Please, DO NOT remove space casino

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MBas
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Re: Please, DO NOT remove space casino

Post by MBas »

coffee-factorio wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2026 11:59 am My issue isn't...
I think there is some sort of misunderstanding since you are replying into convo where we were talking about something really different. And that was balancing of 300 percent productivity research. It was not a philosophical debate if its right or wrong. In my opinion it is wrong. But I dont want to judge others who use it so I dont want to talk about that any further.

It was a discussion about using speed modules in quality upcycling which is interesting point for me. I love to optimise anything :D No matter if its an issue of spoiled mechanics or regular gameplay.

So my humble opinion on that is: Yes, I agree with emty that speed modules in recycler is not that bad idea for optimising blue circuits upcycle even if it sounds absurd on a first view.
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Re: Please, DO NOT remove space casino

Post by emty »

h.q.droid wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2026 5:36 am But your logistics simplification seems flawed to me: if you direct-insert recycler output to your EM plant, it will eventually clog from random drift. At that point, there's no easy way to unclog it because you can't automatically take stuff out of the EM plant's **input** slot. Changing recipe can do it, but that can be quite slow due to having to unload everything before the next cycle could begin.
When EM plant is full, then recycler starts to accumulate the stuff it can't put in into its own slots.
These ones can be extracted via inserter into a side buffer.
It still can clog, since chests are finite, but the ~10K chip buffer is enough to make it quite rare.

If you really want to avoid the clog, probably you can use requester chest to collect the overflow, then tune red/green ratio, set "trash unrequested" on, and then delete the imbalance offloaded by bots.

Maybe for that case it's actually easier to direct insert into recycler and recycle into requester chest with 200/2000 red/green split, limited capacity to 11 cells and "trash unrequested" set.
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Re: Please, DO NOT remove space casino

Post by h.q.droid »

emty wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2026 10:38 pm When EM plant is full, then recycler starts to accumulate the stuff it can't put in into its own slots.
These ones can be extracted via inserter into a side buffer.
It still can clog, since chests are finite, but the ~10K chip buffer is enough to make it quite rare.

If you really want to avoid the clog, probably you can use requester chest to collect the overflow, then tune red/green ratio, set "trash unrequested" on, and then delete the imbalance offloaded by bots.

Maybe for that case it's actually easier to direct insert into recycler and recycle into requester chest with 200/2000 red/green split, limited capacity to 11 cells and "trash unrequested" set.
The extract-from-recycler idea is valid. Didn't think of that. At scale though bots are quite the UPS hog.
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Re: Please, DO NOT remove space casino

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emty wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2026 10:38 pm
h.q.droid wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2026 5:36 am But your logistics simplification seems flawed to me: if you direct-insert recycler output to your EM plant, it will eventually clog from random drift. At that point, there's no easy way to unclog it because you can't automatically take stuff out of the EM plant's **input** slot. Changing recipe can do it, but that can be quite slow due to having to unload everything before the next cycle could begin.
When EM plant is full, then recycler starts to accumulate the stuff it can't put in into its own slots.
These ones can be extracted via inserter into a side buffer.
It still can clog, since chests are finite, but the ~10K chip buffer is enough to make it quite rare.

If you really want to avoid the clog, probably you can use requester chest to collect the overflow, then tune red/green ratio, set "trash unrequested" on, and then delete the imbalance offloaded by bots.

Maybe for that case it's actually easier to direct insert into recycler and recycle into requester chest with 200/2000 red/green split, limited capacity to 11 cells and "trash unrequested" set.
My guess what you ment is more or less this?

Image

Requester chest is not necessary, it could be belt or something. With the chest you may also "thrash unrequested" which should happen very very not so often and it will remove some accumulated materials out of the uniform distribution.

Anyway, you can just use the same solution I believe with full quality modules. There will be more requests for robots, but you can optimise that out by stacking machines this way

Image

Edit: You should also explicitely pick legendary results out to the side.
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Re: Please, DO NOT remove space casino

Post by mmmPI »

emty wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2026 9:42 pm But at this point it also makes sense to remove quality from recyclers, because while it is viable and speeds up the upcycling process, it also produces greens and reds of multiple qualities which you then have to sort. It works, but it's ugly.

As for space casino, I see it as the normal asteroid reprocessing/crushing, just repeated 5 times.
Figuring that basic block is a very fun challenge in itself that you have to solve through the game, but I don't see casino much different from it.
The only thing that one reprocessing step at the legendary level needed to be broken via circuit network, to avoid endlessly eating asteroids.
Ah yeah ok i understand what you are saying, " it works but it's ugly". I felt like Space Casino was beautiful because you can't cheese the sorting with robots.
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Re: Please, DO NOT remove space casino

Post by coffee-factorio »

MBas wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 9:21 am
emty wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2026 10:38 pm
h.q.droid wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2026 5:36 am But your logistics simplification seems flawed to me: if you direct-insert recycler output to your EM plant, it will eventually clog from random drift. At that point, there's no easy way to unclog it because you can't automatically take stuff out of the EM plant's **input** slot. Changing recipe can do it, but that can be quite slow due to having to unload everything before the next cycle could begin.
When EM plant is full, then recycler starts to accumulate the stuff it can't put in into its own slots.
These ones can be extracted via inserter into a side buffer.
It still can clog, since chests are finite, but the ~10K chip buffer is enough to make it quite rare.

If you really want to avoid the clog, probably you can use requester chest to collect the overflow, then tune red/green ratio, set "trash unrequested" on, and then delete the imbalance offloaded by bots.

Maybe for that case it's actually easier to direct insert into recycler and recycle into requester chest with 200/2000 red/green split, limited capacity to 11 cells and "trash unrequested" set.
My guess what you ment is more or less this?

Image

Requester chest is not necessary, it could be belt or something. With the chest you may also "thrash unrequested" which should happen very very not so often and it will remove some accumulated materials out of the uniform distribution.

Anyway, you can just use the same solution I believe with full quality modules. There will be more requests for robots, but you can optimise that out by stacking machines this way

Image

Edit: You should also explicitely pick legendary results out to the side.
This is 7.4 blue chips per second.

Screenshot 2026-07-03 135004.png
Screenshot 2026-07-03 135004.png (757.94 KiB) Viewed 295 times
Since this tangentially about Space Platforms, I thought it'd be nice to do something I remember from December a year ago.

I think you can work emty's optimization onto it. Unfortunately...
coffee-factorio wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2026 11:59 am My issue isn't the logic of the micro optimization. It's for the intended use case of "replacing something the developers have found unbalanced".
From that point of view, I need 4 electronic circuits to make 1 iron plate and 3/8 copper plates (wires are 1/8, not 1/4). With some small residues of copper showing up from advanced circuits. This is going to be say, 240 extra prng calls plus 720 calls to render the copper into plates. And then you have an entire extra building running the shuffle making small prng calls to break the LDS down.
That isn't a philosophical point. It's a technical observation.
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Re: Please, DO NOT remove space casino

Post by emty »

MBas wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 9:21 am Requester chest is not necessary, it could be belt or something. With the chest you may also "thrash unrequested" which should happen very very not so often and it will remove some accumulated materials out of the uniform distribution.
Two options:
Image


I just use regular chests everywhere, this gives about 10K chips storage (in EMP+Recycler+Chest).
On paper you can have either 10K green overflow/1K red underflow (unlikely) or 10K red overflow (highly unlikely).
I think on average this should give you about million blue chip crafts without clog?

This should be enough for *infrastructure* needs.
(Not for science probably, but it is another story and I don't think it's worth it to upcycle through blues, I believe extra inserter work in upcycler will eat all the downstream benefits).

Belt won't work well, since it won't buffer much greens, recycler/EMP buffer is too low for greens.
And you also can't just blindly delete both red/green overflow from recycler.
Because once plant is locked by unconsumed higher quality blues, incoming lower quality will be disassembled and deleted repeatedly, unless you block lower quality flow somehow.

So the disassemble-assemble loop should be closed, have enough capacity to absorb red/green drift and optionally have requester with "trash unrequested" if you really want autobalance.

Quality in recycler just complicates stuff, so I'd rather keep it simple. If you need more speed, just do more loops.
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Re: Please, DO NOT remove space casino

Post by mmmPI »

emty wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 8:26 pm
MBas wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 9:21 am Requester chest is not necessary, it could be belt or something. With the chest you may also "thrash unrequested" which should happen very very not so often and it will remove some accumulated materials out of the uniform distribution.
Two options:
Those two way are interesting because they are using stuff that are not allowed on space platform to solve the logistic puzzle. Really illustrating why space casino are their own particular exercice design :)

Now as often, there are better alternatives than chests, if you are on a surface that allows them :

credit => 125125
Upcycler.jpg
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Re: Please, DO NOT remove space casino

Post by coffee-factorio »

emty wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 8:26 pm
Quality in recycler just complicates stuff, so I'd rather keep it simple. If you need more speed, just do more loops.
That's fair, but you lose about half the stuff you'd get from properly optimizing the build. It turns out doing both makes the entire thing more efficient, and it fits in the same building count as the blueprint I put up.
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As you can see, the legendary electric circuit count went up to 1100 circuits a minute. I think I didn't test for that, to my shame, but I was working on several bench marks at the time.

Granted, insisting on spending 75 million EM science for a production optimization is a little strange. But it might work out since people may decide to not restart a game. I personally would... end up doing both.

Funny, it's easy to test. All you have to do is swap out modules on the build. As a not just using empty recyclers (equivalent to using speed) does show a benefit but not a great one.
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My overall issue with this though, is pretty simple. On the various production graphs it's consistently 4200 electronic circuits per minute, and then 2500 per minute on each tier. If I want 600 legendary science per minute, I need 300 Legendary copper plates per minute ('cause productivity). With even a small benchmark I can hit that. But with like 7500 un-optimizable requests to a random number generator.

Performing a micro optimization by dropping speed into the recyclers from that perspective is rough, because there's no way to prove any of these methods would be especially effective for science. Although it would be a challenge to implement it, and that can be a good time.

With asteroid rerolling, the rates were calculated at 2% [https://dfamonteiro.com/posts/factorio- ... lity-level]. For 15 asteroids a second iron/copper, that's about 1.25 for productivity 300% (using a geometric sequence). But that means about 750 calls to the random number and cleanup. And we're already at 10 times that many calls by upgrading by any available means.

Which gets compounded by having to recycle those chips. So the 1100 is really 412 copper or so. And we add 1100 function calls to the recycler on doing that.

So in comparison to efficiency to a reroller from the UPS perspective, processing units is like belts to bots.
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Re: Please, DO NOT remove space casino

Post by coffee-factorio »

mmmPI wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 8:39 pm
emty wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 8:26 pm
MBas wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 9:21 am Requester chest is not necessary, it could be belt or something. With the chest you may also "thrash unrequested" which should happen very very not so often and it will remove some accumulated materials out of the uniform distribution.
Two options:
Those two way are interesting because they are using stuff that are not allowed on space platform to solve the logistic puzzle. Really illustrating why space casino are their own particular exercice design :)

Now as often, there are better alternatives than chests, if you are on a surface that allows them :

credit => 125125

Upcycler.jpg
That one... it's not a knock against trains, but the random walk can occur on it and create a unique jam condition on it.
In order to do a good train, you have to put a locomotive on it so you can read the inventory and unload. But on this one, the random walk can fill up the train, and then you get an epic processing unit. Which causes a deadlock. That might be true of some 3 container builds in general, you'll always want to use a container that can read an inventory. Not a car and not a tank.

I trialed that one last July. It can be developed of course, this used to be an esoteric subject.
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Re: Please, DO NOT remove space casino

Post by mmmPI »

coffee-factorio wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 9:24 pm So in comparison to efficiency to a reroller from the UPS perspective, processing units is like belts to bots.
Nothing you've showed remotely refers to UPS in any way shape or form from my understanding, i think you are mistaking different notions that are unrelated but it's quite difficult to entangle the mess because your latest designs are seemingly not optimized for anything particular.

Usually when people optimize for UPS they don't make spagetthi because that create excess calculation that are not needed. There are plenty of inserters that are useless or duplicates which is costly in UPS. You seem to equate UPS to some notion of "rolling the dice" as if there was a correspondance but that's not the case. => ""But with like 7500 un-optimizable requests to a random number generator."" No that makes no sense, that is not what is costly in terms of UPS. This is why you should measure the performance of the builds if you wanna talk about UPS.

You have made a Vulcanus build but on a space platform from what it look like, you are not using any asteroids, but infinity chests and pipe for the Sulfur, so really it's not representative of a space platform build regarding the UPS nor is it representative of a proper build to be fair, all the splitters are costly in UPS and unecessary judging by the other build using the same chain for upcycling without all the extra splitters.

Now does it even make sense to measure the UPS of a space casino like that ? probably not x) whoever has already tried to make a big base knows the promethium ship are the number 1 thing that are costly in UPS and thus if you are worrying about UPS you will want to avoid as much as possible doing things with asteroids that are not "promethium science", catching them in space is costly, destroying them is costly and so on.

Space Casino are not "UPS efficient" , one can still try to make them not needlessly inefficient, like the least worst, but in that case the most impotant aspect that relate to UPS is catching asteroids , the ratio of "destroyed / catch" is also important, having a slower ship that catch a higher % of asteroids chunks and process them at the same rate means less math from the game to track unused chunks but in your pictures , you omitted the part that represent most of the UPS of a space platform, so it's not going to be conclusive even if you had measured them.

A proper comparaison for UPS would require at least 2 builds measured the same way, UPS meaning update per second, and for now it appears to me that there isn't even one to begin with.

From my point of view it may appears to be one of those situation where the discussion gets very long not necessarily because of the depth of the ideas presented, but unfortunatly maybe sometimes because some of the participants do not have a proper understanding of what is being discussed. I feel some parts of the arguments are now seemingly more about tutorials or gameplay help, rather than balance, particularly the misunderstanding about wether or not one player should use quality module in both the EM plant and the recyclers or just the EM plant, or just the recyclers, what is viable to do or even possible to do.

I understand there are many possibilities and it's easy to get lost in a design and not see the larger picture or the different designs that other players could use. And i understand how it can participate in the discussion about balancing when player post their design to illustrate their point. However i think it is missing the larger point about Space Casino, i feel the difficulty from one or another player to use the regular upcycling methods and their conclusion from what appears to be empiric measurement on unoptimized design are not really relevant when considering how a different method "space casino" impact in the game.

Or to put it bluntly :
coffee-factorio wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 9:24 pm Granted, insisting on spending 75 million EM science for a production optimization is a little strange.
It's not that people insist, it's that when you design good factories in long game you reach those numbers. If not you are probably not understanding the stage of the game where space casino is advocated to be, or was, when using the regular processing receipe. It is a late game tech that require more than 75 million science. That is exactly the kind of consideration for balancing the late game. If that stage of the game and the design consideration it generate feels strange for you, that may be a sign that you are not fully grasping the implications, which would be corroborated by the recent designs posted that look like someone need help for making use of the regular quality method that are not well understood, making it difficult to have a discussion comparing the merits of differents methods.

I feel the beauty of Space Casino as an exercise design is easily overlooked when players struggle already for regular quality, because it has its own level of depth and quircks and micro-optimizations that are very unique. I feel the recent posted designs don't quite capture it. I am well aware there exist plenty of ways to do quality. But Space Casino were different. No possibility to use chests or wagons , nor robots, nor even SILOS, since in 2.1 the logic for filling them with blue circuits has changed , i was expecting that the new designs for upcycling processing units that are planet-based would take advantage of that, because it is somewhat similar to using the platform hub as a buffer but no, those are all pre 2.1 designs as far as i can tell. To me it's only showing that indeed Space Casino were good in the game because they generated all those different designs really taking advantage of the idea of the asteroid chunk and their clumsy stack 1 size too on top of the other constraint.

Whereas the "alternative methods" i see posted so far are not new, they are more of the same and i'm not convinced by the planet-build disguised as a platform, if you don't use asteroids as inputs it doesn't count as space platform lol.
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Re: Please, DO NOT remove space casino

Post by mmmPI »

coffee-factorio wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 10:37 pm I trialed that one last July. It can be developed of course, this used to be an esoteric subject.
I'm going to assume it's a skill issue, it's written on the post the condition to use it, when it get stuck, why and all that, the math were explained on this thread too.

Thinking about this a bit more, i feel it illustrate people that uses blueprint from the internet without understanding them nor even reading the description, it's a strong point against space casino, it was easy to share and use for people without them really understanding their magic. but i hope not everyone does that x).
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Re: Please, DO NOT remove space casino

Post by coffee-factorio »

mmmPI wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 11:24 pm
coffee-factorio wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 10:37 pm I trialed that one last July. It can be developed of course, this used to be an esoteric subject.
I'm going to assume it's a skill issue, it's written on the post the condition to use it, when it get stuck, why and all that, the math were explained on this thread too.

Thinking about this a bit more, i feel it illustrate people that uses blueprint from the internet without understanding them nor even reading the description, it's a strong point against space casino, it was easy to share and use for people without them really understanding their magic. but i hope not everyone does that x).
Any engineer of any degree of skill. I going to look at this. And laugh their ass off because it is a noncompetive game. There's three guys after a random optimization and one guy going... it's a game with a wiki. It's meant to be beaten and then replayed if it's enjoyed.

There's nothing novel to sell here. It's not an art convention. A method is a tool you use to make art from.

A megabaser is going to evaluate the options themselves and they might just take the extra RNG calls as a challenge. The thing is, read the room and don't give people false hope that the stuff put in is going give them a similar experience.

I looked at the timestamp on this post. In Europe it's after midnight. Get some sleep. If you've got a notification or something just get some rest, it's not worth it to start a fight just because you're upset something isn't your way anymore.
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Re: Please, DO NOT remove space casino

Post by mmmPI »

coffee-factorio wrote: Sat Jul 04, 2026 2:06 am I looked at the timestamp on this post. In Europe it's after midnight. Get some sleep. If you've got a notification or something just get some rest, it's not worth it to start a fight just because you're upset something isn't your way anymore.
It's unfortunate you think discussion are emotionnal moments or fights, i feel it's mostly on you if you feel embarrassed after posting as finding the text you visibly omited to take into consideration when taking the blueprint it was attached to on the internet. I recommend you read carefully how blueprint are supposed to work before using them in the future to avoid subsequent problems. On the plus side, you now have a better understanding of that blueprint than when you tested it last time i suppose, you don't have to call it esoteric anymore x). On the not so plus side, it unfortunatly confirms what i was hinting previously, that sometimes it feels the discussion has extra lengh not because of the depth of the ideas, but because of frequent need to clarify things that were discussed earlier.

I am glad at least, the clarifications on UPS seem to have gone thru it's best avoiding mentionning things by an inappropriate name.

Overall from your recent intervention i understand that having space casino gated away in 75 million research or so is already a significant amount, one that isn't commonly reached by inexperimented players, an amount that made you tick because for you it appeared a questionnably large amount, so it would appears to me that there is plenty of room for such late game science to shine, where it's not going to be easy to cheese by just picking up a random blueprint on the internet and using it with little to no understanding of the beauty of the mechanism, because if the productivity bonus on the "chunk" part of the regular processsing receipe is made to give extra % from the research, the yield would be very low at fist, sort of disqualifying the behavior of picking someone's else late game blueprint without reading the fine prints :) A bit like "every" space platform that moves which needs a minimum level of research to be safe or even allowed to fly in space, it turns out that space casino would require some research.

Now arguably quality already has enough depth to lose some players in the complexity, but for the others you know, some players would enjoy having that extra challenge back into the game, where you can design in late game a platform whose sole purpose is to make quality from asteroids, withthout having to make a copy a of a vulcanus or nauvis build, a really unique build which would use asteroid as input and process them without robots or chests, to yield some legendary materials at the end. Not even ALL the legendary materials, like those from nauvis minus stone and uranium, so really only what iron , copper and coal ? which you get in very large amount for free with LDS anyway.
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The final balance argument for space casinos

Post by usafphoenix »

With the crusher module restrictions introduced in 2.1 that have (against their intentions) trivialized quality instead of finding "balance", Here is my final argument for a means to "balance" space casinos in a way that undoes the triviality of "just put a recycler down, accept the 75% loss and make the design you use everywhere else be the same design you put on a ship!"

HERE WE GO!

If the optimal strategy at the start of the game REMAINS the optimal strategy after all advancements/technologies are unlocked...game design has not achieved "Balance". It's simply achieved a hard enforcement of developer's ideas on what methods a player can/should use to solve the obstacles presented. Balance CANNOT be achieved when the "correct strategy" is the SAME at the beginning of the game as it is after you've unlocked all technology. "Balance" is best achieved when that "optimal" strategy CHANGES periodically based upon your progress through the game. Instead, the "functional" result of the nerfs that were done to crushers have made it so that the correct method to get quality isn't "harder" nor does it ever change...anywhere....ever. This is weak game-development for a sandbox-y factory game.

How is [balance] implemented in the game in the way in which a player is meant to obtain steel plate?
1) They start with a pair of stone furnaces.
2) After some progress in the technology tree, stone furnaces are meant to be upgraded into steel furnaces, which gains the player efficiency in fuel consumption
3) the smelting array that was designed for the 2x2 furnaces is later decommissioned when technology advances to electric furnaces (and beacons too)
4) Finally, the adventuous space engineer discovers the wonders of Vulcanus and unlocks the foundry. This marvel of metallurgic engineering greatly increases the engineer's steel production capabilities. But now does the foundry's SUPERIORITY make it inherently "unbalanced?" because it's far superior to the stone furnaces you began with? No, because it wasn't the "sole optimal strategy" throughout all stages of the game. It took several stages of adaptations/improvements to get there. Either it wasn't available (possible), or it was too costly to invest in are examples of "variable strategy being the method of balance". The foundry is balanced because of what was required PRIOR to it.

crusher and reprocessor casinos aren't unbalanced just because they provide a higher YIELD than the recycler. It was seen as unbalanced because as soon as you get reprocessing, there is never again any OTHER optimal strategy to obtain legendary coal or iron or calcite, it is simply far superior. But being "better" than another method doesn't (on it's own) make something UNBALANCED. It's unbalanced when that method is ALWAYS available and also the BEST. As an immediate counter-argument: the investment cost of a space casino is far higher than that of a SINGLE recycler with only 2 modules. You need WAY more modules to operate a space casino, but that alone won't change anyone's mind, i'm guessing. But space casinos aren't "undone" simply because crushers now reject quality modules.

What'll be done next? no recyclers in space? In my opinion, it is far simpler, cheaper, and less "mentally complex" to build a belt loop with a few filter splitters, plop down a recycler in the middle of a spaceship and go "Well...anything that's not legendary gets chucked off the ship!"....And then make a thousand of those ships doing the same thing. My PC will hate me. But that won't stop me.

The problem with quality modules in asteroid reprocessors isn't EVEN the 80% return is so much better than the recycler, it's the combination of superior strategy with EARLY ACCESS. It's still WAY MORE expensive to craft the 14+ crushers and 28 modules it'll take to populate a functionally-decent space casino (far more expensive then the resulting strategy (post-module exclusion) of... Once again, I'll just put down a single recycler, give it two modules, build a belt loop, and anything that's not legendary gets chucked back into the recycler or thrown away...which is what is done everywhere else. The problem is that it's the optimal play as soon as you can AFFORD the cost to craft the crushers and (the many more) modules. So....make it UNobtainable until the crushers have been "hardened" or "improved" with...say, a little red rock from a long-gone planet? <---this is my proposed solution.

We've seen that the foundry isn't "unbalanced" because it follows a PATH of progression. the crusher's quality module casino builds being BOTH far superior to the recycler and their expensive but EARLY availability is the TRUTH behind why space casinos are unbalanced. So solve the EARLY-availability problem, without completely removing the capability.
Getting LOTS of legendary materials after you've reached the forgotten planet "cheaply" isn't really a bad thing then is it? if the PATH of progress you must make requires a lot of other less-efficient methods of getting legendary materials before reaching the solar system edge. In my opinion, quality modules in crushers should have been locked via technology, or achievement (reaching the solar system edge). So that the "balance" was created by means of a clear pathway of which method is optimal WHEN.

LDS shuffle wasn't touched and nor was the blue-circuit shuffle..both of which I agree with, because they are already balanced by virtue of their technological cost and the investment both of time to devise the strategy (mechanics), and the achievement of the implementation. The blue circuit shuffle is very expensive to get going, but once you do: common iron, common copper, and common plastic become legendary (of all three circuits and their base materials) The upcycling becomes lossless at the max tech level, but does that make it unbalanced? NO!!!!!! because the cost to reach that is EXTREME. The path to get there isn't something you get right off the bat. the "variability" of optimal strategy is the mechanic by which BALANCE is ensured.


If the prerequisite or "barrier to space casinos" were changed such that : To get a crusher to accept quality modules in its reprocessing recipe, a user FIRST had to travel into the orbit of the shattered planet, take the existing crusher and INFUSE it (craft it into a new version/tier/whatever)...and then, ONLY after "hardening" that crusher at great expense after a long journey, could it accept quality modules... Would anyone STILL argue that a crusher reprocessing space casino was "unbalanced"? Could you REALLY argue that???

TL;DR: it's the EARLY obtainability combined with lack of "conflicting" good strategies that makes space casinos unbalanced, not merely the higher yield. Fix the early-obtainability and you solve it in an amicable way that REWARDS players for reaching that higher efficiency tier of legendary resource access.
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meganothing
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Re: The final balance argument for space casinos

Post by meganothing »

Assuming we haven't missed any reasons the developers stopped the casino for then you make a good point. What I don't like is your proposed solution, it looks out of place in factorio.

The best I can come up with would be to add a recipe for a new quality module or a new crusher that works at least partly the old way, but needs promethium to be built.
Last edited by meganothing on Sat Jul 04, 2026 12:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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radical_larry
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Re: The final balance argument for space casinos

Post by radical_larry »

That brings me to an idea for a mod.
Asteroid reprocessing becomes an end game tech unlocked with promethium science, and the three reprocessing recipes also take a few promethium chunks that are fully consumed. But quality modules can be used for that recipe.
Finally some interesting shit to do during end game, and Aquilo ships become way more interesting without the ability to convert between chunks for free.
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usafphoenix
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Re: The final balance argument for space casinos

Post by usafphoenix »

edit: [my idea for the hardening of crushers within the orbit of the shattered planet was meant as an extreme example of how "progress-gating" something, by the very virtue in the difficulty of obtaining it makes something NOT unbalanced. That in the 2.0 reprocessing method, it was both the superiority and the immediate access (with no incremental or variable strategies) that could compete with it that made it unbalanced. It's like: "Are guns unbalanced if you go back in time to 400 BC? heck yeah! until...you run out of ammo." It's the disparity between what you have, and what ELSE is possible to compete with it (or what the difference in cost is) that makes a thing unbalanced.

I also like the idea of the recipe that allows quality modules would also CONSUME prometheium chunks (lossy) for several reasons. The primary of which being it gives prometheium another use. Second, the cost/complexity of having a ship BOTH survive the higher risk of deep space AND be a space casino would, in my opinion, negate all arguments of "unbalanced" as the complexity/cost of obtaining it is not something achievable without significant cost and time
edit: this is negated with P2p transfers. A ship could be a promethium hauler and deliver to an orbiting casino. Also fine.

but the cost of promethium adds to such a mechanic would, at the very least, reduce the severity of superiority. if promethium runs out, the space casino shuts down. I like it! And I seem to recall....there was a mod named something like "promethium is quality" that i think did something along the lines of what i am suggesting (at heart). So I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility within the game's capabilities....
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Hurkyl
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Re: The final balance argument for space casinos

Post by Hurkyl »

Um... your figures seem way off.

In case you are unaware, if you're using legendary tier 3 modules, a reprocessing loop gives you 1 legendary asteroid for every 47.7 common asteroids.

If you decide that you want to compare against chucking asteroids into a recycler, you get one legendary asteroid for every 2727 common asteroids.

That factor of 57 you have to multiply your resource intake to get the same throughput seems like a pretty big deal to just ignore.

The use of a recycler this way is, I think, meant more for people who care about the issue because they're interested in ship-building to be able to continue making functional ships.

And, AFACT, the problem is a throughput one for the system. The 47.7 ratio is on par with craft-recycle loops for resource efficiency.

The big problem is that your throughput is multiplied by a factor of 43 if, for example, you reprocess everything to metallic, crush, smelt the asteroids. That scales up to a factor of 400 by the time you max out asteroid productivity research.

That is a huge hurdle to overcome for all the other options for quality that aren't working with asteroids and so don't get that insane multiplier from crushing and from working with base resources. And you have this single loop that provides coverage for the vast majority of quality ingredients you would need to work with.

I still find it weird how many people seem to have trouble conceiving of doing quality in any other fashion than making quality base resources, and I'm imagining the space casino is a large part of the reason things are that way.

But anyways, you should really should sit down and look at how much legendary stuff a casino processing a nontrivial amount of asteroids will be making -- and to be clear, at a minimum this means processing to the point of working with legendary ores or places -- and then look at what you have to do to get similar output from a different kind of factory.

Spoiler: it's not going to be "entire spaceship" versus "one recycler that was only half loaded with modules".
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NineNine
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Re: The final balance argument for space casinos

Post by NineNine »

Hurkyl wrote: Sat Jul 04, 2026 1:00 pm I still find it weird how many people seem to have trouble conceiving of doing quality in any other fashion than making quality base resources, and I'm imagining the space casino is a large part of the reason things are that way.
That's a bingo!

I play the game without trying to copy other people's ideas, and I made a 100% Legendary factory without once making any quality raw materials. Making quality raw materials seems to be unnecessarily difficult, complicated, and most importantly, un-fun.
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