I'd agree on WUBE having the intention of making it challenging, but I really can't wrap my head around the rewards not being worthwhile. There isn't another process I can think of where if you upgrade one aspect (Production/Speed/Efficiency for example) where the detractor can't be mitigated to some degree, or where there is no detractor in the case of better machines (Foundry & EM Plant base Prod and crafting speed for example).coffee-factorio wrote: Sun Jun 21, 2026 3:29 am
It's less that I feel like it shouldn't be rewarding. It's more that I feel like it's intended for the thing to be challenging. As for whether or not it is, it's a feature which drains more resources than benefits it provides except when optimized by other technologies. So it's part of "Coffee Paradox Circus", because unless I'm mistaken it's going to provide contradictory logic depending on when (n+u+r+e+l)/cost >= 1 (and that's before we get into discussions about how big a build and so forth, which add even more possibilities to analyze). I think it is hostile to analysis.
As for whether or not what is objectively handing someone the analytical equivalent of television static is a great idea. It's an artistic choice. But I'm not sure you can balance this system to make it seem like it isn't television static. It's very satisfying to get a result but it's an absolute nightmare to do it. I don't think you're in a minority, I think it would in fact be a sign of concern if someone liked this system without qualification.
And that's kind of pathological to how the thing operates when you really look at it.
I understand there are other methods to use and that Casinos are not mandatory for Legendary Science, and I am happy with what you pointed out previously where you can still make use of the nerfed Casino and just stockpile it, it gives me an idea for a 'freighter' ship now whose only job is to carry thousands of stacks of materials from the Casino fleet back to base.mmmPI wrote: Sun Jun 21, 2026 6:51 am
I feel you ARE able to use epic and legendary reasonnably, space casino were never "mandadory" , they were mostly convenient for speedrunners or if you play very fast and you don't have the option to have the materials upgrade in quality over the course of a "regular" game lengh, you reach that point of the "late game" where "all you have left to do is quality" so you design a system whose sole purpose is to create quality from raw material. But in many other game you don't HAVE TO play like that, you can start quality earlier as mentionned on Fulgora and recycle everything that piles up, like a regular fulgora game, you will have a lot of "epic" for sure by the time you unlock legendary or even reach Aquilo, you will definitly be able to use them at least on Aquilo, i did that for robots in my first playthru because it took me time to make sure Gleba was "safe to be left unattended", i had plenty epic that i could use to counter the fact that they are less effective there.
All the same, I cannot wrap my head around Legendary Science. I went in with a 10k SPM base without any quality machines or any serious productivity upgrades, and decided to try overhaul it to 100k Legendary SPM without any Research Productivity Research. I think I got to 24k Legendary SPM on all base sciences and capped out at around 8k Legendary SPM being produced for the planet specific sciences and it was a horrible experience that took easily 100-200 hours and ballooned my base to an unpleasant degree.
I don't know how you'd balance Quality either, but I definitely don't know if WUBE intended for it to be this bad. Uncommon and Rare are great, fully worthwhile across the board to upgrade to either for Science production. Epic is a net negative, Legendary is a black-hole that doesn't pay out. I'm happy I did it overall but only so that now I can say I did it personally and can warn others away from doing it for anything other than bragging rights.
