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

[bobucles]

Probably the most useful metric would be to know the expected amount of resources required per 1 legendary output. For example pure upcycling with ore has a 75% recycling loss with ~25% chance to succeed (4 modules), or roughly 16 items devoured per 1 upgraded output. Scoring 4 upgrade rolls to get 1 legendary output would demand ~65k resources, minus the lucky multi upgrades and minus the extra chances from rerolling the failures. Space casino is going to be a similar way. The reroll recipe loses 20% per attempt and has a ~12% chance to succeed (2 modules), so each upgrade would need ~10 lower tier rolls. Four successful upgrades would take ~10k attempts, with a ton of retries to reduce the total chunks required. A third of the final chunks would be the right flavor, and the other types would have to reroll until they succeeded.

Someone smarter can probably figure out the math. Obviously, f the reroll had no cost then 1 normal input would always give 1 legendary output. Some sort of convergence of infinite multiplying series would probably do it.

All in all, it's kind of a funny scenario. Space chunks are like an onion, or perhaps a gobstoper. You peel off one layer over and over until it is the right quality, then peel a few more layers until it's the right chunk flavor. Asteroid chunks have more geologic layers than the planets.

[h.q.droid]

Reading between the words, I think the space casino nerf looks OK: it only prevents quality on reprocessing, but not on *basic processing*. It means you can't easily get early game legendary with reprocessing, but at productivity 30, you can still get legendary stuff en masse with basic processing with roughly the same yield. Just need more by-product disposal.

[Hurkyl]

Someone smarter can probably figure out the math. Obviously, f the reroll had no cost then 1 normal input would always give 1 legendary output. Some sort of convergence of infinite multiplying series would probably do it.

Using legendary tier 3 modules, you average slightly more than one legendary asteroid output per 47.7 common asteroid inputs, so in this metric it's in the same ballpark as craft-recycle loops without any special features.

[RocketManChronicles]

How will the change make the game more fun for you?

It already is fun. I did and do not do the "Space Casino," so I am not reliant on it. This game requires puzzle solving and mathematics to push production and efficiency. Getting Legendary items easily is not part of the plan. I also play this game with mods that make it extremely difficult: I have a 1.1 save file of a Rampant Death-Railworld Extreme, meaning the Rampant mod with all of the extra enemies, with severe deathworld settings (harder than the suggested deathworld) and resources set to the railworld settings. This game is way to easy otherwise. And my 24000 hours shows how much I enjoy this game.

How do you feel about other people being upset at it's removal?

It does not matter, as I am sure there will be a mod made to counter this change. I stay away from mods that make the game "easy" like the far reach and walkthrough mods; those make it too easy. I do enjoy some QoL mods like even distribution. But people play this game how they want to; even use other people's blueprints without laying a thought to solve it themselves. If you want to play the game with everything handed to you, go ahead, I will be at the other end with my mega- and giga-bases that have faced near destruction through evolution.

I've never heard an answer to these questions that satisfies me.

That is your opinion, and I have mine. Just play the game the way you want.

[motmontheinternet]

Reading between the words, I think the space casino nerf looks OK: it only prevents quality on reprocessing, but not on *basic processing*. It means you can't easily get early game legendary with reprocessing, but at productivity 30, you can still get legendary stuff en masse with basic processing with roughly the same yield. Just need more by-product disposal.

All you're telling us is that you've never built one of these ships before. The productivity of the items the ship itself makes are irrelevant, Vulcanus makes all of the legandary products after the ship brings it legendary carbon, calcite, and iron. The point of the ship and the reason to use it over other methods is scale of inputs in the first place. The sources of the materials is high and doesn't need updating when resource nodes empty. Nobody cares about these ships because of productivity, because productivity works on all surfaces.

There's no such thing as an early game legendary item ship, by the way. When you unlock legendary materials you are in the end game.

[quineotio]

How will the change make the game more fun for you?

It already is fun. I did and do not do the "Space Casino," so I am not reliant on it. This game requires puzzle solving and mathematics to push production and efficiency. Getting Legendary items easily is not part of the plan. I also play this game with mods that make it extremely difficult: I have a 1.1 save file of a Rampant Death-Railworld Extreme, meaning the Rampant mod with all of the extra enemies, with severe deathworld settings (harder than the suggested deathworld) and resources set to the railworld settings. This game is way to easy otherwise. And my 24000 hours shows how much I enjoy this game.

How do you feel about other people being upset at it's removal?

It does not matter, as I am sure there will be a mod made to counter this change. I stay away from mods that make the game "easy" like the far reach and walkthrough mods; those make it too easy. I do enjoy some QoL mods like even distribution. But people play this game how they want to; even use other people's blueprints without laying a thought to solve it themselves. If you want to play the game with everything handed to you, go ahead, I will be at the other end with my mega- and giga-bases that have faced near destruction through evolution.

I've never heard an answer to these questions that satisfies me.

That is your opinion, and I have mine. Just play the game the way you want.

This perfectly encapsulates my dissatisfaction with people's answers. I tried to be charitable (maybe there's something I missed), but at the end of the day you just don't care about other people. "Just play the game the way you want" is hypocritical because people WERE playing the game the way they wanted.

This change makes the game better for no-one and worse for some people. There's no good reason to be happy about this.

Thank you for telling me how good you are, it's a good insight.

[Hurkyl]

That is your opinion, and I have mine. Just play the game the way you want.

This perfectly encapsulates my dissatisfaction with people's answers. I tried to be charitable (maybe there's something I missed), but at the end of the day you just don't care about other people. "Just play the game the way you want" is hypocritical because people WERE playing the game the way they wanted.

And you will continue to be able to play the game the way you want after the change.

This change makes the game better for no-one and worse for some people. There's no good reason to be happy about this.

It makes the game better for people who feel being forced into a dilemma between "play well and the game degenerates to become uninteresting" and "deliberately play badly" are both bad options that ruin the fun of a game.

I am very much of the opinion that the game defaults should be well-balanced, and variations that let people play out a power fantasy or skip over parts of the game they dislike should be clearly sectioned off as not being part of the intended game experience. IMO, adding OP features and adding skips to a balanced game works much better than filling up a game with those things and force players that want game balance to guess what things to deliberately avoid -- especially when many (most?) of those players will not have a deep understanding of the game to be able to make those choices or even recognize they need to be made.

[Tallinu]

So many awesome improvements in this FFF. I guess this time that stands for Flipping, Fluids, and Flamethrowers! I'm SO glad that the inserter drop on perpendicular belts can be controlled now!!! That'll open up a lot more options for train unloaders!

[DarkArchitect]

Bye bye vanilla casinos.

I think they were quite a fun way to break the late game, but we all expected this. What I hope is we get another way of obtaining quality materials, because upcycling feels tedious and too "grindy".

A common ground of a difficult but rewarding puzzle to obtain quality would be better that just throw hundreds of recyclers and wait.

That or just a mod that allows quality modules on recyclers again.

Oh, and new flipping options are just awesome! Can't wait to redesign some designs to make them more compact!

Best regards

[quineotio]

And you will continue to be able to play the game the way you want after the change.

To be clear, I don't use the space casino. Although I think this is a bad change, my original comment was more concerned with the attitude "I'm happy about this" coming from someone who it doesn't effect. Why would you care if it doesn't effect you?

I am very much of the opinion that the game defaults should be well-balanced, and variations that let people play out a power fantasy or skip over parts of the game they dislike should be clearly sectioned off as not being part of the intended game experience. IMO, adding OP features and adding skips to a balanced game works much better than filling up a game with those things and force players that want game balance to guess what things to deliberately avoid -- especially when many (most?) of those players will not have a deep understanding of the game to be able to make those choices or even recognize they need to be made.

While I agree with some of what you've said in principle, we're talking about a late game thing that has already been in the game for a year and a half. And Factorio is a non competitive, mostly single player game, and partially a sandbox.

I'm hoping that there are further changes coming for quality, but even then I disagree with the design mentality that has risen to prominence in SA, which is that there are particular things that are arbitrarily allowed, and particular things that are arbitrarily disallowed.

The point of a game is to have fun, and multiple people have stated that they enjoy making space casinos. This idea about disallowing power fantasy or "skipping over parts of the game they dislike" is weird to me. What's wrong with power fantasy in a game? What's wrong with skipping over things you don't like in a game? What's wrong with having easier and harder ways to do things?

As I said above, I don't use space casinos. I tried it, but then I wanted to try something different, so I did something different. It was an interesting challenge, and then I wanted a different challenge. What's the problem?

Achievements have been used as additional optional challenges. Why not just add an achievement that disallows putting quality modules into crushers? That would serve the elitists while still allowing those who want to to make space casinos. If you want a "hard mode" - hooray it would exist. If you want an "easy mode" it'd be there too. There are many games with difficulty options. Should difficulty options be removed because playing on easy is "OP"?

Why not just add difficulty options directly as an option when making a new game? Remove ALL the restrictions on easy - allow me to put quality modules into crushers on planet surfaces, place biolabs on any planet, have multiple landing pads per planet and whatever else. And then have a hard mode with whatever restrictions?

In fact that's a good idea. There are a lot of things I'd like to try but can't due to arbitrary restrictions. I'm not happy when someone's fun is gated behind an arbitrary design choice and an elitist mentality. Give the elitists a medal and give the rest of us the choice to play the game the way we want. What's the problem?

[Valorian]

I got a suggestion regarding the LDS quality issue : what about putting a quantity multiplier on fluide from quality recipes ?