Friday Facts #442 - Flip, Flow, and Fresh Paint

[bobucles]

This is exciting stuff, particularly the lane placement and tinkering with quality.

I love the quality mod, but I wish you guys would take another look at quality fusion reactors. Naively dropping in quality reactors into a non-quality multi-reactor setup tanks your fuel efficiency. Designing the infrastructure to accommodate the quality reactors completely negates the benefit of a reactor with higher max output.

Yeah, fusion reactors are a bit funky. Nuclear power has perfect adjacency, if all the reactors are online then they get the full bonus. Fusion has constantly changing adjacency, a reactor will only give the full bonus when the power grid demands it. From what I can tell, the fusion output averages to give the worst adjacency bonus possible.

For example, take a grid with 4 adjacent 100mw reactors. When the power grid is under 400mw each reactor starts ramping up, until they are all fully active at 400mw with 0 adjacency bonus. As the grid draws above 400mw, reactors 1 by 1 build their adjacency until they are all at max output with the max bonus.

I have also hesitated to upgrade reactors for this very reason. Better fusion plants have a higher baseline cooking speed, so they burn more fuel, and they increase the threshold before adjacency bonus can activate. It's not mechanically that significant because fuel is cheap, but it is a bit upsetting to upgrade fusion reactors and feel like it was a waste of fuel. Upgrade the turbines first, they're always useful, but anything under a few hundred mw should never upgrade fusion cores.

As a side note, I once saw an old bug report that fusion plasma flow rate caps out at 300 or something like that. Will the new liquid buffer mechanics change that and let giga reactors pump out more plasma?

[wizcreations]

I'm just going to keep playing 2.0 until a quality asteroid chunk mod comes out, then.

The devs should be under no illusion here, the space ships making quality materials is more interesting than everything they're putting into version 2.1, and it isn't even close.

It is already out. https://mods.factorio.com/mod/bring-back-space-casino

[radical_larry]

And calling space casino as engaging thing when it is just copy paste bp from forum is just overreaching andhonestly a skill issue on player part.

Copy pasting blueprints someone neither made nor understands is a skill issue. It invalidates every challenge of the game and has nothing to do with space casinos.

[fryyyy]

What makes you think that a low-quality fusion reactor produces more energy and takes up less space than a high-quality one? You just need fusion generators that match the reactor's quality. The efficiency also stays the same if you limit the fluoroketone supply properly.
You can use the same blueprint regardless of the quality. With higher quality, you generate more energy in the same amount of space. Thats all.

To be clear, I'm talking about multi-reactor setups. You need to run the reactor at 100% capacity to get the most fuel efficiency. You need more infrastructure (tons of accumulators and logic to switch the reactors on/off) to capture the higher output of the quality reactors to preserve the fuel efficiency. Two quality reactors will produce less electricity at a worse fuel efficiency than 3 non-quality reactors. Fluoroketone levels have nothing to do with fuel efficiency.

For any given target output, there is a non-quality reactor setup that will have better fuel efficiency and take up the same or less space than a quality setup. The only use case for a quality reactor is when you don't have enough space for multiple reactors, forgoing any efficiency bonus, and need more than 100 MW and less than the max output of whatever quality you have available.

[soldans]

Holy... last week's FF was already an answer to so many wants. And this week it just keeps going
Inserter output lanes. Always placed at splitter input side. 45° flamethrowers. Trains! Pipe throughput fix. All GREAT!
And of course, the art updates are amazing as always. I wish they weren't pictured though, I really enjoy how those things can be such a positive surprise when discovered in the moment.

Also good decision on the no quality asteroid reprocessing. It completely diminished impact and point of any other rarity than legendary...

But the most interesting change to me at the moment is actually the "hidden" ability to select output circuit.
Any chance that there are more QOL coming to circuit logic?
Last week announced that space platforms would be able to both have 'Set Requests' and 'Read Contents'. Wouldn't this be possible to add to requester/buffer chests as well? I think it is also already a feature with 'Set Recipe' machines not counting their own contents.
I thought of something similar with 'Set Filter' inserters.
Would it be possible to add the circuit selection feature here as well? So basically you could have an inserter that reads its contents without it affecting its filter logic. Something like:
InserterFilterCircuit.jpg
I know something like that is already possible by making sure that all contents in the inserter's circuit are in the negatives (except those that should be added to filter), but I feel that this too often turns very... inelegant.

In any case, I'm super amazed so far with how much every announced improvement have aligned with my own wanted Qol features! I'm going to have to revise so many blueprints

I took the liberty and added some options!...

06-12-2026, 23-51-31.png (799.66 KiB) Viewed 1379 times

But my speculation would be that the output and input channel will be selected in the way the output channel is selected in the FFF-pic... but one could hope that the enable/disable still can work somehow.

[jackthesmack]

While [flipping] some things will always be impossible (Train stops, Rail signals, etc.), we do what we can.

Sentences like this are a bit more bittersweet to read now that we're in the final stretch of development, huh?

How so?

I'm sure you could spend dozens of more hours implementing a rail specific rotational mechanic that allows flipping while preserving the direction, or allow flipping the direction. IMO it would be a waste of time compared to other, cooler, features.

[spacedog]

Ummm.... the thing with inserters dropping to the input side of splitters by default is a breaking change.

Inserter lane flipping is super cool, and will enable cleaner builds for belt enthusiasts. I like this a lot. Most importantly, when loading existing saves, it can default the target lane to the old behavior so nothing breaks.

But changing the side of the splitter the inserters drop to will 100% break existing saves that relied on the old behavior, and I don't see a workaround for that. Don't get me wrong, I like the change and think it should have always been like that, but... breaking changes suck.

Curious to hear what the devs thoughts are about this.

[factoriouzr]

I think it's a big mistake to remove or nerf space casinos for quality. This is a super late game thing. Many things can't be upcycled with it.

This is not an mmo or persistent online game. If I want to use space casinos, let me. I shouldn't need a mod to re-enable this. Copy/pasting recycling loops for every item is boring. I beat space age twice, legendrized most items, built megabases twice. Who cares if in a mostly single player game or game with friends you can upcycle a few things in space. I build full turbo belts stacked with every science, tons of rockets instantly launching 40k of each science into space at once. I built tons of other upcycling designs, but you know what they all had in common? The recycling loop. You know what space casinos don't need? You guessed it, the recycler. Way to nerf more fun out of a mostly single player game.

[motmontheinternet]

Ummm.... the thing with inserters dropping to the input side of splitters by default is a breaking change.

Inserter lane flipping is super cool, and will enable cleaner builds for belt enthusiasts. I like this a lot. Most importantly, when loading existing saves, it can default the target lane to the old behavior so nothing breaks.

But changing the side of the splitter the inserters drop to will 100% break existing saves that relied on the old behavior, and I don't see a workaround for that. Don't get me wrong, I like the change and think it should have always been like that, but... breaking changes suck.

Curious to hear what the devs thoughts are about this.

It's understood that major patches can break save files. And save files that depend on mods, too. Having to refactor builds due to major patches isn't anything new. I don't think it's even a big deal to refactor such a thing unless you made some very strange decisions like building 100 space ships that relied on old splitter behavior and will instantly run out of materials, meaning updating them all would be a legit pain. For everything else you just blueprint a more sane build.

[factoriouzr]

the point they are trying to make is that space casino trivializes every other method for creating quality products in the game, especially gleba and its complex system for producing quality materials from fruit.

That’s simply not true; if you want mass quantities of legendary carbon fiber you’re still having to do typical up-cycling work with fruit on Gleba. The only other method is up-cycling tool belts, which has all the annoyances and slowness downsides of every other up-cycling method. Space casinos don’t obviate other approaches for things like holmium or carbon fiber, which require their own approaches. They just make all the basic materials significantly easier to scale up, which—at the tail end of a long play-through, after all the central mechanics have been well-explored—feels like a satisfying reward for the time put in thus far.

I agree!

[GregoriusT]

Ummm.... the thing with inserters dropping to the input side of splitters by default is a breaking change.

Inserter lane flipping is super cool, and will enable cleaner builds for belt enthusiasts. I like this a lot. Most importantly, when loading existing saves, it can default the target lane to the old behavior so nothing breaks.

But changing the side of the splitter the inserters drop to will 100% break existing saves that relied on the old behavior, and I don't see a workaround for that. Don't get me wrong, I like the change and think it should have always been like that, but... breaking changes suck.

Curious to hear what the devs thoughts are about this.

I would like to know which scenario it was even possible to have the splitters cause issues with that. Because the whole "put on the input side of splitters" thing only ever applied to splitters facing towards or away from the Inserter, both of which being cases that were quite literally unusable in any setups before this change. So which working Setups would be broken by this "breaking" change?

Also 2.1 also breaks fluid setups with throughput filters, and space casinos, and a few other things, I dont think "dont break things" on principle of "not breaking things" is much of an arguable point for 2.1 anymore.

[sben]

Holy... last week's FF was already an answer to so many wants. And this week it just keeps going
Inserter output lanes. Always placed at splitter input side. 45° flamethrowers. Trains! Pipe throughput fix. All GREAT!
And of course, the art updates are amazing as always. I wish they weren't pictured though, I really enjoy how those things can be such a positive surprise when discovered in the moment.

Also good decision on the no quality asteroid reprocessing. It completely diminished impact and point of any other rarity than legendary...

But the most interesting change to me at the moment is actually the "hidden" ability to select output circuit.
Any chance that there are more QOL coming to circuit logic?
Last week announced that space platforms would be able to both have 'Set Requests' and 'Read Contents'. Wouldn't this be possible to add to requester/buffer chests as well? I think it is also already a feature with 'Set Recipe' machines not counting their own contents.
I thought of something similar with 'Set Filter' inserters.
Would it be possible to add the circuit selection feature here as well? So basically you could have an inserter that reads its contents without it affecting its filter logic. Something like:
InserterFilterCircuit.jpg
I know something like that is already possible by making sure that all contents in the inserter's circuit are in the negatives (except those that should be added to filter), but I feel that this too often turns very... inelegant.

In any case, I'm super amazed so far with how much every announced improvement have aligned with my own wanted Qol features! I'm going to have to revise so many blueprints

I took the liberty and added some options!...
06-12-2026, 23-51-31.png
But my speculation would be that the output and input channel will be selected in the way the output channel is selected in the FFF-pic... but one could hope that the enable/disable still can work somehow.

Yeah, I hoped the same. This would have allowed one more dimensions of modding options.
Still, it's a great change even if it happens only at the level presented in the FF.

[Monsa]

I'm in agreement with the rest of the people disappointed that the "Space Casino" is being removed. Quality as a whole is a mechanic that doesn't feel like it belongs in Factorio's gameplay loop. It's a huge time investment and, now that the "Space Casino" is going away, entirely luck-based. I'd much rather have the building upgrade system expanded: having higher building tiers at the cost of more complex and expensive recipes. Or even just a way to make quality not take so much time and require copying and pasting the same upcycling setup over and over again.

Quality desperately needs a rework, and the solution isn't removing it completely either.

[spacedog]

I would like to know which scenario it was even possible to have the splitters cause issues with that. Because the whole "put on the input side of splitters" thing only ever applied to splitters facing towards or away from the Inserter, both of which being cases that were quite literally unusable in any setups before this change. So which working Setups would be broken by this "breaking" change?

Also 2.1 also breaks fluid setups with throughput filters, and space casinos, and a few other things, I dont think "dont break things" on principle of "not breaking things" is much of an arguable point for 2.1 anymore.

I mean, this will definitely break a few of my saves. It's mostly in situations where you have cursed belt spaghetti, and realize that the output of something can skip a splitter if the inserter is dropping onto the far side of it, which lets you "optimize" out a bunch of extra belt routing. That kind of stuff was traditionally part of the "puzzle" of this game -- heck, all of the "transport belt madness" scenarios are exactly about this kind of stuff -- so I know I'm not alone here.

Here's an example with everything else removed for clarity, where I need to produce one belt with iron plates and gears, and one belt with just iron plates (destined for different downstream endpoints):

06-12-2026, 16-12-26.png (110.68 KiB) Viewed 1184 times

I realize there are hundreds of ways to produce the same results. The part that really sucks about this though is when you've crammed something so tightly together, like on a space platform, and it's laid out like that because it just barely squeezes in around all the other existing things, it's really not as simple as "just rearrange some stuff". In my case it's just throw away and redesign from the ground up.

I guess that's one way to say 2.1 provides several additional hours of gameplay... but I wouldn't exactly market it as a feature.

For the record, I'm also not sure killing space casinos was the right thing to do. The fact that they kind of rushed 2.0 across the finish line is their own fault. I mean, if you want to truly "fix" it, then break ALL the quality cheese (like infinite LDS and circuit loops) and rebalance the RNG so people don't feel the need to cheese to produce quality products at scale. Otherwise just leave it alone at this point... they should have rebalanced that within a few weeks of launch if it was really that important.

Don't get me wrong, most of these changes are just pure awesome. But I feel like they've tried harder in the past (or at least since 1.0) not to break things and just live with their mistakes.

[WalterVerfloats]

The Space Casino nerf is extremely disappointing. It was one of the few places where you could apply a creative solution to quality.

We don't want to be fun killers, but it just makes any other approach to quality obsolete.

Yes, because there is one [0] other approach to quality. Is the intended gameplay loop for quality really copying the same old recycling blueprint over and over again with a few tweaks? Awful.

[0] There's the LDS/Blue Circuit loop, but realistically you already need to have high quality buildings before you can make use of it.

There are actually two other approaches to quality - trickle and filter from regular production lines and then the dedicated upcycling. One is extremely boring and the other does not scale well at all. Yes, the space casino was OP, but the core reason why so many people use it is because the whole quality feels half baked and at least the space casino allows you to skip the boring "grind".

I wish they would revisit the quality as a whole, for regular play through the trickle method is interesting challenge, but when you get to mid/late game or megabases you really want to be able to scale and currently the only method is copy-paste upcycling loops or making the casino. Mod allowing the casinos to continue will be my first download after the 2.1 patch.

People use space casino cause exactly was boring solution to logistic problem and it is easy to setup and bypass biggest points of quality. People want easy rewards without putting any work to getting them.

Factorio is easy to mod so they can bring it back with mods but it always baffled my. If you use sapce casino why not just mod in everything legendary.

At that point you're overinflating the power of space casinos. Even if you build a space casino you'd still need to gather many other materials by repeating the conventional methods across multiple production chains, so why is a bit more variety that big of a problem? I don't think people would rely nearly as much on space casinos if the other approaches were less tedious - and I don't mean challenging, just tedious - but I don't think it's reasonable to expect many changes to quality, so why bother removing a different approach from a system that already lacks variety?

[GregoriusT]

The part that really sucks about this though is when you've crammed something so tightly together, like on a space platform, and it's laid out like that because it just barely squeezes in around all the other existing things, it's really not as simple as "just rearrange some stuff". In my case it's just throw away and redesign from the ground up.

Interesting Setup, though inserting on the input side of splitters allows for much more compactness overall, because now you can make a tileable setup much less wide thanks to that.

Also your Setup looks like it would just work if you just put gears onto the belt with longhand inserters.

[factoriouzr]

I'm in agreement with the rest of the people disappointed that the "Space Casino" is being removed. Quality as a whole is a mechanic that doesn't feel like it belongs in Factorio's gameplay loop. It's a huge time investment and, now that the "Space Casino" is going away, entirely luck-based. I'd much rather have the building upgrade system expanded: having higher building tiers at the cost of more complex and expensive recipes. Or even just a way to make quality not take so much time and require copying and pasting the same upcycling setup over and over again.

Quality desperately needs a rework, and the solution isn't removing it completely either.

Also, in megabases, with traveling to get promethium chunks, multiple ships doing it, the ups drops. I'm sure casinos add to this a lot because you need a lot of casinos and casinos just waste resources, literally giving you 25% of the products (75% loss I think, haven't played in a while), and that's just for one step, when you need to upcycle from normal all the way to legendary (which is the typical case), it seems like quality is literally in opposition to UPS. You could just craft items with more expensive recipes at a guaranteed rate, but instead you have to build lots of upcyclers for the same items to get them at a descent rate. Literally in opposition to optimized gaming design. Even though I didn't rely heavily on space casinos, I did have a few ships running them and it was nice to have something different and more efficient then the repetitive recycling loop.

It's literally end game stuff in a mostly single player game. I wonder how many non hard core players even bothered reaching the true end game and promethium science and quality. Removing or nerfing space casinos is the wrong decision.

[Bloodred217]

I love to finally see quality trains coming. Very nice! On the other hand I'm kind of disappointed in the "space casino" change though. I very much so like the idea of quality but in practice all the quality stuff (on my maps at least) just seems to grow like warts on my factory, recycler loops all over the place, nothing really different about them and there are precious little different or clever ways to improve on them. The "casino" was an alternative way and even if it was too effective, removing it but providing no other approaches to quality, especially nothing that can really scale late-game feels rather lackluster. Is it really so wrong to have an end-game alternative to the eternal recycler loop? Doesn't have to be the space casino, but it would be really nice to at least have something.

I think what bothers me the most is that quality processing & production feels so entirely separated and segregated away from the rest of the factory. You just make loops on the side over and over again, there's no real way to integrate your quality stuff with the rest of the factory, the loops just do their thing and shred stuff in Recyclers.

I wish we'd be able to use higher quality items to make lower quality recipes at least. The fact that this isn't possible always felt a bit lacking to me as well. From a conceptual point of view I think it doesn't make much sense, like what, this iron plate is too good, so I can't make a circuit out of it? It can only be made if I use lower quality iron, making it with better iron is literally impossible? I don't think there's much sense in that. Beyond that I think it would be very nice and a big help as to how quality production can integrate into your factory. For example I think it would be much more interesting from the logistics point of view if I could priority-route excess quality items into science production rather than just shredding them in a recycler.

I think allowing an option like this would go a long way to making quality fit in better with the rest of the game.

[bobucles]

For quality mass production, vulcanus is my guy. The main iron rig uses red underground belts, fed by ultra high speed gear production(a LOT of gears get shredded). The main output is quality gears that can go anywhere. Steel uses plain old steel chest upcycling. Copper uses upcycled coal into plastic into liquid LDS, which devoured coal until 50% quality cryo plastic went online. Stone uses upcycled calcite into liquid metal, giving quality stone output.

The nice thing about simple quality items is that they make planet resources far cheaper to upgrade. Every gambling recipe is automatically 75% cheaper than upcycling, so I'll blow away any amount of rare iron on a recipe if it saves a pinch of holmium plate. It's also very important to just gamble on purple, for everything. Shredding purple parts is extremely wasteful and there is more gold output by just gambling on purple, plus it gives a pile of purple items as a bonus.

[ShakurasEnder]

Made a forum account just to say that this is the sexiest update to ever hit the game.