Quality levels completely break factory

[Tertius]

I feel like I'm in this situation not because of anything I did. Tertius replied to one of my posts; I didn't make them respond in that way.

It seems we don't understand each other, so I stopped contributing to the discussion. It's not that I don't have anything more to say, it's just I don't seem to understand what exactly the discussion is about. My posts are primarily guided by the OP, because that's what the thread should be about. If you talk about something different, I don't think it's the right place here to discuss - this should be in its own thread.

[XT-248]

The lesson here is not to jump into the middle of a conversation and miss important context clues from previous posts by quoting a small snippet that omits many of the nuances.

Let's take this serious then.
The OP talked about adding quality to Fulgora and how they quickly became overwhelmed by the multiplicative nature of quality in the initial post.

You made 11 posts on this topic so far. Yours was the third post on the topic.
Do you feel like you have adequately adhered to your own assertion that you should keep context in mind when it comes to quality on Fulgora?

I would conclude you didn't, from my pov it seems you simply insertered your unsatisfaction with Gleba into this post without any regard for what the OP had to say. It seems to me it would be much more suitable if you had made a new topic for how quality is a problem on Gleba. And maybe an additional one about meta-communication, critic's feedback and a rejection of unwarranted social framing (which may be very well warranted but is also out of place in here, frankly).

I suggest we all take your suggestion serious and stay on topic: "Quality, specifically on Fulgora, gets out of hand quickly." (paraphrasing the OP)

You might have forgotten, or haven't checked in-game, but recycling scrap isn't limited to Fulgora. Meaning, if someone decided to export scrap off-world to be processed on a non-Fulgora world, they could.


OP had issues with scrap recyclers recycling, using quality modules in machines, machines not taking in ingredients of a different quality level than the recipe's quality level, and more.

OP mentioned quality-adjacent issues with scrap recycling and Fulgora, and Gleba would have experienced the same thing but with the added twist of dealing with spoilage mechanics at the same time.


You obviously have forgotten how I started my first post, but I am going to repost it here.

Quality breaks Gleba.

Yes, I know mentioning Gleba can be contentious at times, but this is not that kind of topic.

I was being genuine when I brought up Gleba here because it would have suffered the same quality-adjacent issues as OP's scrap recyclers or Fulgora did. If there were a solution through design or game changes or whatever, it would impact or affect Gleba and spoilage too, not just scrap recyclers or Fulgora.

[XT-248]

I feel like I'm in this situation not because of anything I did. Tertius replied to one of my posts; I didn't make them respond in that way.

It seems we don't understand each other, so I stopped contributing to the discussion. It's not that I don't have anything more to say, it's just I don't seem to understand what exactly the discussion is about. My posts are primarily guided by the OP, because that's what the thread should be about. If you talk about something different, I don't think it's the right place here to discuss - this should be in its own thread.

This is the right place. See my previous post about quality-adjacent issues.

The thing I don't understand, and still don't. Why did my posts comparing different Gleba designs, with different pros and cons, turn into an assertion by you that I didn't use beacons?

It doesn't matter whether I used beacons on Gleba; it had nothing to do with how to fix or mitigate the con of using quality modules in biochambers to get higher-quality Gleba science packs.

[mmmPI]

Thank you Tertius for pointing out how unrelated to OP's thread the recent posts are. I think at this point we're reaching gameplay help territory and although it is understandable from someone who just used a quality module for the first time and discover how it works, it's a bit more puzzling when a person insist their own way to improperly use a feature is the way it was meant to be ....

[coffee-factorio]

I'm going to just have to remove all of the quality modules and go back to common quality on everything because I don't have the room to make a separate assembly line for every single quality level of every single ingredient. This exponentially complicates any factory design and I can't imagine it being worth it just for the little boost each higher quality item gets. What am I missing here?

I can totally understand that for "newer" players, especially in terms of this particular mechanic, it can get overwhelming quite quickly. And I know it took me some time to understand it properly. Fulgora on it's own has enough headache potential without ever involving quality. But I can assure you, once you have gotten more familiar it's a great challenge to overcome. Even just for the challenges own sake (but the quality machines more than make up for it, too).

This little base I build handles every type of item at every quality level, is mostly belt based, upcycles most everything where it makes sense, plus it's small and scales easily. This itself is obviously more a proof of concept but it works fine while I'm testing all sorts of things in other areas and produces a trickle of science consistently. There are also quality modules in the miners. It's not beautiful nor fast I will admit.
grafik.png

And if you play around with quality and don't find the quality aspect enticing, that's perfectly fine, albeit humbling. Do yourself a favor and turn it off. No shame in stopping to do something that isn't enjoyable in gaming.

You appear to, actually be interested in, having a conversation. Lets continue with that trend. Apologies for my tangent. Sometimes I need to finish a thought.

I took a different route on Fulgora when I've played it. My interests have me play more games to explore different scenarios and not do one real dedicated run till recently. So, my Fulgora went through two stages: first I did some fishing for uncommon to rare items with quality modules and focused on having a small quantity of science.

When I went through the first scale up, I went for ~10K ESPM consistent and a legendary EM Plant upcycle. Just keep it simple, see what large volumes of scrap got me. I'm pretty happy with the results of that. It's a lot easier to scale the project up, I associate certain materials only have specific jobs. With that being said, sometimes on disposal jobs there where things that were too good to miss. I ended up making a small cycle for legendary substations there and that was outstanding.

My feelings about a full quality sort are mixed, because the more large numbers I have to play with the more success I know I'll get. I've got success from other supply chains so I'm seeing the 60 sort as something to do for fun and not a requirement. It seems like it's incredibly gratifying.

Remember having a lot of luck making quality accumulators, putting all normal into science, and the rest where used to make lightning collectors. That always seems to make the islands safer for the bots and there's a ton of power in it. Uncommon lightning collectors make it possible to set up a roboport grid in one step. Legendary ones overlap the furthest roboport too, so they let that happen without subjecting construction bots to a safety problem.

[XT-248]

Looks like I missed something, and I am going to briefly respond to this bit.

And if you play around with quality and don't find the quality aspect enticing, that's perfectly fine, albeit humbling. Do yourself a favor and turn it off. No shame in stopping to do something that isn't enjoyable in gaming.

I do find quality fun in its own way, and I make use of it when it makes sense. The same is true of any other machines or mechanics in Factorio.

You are a funny person if you thought I needed help finding or learning how to turn off mods after a decade of playing Factorio.

[mmmPI]

If you "break your factory" using quality and voice a complaint about it on the forum it would appear that maybe you are not only using only when it make sense and that as such you could do with some help about how to use the mechanic instead of turning it off entirely, albeit the later is a valid option there is hardly any help that can be provided to achieve it which leaves the former option the more rationnal approach for a discussion imo.

[worph]

you could do with some help about how to use the mechanic instead of turning it off entirely

I wholeheartedly agree, that is why 80% of the post in which I mentioned the option of turning if off focused around getting back on topic for how to actually tackle quality and that it's not so overwhelming as it might seem at first, even if you do it in an inefficient way (i.e. quality modules everywhere).

Sometimes people get defensive when you assert your own opinion too strongly and that seems to make them feel unheard and being lectured by some elitist player who has no empathy for someone just starting out. The statement that quality can be turned off was meant to combat that. As a way of saying: It's fine if you don't engage with the mechanic at all, you don't have to. It's fine and I'm not going to judge you for that decision.

Of course I would much rather help someone work through the issues with a feature that I really enjoy, but at the end of the day, some people clearly prefer not to. Perfectly reasonable.

I think the main takeaway from this thread so far is this:

How to approach quality

Don't put quality modules just anywhere, especially in miners and at the beginning of production lines, in the following cases:

• You are new and/or have felt overwhelmed by the mechanic in the past.
• You don't have supportive technologies yet (especially tier3 modules, EM plants, recyclers and beacons)
• You are still building small scale factories on each planet / you don't have many ressources to spare

Beginning

In these situations it's best to just put some tier2 modules into assemblers for certain things and use some of the resulting better items for bottlenecks or smal improvements.
Some recipes that are best suited for this tier2 approach:

• Crafting machines: assemblers, chemplants, refineries
• Planet specific machines: Em-plants, biochambers, big mining drills, foundries, etc.
• Space buildings: Asteroid collectors(!), crushers, cargo bays, etc.
• Defensive buildings: Turrets, radars
• Modules
• Power production: Solar panels, accumulators, lightningrods/collectors, fission/fusion buildings

Essentially anything that cannot accept productivity and has a tangible benefit from quality.

Intermediary

Once you transcend that stage of just using some lower quality modules on selected recipes, and you have excess production/energy/machines/space you can start to either incorporate quality in more places if you don't mind the challenge of sushi stuff. Or you build dedicated subfactories to extract specific items in high quality. (The latter being clearly the ideal way to deal with quality later in the game)

Some examples:

• Coal ore -> legendary plastic on Nauvis/Vulcanus:
  Quality modules in big mining drills -> scrap everything below epic -> make plastic using >= epic coal in cryochambers (would have to check if prod or quality is best here, both will work if you accept inefficiencies) and then scrap any non legendary plastic.
• Or something similar with a dedicated subfactory to upcycle supercapacitors/em-plants.
• On Aquilo just put quality modules into ice-crushers and get easy legendary science there (if you also did some upcycling on fulgora).

Or just do it like me in the example I gave earlier: Embrace the inefficiency and put every level on a sushi belt and just vibe with it, accepting something below maximum efficiency, just to see if it works.

Late game

Quality science is something someone can start to think about once they have been to the edge of the solar system and have familiarized themselves with quality.
Clearly quality science in itself is often not the most efficient way to produce reasearch in every scenario, but it can be a fun challenge for some players plus there are possible reciprocal benefits to making quality science.

On gleba for example, just heading for quality science really doesn't seem very enticing. But If you also want legendary stack inserters, legendary biochambers, legendary biter eggs, legendary spoilage it can be useful. Suddenly you are not doing it primarily for the science, but the science can be viewed as a useful byproduct to getting those other things, to recoup some of the high material costs.

Pitfalls

If someone just landed on a new planet with only tier2 modules, it's really not the right time to put quality modules just anywhere, neither front of production nor trying to make quality science.

Take this as a general roadmap not a 1:1 way to do each and everytime. This is especially addressed at people that might be overwhelmed when using quality for the first time.
I didn't quote anything here, but that seems to be the best advice in this thread coming from different people.

[mmmPI]

I wholeheartedly agree, that is why 80% of the post in which I mentioned the option of turning if off focused around getting back on topic for how to actually tackle quality and that it's not so overwhelming as it might seem at first, even if you do it in an inefficient way (i.e. quality modules everywhere).

Sometimes people get defensive when you assert your own opinion too strongly and that seems to make them feel unheard and being lectured by some elitist player who has no empathy for someone just starting out. The statement that quality can be turned off was meant to combat that. As a way of saying: It's fine if you don't engage with the mechanic at all, you don't have to. It's fine and I'm not going to judge you for that decision.

That appears rationnal to me, and providing help for OP which sounds like they are unfamiliar with quality. That was not the part that was puzzling me, more from other player asserting that they'be been playing for "long" and still quality "break their factory". It appears to me a situation where the help you provided should be welcome and not pushed back because if a player "break their factory" with quality, then it doesn't make sense for them to use it and they may turn it off entirely, and while it is a valid way of avoiding the problem, it's not a way to solve it or to learn how to use the feature.

I think not choosing appropriatly where to place the quality module is the main reason for troubles with quality and starting with just putting them in the mall as opposed to the miner is the first basic step to reduce unwanted complexity arising too early.

[Tertius]

I think not choosing appropriatly where to place the quality module is the main reason for troubles with quality

Never have truer words been spoken. This reminds me of The Importance of Where.

In our case, it's not most important where to place the module in our factory but where in our Factorio career (experience level) and where in our map progress (early or late?) we begin to use quality.

[XT-248]

I wholeheartedly agree, that is why 80% of the post in which I mentioned the option of turning if off focused around getting back on topic for how to actually tackle quality and that it's not so overwhelming as it might seem at first, even if you do it in an inefficient way (i.e. quality modules everywhere).

Sometimes people get defensive when you assert your own opinion too strongly and that seems to make them feel unheard and being lectured by some elitist player who has no empathy for someone just starting out. The statement that quality can be turned off was meant to combat that. As a way of saying: It's fine if you don't engage with the mechanic at all, you don't have to. It's fine and I'm not going to judge you for that decision.

Of course I would much rather help someone work through the issues with a feature that I really enjoy, but at the end of the day, some people clearly prefer not to. Perfectly reasonable.

I would rather spend time having a meaningful conversation about improving Gleba's experience overall, which hasn't happened yet. Right now, mixing spoilage and quality creates a double-dip dose of inefficiency.

Currently, Gleba is the only world where I would recommend against using quality modules at all. Mixing quality and spoilage is a newbie trap, worse than Fulgora.

Fulgora, on the other hand, has a different problem that is much easier to deal with through a factory design adjustment. Sometimes that adjustment can be deceptively simple. Unfortunately, players can't make simple adjustments on Gleba as easily.


Sometimes judging a book by its cover instead of what it actually holds creates problems. People end up talking past each other, and I wish we lived in a perfect world where that doesn't happen, but we don't.

With that in mind, I am going to go over your post and offer constructive criticism.

I think the main takeaway from this thread so far is this:

How to approach quality

Don't put quality modules just anywhere, especially in miners and at the beginning of production lines, in the following cases:

• You are new and/or have felt overwhelmed by the mechanic in the past.
• You don't have supportive technologies yet (especially tier3 modules, EM plants, recyclers, and beacons)
• You are still building small scale factories on each planet / you don't have many ressources to spare

Add needing to understand how splitter and inserter filters work to that list, along with a few other things I might be forgetting right now.

Beginning

In these situations it's best to just put some tier2 modules into assemblers for certain things and use some of the resulting better items for bottlenecks or smal improvements.
Some recipes that are best suited for this tier2 approach:

• Crafting machines: assemblers, chemplants, refineries
• Planet specific machines: Em-plants, biochambers, big mining drills, foundries, etc.
• Space buildings: Asteroid collectors(!), crushers, cargo bays, etc.
• Defensive buildings: Turrets, radars
• Modules
• Power production: Solar panels, accumulators, lightningrods/collectors, fission/fusion buildings

Essentially anything that cannot accept productivity and has a tangible benefit from quality.

The order or priority of what to uptier as soon as possible is debatable.

Some inclusions seem puzzling. Crafting speed isn't a strong stat to boost in the "beginning" or "early/middle game".

Some recipes don't accept productivity modules. I have seen a few people fall into the trap of trying to quality-boost items that don't have any beneficial effects just because the recipe doesn't accept productivity modules.

Intermediary

Once you transcend that stage of just using some lower quality modules on selected recipes, and you have excess production/energy/machines/space you can start to either incorporate quality in more places if you don't mind the challenge of sushi stuff. Or you build dedicated subfactories to extract specific items in high quality. (The latter being clearly the ideal way to deal with quality later in the game)

Some examples:

• Coal ore -> legendary plastic on Nauvis/Vulcanus:
  Quality modules in big mining drills -> scrap everything below epic -> make plastic using >= epic coal in cryochambers (would have to check if prod or quality is best here, both will work if you accept inefficiencies) and then scrap any non legendary plastic.
• Or something similar with a dedicated subfactory to upcycle supercapacitors/em-plants.
• On Aquilo just put quality modules into ice-crushers and get easy legendary science there (if you also did some upcycling on fulgora).

Or just do it like me in the example I gave earlier: Embrace the inefficiency and put every level on a sushi belt and just vibe with it, accepting something below maximum efficiency, just to see if it works.

Maybe I am missing something, but this sounds more like decoupled subfactories city-block designs people usually resort to in the late game? Speaking of late game.

Late game

Quality science is something someone can start to think about once they have been to the edge of the solar system and have familiarized themselves with quality.
Clearly quality science in itself is often not the most efficient way to produce reasearch in every scenario, but it can be a fun challenge for some players plus there are possible reciprocal benefits to making quality science.

On gleba for example, just heading for quality science really doesn't seem very enticing. But If you also want legendary stack inserters, legendary biochambers, legendary biter eggs, legendary spoilage it can be useful. Suddenly you are not doing it primarily for the science, but the science can be viewed as a useful byproduct to getting those other things, to recoup some of the high material costs.

There are few, if any, concrete steps, and it overgeneralizes and offers very few actionable tips for either Fulgora or Gleba.

"Space Platforms with Crushers with quality modules can produce max-quality carbons to craft max-quality stack inserters. That is one less complication to deal with on Gleba, and max-quality carbons are useful everywhere that a Space Platform can go."

That example gives new people something actionable.

Pitfalls

If someone just landed on a new planet with only tier2 modules, it's really not the right time to put quality modules just anywhere, neither front of production nor trying to make quality science.

Take this as a general roadmap not a 1:1 way to do each and everytime. This is especially addressed at people that might be overwhelmed when using quality for the first time.
I didn't quote anything here, but that seems to be the best advice in this thread coming from different people.

There is still room for improvement before I'd recommend it to someone new.


Edit: A new post.

Never have truer words been spoken. This reminds me of The Importance of Where.

In our case, it's not most important where to place the module in our factory but where in our Factorio career (experience level) and where in our map progress (early or late?) we begin to use quality.

The more important question from OP is how to properly use splitters and inserters to handle mixed-quality items.

It won't matter if quality modules are placed correctly if splitters and inserters end up in a non-functional shape.

[Hurkyl]

Currently, Gleba is the only world where I would recommend against using quality modules at all. Mixing quality and spoilage is a newbie trap, worse than Fulgora.

Mixing quality and spoilage?

The thing that makes Gleba qualitatively different is that quality with the agricultural chains works mostly as a skimming operation. If you are locked into upcycling approaches, you get bad results because you have to use self-recycling recipes.

Some inclusions seem puzzling. Crafting speed isn't a strong stat to boost in the "beginning" or "early/middle game".

It's still a free boost. But that aside, among its values are

• It multiplies the value of other investments; e.g. modules, especially higher tier and/or higher quality ones.
• It streamlines building production chains when common quality is a little too slow for what you're building
• The greater space and electricity efficiency helps for platform building

[Tertius]

The more important question from OP is how to properly use splitters and inserters to handle mixed-quality items.

It won't matter if quality modules are placed correctly if splitters and inserters end up in a non-functional shape.

The complaint of the OP was that inserter and splitters work on normal quality as default, and they had to change filter settings to work on mixed quality as well. This is a non-issue, it's some new thing to do if you deal with mixed qualities. If you think about it, the default cannot be any different.

Another complaint was that any given recipe just accepts exactly the quality of the recipe, nothing different. Yes, this has been mentioned before, and this is the way quality works. You have to deal with it. Everything with quality works as designed. This is what the devs said to corresponding posts with the 2.1 experimental release when players asked why there was no change with the quality mechanics.

So the question is not what to change in the engine and to complain how it's working. The question is how to make the best use of the existing mechanic as player. You were back to complaining, but that's not what to do.

I also had complaints about quality, but they were different. I complain that quality has no direction. It's too open. The player is alone, he gets no hint what he can do to make good use of the mechanic. It's just thrown at him, and my complaint is that this could lead to players following all kind of dead ends, which leads to frustration. However it was made clear there will no assistance added, so I simply have to deal with it. So I stopped complaining and dealt with it. All in all my judgement and opinion about quality in general is that it is the least good mechanic in Factorio. Its ok and solves the endgame scaling challenge, but the design quality of the quality mechanic in general is sub par. The implementation is lacking introductory functionality. Just unlocking quality tiers one by one isn't sufficient.

[XT-248]

The complaint of the OP was that inserter and splitters work on normal quality as default, and they had to change filter settings to work on mixed quality as well. This is a non-issue, it's some new thing to do if you deal with mixed qualities. If you think about it, the default cannot be any different.

Another complaint was that any given recipe just accepts exactly the quality of the recipe, nothing different. Yes, this has been mentioned before, and this is the way quality works. You have to deal with it. Everything with quality works as designed. This is what the devs said to corresponding posts with the 2.1 experimental release when players asked why there was no change with the quality mechanics.

Regardless, the problem remains. How do we ease people into using splitters and inserters the intended way?

I am going to bring up a prior incident with some parallels: the basic oil processing recipe from before 0.17.60. People struggled to move past the huge spike of challenges that basic oil processing introduced all at once, with three-fluid byproducts, setting up general-fluid pipe logistics, and more. The 0.17.60 change helped smooth the transition between pre-oil and post-oil phases.


I believe something similar could have been done for spoilage and quality mechanics, independently. Introduce the respective mechanics in smaller, digestible chunks. It is not enough to just "blindly" pick up rocks and fruit trees to help people understand what they should be doing with spoilage mechanics, and placing quality modules in machines without any prior experience of quality mechanics produces a similar effect.

Adding an "opt-in" button for quality only sidelines the problem instead of directly addressing the lack of introductory experience.


Here are some changes that I think will help smooth the transitions between before and after introducing of the respective mechanics tremendously.

Some ingredients could have been given the "spoilage" treatment on Nauvis to ease new players into Gleba without Quality. Repeat for quality mechanics; after all, OP indicated they had spent considerable time building out factories without quality modules before deciding to do a small experimental run and go all-in on quality modules. That kind of experience ultimately turned the OP away from using quality modules, which is a problem.

Then, in the end, players can take what they learn and combine it into a functional design that incorporates one of the mechanics, or even both. Nothing currently exists that could resemble an introductory experience for each world's unique mechanics, with one small, noticeable exception: Vulcanus (liquid/petroleum handling).

So the question is not what to change in the engine and to complain how it's working. The question is how to make the best use of the existing mechanic as player. You were back to complaining, but that's not what to do.

There is a difference between giving constructive feedback and people treating all feedback as "complaining".

I don't know how my constructive feedback on a guidance post could be considered "complaining". Maybe it is time for someone to go outside and touch grass.

I also had complaints about quality, but they were different. I complain that quality has no direction. It's too open. The player is alone, he gets no hint what he can do to make good use of the mechanic. It's just thrown at him, and my complaint is that this could lead to players following all kind of dead ends, which leads to frustration. However it was made clear there will no assistance added, so I simply have to deal with it. So I stopped complaining and dealt with it. All in all my judgement and opinion about quality in general is that it is the least good mechanic in Factorio. Its ok and solves the endgame scaling challenge, but the design quality of the quality mechanic in general is sub par. The implementation is lacking introductory functionality. Just unlocking quality tiers one by one isn't sufficient.

That is the exact kind of constructive feedback I gave when Space Age was released, and I was ultimately disappointed by the lack of introductory experiences. I overcame it, but I still found plenty of room for improvement.

The difference is I also had the same constructive feedback about spoilage. Not just quality.

[mmmPI]

There is a difference between giving constructive feedback and people treating all feedback as "complaining".
I don't know how my constructive feedback on a guidance post could be considered "complaining". Maybe it is time for someone to go outside and touch grass.
The difference is I also had the same constructive feedback about spoilage. Not just quality.

Its not because you call your complain a constructive feedback that it makes it "constructive", that's like if you have a bad idea, and you call it brillant, that's just a bad idea, that is on top of that being pretentiously mislabeled.

It's not constructive to assert counter factual statement unrelated to the thread. Which is what you did about spoilage. That's bad advices for those who posted.

There is no reason to draw paralel with 17.60 which introduced a change in the game people had already experimented, it was not a new expansion and it's old enough most players participating in the discussion, including you , didn't have an account.

Your only suggestion which is to add an item that spoil in Nauvis is already in the game under the form of fish and has nothing to do with the thread in which it is posted.

[mmmPI]

In our case, it's not most important where to place the module in our factory but where in our Factorio career (experience level) and where in our map progress (early or late?) we begin to use quality.

Not so sure about that, if you just place your module at the end of the production chain like for ammunition, or science packs, or in the mall, then you don't have to deal with byproducts of everything. You localize the area in your factory where you will have items of different quality, you spare yourself the trouble of using plenty of filters everywhere in the first place

On the opposite side of the spectrum , you place your quality module in your mining drill, and you have to deal with the largest diversity of byproducts and quality levels, the puzzle is more complex.

This would be true no matter the level of experience and stage of the game. It's something to recognize and take advantage of !

[coffee-factorio]

There is a difference between giving constructive feedback and people treating all feedback as "complaining".
I don't know how my constructive feedback on a guidance post could be considered "complaining". Maybe it is time for someone to go outside and touch grass.
The difference is I also had the same constructive feedback about spoilage. Not just quality.

Its not because you call your complain a constructive feedback that it makes it "constructive", that's like if you have a bad idea, and you call it brillant, that's just a bad idea, that is on top of that being pretentiously mislabeled.

It's not constructive to assert counter factual statement unrelated to the thread. Which is what you did about spoilage. That's bad advices for those who posted.

There is no reason to draw paralel with 17.60 which introduced a change in the game people had already experimented, it was not a new expansion and it's old enough most players participating in the discussion, including you , didn't have an account.

Your only suggestion which is to add an item that spoil in Nauvis is already in the game under the form of fish and has nothing to do with the thread in which it is posted.

Consider:
Production science buys beacons. I cannot ship in beacons if I do not research that, which is what happens if someone tries the Rush to Space achievement. So. I can sell that no beacons + basic assemblers and modules, is a component of an achievement.

But saying it is easier than say, the massive power cut, or speed boost beacons could provide starting a planet. Is just. Not. That's either less machines put down or less power generation put in.

I think; mmmPI, that seen from another angle. Your assessment of this person's ideas is correct.

[XT-248]

Consider:
Production science buys beacons. I cannot ship in beacons if I do not research that, which is what happens if someone tries the Rush to Space achievement. So. I can sell that no beacons + basic assemblers and modules, is a component of an achievement.

But saying it is easier than say, the massive power cut, or speed boost beacons could provide starting a planet. Is just. Not. That's either less machines put down or less power generation put in.

Okay, something got lost in translation.

Nothing I said touched on beacons, production sciences, or anything in the previous post.


Fish or tree could have been used to softly introduce people to spoilage mechanics.

Quality is already more or less introduced on Nauvis, but the onboard experience, by your own admission, is lacking. So it is surprising to see a strong opposition to a better introduction to quality from someone who wishes they had one.

[coffee-factorio]

No. I said I took quality in the early game as a technical challenge. Said that you could build an experience that was rewarding every four hours or so out of that.

I said if you extended the experience by going to rare layouts it'd be more rewarding, because your layouts wouldn't break as often at legendary.

I've, yet to weigh in on this part of the topic at all in fact. But I've commented on things already in the game that can be used to provide a smoother ramp into it.

mmmPI is not wrong. Those things are an option, but are not the option. Particularly quality in mines actually, but for reasons he doesn't know yet.

If you do spoilage on fish you run into practical problems: a fish spoils so slowly that it's worth as an aid is questionable. More importantly it's a healing item, and one of the strong combat strategies in the game is to just grab 10 fish and go in guns blazing. So what's to stop me from generating like a hundred fish? And just being sushi man?

With wood its iffy. Because then you make a gigantic power offset for coal. And have to reconsider the power and plastic economy of the game.

You have to make a spoiling item necessary over the 20 hours you're launching your first space platforms to. So the reasons that make quality really intimidating at that time, and make quality "an option" are going to apply equally to spoilage.

[quineotio]

A couple of issues I have with quality:

1. The early game.

Without recyclers you can't do much with it. You can't use it in your main production lines because it will jam your factory. And you can't do upcycling. So the only thing you can really do with it is gamble.

Now technically you CAN use it in more ways, but only if you manually clear things. You could argue that this is a legitimate form of progression - you get the base functionality first and then automate it later. But this feels bad, because the thing required for automation (the recycler) is unlocked on Fulgora, which reduces your options with regard to planet order if you want to use quality.

I think it's bad design. It's a noob trap, and another example of Wube forcing particular playstyles. Of course people don't like quality when there's no easy way to use it until you've been to another specific planet. There's this idea that "quality is controversial", which I think is the wrong framing, because it implies that there aren't obvious things that could be done to improve it. Quality is controversial because it's badly implemented.

The solution is easy. Unlock the recycler on Nauvis. Let people actually use quality when it's unlocked.

And there are other suggestions which would achieve a similar thing, such as allowing quality to be controlled via circuits. If it was possible to turn off quality modules when your buffers get full you could automate quality production without needing recyclers.

2. The late game.

The most fun I've had with quality is progressively upgrading things over time. It's fun to squeeze more production out of the same space and watch builds slightly morph as faster machines/inserters/power poles/modules become available. But this ends once everything is upgraded to legendary, which doesn't take that long. And then I find myself with all this factory infrastructure devoted to quality which is no longer doing anything, and I have to pull it out before all the buffers fill with legendary stuff.

The logical thing to use quality for in the late game is science, but it's not worth doing for two main reasons. Firstly, productivity is just better. Secondly, there's not much challenge to quality science - it's exactly the same builds multiplied by 5. So it's tedious and boring.

I think the solution to this is to make some way to produce quality reliably via different and more complex crafting chains.

I also don't think quality modules should have a negative interaction with speed modules. It reduces the space of possible builds and adds nothing interesting. There's already a speed penalty on the quality modules.

To what extent do I repeat myself here? It's annoying that the devs refuse to comment on these things. "We don't want to ruin your fun but space casinos make other options less appealing". Ok, so what are the new options? From a different thread:

Quality was the first system implemented in the expansion. It was not tacked on to anything. There are no intentions to change how things work because it *is working how it was intended to work*. I get it; not everyone likes how it works - but it is working how it was intended to work. A huge resource sink for marginally better versions of machines - something that you can use to scale *up* rather than out.

So it's intended to work in a way that it doesn't actually work when you unlock it? It's NOT a resource sink for better machines when you unlock it. That only happens after Fulgora. And why should it only work in this way? Why do you allow quality modules in miners? I have to doubt that the devs actually play the game. It's not as if it's just me, or even just a small number of people complaining. And it's not as if the complaints aren't similar. The same things keep coming up over and over again.

It blows my mind that so much time has been devoted to fixing obscure bugs that only occur in obscure mods, but a major system which has been "controversial" since the beginning has had no work done on it at all. It feels like trolling. It's the perfect encapsulation of the idea that we supposed to play the game in a particular way.

"You wanted to do other things with quality? Sorry, it's only for what we intend and nothing else".

I feel the same way about Gleba. So many things could be done to ease that obvious pain point, but nothing. But what's the point in going over that again, it's working as intended apparently.