Split Recycling from the Quality mod

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Shemp
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Split Recycling from the Quality mod

Post by Shemp »

Is there any reason why these two mods are not conceptually separate? I'm getting "I'm insane but also a genius" vibes in my head so I thought I'd put this out to air. I doubt very much that it'll be implemented.

The Recycler item/entity/recipe/technology and the code that generates all of its recipes from the auto_recycle property would be moved into its own official mod.

space-age would then depend on recycling, with the dependency on quality being optional.

The only DLC feature that Recycling uses is belt-stacking, which could be added from space-age's side. With that removed, the recycling mod could be made available to non-DLC players, or moved into the base mod entirely.

If it were in base, it would probably make sense to make Recycler a hidden recipe/technology like loaders are. The auto-generated recipes would be governed by a new utility-constant, perhaps enable_auto_recycle_recipes and set to false.

This has the advantage of giving all mods access to a standard recycling system if they want it, similar to how barrelling recipes work.

Using quality or space-age would unhide the Recycler and enable the utility-constant.
Last edited by Shemp on Thu Feb 12, 2026 4:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
eugenekay
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Re: Split Recycling from the Quality mod

Post by eugenekay »

Shemp wrote: Thu Feb 12, 2026 3:11 pmIs there any reason why these two mods are not conceptually separate?
Because this is how the DLC was designed.

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Re: Split Recycling from the Quality mod

Post by Shemp »

eugenekay wrote: Thu Feb 12, 2026 4:12 pm Because this is how the DLC was designed.

Previously
Ah thanks for the link, I missed that one. This thread is more focused on Recycling being moved out and possibly becoming available to "base". Only one of those posts alludes to the Recycler being split out, so I'll keep this thread separate.

When I talk about "these two mods being separate", I'm talking about quality and recycling just to be clear. You can have two completely independent mods:
  • quality - Adds Quality modules and higher quality levels
  • recycling - Adds the Recycler machine and automatically generates recipes to recycle items in it
My main point is that space-age depends only on recycling, it does not depend on quality at all.

I realise it's probably not going to happen because it would make the presentation of the DLC unnecessarily complex to most players.
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Re: Split Recycling from the Quality mod

Post by Erfar »

TBH I would like to have recycler separate from Quality too. I like quality, but some modes implement alternatives to quality and as such recyclers would have sense to be implemented separately
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Re: Split Recycling from the Quality mod

Post by Shemp »

With FFF-442, this thread can now be considered Implemented.

There are still some questions:
  • Will the recycling mod be part of the Space Age DLC only, or will it be available to all players as a common dependency which any mod can access?
  • Are quality and recycling mods independent of each other, or does e.g. quality depend on recycling?
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Re: Split Recycling from the Quality mod

Post by Bilka »

The recycling mod is Space Age only. As of writing this post, quality mod depends on the recycler mod. Moved to implemented.
I'm an admin over at https://wiki.factorio.com. Feel free to contact me if there's anything wrong (or right) with it.
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Re: Split Recycling from the Quality mod

Post by Shemp »

Now that I've been able to get my hands on the 2.1 Experimental and inspect the Quality mod's source for myself, I encourage you to make "recycling" a recommended dependency instead of mandatory.

There is no part of Quality's code that references "recycling" or "recycler". Altering the dependency to "+ recycler" allows the "quality" mod to be loaded alone without errors.

This would give third-party mods flexibility to include Space Age's quality tiers without having to manage the recycler building, or perhaps they can implement their own alternative.
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Re: Split Recycling from the Quality mod

Post by boskid »

This was actually attempted once but it has a relatively ugly implication: if a quality would only recommend a recycler, then 2.0 players that were running a base+quality save would not get recycler enabled and all recyclers in their saves would be deleted. Because of that this change was reverted and recycler mod remains a mandatory dependency of quality mod. In the future (after vacation when 2.1 would be marked as stable) when i would see most of player are on 2.1, then i will make it recommended dependency. For now recycler will remain a mandatory dependency of quality.
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