Version 2.1.7

[coffee-factorio]

Even though an average player doesn't see it, it would be viable enough to at least try and assume Wube has a payed playtester so they don't have to have emotion be involved in a situation.

The presence of a tester doesn't mean they're doing what you think. Balance is handled by a game designer, not a tester. But I doubt anyone compiled balance sheets. It all started with the "Megabase" Discord group. That's where the decision was made to remove the "space casino" and " LDS shuffle" from the game.
This may not be obvious to some. But as a programmer with 15 years of experience, it's clear to me that the "LDS shuffle" hasn't been removed from the game only because the developers have no idea how to remove it without completely rewriting the game engine to ban a specific recipe so that legendary plastic can't be used. This exploit works even without modules. All you need is legendary plastic. And as I already wrote here about removing the "LDS shuffle" productivity feature, it won't have any significant impact, since you'll simply need to spend more legendary plastic to craft legendary copper from it. And that's completely illogical and not in the style of Factorio. It's more like some kind of alchemy...
And regarding the "space casino," I already explained everything here viewtopic.php?p=694327#p694327 about how it could be balanced. Incidentally, they quickly implemented my idea to fix asteroid productivity, even though the FFF didn't mention it. Coincidence? I don't think so.

And, to me. Well, I have to fall back on my experience and education.

Ever in 15 years had a layman point out a context sensitive mistake that was relevant to a project? On say, functional software requirements? Because that's where this conversation is going. And if it's about social status and expertise, I'll pass because I am a layman and it's more worthwhile to send you to get a mod so you don't have to get a new supply chain.

I don't have to defend a software practices business to you, that's Wube's job. They already published they do TDD and they have a record that invites a commons sense judgement as to whether or not they have a balance sheet. If you respect me I'll respect you but that doesn't mean I'll see eye to eye or make you happy.

Fluid Voider - is a bug, an exploit.

naaaa..... I'm using it to void molten copper to get stone, in case there is demand for stone and nothing consumes molten metal. I never use exploits, so it cannot be an exploit

Seems legitimate.

[mmmPI]

I said as much already. I have neither built a space casino nor a fluid voider. But I have read both the descriptions of casino and voider and
A) my guess is that I would have had a passable chance to discover the space casino by myself if I hadn't read about it, which is not the case for the fluid voider which seems to exploit an implementation detail.
B) I don't see any problem in building a space casino now that I have read about it. There might be one, but the absence of robots and chests is certainly not the problem that would stop or hinder me. For the fluid voider I have a dim idea where I would start experimenting but I am not sure I would actually be able to build one without looking up the solution.

Now this is only a subjective view of the relative difficulties and there is a level of assumptions in it as well. But I would assume I am a passable role model for an average player who doesn't simply "play by copy" or "play by current meta"

And I naturally don't know what player Wube wants to balance the game for. But just assuming they want to balance for players like me the nerf of space casino might have been appropriate.

When i read that, to me , it sound that space casino was not ruining your game in the slightliest, as you never ever used it, so assuming players like you, i imagine there was no need to do anything

To me, one is to discover the fluid voider as soon as they try to change the receipe of something that has a liquid input, more often than not i feel you don't want your fluid voided, and it can annoyingly happens, making you aware of the fluid voider mechanic. So you can even make one accidentaly lol. Maybe you didn't try to fiddle with that ?

Granted. My choice of words showed it was just a guess. For me the drop belt seemed to immediately suggest the design with unfiltered collectors.

Yeah but you're already choosing here some self imposed challenge, the "no filter" on the inserter when you could just "transform" each asteroid collector into the functionnal equivalent of a miner for asteroid chunk, that output always the same type.And then build like a regular "factory" or production lane behind. That's something i saw other players doing in multiplayer games to make it simpler for themselves. And i've seen quite a lot of players sending ammo and others from Nauvis, having super simple platform. It's fairly obvious to me that space casino aren't amongst the simplest platorm. ( and also the achievements are quite telling).

Beside , the change happened not because the machine was easy or not to build, but rather because the reward was deemed to strong/good as far as the FFF says .

I don't think the question whether a fluid voider is trivial or not is unimportant. It is unimportant only if all players Wube cares about look up solutions on the internet and just play the meta.

I've check on steamdb, and currently Factorio is more popular than ever, apart from the spike in players during the release, the average number of online player is higher than when the game was more recent. It's a very particuliar long tail, where many other games have a very fast diminshing player base after release. If there is a multiplayer community, players share tricks lol.

Otherwise why change the space casino, when only 2% players ever made a legendary prod module ? I believe the game is intended to be balanced also for the exploits people can share around. I feel amongst those methods, the one that was the least interesting to build was kept, the fluid voider, even though devs already took steps to remove possibilities to do so that existed in the past. But the interesting challenge, the new one, in space with quality, the one that mixes all, this one, the most grandiose, was removed.

naaaa..... I'm using it to void molten copper to get stone, in case there is demand for stone and nothing consumes molten metal. I never use exploits, so it cannot be an exploit

HAha, that's very consistent of a subjective vision where one need to min/max when playing the game, but also with comon sense, and everyone is free to tell wether or not the min/maxing has gone beyond.

If you compare achievements you need to also bring up the achievement for tier 3 quality modules, because someone who does not even do those will also never try to do space casinos in vanilla.

2.2 % !!! If you mean the achievement for having one legendary.

It all started with the "Megabase" Discord group. That's where the decision was made to remove the "space casino" and " LDS shuffle" from the game.

Actually, the removal of Space Casino and LDS Shuffle was discussed over a year ago on Reddit, and the developer made their final decision that both options would be removed in 2.1. YouTubers have nothing to do with it. This was a final and irrevocable decision over a year ago.

Where next ? x)

And regarding the "space casino," I already explained everything here viewtopic.php?p=694327#p694327 about how it could be balanced. Incidentally, they quickly implemented my idea to fix asteroid productivity, even though the FFF didn't mention it. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Ohh right x) i think it is a coincidence lol

This may not be obvious to some. But as a programmer with 15 years of experience, it's clear to me that the "LDS shuffle" hasn't been removed from the game only because the developers have no idea how to remove it without completely rewriting the game engine to ban a specific recipe so that legendary plastic can't be used.

have you thought of molten platic instead of solid plastic in the LDS casting receipe ? Cuz to me it doesn't appear that you need to rewrite the whole engine just to change the ingredient of the one receipe.

[SerhiiS]

have you thought of molten platic instead of solid plastic in the LDS casting receipe ? Cuz to me it doesn't appear that you need to rewrite the whole engine just to change the ingredient of the one receipe.

This is clearly a question for the developers, not me. You should also reread the FFF statement.

There are other recipes we were considering tweaking, such as Low Density Structure in Foundries or such, but we are leaving those alone.

They wanted to remove this recipe, but something kept it. Maybe the space casino is fixing one line of code in the recipe? And liquid plastic is a new recipe? Will the game have both solid and liquid plastic, and will that confuse newcomers? After all, judging by the Steam achievements and the features the developers have planned, they've focused on their core audience—newcomers. Old players can always install mods that fix the issues of the original game.

They already published they do TDD and they have a record that invites a commons sense judgement as to whether or not they have a balance sheet. If you respect me I'll respect you but that doesn't mean I'll see eye to eye or make you happy.

You're confusing hot with wet. TDD is used to find bugs in code. It has nothing to do with balance or game design. It's like saying, "I'll call a chef to fix my plumbing, because a chef often works in the kitchen; he should know how to fix a drain."

And to find out whether a space casino is too profitable, you need to create a balance sheet. Programmers don't do that, and certainly not testers. And TDD won't help you create a balance sheet.

A balance sheet is any table, such as an Excel spreadsheet, that displays mathematical, statistical, and functional relationships. Typically, mathematicians or experienced game designers who have already worked on balance issues are hired for this. These people don't need to know how to program at all. They need to be able to see numbers. This is a matter of analytics, not game coding.

[meganothing]

When i read that, to me , it sound that space casino was not ruining your game in the slightliest, as you never ever used it, so assuming players like you, i imagine there was no need to do anything

It would not have ruined my experience anyway, but I might have gotten less fun out of experimenting with the quality mechanisms if I for example had heard the ultimate bestest way to get quality stuff is doing it with asteroids on a space ship. Instead I now made lots of different quality production setups, some horribly inefficient, distributed all over the planets.

Oh, and when I start a new game eventually, or even in this game I might just make a space quality factory just to see how good or bad it is. Probably it can't be called a space casino anymore as it is more like a space gambling den now.

To me, one is to discover the fluid voider as soon as they try to change the receipe of something that has a liquid input, more often than not i feel you don't want your fluid voided, and it can annoyingly happens, making you aware of the fluid voider mechanic. So you can even make one accidentaly lol. Maybe you didn't try to fiddle with that ?

Oh, seeing it happen and even being annoyed by it is not sufficient to really have the idea to use it later to void fluids. Both events would usually happen days, weeks or months apart, usually players memory is not perfect and having the right thought "outside the box" depends on intelligence and luck.

Also, voiding fluids is something only megafactory builders might need. Do they always need it?

Assuming Wube found out it is hard or inconvenient to fix this they could readily have accepted that since all solids can be destroyed anyway, why not fluids as well. The alternative might have been to redesign fluids, again!!

Granted. My choice of words showed it was just a guess. For me the drop belt seemed to immediately suggest the design with unfiltered collectors.

Yeah but you're already choosing here some self imposed challenge, the "no filter" on the inserter when you could just "transform" each asteroid collector into the functionnal equivalent of a miner for asteroid chunk, that output always the same type.

That isn't a self imposed challenge. It just is a different design that sets the filtering at a different spot in the pipeline. Even if your proposed design were somewhat better, that doesn't mean much, not all players will automatically flock to the most optimal design. Otherwise anyone not having used space casino previously would have as well "done a self imposed challenge".

And then build like a regular "factory" or production lane behind. That's something i saw other players doing in multiplayer games to make it simpler for themselves. And i've seen quite a lot of players sending ammo and others from Nauvis, having super simple platform.

Are the players who are sending ammo from Nauvis doing a self imposed challenge? Or do all others?

It's fairly obvious to me that space casino aren't amongst the simplest platorm. ( and also the achievements are quite telling).

The simplest platforms that send stuff from planet to planet? I agree, but I wouldn't really build a space casino for that. I had thought the space casino was something to make legendary quality.

Beside , the change happened not because the machine was easy or not to build, but rather because the reward was deemed to strong/good as far as the FFF says .

It all plays into it. An easy to implement OP solution or mechanism would be the first to be nerfed whereas a complicated mechanism that only a few players can get working would be last on any nerf list. A mechanism useful for every player would as well be nerfed first and a mechanism that is only useful for a niche application or task would be last on any nerf list. ...

I've check on steamdb, and currently Factorio is more popular than ever, apart from the spike in players during the release, the average number of online player is higher than when the game was more recent. It's a very particuliar long tail, where many other games have a very fast diminshing player base after release. If there is a multiplayer community, players share tricks lol.

Otherwise why change the space casino, when only 2% players ever made a legendary prod module ? I believe the game is intended to be balanced also for the exploits people can share around. I feel amongst those methods, the one that was the least interesting to build was kept, the fluid voider, even though devs already took steps to remove possibilities to do so that existed in the past. But the interesting challenge, the new one, in space with quality, the one that mixes all, this one, the most grandiose, was removed.

I would not have the slightest problem if the fluid voider were nerfed too. Even if I eventually got to a point where it would be convenient to use one.
But we also have listed a very possible reason why fluid voider escaped the axe. And that reason can't apply to casino. So I don't think there is any mystery at all, the probable answer to your question seems rather obvious.

[coffee-factorio]

You're confusing hot with wet. TDD is used to find bugs in code. It has nothing to do with balance or game design. It's like saying, "I'll call a chef to fix my plumbing, because a chef often works in the kitchen; he should know how to fix a drain."

And to find out whether a space casino is too profitable, you need to create a balance sheet. Programmers don't do that, and certainly not testers. And TDD won't help you create a balance sheet.

A balance sheet is any table, such as an Excel spreadsheet, that displays mathematical, statistical, and functional relationships. Typically, mathematicians or experienced game designers who have already worked on balance issues are hired for this. These people don't need to know how to program at all. They need to be able to see numbers. This is a matter of analytics, not game coding.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/bring-bac ... rom=search

There's a common sense judgement a lay person can make about whether or not that analysis was done. I don't believe I could do justice to your description of TDD without being poetic.

You are inviting a nuanced discussion of engineering about a video game about engineering.

On a bulletin board with fans of the game on it.

I'm not seeing a conversation I should be involved with.

[mmmPI]

have you thought of molten platic instead of solid plastic in the LDS casting receipe ? Cuz to me it doesn't appear that you need to rewrite the whole engine just to change the ingredient of the one receipe.

This is clearly a question for the developers, not me. You should also reread the FFF statement.

No it is a question for you, you wrote that statement :

This may not be obvious to some. But as a programmer with 15 years of experience, it's clear to me that the "LDS shuffle" hasn't been removed from the game only because the developers have no idea how to remove it without completely rewriting the game engine to ban a specific recipe so that legendary plastic can't be used.

The obvious here is that YOU have no idea how to fix it . Now requiring molten plastic in the LDS casting receipe is one of several solutions that the devs are aware of, another one would be to increase the amount of plastic required in the foundry receipe for LDS as recycling is based on the "solid receipe", you'd be "loosing plastic" even with max productivity. That is a less harsh take on the problem depending on the ratio. There are several methods that exists that definitly do not need any engine rewrite.

As you correctly pointed out in the FFF it doesn't say "we have no idea how to fix it" instead that it's a decision they took to leave them in there.

They wanted to remove this recipe, but something kept it.

I think the previous claim of it being obvious that it require an engine rewrite was wrong but this more moderate version is still impervious to what is literally written in the FFF that devs decided to keep it !!

Now if you want to speculate on what is actually difficult and requires working on the engine and not just changing prototypes, that's the fluid voider, the fluid simulation IS a very hard problem in general, and here the specifics are that fluid are free flowing , unless you use pumps, you can't just prevent the foundry receipe to be changed if there is fluid inside, because you couldn't prevent fluid from entering in, if you try with a pump, then the pump when stopped may contain a wrong fluid that moves the problem around and would make any system much more complicated than what would be balanced for the game.

Now to get back on the actual topic of the space casino you said what appears to me contradicting statement :

The "space casino" doesn't affect the average player in any way. It's neither good nor bad. Because the average player hasn't completed Space Age. Check your Steam achievements and see how many players have earned the "Second star to the right and straight on till morning" achievement and how many have earned the "My modules are legendary" achievement.

After all, judging by the Steam achievements and the features the developers have planned, they've focused on their core audience—newcomers.

To me it's contradicting because you appear to say at the same time that the balance was done for the newcomer, and there i understand the removal of the space casino. But you just said that it didn't affect average player in any way. So are you saying it only affect newcomers and not average player ? That seem illogical to me.

What seems more logical is that the balance was done for "every player" not necessarily new comers, even though they are many , but also veterans, that would explain why they would remove a "cheesy" too rewarding methods, that at most only 2% of players have experienced. It affects both new players that wonder about "what is the late game of this factorio game i may be buying", if they see an "unbalanced game" where veterans uses exploit it's not the best i feel. ( here i feel it's not perfect because now fluid voider is made more visible as it's one of the "tricks" that unless you fiddle with circuits you don't discover for youself. Like space casino.)

Here i agree new-comers, like playtesters are never going to reach such understanding of the game , that requires spreadsheets, or something called "perspective" instead of "perception", where the latter is one's subjective experience, whereas the first one "perspective" requires to put one-self in the shoes of others, to go beyond what is a personnal experience, but understand the broader picture. When considering a "perspective" it tries to encompass from "newcomers that create multiplayer games entitled "plz help"" to various achievers in speedruns, entertainment, megabase, optimisation, aesthetic, difficulty, and what nots, to your regular average players, and those that have too much time on their life and those that preprare for 15 hours before playing 1 hour, or those that have not much time for video games.

Considering a broader perspective, what every different playstyle usually do, i believe the space casino added some value to the game more than the opposite, even if it wasn't originally in the devs intent. I'm thinking the fluid voider on the other hand, is the worst, and the LDS shuffle sits in the middle. LDS shuffle require players more "smart" than fluid voider, and space casino was the more interesting thing to build. That's "my" perspective be it for newcomers to give them like a carrot for quality, an horizon, something they want to build , they know it's hard but it's a jack of all trade for quality, or for veterans, that can spend countless hours optimizing that, instead of mostly promethium ships. In my mind the problem was the reward of the puzzle, and the decision was to remove the puzzle, when the puzzle was interesting, and fun, i would have prefered only the reward to be less severely removed, in a way that doesn't leaves LDS shuffle and fluid voiders so much reprentative of the game "meta".

It would not have ruined my experience anyway, but I might have gotten less fun out of experimenting with the quality mechanisms if I for example had heard the ultimate bestest way to get quality stuff is doing it with asteroids on a space ship. Instead I now made lots of different quality production setups, some horribly inefficient, distributed all over the planets.

Imagine you go in a restaurant with spicy food. And you never tried any of the dishes, you only heard the name of some and read the receipe of couple others. I understand you can have an opinion , according to you , what would be the spiciest food out there, but it would be quite limited to judge what is the actual spicyness of the food. It would be wiser to take advice on people who actually know the dishes. Not necessarily to tell you if they find the dish spicy as it wouldn't translate for your own taste, but to tell you which one is spicier than another for sure they would have a more reasonnable "opinion".

Now, the spiciest dish is removed from the restaurant menu, but you never ordered it yourself, i don't buy the argument that it made your eating of the other dishes a more enjoyable experience. x) I get it if the devs, i mean, the chefs don't want to poison people with too spicy food and take responsability for burnt players , brain tongue computers or whatever, but then serve it with milk, in small portion and with a disclaimer, keep the recipe, keep the space casino, but make it eatable , or edible , the best one.

You prefer the medley of hors d'oeuvres than the spicy food ? all good this is unchanged !!! x)

But we also have listed a very possible reason why fluid voider escaped the axe. And that reason can't apply to casino. So I don't think there is any mystery at all, the probable answer to your question seems rather obvious.

The fluid voider yes, this one unlike the LDS shuffle it sounds a bit tricky engine side. But that's like saying there is still a dish i'm not ordering on the menu that i'd pefer removed. That's not convincing me it was a good idea to remove the first one. Nor wether the removal or a change in the yield would have imo served more players.

I feel going forward there may be changes to those particular points, maybe intentionnaly , maybe around an unrelated debugging when making a choice for how something resolve, it opens up opportunities, who knows... ^^ I'm not convinced by the alternatives speculatives hypothesis on why devs did this, they said in FFF that's fine , but now that the changed is made, and players starts to get more familiar with it, maybe more players will miss the space casino when doing LDS shuffle, a no byproduct stuff for iron and a couple fluid voider, they will regret having this opportunity to make some platform play with asteroids and quality at the same time.

Maybe it wouldn't be something you "miss" but players would suggest in the future, "please make a way to make quality from asteroid on space platform", and other player will explain "there was a space casino but it was removed" . x)

[SerhiiS]

No it is a question for you, you wrote that statement ...

The obvious here is that YOU have no idea how to fix it . Now requiring molten plastic in the LDS casting receipe is one of several solutions that the devs are aware of, another one would be to increase the amount of plastic required in the foundry receipe for LDS as recycling is based on the "solid receipe", you'd be "loosing plastic" even with max productivity. That is a less harsh take on the problem depending on the ratio. There are several methods that exists that definitly do not need any engine rewrite.

No, you're suggesting making liquid plastic. I've never suggested that anywhere. And how do you even imagine three liquids in the lineup? I just added your recipe, and the foundry isn't working. Because the developers didn't include three liquid outlets. And why do you think the developers wanted to add liquid plastic to the game? Did you just come up with this? Especially since not all the buildings support it, and we'd have to not only rewrite the game engine, but also redesign every building in the game, which is much more difficult than adding a quality opt-out option in the game engine. Next, the buildings need to be redesigned so that the liquid inlets and outlets on the Aquilo can be heated. And not just randomly slap an inlet anywhere in the building.
Regarding increasing the price of plastic, I absolutely disagree. Even if 1,000 plastic costs 1 LDS, it won't change anything. I'll still be crafting copper and steel from plastic. Price doesn't affect anything at all. The alchemy of trancformation plastic into copper and steel remains.

[mmmPI]

You seem to confuse what need a prototype change / receipe change, and what need more rework, the idea of using molten plastic is that you then can't transfer the quality of the solid plastic to the LDS, you can use lava for copper and iron/steel , that doesn't change, you just don't get it magically upgraded thank to the plastic catalyst. Since the plastic is molten, it has no quality.

Make the molten plastic require steel and plastic to be made or molten iron and plastic and voila , you still have 2 liquid inputs to your foundry, nothing changed there easy.

Anyway there is no doubt that the fluid voider is the one that require engine rework, not the LDS shuffle to me. Space casino is along the same line it's more of tweak numbers here and/or allow this, rather than an engine rework.

[SerhiiS]

You seem to confuse what need a prototype change / receipe change, and what need more rework, the idea of using molten plastic is that you then can't transfer the quality of the solid plastic to the LDS, you can use lava for copper and iron/steel , that doesn't change, you just don't get it magically upgraded thank to the plastic catalyst. Since the plastic is molten, it has no quality.

Make the molten plastic require steel and plastic to be made or molten iron and plastic and voila , you still have 2 liquid inputs to your foundry, nothing changed there easy.

Anyway there is no doubt that the fluid voider is the one that require engine rework, not the LDS shuffle to me. Space casino is along the same line it's more of tweak numbers here and/or allow this, rather than an engine rework.

It sounds like some kind of hack. A game designer would clearly be against adding hacks to the game. Come up with beautiful recipes with logical and sensible ingredients. And then propose them to the developers. Your assumption that the developers know how to do this is just your guess. I haven't seen the developers share their own ideas about how they want to change this recipe. All they wrote in the FFF is that they abandoned their rebalancing LDS idea.
They also wrote that 2.1 would be the last major release. After that, there would only be bug fixes and mod support. They won't be rebalancing recipes after 2.1.

[mmmPI]

Come up with beautiful recipes with logical and sensible ingredients.

I wonder who can judge what is sensible there, and i think that's funny because thermoplastic, basically liquid that are molded in solid form would actually be more logical and sensible than using steel or copper for LOW density structure imo x). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injection_moulding. You can see some variations there too : https://mods.factorio.com/mod/molten_plastic

But beside your knowledge on plastics and your subjective appreciation of what is beautiful, the claim was about the need for an engine rework and no, it appears incorrect, given the evidences :/ it is NOT the case that LDS shuffle fixing require engine rework, if you make "molten plastic" require "molten iron and plastic bar" and LDS require "molten copper and molten plastic" as input in the foundy receipe, you have something that is removing the ability to use legendary plastic as catalyst for legendary steel and copper. There are obviously many alternatives receipe that could play similar role without ever changing the engine, UNLIKE for the fluid voider which is much more complicated.

For space casino though that is still not a rationnal argument to me, because it doesn't apply, space casino is easy to add or remove as it was, it's currently very very unprofitable for what's left, but not that hard to restore, or improve the yield, it's difficult to anticipate what "most players" will consider worth after a tweak in the numbers, but it's along the lines of "easy tweaking", it's more about the intent. And although the devs said they didn't plan to do further balance change, there is no strict rules about that x) obviously if they see a better option or realized they made a mistake or start missing space casino, or just reconsider the decision or have players that suggest something similar be added to the game and so on, they may change the receipe again. Like there was already change to the fluid behavior since this 2.1.7 version .... x) Maybe the fluid voider will be defeated, and that will leave room for the return of the space casino !

[coffee-factorio]

I wonder who can judge what is sensible there, and i think that's funny because thermoplastic, basically liquid that are molded in solid form would actually be more logical and sensible than using steel or copper for LOW density structure imo x). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injection_moulding. You can see some variations there too : https://mods.factorio.com/mod/molten_plastic

You can make your rockets out of plastic only. It. Isn't an OSHA violation at all. By all means, construct your rockets out of thermoplastic.

[mmmPI]

I'm not seeing a conversation I should be involved with.

I agree it doesn't appear you contribute in any useful way

[meganothing]

It would not have ruined my experience anyway, but I might have gotten less fun out of experimenting with the quality mechanisms if I for example had heard the ultimate bestest way to get quality stuff is doing it with asteroids on a space ship. Instead I now made lots of different quality production setups, some horribly inefficient, distributed all over the planets.

Imagine you go in a restaurant with spicy food. And you never tried any of the dishes, you only heard the name of some and read the receipe of couple others. I understand you can have an opinion , according to you , what would be the spiciest food out there, but it would be quite limited to judge what is the actual spicyness of the food. It would be wiser to take advice on people who actually know the dishes. Not necessarily to tell you if they find the dish spicy as it wouldn't translate for your own taste, but to tell you which one is spicier than another for sure they would have a more reasonnable "opinion".

Now, the spiciest dish is removed from the restaurant menu, but you never ordered it yourself, i don't buy the argument that it made your eating of the other dishes a more enjoyable experience. x) I get it if the devs, i mean, the chefs don't want to poison people with too spicy food and take responsability for burnt players , brain tongue computers or whatever, but then serve it with milk, in small portion and with a disclaimer, keep the recipe, keep the space casino, but make it eatable , or edible , the best one.

You prefer the medley of hors d'oeuvres than the spicy food ? all good this is unchanged !!! x)

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. If I had heard that quality on a platform was a good way to make quality stuff (or discovered it early in the game) there is a good chance I would have built it and then there would have been a good chance that I would never have experimented with the lesser versions. Simply for the convenience of it producing almost all quality raw mats I need without making a special setup. And the mats already being on a ship means I even save the effort to setup half of any delivery pipelines to other planets.

The restaurant example would probably be equivalent if I ordered that most spicy dish and because I like it well enough never ordering the less spicy dishes.