Friday Facts #442 - Flip, Flow, and Fresh Paint

[nixCorvus]

Since space casinos are now banned, I really hope that one of the upcoming Friday Facts will mention that we can use higher-quality ingredients for low-quality recipes. Imho its the next logical step.
That would have a major impact on the usefulness of quality modules throughout the entire production chain. It feels somehow wrong that you can’t produce a simple product even though you have plenty of higher-quality ingredients but not enough of the lower-quality ones. The current mechanics (2.0) mean that quality modules are used almost exclusively at the end of the production chain in the form of recycling loops. Otherwise, you inevitably end up with high-quality intermediate products of specific types that you can’t process further, since consumption ratios never match up perfectly. This leads to players simply avoiding the use of quality modules throughout the entire production chain (exept the end of it) so they don’t have to dispose masses of legendary items just to produce enough lower-quality ones.

[Gundyr]

Disabling quality modules for asteroid processing is a dubious idea. It would be better to upgrade other methods of obtaining quality items to the level of a space casino. This won't change my gameplay much, as I'll continue to play with the mod that increases the quality percentage in modules. My condolences to those who play without mods.

[radical_larry]

The time before game patches was quite magical. Whatever you printed on that disc was what everyone got. Discovering 'unintended' unbalanced interactions in the game was really fun, because you get to play around with it when you find it.
Space casinos are exactly that. They don't break the game, they're not a bug, everything works as intended but up to now they are probably the 'best' way to get legendary base materials, by most metrics.
Maybe nowadays people are just mad they got spoilered on finding such a thing by themselves? They want whatever they found by themselves to be the best design, but now that they've seen a better design, they can't unsee it and want it removed?

I think the space casino should stay and the internet be nerfed instead.

[Leex2k]

This perfectly encapsulates my dissatisfaction with people's answers. I tried to be charitable (maybe there's something I missed), but at the end of the day you just don't care about other people. "Just play the game the way you want" is hypocritical because people WERE playing the game the way they wanted.

This change makes the game better for no-one and worse for some people. There's no good reason to be happy about this.

Thank you for telling me how good you are, it's a good insight.

You are being surprisingly dramatic.
I mean, I guess there could be a cabal of elitist grinches that have schemed up a way to ruin the fun of countless innocent, good-natured fun-havers. All for their own mean spirited, fun-hating pleasure.


Or, a balance issue was considered and a decision was made that asteroid reprocessing had too high of an output for too simple a setup. It was deemed too contrary to the fundamental design philosophy, which has more or less remained constant throughout the existence of this game's development. It is, to me at least, a pretty unsurprising outcome.

This is perfectly reflected in the fact that you will still be able be to replicate the space casino dynamic moving forward. You will still be able to recycle asteroids effortlessly until they turn into the exact quality you want, no hassle. The effort and footprint will be pretty much the same. Only, now the output - which was too high - has been brought down to baseline recycling where this method belongs.
You should still be able to extract basically the exact same amount of fun from developing this solution, as it works close to the same. The output will simply no longer utterly outshine every other way of approaching the challenge of quality. And if your fun was solely predicated on output... well, I don't know what to tell you, except I guess its obvious then why you have become so dramatic about it.

The dynamic can still be replicated with some simple machine replacements. The output will just be in line with the other related methodologies. It's a balance consideration. It makes good sense.

And again, the in-game mod menu literally has a tag with the subtitle "Play it your way.". If you for any reason feel tedium or boredom with the baseline balance, I REALLY don't think it's because the devs or anyone else is conspiring to prevent you from tuning your experience however you want.

[Leex2k]

The time before game patches was quite magical. Whatever you printed on that disc was what everyone got. Discovering 'unintended' unbalanced interactions in the game was really fun, because you get to play around with it when you find it.
Space casinos are exactly that. They don't break the game, they're not a bug, everything works as intended but up to now they are probably the 'best' way to get legendary base materials, by most metrics.
Maybe nowadays people are just mad they got spoilered on finding such a thing by themselves? They want whatever they found by themselves to be the best design, but now that they've seen a better design, they can't unsee it and want it removed?

I think the space casino should stay and the internet be nerfed instead.

I have good news for you.

YourPick.jpg (83.53 KiB) Viewed 569 times

[GregoriusT]

The change determined to discontinue space casino designs won't stop people from building them, it will only change the way they are built.

While the upcycling via reprocessing might disappear, the big productivity bonus on asteroid crushing stays.

Upcycling the asteroids via recyclers and crushing them will be the new way.

Crushing metallic asteroids yield 14-20 output items plus productivity bonus, this way you will need up to 1/14 ~= 7%, so at least 93% less production buildings to produce the same amount of quality iron ores compared to ground-based upcycling.

Absolutely correct, the Asteroid Processing Productivity Research at 300% when applied to just crushing the Asteroids into Resources, will yield a LOT more quality resources per Building, than using the other Upcycling Methods like Vulcanus Iron Underground Pipe casting for Iron Plates for example.

The Problem with Space Casinos however is not the ridiculous per building Efficiency.

It is that it is "one solution to rule em all", because you can use it to get all the non-planet-specific resources at Legendary Quality, including Stone if you make a stop at Vulcanus to convert onboard Calcite.

You can do almost everything with a Space Casino, and not only that, but it also happens to be the most optimal way to do it at the same time, and it is extremely mobile as well, so you wont even need to launch Rockets, especially with the Platform to Platform Logistics we will have. And I did not even mention that Asteroids are free and abundant!

Space Casinos simply prevent other more creative solutions from popping up, which kindof breaks the puzzle aspect of the Game by having the ultimate Solution fix all your needs the moment you find out about it. (gotta love youtubers hyperfixating on space casinos instead of coming up with new ideas...)

Kinda wish they fixed it by just adding a per-recipe-output quality-improvement-ban, as opposed to a per-whole-recipe quality-module-ban, so Asteroid Crushing wouldn't yield higher quality Asteroids, while still yielding higher quality Iron Ore etc.

[Leex2k]

Kinda wish they fixed it by just adding a per-recipe-output quality-improvement-ban, as opposed to a per-whole-recipe quality-module-ban, so Asteroid Crushing wouldn't yield higher quality Asteroids, while still yielding higher quality Iron Ore etc.

That does seem like a more elegant solution. But would you then still allow q.modules in reprocessing, and which output would you then apply the quality chance? The 40 %'er, or either of the 20 % 'ers? Because a 40 % return rate is still way superior to a basic 25 % recycler in the context of recycling for quality.

And would you then also allow for Kovarex Enrichment? Because that would then also make getting quality U-235 much, much easier, to the point of triviality.

[quineotio]

Enjoy. Not just the ability -- my enjoyment matters too. What good game balance does is that
.....
and leaves me with gameplay I can enjoy rather than being forced to choose between bad options.
.....
the space casino is excessively better than other options, and causes gameplay to degenerate.

You're trolling at this point. No-one is forced to do it, and no-one who does it is complaining about it ruining their fun.

I mean, I guess there could be a cabal of elitist grinches that have schemed up a way to ruin the fun of countless innocent, good-natured fun-havers. All for their own mean spirited, fun-hating pleasure.

It seems that way. Consider who would be happy if Wube reversed their decision > people who build space casinos. Consider who would be upset > people who don't build space casinos but don't want other people to be able to.

So weird.

[radical_larry]

Space Casinos simply prevent other more creative solutions from popping up, which kindof breaks the puzzle aspect of the Game by having the ultimate Solution fix all your needs the moment you find out about it. (gotta love youtubers hyperfixating on space casinos instead of coming up with new ideas...)

Space casinos are the creative solution people came up with. This type of thinking is just an endless cycle of nerfing the most creative solution until no fun remains in a game.
If the devs want people to find new creative solutions, they need to change quality, not nerf the creative solutions to it.

[Hurkyl]

Enjoy. Not just the ability -- my enjoyment matters too. What good game balance does is that
.....
and leaves me with gameplay I can enjoy rather than being forced to choose between bad options.
.....
the space casino is excessively better than other options, and causes gameplay to degenerate.

You're trolling at this point. No-one is forced to do it, and no-one who does it is complaining about it ruining their fun.

Whelp, I tried to be charitable. but at the end of the day you just don't care about other people.

[GregoriusT]

Kinda wish they fixed it by just adding a per-recipe-output quality-improvement-ban, as opposed to a per-whole-recipe quality-module-ban, so Asteroid Crushing wouldn't yield higher quality Asteroids, while still yielding higher quality Iron Ore etc.

That does seem like a more elegant solution. But would you then still allow q.modules in reprocessing, and which output would you then apply the quality chance? The 40 %'er, or either of the 20 % 'ers? Because a 40 % return rate is still way superior to a basic 25 % recycler in the context of recycling for quality.

For Reprocessing the ban on Quality Modules makes perfect sense, since neither Output should be upgraded.

For Regular Processing, just the normal Output should have better quality, not the returned Asteroid.

And would you then also allow for Kovarex Enrichment? Because that would then also make getting quality U-235 much, much easier, to the point of triviality.

I dont feel like Uranium needs to be nerfed, since it is already a very niche resource to begin with.

The only viable Quality Stuff you get from Kovarex Processing is Train Fuel, because:
- Quality Uranium Reactor Fuel Cells dont have any benefits (not to mention you're at Fusion at this point)
- Quality RTGs are gotten via Spidertron upcycling (easiest way to get the required Fish).
- Quality Biolabs are best gotten via regular upcycling too.
- Quality Nukes are typically used manually, so they are a low production volume. (Common Nukes can be nice for Shattered Planet Runs thou)
- Quality Uranium Ammo needs 238 which is already flooding Bases if you do any serious Quality Uranium Mining.

[Tertius]

My criticism about the quality mechanic was "lack of direction", which means the player is left alone with the choice of how to approach quality, so he is utterly confused. The choice is so broad, it contains so many invalid approaches so you're unable to see valid ones. Killing the space casino seems killing one of the few directions visible to the player, so it even adds to the confusion. However I never felt space casino a valid direction to go. It just felt wrong. It's an exploit as far as I see it, and I refused to use it. Now it seems my view on the game has some counterpart on the dev's side.

There was more to be announced about quality, and may be there is more "direction" upcoming with quality, whatever it may be.

I'd like to see better distinction between feasible and not feasible approaches for upcycling. And if there are multiple good approaches in every stage of the game, and not just one single one (like the space casino) it would definitely be a good change. That's all about balance and choice between multiple options. But not so many you cannot decide on.

[FasterJump]

I love the changes, all of them. (And I think blue circuit shuffle is even stronger than LDS shuffle, as it allows to get 1 legendary green/red circuits per normal green/red circuit, or 30-40% legendary iron plate and 10-15% legendary copper plate per normal iron & copper).

What diagram software was used in the FFF?

[32583279]

After reading more of the discussion, I understand that there are players who genuinely dislike Space Casino.

In a way, it reminds me of the discussions around the Quality system itself. Some players dislike Quality because a Legendary Electric Furnace can be so efficient that it removes some of the challenges and interesting decisions that used to come with expanding a factory.

Legendary items also make lower quality tiers far less meaningful, as players will naturally prefer the highest quality version available.

If the concern is that a mechanic can make alternatives less relevant, then the existence of Legendary quality itself has a much larger impact than Space Casino ever did. Space Casino could never fully replace other quality production methods.

I also know that some players dislike electric inserters and prefer burner inserters because managing fuel is part of the gameplay they enjoy.

I can understand those viewpoints. While I personally use Quality and electric inserters, I do not expect or require other players to use them.

What I find interesting is that this FFF does not fully side with either group regarding Quality. Instead, it says:

"We have decided to make it possible to play Space Age without Quality..."

and gives players the choice of whether they want to use the Quality system at all.

Because of that, I don't understand why Space Casino is being removed outright. Given that players clearly have different opinions on it, why not at least provide some form of player choice, or explore some other solution, rather than removing it entirely?

[Nelyus]

I love everything said and unsaid in this FFF, and I think it makes a lot of sense.

I which for the possibility to disable quality modules via circuit, to better balance quality production during early game.

I low-key which for interrupt condition regarding the train composition to help decommission lower quality trains. But it probably isn’t that much of a problem.

The read form red/green wire is awesome. For setting I envisioned something like "Set recipe: [x] ; when value = [-1]", but I suppose we will have "set from red/green wire" and it is rather nice, already.

I also feel like space casino was OP as it was, and as such shadowed other solutions, and they will hopefully become more relevant.

[marrette]

So a little talk about space casino nerf.
To me this reminded of a post in the 2.0 FF about the jonny, the jimmy, and on last name.
basicly the one that whant the perfecly balance game, the one that don't care has long has it's fun, and the one that want the fastest and most efficient way to reach mega-base.
Of those 3 type the casino nerf only appeal to the one that want balance. Even to them it's not a aceptable change, quality is still far to be balance because of productivity recipe.
To the one who want to megabase quiclky it's a annoyance because it make reaching mega base building slower and more tedious.
To the one who want fun to play with it's a extremly bad change, because you deprive them of the most fun late game quality mecanic and of one of the few interesting platform build.

In terms of proportion this change make more people angry than it make people happy. A good exemple of this is the aparition of a mod to revert the change before it even happen (in the 24 h that follow the annoucement of the casino nerf).

I don't think forcing people to use a mod is more acceptable to tell people ignore a mecanic if it's doesn't feel balanced.


So lets try to compare the different quality method, there 6 big way to make legendary item.

The 1 first wich is the early game way is the upcicle the finish product. it's mostly use early and mid game for things like personal armor and personal equipement. ant later for space platform building.
It's the only early game way, the most tedious to expand to a large number of item. It'st fun it entirelly serve its purpose as the early game solution and doesn't collide with the 5 other methods.

The 2 method is asteroid casino its a late game solution and the funiest (for most people) of the late game solution. it's one of the best method to make lengendary of everithing but not the best.
the 3 method : recycling prod recipe like lsd and blue circuit is more poweful both in number of legendary from common material (1 common -> 1 lengendary). and cheaper/ easier to set up. (producing 100 legendary copper plate per second need less building and module with lds recicle that with space casino).
even if you combine space casino with LDS shuflle it doesn't beat pure prod recycle.
in term of pure performance asteroid recincling has the same performance than plate recling. It became better only thanks to the fact than asteroid get a few productivity boost while beeing transform to plate. Even this calculation is flawed because it consider 1asteroid == 1ore.
It's way easier to obtain a full stack belt of ore than it is to obtain a not stacked belt of asteroid. It's even worse if you consider plate because of fondry recipe.
Taking this into account recicling gear or chest to obtain legendary is a more efficient option that pure casino.
If you don't combine it with LDS shuffle, casino is one of the worst method to get legendary.
Its only sell point is that its the funiest and one that allow to produced the biggest number of producted with 1 set up while recycling plate take 1 build for every ore.

The 3 method is recicling prod recipe. it's the beast in both production and ease of building. Since it's fast to build and powerful it'st use by those who want to skip quality.

The 4 method is gleba way. Its a less porwerful version of casino. it's fun (but less than casino) so less people use it.

The 5 way is fulgora way. It's fun but only for a small part of people. The main reason to why it'st not use by a lot of people.

The 6 way is upclicling for ore, it's the most tedious and less fun, the main reason it's not really use. If it was fun, more peopele will use it.


In the end you see that all method are use by a least a small part of people. And the number of user of a method is more tied to how fun a method is than to it's reall power.
So about the nerf :
It doesn't fix the balance since LSD and prod recipe are still present.
It only a nerf to space casino since you can replace asteroid crusher by recycler. The biggest problem here is that a build with recycler is less fun and closer to most other build than with crusher.
in a recycler build you don't need to play with 3 different item. You cans just convert every asteroid to 1 type. upcycle it to legendary and transform the legendary asteroid of 1 type to the other type. making a compact recycler build is more trivial than with crusher, only 1 input output to consider, so less belt for a bigger building, so less opportunity to plane a build than is not a copy past of another set up.
And the nerf isn't even that big with legendary quality, it's diminish the fun without retablishing the balance.

Honestly when a nerf upest the majority of a community and doesn't even retablish balanced, nobody and up linking it. The guy wanting balance cry that the nerf isn't enough, and the guy that lost it's fun toy cry that the game became less fun. (and the guy that don't like quality won't end up liking quality).

If a nerf was needed, augmenting the loss of the recycle recipe to for example 25% or 30% loss would do the same job while being more fun.

The only good point about this is that factorio is easy and open enough to modding so that this nerf can be revert by a mod : https://mods.factorio.com/mod/bring-back-space-casino.

[zgy12zxjk@gmail.com]

The quality of the train engine can be improved by adding an engine slot and then increasing the power by inserting engines of different qualities.

[stillmoms]

Have you tried playing the game in the map editor?

Yes, 25% of my 3500 hours in the game were spent in editor worlds, theory-crafting designs and testing ideas. It’s a significant source of fun for me. Another significant source of fun for me is having tools to “break the game” at the endgame. This whole attitude reeks to me of “I’m better than you, and my way of having fun is more valid than yours.” It’s gross, and baffling. How other people play a single-player game ought not have anything to do with you. It strikes me as seriously insecure, this seemingly compulsive need to punish other players for enjoying something that you don’t.

To have the devs endorse it is just insulting, frankly, to the vast bulk of the player base. Kinda feels like a “we don’t like you, you’re not playing the game the way we want, so we’re taking our ball and going home.” No one likes that kid.

EDIT: And to be clear, I spent dozens of hours designing a quality scrap up-cycling system for use on Fulgora after I had already built up a space casino-fed legendary production facility on Vulcanus, because by then I could easily make the legendary machines that made it functional and buildable (actually, I spent dozens of hours designing and redesigning a legendary holmium via EM plant up-cycling setup before that!). It was still fun to design and test and experiment with. I spent dozens of hours building and testing a fruit up-cycling system for Gleba to mass-produce legendary carbon fiber after I had space casinos, because I had the legendary buildings and a source of legendary carbon that made it feel worthwhile to do. Space casinos fed my excitement to play the game more, to design new things. This is why it bothers me that the devs have decided that no, this way of playing the game is wrong. My enjoyment of Factorio’s endgame was strengthened by their presence, not diminished.

[Hurkyl]

This whole attitude reeks to me of “I’m better than you, and my way of having fun is more valid than yours.”

A pretty ironic thing to say when the person I was arguing against refuses to even acknowledge what is fun for me.

It’s gross, and baffling. How other people play a single-player game ought not have anything to do with you. It strikes me as seriously insecure, this seemingly compulsive need to punish other players for enjoying something that you don’t.

I don't really care how other players play it. I care what game I get to play.

And we have a conflict! The game that is more fun for you is less fun for me, and vice versa. Which way should the game go?

As far as I can tell, it's really easy for you to still have your fun if the devs balance the game. I, however, can't really pretend the game is balanced when it's not. So, I don't really feel asking for the game to be balanced is an imposition. And that's without even considering that I expect better game balance to make the game better for new or uninformed players.

because by then I could easily make the legendary machines that made it functional and buildable...

because I had the legendary buildings and a source of legendary carbon that made it feel worthwhile to do...

TBH, this sounds a lot more like your enabler was "already having a way to get legendary stuff" than it was "having a space casino". From your description, I'd expect your experience to go pretty much the same way if you had chosen some other method to quality up as your first approach.

[salopesensible]

Just when I thought "there, it's perfect", you come along and improve it yet again. Bravo!