Factorio Forums

How is playing Factorio "grinding"? Are people physically moving things with the engineer late game? Are people sitting and watching the assemblers work late game? If there's any game where the word "grinding" makes no sense, it's Factorio.

kammerer wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 4:11 pm Without space casinos I'm afraid we would have to grind. Even if the grinding curve is not purely linear, it's still fills a little bit boring quite some time.

I'm not afraid because i already found a method to avoid repetitive task or waiting , so really no grind at all. I thought i explained it earlier, go fulgora first, setup early quality setup, by the time you finish vulcanus and gleba you're filled with epic material in all your buffers, and by the time you unlock legendary, you have what you want almost right away, you'll be happy you can finally stop adding chest for buffer and void all those epic stuff that have been piling forever. It's unfortunate you seem to have not understood what i meant, but i'm sure when times comes there will be some guides to explain it with much patience than i have. Maybe i speak only for myself here, but i'm no speedrunner lol, most of the time i'm inefficient in my time usage when i play, i'm having fun doing detour or i make mistake, so overall i design m factory not to punish me for that, instead reward me at least when i screw up , my factory have my back:)

Rinin wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 4:55 pm

mmmPI wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 2:31 pm
The output rate if you consider how much asteroid gets in vs how much legendary gets out itself isn't really the main question to me, because it's easy to gather "more asteroids" most space platforms are not bottleneck by inputs at this stage of the game, you could "easily" increase the input of asteroids by x10, if you have a process that is 10X more wasteful in 2.1.

Yes, you can fairly easily make the "new casino" only 10x worse than the existing casino. That means either 10x more ships launched and a corresponding UPS hit, or coffee breaks that are 10x longer while waiting to receive the required resources. But to achieve what?

Moving from a design game to a grind game or an idle game is a step in the wrong direction. Upcycling is an order of magnitude more efficient than washing. Is that a reason to remove upcycling and force everyone to use washing instead? Or to make upcycling so bad that it's equeal to washing?

In no way it means you NEED to launch 10x times more ship, you could, but you could just have 10 times more asteroid grabbers on a ship with the same amount of quality module, recycling is much faster than reprocessing, even though it more wasteful, and you can use more module in a recycler than in a crusher. It's not about the amount material that gets in vs the amount that comes out and wether or not the process is "wastefull", the real deal is about how much material is being converted per time per module. If you convert 10 normal chunk into 5 legendary chunk every minutes using 2 modules, you are not necessarily doing better than someone who convert 100 normal chunk into 12 legendary chunk every minutes also using 2 module. You could almost "forget" the input, one module yield 2.5 legendary chunk in the first case, and 6 in the second.

Even though the second process is much more "wasteful" , it produce more output per module. if you can set it up using the same amount of legendary quality module, you will have a better return on investement over time per module. The number of ship or asteroid in input isn't relevant for me.But if you go this route, then space casino wasn't even the fastest method, for many items setting up a recycling loop is faster, it only falls short because you don't need a continous production of centrifuge or nuclear reactor, but if you don't want to wait at all nor anticipate the moment where you will need quality, then by all means use a faster method than space casino would be my advice !

It's still paradoxical imo that you say you don't want to have "legendary just at the end when the game is over because that's why Factorio is better than Satisfactory" , (sic) but you still explain what you miss in space casino as the stuff you would do "at the end of the game juste before it is over", ( to me) i don't see why you wouldn't just do early quality in Fulgora and let it stockpile materials when you do Vulcanus and Gleba, if you DO want to use quality before the "end game". But if you are reaching the end game and kept quality for that post game sink, you can still use space platform, that part is even removed from the game I feel.

NineNine wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 5:15 pm How is playing Factorio "grinding"? Are people physically moving things with the engineer late game? Are people sitting and watching the assemblers work late game? If there's any game where the word "grinding" makes no sense, it's Factorio.

Apparently the definition of grinding also include "AFK grinding" according to => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_(video_games) that's kinda new to me. but now if you just build 1 lab, or just 1 assembly of each type, you may feel like the game is forcing you to "grind afk", i remember a steam review about that x) , i suppose that can extend to when you have a capacity of production for 1 new platform say every 10 minutes and you need like 1000 platform running 1000 hours to turn all your base into legendary. I don't really think it's grinding, it's just being lazy and not willing to play the game x), you should instead increase your platform production capabilities, or refine your platform design, and keep doing it until the objective is achieved, or reduce the bloat in your base along the way so it doesn't take as much time x).

I feel then the game can be "hard" in that it's complex , and players can attempt something several time and not succeed, it's not that easy to make a good platform, or rather it's very easy to improve one, and if you try and you spend a lot of time making improvements here and there and again, but at the end, the platform you made isn't able to achieve the rate or the objective you wanted, you can be disappointed, feel like your base is good enough, it's just the game that is out of scale, that the task is impossible or super tedious. I feel it's often time a question of methods and expectations, you can also easily spoil yourself some good moment if you don't learn by yourself, but not everyone has all the time in the world to solve the problems. Thus player can end up "grinding" even if it's not a "grinding game" . Like it's all honorable to you if you don't pick up blueprints from the internet just because "that's meta", and you do it all by yourself, but then yeah you might end up "grinding unecessarily", like you hit the mob with the wrong weapons the whole game. Devs have to balance "for everyone" including people that share blueprint and tricks, that can make the gama harder for those that don't too, creating that feeling of grind instead of smooth sail which really it should be x) And quality itself is something that completionist wants "more accessible" and other people would want "less accessible", with more levels and "more grind" would say the other group typically if there was 10 level of qualities instead of 5 x).

mmmPI I get your point that resources are infinite. But the real bottleneck is UPS, especially for multiplayer. So in reality, asteroids have a finite yield. But the much bigger question is: what is gained?

Sure, your way works. Many other ways work as well. You can enjoy your way, and no one is talking about adding a hard chest limit for Fulgora, because it's to OP right? Why can't I play the way that I find interesting? What is gained from this change?

Another point no one has mentioned: it feels like FOMO content. People who had the time played with it, enjoyed it, and then moved on when they got bored. I never built a space casino. Now I can only watch it on YouTube or discuss it with people who did. People who bought the game the same way I did had access to more content because I didn't know I was participating in a FOMO event called "space casinos." I know it exists, I know it is fun, but I can't have it because I'm too late.

Rinin wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 6:58 pm mmmPI I get your point that resources are infinite. But the real bottleneck is UPS, especially for multiplayer. So in reality, asteroids have a finite yield. But the much bigger question is: what is gained?

Sure, your way works. Many other ways work as well. You can enjoy your way, and no one is talking about adding a hard chest limit for Fulgora, because it's to OP right? Why can't I play the way that I find interesting? What is gained from this change?

Another point no one has mentioned: it feels like FOMO content. People who had the time played with it, enjoyed it, and then moved on when they got bored. I never built a space casino. Now I can only watch it on YouTube or discuss it with people who did. People who bought the game the same way I did had access to more content because I didn't know I was participating in a FOMO event called "space casinos." I know it exists, I know it is fun, but I can't have it because I'm too late.

The devs aren't going to rip the functionality out of the game executable: they're just going to tweak the Space Age mod file. If you know space casinos are fun and want to have them, then you can get the mod that will re-allow quality modules in reprocessing recipes. Or edit the mod file yourself; I expect it to be a relatively trivial matter to do so.

(and even if they were ripping it out for 2.1.x, you could always keep a 2.0.x install around to play with space casinos)

What is gained from the change? Balancing the game means that players won't get their experience soured if they run into the degenerate gameplay it causes. Players who like solving the puzzle will have a better puzzle to solve.

And to pre-empt "but why not make those people use a mod instead mf me" or "just don't use it", look at the actual options:

• Option 1: people who are interested in overpowered factory pieces can download interesting mods they hear about or find while browsing
• Option 2: people who are experiencing the game -- some even for the first time -- have to somehow know the game is busted and how, and guess what personal rules to adopt to fix it, or somehow know about the one mod made by someone who does have the knowledge and experience to fix the game that has made one

I really, strongly think option 2 is very unreasonable: by default games should seek to provide better balanced gameplay tuned by people who actually know the game, and leave the OP stuff to be added separately. Especially for something like Factorio that makes it fairly easy for people to find and add mods to their game.

Rinin wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 6:58 pm mmmPI I get your point that resources are infinite. But the real bottleneck is UPS, especially for multiplayer. So in reality, asteroids have a finite yield. But the much bigger question is: what is gained?

Sure, your way works. Many other ways work as well. You can enjoy your way, and no one is talking about adding a hard chest limit for Fulgora, because it's to OP right? Why can't I play the way that I find interesting? What is gained from this change?

Another point no one has mentioned: it feels like FOMO content. People who had the time played with it, enjoyed it, and then moved on when they got bored. I never built a space casino. Now I can only watch it on YouTube or discuss it with people who did. People who bought the game the same way I did had access to more content because I didn't know I was participating in a FOMO event called "space casinos." I know it exists, I know it is fun, but I can't have it because I'm too late.

I'm not sure what is gained, if it was me i would not have touched it, now the way it was changed is preserving what i found the most interesting i think, so overall i don't mind the change, i don't like it, but i feel my personnal way of using it which was rarely, and in some particular game, or as a design exercice outside a real game isn't impacted really. I can understand why people would dislike the change though. I feel it's easy enough to mod or use an archive version for me to not have FOMO. I didn't know what it was i had to google it. And if i had it, i would try to resist the irrationnal fear, rather than indulge in what that fear makes me think i should do x) but it's much easier said than done i know. I feel it's typically a good concept for a modded playthru where you want to focus on something else, weirdly enough, this way you take the "shortcut" that was removed "that game only" because you have mods that adds something to do with that legendary content, for which the un-banished space platform is now a proper tool, and not a end in itself , why not ? I understand it's not what you say, it's how i feel, it's different x)

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 7:24 pm Balancing the game means that players won't get their experience soured if they run into the degenerate gameplay it causes.

I thought balancing was about the difficult exercise of finding the unique arbitrary setting that should please everyone and their different preferences at the same time but i see you went for a loaded definition, and i think it's not enough, i think you meant something like if the treacherous and evilish space casino would come to viciously impose itself in their game to corrupt their souls forever. Let's use the appropriate vehemence and emphase to properly depicts all the harm those machines have caused already.Hopefully it will be retro-active and their experience will be un-soured.

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 7:24 pm Option 2: people who are experiencing the game -- some even for the first time --

Would obviously make a space casino right away like every one of us did in our first playthrough because it was too good and too obvious to pass on, and would keep doing it all the time because after all what's the point of trying something else than the best method in every aspect that you just happen to have found the first time. ( or the second ). Why would anyone would ever make recycling loop really ? Who does that anyway x) Currently space casino are so busted ......

mmmPI wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 6:33 pm

NineNine wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 5:15 pm How is playing Factorio "grinding"? Are people physically moving things with the engineer late game? Are people sitting and watching the assemblers work late game? If there's any game where the word "grinding" makes no sense, it's Factorio.

Apparently the definition of grinding also include "AFK grinding" according to => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_(video_games) that's kinda new to me. but now if you just build 1 lab, or just 1 assembly of each type, you may feel like the game is forcing you to "grind afk", i remember a steam review about that x) , i suppose that can extend to when you have a capacity of production for 1 new platform say every 10 minutes and you need like 1000 platform running 1000 hours to turn all your base into legendary. I don't really think it's grinding, it's just being lazy and not willing to play the game x), you should instead increase your platform production capabilities, or refine your platform design, and keep doing it until the objective is achieved, or reduce the bloat in your base along the way so it doesn't take as much time x).

I imagine you're right. I don't know what else "grinding" would mean in relation to Factorio. Personally, I don't understand why somebody would take time to play a game, but then not want to put forth the effort to conquer whatever the challenge is (in this case, maybe building up big enough so you don't have to wait for something to finish).

mmmPI wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 6:33 pm I feel it's often time a question of methods and expectations, you can also easily spoil yourself some good moment if you don't learn by yourself, but not everyone has all the time in the world to solve the problems. Thus player can end up "grinding" even if it's not a "grinding game" .

I think it's the same thing as when people complain about Gleba being "too hard". Gleba (spoilage, etc), like Quality, is a different way of playing Factorio, with constraints put on by the game developers. Some people just don't like or want new challenges, for whatever reason.

I don't like to nerf the game. I enjoy the quality challenge, which I see as having to multiply the production of my current factory by 10 to get everything built Legendary. That's like playing a whole new game, with all new challenges that happen because of the new scale that you have to build at. I enjoy the challenges. That's why I play Factorio, and that's why I bought Space Age and I play Space Exploration, and K2, etc. etc. If you don't want more challenges, there are tons of ways to make the game easier, or play different versions of it that don't have in the parts that you don't like.

But ultimately, Factorio is a creative work made by Wube, so I'd like to respect whatever they want to turn Factorio into. If they want to take out a way to nerf the game, I think that makes their game better. It's just a matter of integrity on their part, that they obviously want to create a great piece of software that will be enjoyed by a lot of people for a long time. To intentionally leave a known nerf in the game really would just cheapen it.

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 2:57 am I'm saying the whole thing cleanly separates into two distinct parts: "how I get the basic resources" and "how I improve the quality". The space casino isn't interesting (in the sense of having a variety of builds) for improving quality; it's interesting as a way to get resources.

But the space casino is overpowered as a way to improve quality, because it makes par for resource efficiency and then you get a gigantic multiplier on your efforts on top of that; e.g. the crushing recipe for iron multiples all your efforts by a factor between 43 to 400 depending on your productivity research level. (yes, forty-three and four hundred)

I suppose maybe it doesn't look overpowered in comparison to LDS with productivity research, but that's super overpowered too.

I bet if the people who enjoy making space factories were arguing "We need to better encourage building in space" rather than "We need casinos for making quality" they would get much more sympathetic responses from the people who feel it's overpowered for making quality. Maybe not agreement to keep casinos the way they are, but people certainly wouldn't react like they're talking nonsense.

You claim that "the crushing recipe for iron multiples all your efforts by a factor between 43 to 400". Relative to what, and by which metric? Are space casinos 400 times more space-efficient than the equivalent upcycler on land? UPS efficient? Comparing resource efficiency is pointless, because all resources are free in space.

I wonder how much the improved space logistics is going to help with the "reasons to build in space" bit; this whole disagreement could already be mostly moot and we just don't know it yet. I wonder if Wube has anything else planned.

If the latest FFF is to be believed and 2.1 is releasing next week, it doesn't seem like they have anything else planned, unfortunately.

mmmPI wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 10:58 am There are a bunch of methods that are viable to get quality materials, they don't all require the same investment in thoughts nor in game ressources and they do not yield the same output with the same consistancy and speed. Amongst those methods, upcycling asteroids using reyclers on space platforms, or upcycling ore on planets directly after the mines are just 2 different forms that are still available in 2.1 it would appear to me. The first one require much less effort to scale, just duplicate platforms , that hasn't changed, you need to duplicate more platforms, but that doesn't weight much in the equation for me, it's still the "infinitly scalable method". Whereas upcycling ore on planet , you need to pay attention to ressource locations, you need to extend bot network or go there and build with your character. Saying "they'll just do it on land where resources are far more abundant" isn't convincing to me. Even if you consider late game productivity bonus for mining and a patch last forever, ressources are infinite both in space and on planets then but "you still have to expand" on a planet. Whereas if you just duplicate platforms, it's a nice smooth exponential series, the output of legendary materiel, that is unrelated to your ability to explore the map, fight biters, expand defense and build outpost. If you play long term, eventually the math pays off, you just sit and duplicate more and more platforms with no scaling cost.

"Just build more platforms" works great in theory, but in practice, it'll gut your UPS. If removing space casinos just results in having to build more platforms to drain UPS, as you said, isn't that even more reason to keep them in the game?

NineNine wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 9:12 pm I imagine you're right. I don't know what else "grinding" would mean in relation to Factorio. Personally, I don't understand why somebody would take time to play a game, but then not want to put forth the effort to conquer whatever the challenge is (in this case, maybe building up big enough so you don't have to wait for something to finish).

The issue is that common quality infrastructure becomes worthless when you get access to legendary quality. So you have two options:
1. Build more common infrastructure so you can reach the goal of legendary quality quicker, which will increase the time you have to spend tearing it all down later and has diminishing returns;
2. AFK.
Now you probably should be doing actual things and not AFKing if all you have, say, one rocket silo sending building materials up to build quality grinding plaforms, but what if you already have 20? 40? 100? There's a point where it's better to just spare yourself the effort and wait. It's why you don't build a 1000SPM factory for red and green science before unlocking blue science.

It's just a matter of integrity on their part, that they obviously want to create a great piece of software that will be enjoyed by a lot of people for a long time.

It gets really hard to assume good will on Wube's part when they ignore any all and feedback provided. Where's the integrity in that?

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 7:24 pm The devs aren't going to rip the functionality out of the game executable: they're just going to tweak the Space Age mod file. If you know space casinos are fun and want to have them, then you can get the mod that will re-allow quality modules in reprocessing recipes. Or edit the mod file yourself; I expect it to be a relatively trivial matter to do so.

What about the new achievements for 2.1? Are we supposed to just cheat those in?

What is gained from the change? Balancing the game means that players won't get their experience soured if they run into the degenerate gameplay it causes. Players who like solving the puzzle will have a better puzzle to solve.

And to pre-empt "but why not make those people use a mod instead mf me" or "just don't use it", look at the actual options:

• Option 1: people who are interested in overpowered factory pieces can download interesting mods they hear about or find while browsing
• Option 2: people who are experiencing the game -- some even for the first time -- have to somehow know the game is busted and how, and guess what personal rules to adopt to fix it, or somehow know about the one mod made by someone who does have the knowledge and experience to fix the game that has made one

I really, strongly think option 2 is very unreasonable: by default games should seek to provide better balanced gameplay tuned by people who actually know the game, and leave the OP stuff to be added separately. Especially for something like Factorio that makes it fairly easy for people to find and add mods to their game.

The argument against "degenerate gameplay" falls flat when things like surrounding biter bases with pipes to trivialize their challenge are left in the game. Space casinos are something that a new player is fairly unlikely to run into, and by the time they have legendary quality unlocked, they'll be pretty close to beating Space Age anyway. Worst case scenario, it's going to ruin a very small parcel of their gameplay - if it even ruins anything at all. Maybe they'll find building space casinos fun!

Circling back since the new FFF is out and while it was great I still do not see Quality being addressed in some way from a quick read through.

The arguments that Casinos are overpowered are valid. The arguments that if anything should go it was the LDS & PU shuffles are valid. The argument that Casinos/Upcycling/Washing/Shuffles are boring/unrewarding are subjective but valid. The arguments that WUBE have improved/hurt the game by removing Casinos are valid. But what isn't really being argued is whether Quality is fun, and in my opinion it really isn't in it's current state.

A full rework of Quality should be something WUBE consider seriously I think, even if it was in the far future of 2.2, I believe it just isn't in a serviceable state for most people and that's what all this arguing points toward really. Quality should be a logistics centered problem, that's reasonably rewarding to interact with at all tiers, that isn't RNG based, that's very resource intensive, that isn't copy-paste the same thing over and over again. At least from my reading of what everyone seems to want from it, myself included.

If you think what we currently have fulfills what you need from it currently, your argument is valid. But I'd say based on the amounts of disagreement on all sides there really should be more searching for underlying problems rather than small balance changes. A small balance change doesn't generate this amount of push-back, this is indicative of a bigger issue.

ivan_349876 wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 10:11 pm "Just build more platforms" works great in theory, but in practice, it'll gut your UPS. If removing space casinos just results in having to build more platforms to drain UPS, as you said, isn't that even more reason to keep them in the game?

I shall add again apparently, that there are other methods like : do early quality in Fulgora and let it stockpile materials when you do Vulcanus and Gleba, so the "If removing space casinos just results in having to build more platforms" is not an assumption i can follow.

I thought i already answered that here :

mmmPI wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 6:06 pm In no way it means you NEED to launch 10x times more ship, you could, but you could just have 10 times more asteroid grabbers on a ship with the same amount of quality module, recycling is much faster than reprocessing, even though it more wasteful, and you can use more module in a recycler than in a crusher. It's not about the amount material that gets in vs the amount that comes out and wether or not the process is "wastefull", the real deal is about how much material is being converted per time per module. If you convert 10 normal chunk into 5 legendary chunk every minutes using 2 modules, you are not necessarily doing better than someone who convert 100 normal chunk into 12 legendary chunk every minutes also using 2 module. You could almost "forget" the input, one module yield 2.5 legendary chunk in the first case, and 6 in the second.

Even though the second process is much more "wasteful" , it produce more output per module. if you can set it up using the same amount of legendary quality module, you will have a better return on investement over time per module. The number of ship or asteroid in input isn't relevant for me.

==>even if you want to stick with space platforms i feel you don't build more platforms, you leave "less" of the chunks crashing onto the platform or going to waste, you pick up a higher % with the asteroid grabbers, to make up for the fact that the process is wasteful before you have enough research to swap. It's not magic for UPS, it's still going to cost more obviously, because the asteroid collector are costly, but they are not the whole cost of the platform either. And space platforms ressources were never the UPS efficient method, it's easily scalable, but even with an "optimised platform" it's not competitive for UPS, even recycler loops aren't the best for UPS but rather it appears to me that people pushing very large megabase of millions of science per minutes are using ore recycling, so here again i would say, use the proper tool for the proper job x)

ivan_349876 wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 10:11 pm

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 2:57 am I'm saying the whole thing cleanly separates into two distinct parts: "how I get the basic resources" and "how I improve the quality". The space casino isn't interesting (in the sense of having a variety of builds) for improving quality; it's interesting as a way to get resources.

But the space casino is overpowered as a way to improve quality, because it makes par for resource efficiency and then you get a gigantic multiplier on your efforts on top of that; e.g. the crushing recipe for iron multiples all your efforts by a factor between 43 to 400 depending on your productivity research level. (yes, forty-three and four hundred)

I suppose maybe it doesn't look overpowered in comparison to LDS with productivity research, but that's super overpowered too.

I bet if the people who enjoy making space factories were arguing "We need to better encourage building in space" rather than "We need casinos for making quality" they would get much more sympathetic responses from the people who feel it's overpowered for making quality. Maybe not agreement to keep casinos the way they are, but people certainly wouldn't react like they're talking nonsense.

You claim that "the crushing recipe for iron multiples all your efforts by a factor between 43 to 400". Relative to what, and by which metric? Are space casinos 400 times more space-efficient than the equivalent upcycler on land? UPS efficient? Comparing resource efficiency is pointless, because all resources are free in space.

With all the productivity research, crushing asteroids averages 400 iron ore each. Smelting them turns that 600 into iron plates. This number is a multiplicative factor of metrics like "number of legendary iron plates per minute", since it's the conversion rate between "legendary metallic asteroids" and legendary iron plates".

Asteroid reprocessing loops are only par for resource efficiency; 47.7 common to 1 legendary is better than what you can get with assembler 3's, but worse than what you can get with the space age crafting buildings.

Goodbye, my "One-armed bandit"... I will miss you.

DmitriiP wrote: Sat Jun 20, 2026 9:53 am
Goodbye, my "One-armed bandit"... I will miss you.

I imagine someone at wube sitting there and pondering your screenshot
"No, this cannot do. It has too much soul. Too much fettuccine. It has to go. He should be building an LDS shuffling setup instead and grinding coal on Vulcanus."

Space casino is not completely dead, it is just changed.

If volume of byproducts is irrelevant, you can use normal crushing recipes with quality instead, probably on oxide chunks.
If minimizing amount of byproducts is important, just do raw chunk recycling on the first tiers.

Main implication as I get it is that advanced asteroid crushing recipes are less accessible, because they waste chunks faster.
For metallic/copper it does not matter much, same for oxide/calcite.

Main problem is the plastic through sulfur and coal synthesis.
So instead of wasting asteroids on sulfur, you can either do legendary biosulfur on gleba or just upcycle the coal itself into legendary through grenades.
Or just do LDS upcycle.

emty wrote: Sat Jun 20, 2026 5:42 pm Space casino is not completely dead, it is just changed.

It's dead for a long long time.
You're able to raise it as undead after this long time, if you sacrifice 191.7 mio research to get asteroid productivity to 300%.
But you don't get the soul back.

And it's incontinent and you have to get rid of some rather unpleasant leftovers.

TCJM wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 10:25 pm If you think what we currently have fulfills what you need from it currently, your argument is valid. But I'd say based on the amounts of disagreement on all sides there really should be more searching for underlying problems rather than small balance changes. A small balance change doesn't generate this amount of push-back, this is indicative of a bigger issue.

So when you use circular reasoning, you run the risk that you engage with paradoxes. They create a scenario where it becomes very difficult to reason with something because you can always justify an argument.

It's a bit worse than being deliberately dishonest because people can tell if you lie and use evidence based arguments to tell what is what. Instead you'll have an indefinite number of ways to say "it's true" even if something in the environment will make it false of practically undesirable.

A couple trivial examples of paradoxes can be found investigating gun range and mining quality ores early. Gun range lets you affect a wider volume of area without increasing your damage. So you end up putting out about the same amount of energy.

Quality ores make you move -15% as fast, so you make ores that you potentially don't use (at some level of quality), slowly. You get your own dragon hoard of glowing green stuff, instead of more science, which tends to rob you of a psychological sense of control.

I think some of the things you're saying are correct but the balance is intentional because I haven't run into two paradoxes, actually I'm thinking of collecting them as a hobby. I also think that the paradoxes are bound to make people not like the system on an instinctive level because logical inconsistency usually indicates truly cursed things.

As for your other arguments here, I think you should write them down and review them for contradictions. I am pretty convinced that asteroid rerolling was being mistaken for the ships it was being built on, due to issues related with principles of explosion. Since if you "actually try it" you realize pretty quickly the workflow can be implemented as a long line of rerollers w/out filters. I think there's something being taken out that distorts the picture of space mining and late game quality by giving the impression there's a total solution to problems, instead of a solution which is only conditionally effective.

coffee-factorio wrote: Sat Jun 20, 2026 8:22 pm I think some of the things you're saying are correct but the balance is intentional because I haven't run into two paradoxes, actually I'm thinking of collecting them as a hobby. I also think that the paradoxes are bound to make people not like the system on an instinctive level because logical inconsistency usually indicates truly cursed things.

As for your other arguments here, I think you should write them down and review them for contradictions. I am pretty convinced that asteroid rerolling was being mistaken for the ships it was being built on, due to issues related with principles of explosion. Since if you "actually try it" you realize pretty quickly the workflow can be implemented as a long line of rerollers w/out filters. I think there's something being taken out that distorts the picture of space mining and late game quality by giving the impression there's a total solution to problems, instead of a solution which is only conditionally effective.

So, just to clarify from my own previous posts, I have no issue with Casinos being nerfed, and nerfed heavily (I am aware they are not dead, just locked behind Asteroid Productivity Research, which is fine). My main issue comes from Quality itself as a feature in its current state.

Casinos in my own opinion are a symptom and not a solution. Quality allows players to access a tier of automation that was previously unreachable, and for good reason as it allows scaling that is beyond what I would term 'standard scaling' from the perspective of a base game point of view. I believe that definitely opens up the can of worms of "what constitutes a viable reward?" in this automation game.

My main gripe is not with Uncommon or Rare (which are honestly great and require zero changes imho), it is with Epic and/or Legendary. 'If I have an option by default, I should be able to utilize it reasonably' is essentially my argument. This pertains to Epic or Legendary Science specifically for me in particular.

I have done a full 'non-cheese' build of all Legendary Science bar Promethium Science, and it was atrociously poor fun for me. I wanted to get to a point where the resource sink was reasonable for an average player, logistics and time be damned, and to be brutally honest for 80% of the time I hated what I was doing since it was just copy-paste upcycler BPs. Iron was fine, steel was fairly attainable, copper was a slog, and carbon fiber, tungsten, holmium, lithium and stone were such unbelievable nightmares I took several day/week-long breaks between most of them.

To be even more clear, if Quality Science was not a thing I would have no issue. It is only the fact that this is an allowed mechanic that I have an issue with Quality. Rewards for buildings? Achievable and more or less negligible in terms of automation since you need so few of them (no need for Casinos for sure here). Quality for base resources? Achievable and basically negligible (if you are only using them for buildings). It is simply the fact that the rewards for Legendary Science are so unrewarding that I am irritated and am of the belief Quality needs a full rework. Nothing should be a 1,000.00% (1*0.2*0.2*0.2*0.2 = 0.0016) resource sink for a 500.00% gain within the confines of an automation game.

If you feel Legendary Science should not be rewarding, I have no issue with your point of view, but from my own point of view in a game as refined as Factorio where automation is key and rewards are plentiful, this seems like a big swing-and-a-miss rather than a justifiable mechanic. 'Oh, Legendary Science is not meant to be worthwhile' just doesn't cut it for me unfortunately and if I'm in the minority on that then that is fine. But it feels like a hugely unrefined area in an otherwise very refined experience for me.

TCJM wrote: Sun Jun 21, 2026 12:59 am
To be even more clear, if Quality Science was not a thing I would have no issue. It is only the fact that this is an allowed mechanic that I have an issue with Quality. Rewards for buildings? Achievable and more or less negligible in terms of automation since you need so few of them (no need for Casinos for sure here). Quality for base resources? Achievable and basically negligible (if you are only using them for buildings). It is simply the fact that the rewards for Legendary Science are so unrewarding that I am irritated and am of the belief Quality needs a full rework. Nothing should be a 1,000.00% (1*0.2*0.2*0.2*0.2 = 0.0016) resource sink for a 500.00% gain within the confines of an automation game.

If you feel Legendary Science should not be rewarding, I have no issue with your point of view, but from my own point of view, in a game as refined as Factorio where automation is key and rewards are plentiful, this seems like a big swing-and-a-miss rather than a justifiable mechanic. 'Oh, Legendary Science is not meant to be worthwhile' just doesn't cut it for me unfortunately, and if I'm in the minority on that then that is fine. But it feels like a hugely unrefined area in an otherwise very refined experience for me.

It's less that I feel like it shouldn't be rewarding. It's more that I feel like it's intended for the thing to be challenging. As for whether or not it is, it's a feature which drains more resources than benefits it provides except when optimized by other technologies. So it's part of "Coffee Paradox Circus", because unless I'm mistaken it's going to provide contradictory logic depending on when (n+u+r+e+l)/cost >= 1 (and that's before we get into discussions about how big a build and so forth, which add even more possibilities to analyze). I think it is hostile to analysis.

As for whether or not what is objectively handing someone the analytical equivalent of television static is a great idea. It's an artistic choice. But I'm not sure you can balance this system to make it seem like it isn't television static. It's very satisfying to get a result but it's an absolute nightmare to do it. I don't think you're in a minority, I think it would in fact be a sign of concern if someone liked this system without qualification.

And that's kind of pathological to how the thing operates when you really look at it.

TCJM wrote: Sun Jun 21, 2026 12:59 am So, just to clarify from my own previous posts, I have no issue with Casinos being nerfed, and nerfed heavily (I am aware they are not dead, just locked behind Asteroid Productivity Research, which is fine). My main issue comes from Quality itself as a feature in its current state.

Casinos in my own opinion are a symptom and not a solution. Quality allows players to access a tier of automation that was previously unreachable, and for good reason as it allows scaling that is beyond what I would term 'standard scaling' from the perspective of a base game point of view. I believe that definitely opens up the can of worms of "what constitutes a viable reward?" in this automation game.

My main gripe is not with Uncommon or Rare (which are honestly great and require zero changes imho), it is with Epic and/or Legendary. 'If I have an option by default, I should be able to utilize it reasonably' is essentially my argument. This pertains to Epic or Legendary Science specifically for me in particular.

I have done a full 'non-cheese' build of all Legendary Science bar Promethium Science, and it was atrociously poor fun for me. I wanted to get to a point where the resource sink was reasonable for an average player, logistics and time be damned, and to be brutally honest for 80% of the time I hated what I was doing since it was just copy-paste upcycler BPs. Iron was fine, steel was fairly attainable, copper was a slog, and carbon fiber, tungsten, holmium, lithium and stone were such unbelievable nightmares I took several day/week-long breaks between most of them.

To be even more clear, if Quality Science was not a thing I would have no issue. It is only the fact that this is an allowed mechanic that I have an issue with Quality. Rewards for buildings? Achievable and more or less negligible in terms of automation since you need so few of them (no need for Casinos for sure here). Quality for base resources? Achievable and basically negligible (if you are only using them for buildings). It is simply the fact that the rewards for Legendary Science are so unrewarding that I am irritated and am of the belief Quality needs a full rework. Nothing should be a 1,000.00% (1*0.2*0.2*0.2*0.2 = 0.0016) resource sink for a 500.00% gain within the confines of an automation game.

If you feel Legendary Science should not be rewarding, I have no issue with your point of view, but from my own point of view in a game as refined as Factorio where automation is key and rewards are plentiful, this seems like a big swing-and-a-miss rather than a justifiable mechanic. 'Oh, Legendary Science is not meant to be worthwhile' just doesn't cut it for me unfortunately and if I'm in the minority on that then that is fine. But it feels like a hugely unrefined area in an otherwise very refined experience for me.

I did legendary science too baring agriculture and promethium. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have done metallurgic because that was just as unfun as your description. Standard upcyclers are so boring and unproductive so it's more fun to cheese it. The more yield-optimized approach to quality science would be uncommon / rare, which becomes efficient once you get enough mining productivity.

In retrospect, early access to space casino removed the fun of expansion. I liked killing biters but I never had to kill much in my game, since I never had to expand on (or mine much of) Nauvis after building my biolabs. Everything was done on Vulcanus where bug hunting stoped being fun with a handheld railgun.

Tertius wrote: Sat Jun 20, 2026 6:19 pm

emty wrote: Sat Jun 20, 2026 5:42 pm Space casino is not completely dead, it is just changed.

It's dead for a long long time.

I feel this is subjective, it has to be made differently or at a different moment, for some usage it will no longer works, or require more investment, and it's more of an individual perspective, a subjective one, to then call it "dead" "undead" "different" "nerfed". You don't necessarily have to reach 300% productivity or spend 190M research to have a working "quality producting platform", even with 250% you can still use the platform , it's slower and less effective, yet it works, it's not like LDS shuffle where you reach a cap where "plastic becomes catalyst" and the design can 'fundamentally change' past the point where it's a 1=>1 ratio, ( or blue circuits upcycling for instance). Instead for quality it's a continuum of increasing rate of return that can apply on the same platform design. At very late stage, the rate of return is 'virtually unchanged", but if you only have 100% productivity ,or 150% or 200% or 250%, the machine can still be there on your map slowly doing its work. It can still be your only source of quality material for a while, and you should probably make it so it keeps the "uncommon" at first and not the legendary only, so you can turn your platform uncommon where it matters , and then rare, and epic. I feel it's still a choice for the player that is left open , but the reasons for which you'd choose to make a space casino are narrowed down because its effectivity has been reduced and slowed.

h.q.droid wrote: Sun Jun 21, 2026 3:39 am

TCJM wrote: Sun Jun 21, 2026 12:59 am My main gripe is not with Uncommon or Rare (which are honestly great and require zero changes imho), it is with Epic and/or Legendary. 'If I have an option by default, I should be able to utilize it reasonably' is essentially my argument. This pertains to Epic or Legendary Science specifically for me in particular.

I did legendary science too baring agriculture and promethium. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have done metallurgic because that was just as unfun as your description

I feel you ARE able to use epic and legendary reasonnably, space casino were never "mandadory" , they were mostly convenient for speedrunners or if you play very fast and you don't have the option to have the materials upgrade in quality over the course of a "regular" game lengh, you reach that point of the "late game" where "all you have left to do is quality" so you design a system whose sole purpose is to create quality from raw material. But in many other game you don't HAVE TO play like that, you can start quality earlier as mentionned on Fulgora and recycle everything that piles up, like a regular fulgora game, you will have a lot of "epic" for sure by the time you unlock legendary or even reach Aquilo, you will definitly be able to use them at least on Aquilo, i did that for robots in my first playthru because it took me time to make sure Gleba was "safe to be left unattended", i had plenty epic that i could use to counter the fact that they are less effective there.

Or you can use recycling loops for certains items, it always was and will be a proper method to achieve "epic" or "legendary" in a significant, or useful way, to make the mech armor, or thrusters or some modules or beacons. I used that mainly to force the "big mining drill" to be the best quality level available, because i feel unlike some other pieces like accumulators i have no use for the lower tier. Accumulators are very different because you need them for science, so here it's a place where you can use yet another method to reach some epic and legendary => use quality module in the EM plant that makes accumulators. Those of no quality => goes into science, uncommon, you can ship on Nauvis if you make a solar field there, or recycle, rare i keep for Fulgora because of space constraint, and all the epic and legendary that will pile over the course of the game, i can use them for space platform, where the constraint is the worst.

Also on my list of advice, and sorry if this sounds like i'm belittling or something, i have posted one of your design i liked h.q.droid that i found smart and creative, an inspiring design exercise, but here i think you maybe have made a mistake in not doing the Agricultural science as one of your choice for quality science, because it is very unique and fun (in my subjective opinion) but most importantly, because objectively, agricultural science spoils, and isn't required at all time, thus creating for that particular science alone a window of usability for quality = "to hold on", when you don't need the science, you can turn it into higher quality instead of letting it go to waste, this will provide in the worst case quality spoilage for modules, in the best case, a way to make the best out of the idle time of Gleba. It's unrelated to space casino directly, but if you consider "what's left" i feel there are methods that may be overlooked , some design exercice unthought yet

I did the blue science on Gleba once, as legendary, because why not, i wanted my robots to be like legendary bees, i wouldn't consider it reasonnable , but it made me happy