. You can just beacon it or double it later once you've got the demand.

However it wasn't until I was preparing to head out to Aquilo that I decided to see if I could get some Quality upgrades for my gear. I had so far ignored it because the idea of scrapping items and losing so much of the raw material was just too much for me to take. Plus where could I fit in Quality modules that my Productivity modules weren't already filling? The other two options I had were:

1) Space Casino and LDS shuffle shenanigans to get infinite raw materials as Legendary, however "what's the point in setting this up now when I only have access to Epic Quality" I thought to myself. This option also seems to sidestep the whole system in a way that seems unintended, jumping from standard to Legendary all at once.

2) Rebuild everything I've ever done 5x bigger to account for a tiny trickle of Quality items in every process that would otherwise clog every machine the moment they arrive. Ouch. Most of those machines will stay idle too as they wait for the mountain of low Quality items to be processed.

"Well those don't seem appealing at all, surely I'm missing something." And there I was stuck for days. Considering tearing down everything, ignoring quality completely, maybe mods to combine Productivity and Quality modules? There must be some way you would be intended to gradually increase the quality of everything in your factory as it became available to you right? Otherwise why bother until you can jump straight to Legendary, but at that point the game is almost over. Something has got to click. But it just never did, and slowly the infinite research ticked on with nothing else to do while I drove myself in circles.

I seized up and almost quit, it wasn't fun anymore. This wasn't a puzzle I wanted to solve, but ignoring or sidestepping the problem suddenly made the game feel hollow and meaningless. I tried out a bunch of mods to tweak things, but finding anything balanced was rough.
Eventually I found the Quality Processing mod by Schneefall https://mods.factorio.com/mod/quality-processing
And the High Precision Manufacturing mod by Heinarc https://mods.factorio.com/mod/HighPreci ... ufacturing
Which didn't immediately fix my issues but allowed me to start thinking about designing for Quality differently. Schneefall's mod allows finished products to be increased in Quality for a reasonable cost in raw materials and processing complexity. Perfect for single or low frequency crafted items like armour, weapons, vehicles, etc. That would otherwise need to be crafted and scrapped a hundred times over just to get the one you want. However it isn't so cheap as to be a reasonable option for everything that is under continuous demand like science packs, modules, crafting machines, power poles, etc. To do so would be Wastefull . Combined with Heinarc's mod, which encourages upstream Quality crafting for those high demand items. With the new option to now upgrade any items that had failed to reach a higher Quality for a not insignificant cost instead of scrapping them, suddenly every percentage increase in Quality at each step of every process was helping to reduce Waste. I understand this isn't mechanically very different than the standard "scrap and re-craft until you get the Quality you want" approach, but it at least feels better than throwing perfectly good items into a Recycler.

It still isn't perfect in my mind, where do Productivity modules fit in all this if Quality is the new consideration? Maybe that's why the new crafting machines have a productivity bonus built in and raw materials on other planets are mostly infinite.
Does it make more sense to limit all Quality upgrades by 1 level per crafting step with a higher Quality chance on modules to compensate? As in: a jump from Uncommon Iron Ore to Epic or Legendary Iron Plate when smelting is impossible. That does make designing around the outputs far simpler as you only need to have 2 production lines for each crafting step instead of 5, and slowly increasing Quality as the complexity of what you are producing increases seems much more thematic to the game.

Thanks for reading. I just needed to put my frustration with Quality into words. So I hope it at least serves as good feedback for the DLC or help someone else break through the Quality barrier.

I agree.