kammerer wrote: Sun Jun 28, 2026 2:46 pm
My main point is that another mode is in fact a grind. Without space casinos, there are no other ways around to produce legendary calcite and coal than just grind them directly with moduled miners.
Certainly there is.
Or, actually you don't need it in the first place. The only solid product you craft with calcite is stone. So you don't want to produce legendary calcite, instead you want to produce legendary stone. What do you need legendary stone for? The only useful product I see with stone is the stone brick. So instead of legendary stone, you want to produce legendary stone brick. Now, what do you need legendary stone brick for? For electric furnace, concrete, refinery etc. So this is a useful legendary intermediate. Let's craft legendary stone bricks.
How can we craft legendary stone bricks if not with legendary stone? We upcycle it. Given the multiple recipes, the best method is with concrete, because concrete can be crafted in the foundry with inherent productivity and 4 productivity modules. And there was a recent change with hazard concrete, which recycles into the same ingredients as concrete so we have 2 crafts with the chance of quality increase instead of just 1 as with most other upcycling methods. So it's especially efficient.
So we do this:
- craft stone bricks with electric furnaces and quality modules.
- craft all quality tiers of concrete in foundries with quality modules
- craft all quality tiers of hazard concrete in assembling machines with quality modules
- recycle all non-legendary concrete (we need legendary concrete as well, it's a welcomed byproduct here)
- recycle all hazard concrete
- recycle all iron ore, optionally craft stuff from the occasional legendary iron ore you get; I craft iron plates to consume them.
- feed back all non-legendary stone bricks to the start of the production line
- store legendary stone bricks and legendary concrete
- for more concrete, craft legendary concrete in a foundry with productivity modules
- for other end products requiring stone bricks, provide the legendary stone bricks to whatever mall you maintain
Looks like this, for example:
- 06-28-2026, 18-35-52.png (3.63 MiB) Viewed 395 times
Now about coal. What do you need legendary coal for? You need it for plastic. Other uses, for example carbon, don't apply because you need carbon only for products you have to upcycle anyway, so you get legendary carbon while you upcycle these products.
But there is a need for legendary plastic, so you can craft low density structures which is an essential legendary resource and the vehicle to legendary steel via LDS shuffle.
So let's get legendary plastic, and you craft this with upcycling low density structures. As byproduct, there is an enormous output of legendary copper plates and some legendary steel. Crafting plastic in a cryogenic plant with all quality modules is quite efficient and a good start for the upcycling loop.
It's a direct upcycle loop, the only difficult thing is to get rid of non-legendary steel and copper, but you will do this on Vulcanus so just throw it into the lava.
- for more legendary low density structures: craft them with legendary plastic and productivity modules in a foundry.
- for more legendary steel: start LDS shuffle (not shown here)
Looks like this, for example: [non-legendary steel and copper is being recycled here, on a real map you would throw it into the lava]
- 06-28-2026, 18-48-39.png (2.14 MiB) Viewed 395 times
The result is legendary copper, legendary steel, legendary plastic, legendary low density structures.
There is a 3rd thing missing as proper replacement for the space casino, circuit production. You will also perform blue circuit upcycling to craft green circuits and red circuits. Produces vast amounts of legendary green and red circuits, and since you overproduce legendary green circuits you need to recycle them so you get iron plates, copper wire and copper plates (since you need to recycle copper wire to get rid of them).
- for legendary blue circuits, craft them from legendary green and red circuits in a electromagnetic plant with productivity modules.
Looks like this, for example:
- 06-28-2026, 19-00-56.png (1.29 MiB) Viewed 395 times
The final thing missing is legendary iron plate. It can be upcycled in a somewhat similar manner as the stone bricks, with 3 quality upgrading steps.
- cast iron plates in a foundry with quality modules
- craft all qualities of pipes in a foundry with quality modules
- cast all qualities of underground pipes in a foundry with quality modules
- pick legendary pipes, since they are a valuable intermediate we often need in our mall
- recycle everything else
- pick legendary iron plates
Looks like this, for example:
- 06-28-2026, 19-08-56.png (2.29 MiB) Viewed 395 times
Statistics: [LDS shuffle not included, so steel production is quite low]
- 06-28-2026, 19-13-58.png (275.79 KiB) Viewed 395 times
In my opinion, all this is a quite interesting thing to build as a whole and way more fitting to the Factorio vibe than a space casino which used a quasi-exploit as core and build a whole production environment around this exploit instead of a real factory. Because of the latter, players are probably so upset, because not just the asteroid upcycling part is gone, the whole infrastructure around it on the space platform is became obsolete as well.
What I show as alternative, did work before and needed just minor adjustments due to the concrete change (it improved, actually)
