Please, DO NOT remove space casino

[Eulenberg]

The main reason why people are mad about space refineries, is because they didnt come up with that idea themself, got mad over the time they spend building multiple upcyclers, that were tedious and boring, when they saw how it could be done better, felt cheated for there time and demanded it to be removed, so they can get acknowledgement for there elitist egos, because they did it the hard way.


...

That argument could be flipped. People who want to keep the casinos are the ones who put all the time and effort into building them and don't want them removed. Which is why they're up in arms about it. They now have to spend time figuring out how to tackle the problem without them, one that everyone who didn't use them already solved.

All it does is insult one side or the other and adds nothing.

Only that there is nothing interesting to figure out imo, in a upcycler,but I agree with what you said. I follow this debate since it came up 1 year ago. In my opinion removing without presenting in alternative or new system to replace it the worst thing, the devs could have done. It is clear that the quality mod has some flaws, some would say its fundamentaly flawed, but that's a diffrence topic. Casinos allowed to partly bypass these flaws, while keeping the need to build a hand full of loops here and there. Removing it was just so lazy especially without any changes to the system. Because it forces us now only engage with the flawed side of quality, the repetitive, grindy, copy and paste upcyclers and washers side. The people who want ot removed, want it removed for the wrong reasons, not because its to OP, its because they can't get acknowledgement for archivement. Easly proven by there arguments they wanna play most optimal, but not use it. Beeing focused on efficiend method means to play the most optimal way no matter what it takes, there is no feeling involved if optimization is your goal. Some g'ol video game reference: "A shinobi knows the difference between honor and victory. I don't claim any honor, when i seek victory. But these people claim they fight for victory, when all they seek is honor." And in the end these people got it finally removed. Now I have to install an extra mod that enables it again, if I want it. If quality was an actual challenge to overcome I would agree that there should be balance, but there is no logistical puzzle or complex upcycle strategy, its simply route the products to recyclers move the upgraded stuff to the next quality step and pipe back what was not upgraded. No one seems to Care that foudrys make furnace rows, right. Because they clearly indeted to make them obsolete, the game always been like this. First you unlock it and its rare, then it become nice to have a dencent amount, and when you unlock or enter the next phase its abundant. Quality is just vertical scaling, Nd because it has its design flaws you can't fully scale vertically. And casinos were a part of mod that actually allows the promised vertical scaling, that quality actually wantes to be.

[krozu]

The main reason why people are mad about space refineries, is because they didnt come up with that idea themself, got mad over the time they spend building multiple upcyclers, that were tedious and boring, when they saw how it could be done better, felt cheated for there time and demanded it to be removed, so they can get acknowledgement for there elitist egos, because they did it the hard way.


...

That argument could be flipped. People who want to keep the casinos are the ones who put all the time and effort into building them and don't want them removed. Which is why they're up in arms about it. They now have to spend time figuring out how to tackle the problem without them, one that everyone who didn't use them already solved.

All it does is insult one side or the other and adds nothing.

Only that there is nothing interesting to figure out imo, in a upcycler,but I agree with what you said. I follow this debate since it came up 1 year ago. In my opinion removing without presenting in alternative or new system to replace it the worst thing, the devs could have done. It is clear that the quality mod has some flaws, some would say its fundamentaly flawed, but that's a diffrence topic. Casinos allowed to partly bypass these flaws, while keeping the need to build a hand full of loops here and there. Removing it was just so lazy especially without any changes to the system. Because it forces us now only engage with the flawed side of quality, the repetitive, grindy, copy and paste upcyclers and washers side. The people who want ot removed, want it removed for the wrong reasons, not because its to OP, its because they can't get acknowledgement for archivement. Easly proven by there arguments they wanna play most optimal, but not use it. Beeing focused on efficiend method means to play the most optimal way no matter what it takes, there is no feeling involved if optimization is your goal. Some g'ol video game reference: "A shinobi knows the difference between honor and victory. I don't claim any honor, when i seek victory. But these people claim they fight for victory, when all they seek is honor."

I'm honestly curious what the response would be if they did implement a completely new quality system, but it doesn't have the same throughput as casinos do now. Would pro-casino players (and/or LDS) still hate it because it doesn't have _at least_ the same production rate for legendary items? If I had to guess I would say some would be happy with the new system, some would hate it, and the group that I have a problem with, are the ones that would hate it for no reason other than not meeting throughput expectations. Not because the system is bad.

Maybe I just have a different mindset where not every single point of research needs to be done with legendary items, and nothing less.

[eloepp]

That being said, the idea of not allowing it because "thats not how the game was intended to be played" seems like absolute nonsense. If people dont want to do it, they wont do it. People like me, never cared enough to even try it. People who think its cheating won't do it. Also, its not exactly an early game strategy is it?

this is not a good argument. people are going to tend to use all the most powerful tools available to them regardless of whether or not it creates a more satisfying experience overall. Sure, some people do limit themselves and have fun doing so, but I know 99% of us are using what is provided. Developers can't add overpowered everything to games and expect players to filter out some things to find some most optimally fun and satisfying way to play. It is the developers job to make something that is "appropriately" limiting.

I just think it's a bad and slightly entitled take. There are some great arguments people have made in favor of keeping them, though.

Anyway, people actualy can play however they want. Play in sandbox, use mods, use /c, copy others' blueprints. There are so many options to "play how you want". There is already a mod ready for 2.1 to enable Quality Modules.

And lastly, you will still be able to Space Casino according to people that have thought this out. It will just take more play time, which seems reasonable and appropriate for how powerful they are.

[Eulenberg]

The main reason why people are mad about space refineries, is because they didnt come up with that idea themself, got mad over the time they spend building multiple upcyclers, that were tedious and boring, when they saw how it could be done better, felt cheated for there time and demanded it to be removed, so they can get acknowledgement for there elitist egos, because they did it the hard way.


...

That argument could be flipped. People who want to keep the casinos are the ones who put all the time and effort into building them and don't want them removed. Which is why they're up in arms about it. They now have to spend time figuring out how to tackle the problem without them, one that everyone who didn't use them already solved.

All it does is insult one side or the other and adds nothing.

Only that there is nothing interesting to figure out imo, in a upcycler,but I agree with what you said. I follow this debate since it came up 1 year ago. In my opinion removing without presenting in alternative or new system to replace it the worst thing, the devs could have done. It is clear that the quality mod has some flaws, some would say its fundamentaly flawed, but that's a diffrence topic. Casinos allowed to partly bypass these flaws, while keeping the need to build a hand full of loops here and there. Removing it was just so lazy especially without any changes to the system. Because it forces us now only engage with the flawed side of quality, the repetitive, grindy, copy and paste upcyclers and washers side. The people who want ot removed, want it removed for the wrong reasons, not because its to OP, its because they can't get acknowledgement for archivement. Easly proven by there arguments they wanna play most optimal, but not use it. Beeing focused on efficiend method means to play the most optimal way no matter what it takes, there is no feeling involved if optimization is your goal. Some g'ol video game reference: "A shinobi knows the difference between honor and victory. I don't claim any honor, when i seek victory. But these people claim they fight for victory, when all they seek is honor."

I'm honestly curious what the response would be if they did implement a completely new quality system, but it doesn't have the same throughput as casinos do now. Would pro-casino players (and/or LDS) still hate it because it doesn't have _at least_ the same production rate for legendary items? If I had to guess I would say some would be happy with the new system, some would hate it, and the group that I have a problem with, are the ones that would hate it for no reason other than not meeting throughput expectations. Not because the system is bad.

Maybe I just have a different mindset where not every single point of research needs to be done with legendary items, and nothing less.

That would be perfectly fine for me at least (ofc pro casino atm) if it was interesting to interact with. If its a bad new system nothing changed and at least they tried fixing it. I feel like the whole removal is some kind of fixing a dent in a woodplank by cutting around it, and leaving behind a bigger dent.

[Eulenberg]

That being said, the idea of not allowing it because "thats not how the game was intended to be played" seems like absolute nonsense. If people dont want to do it, they wont do it. People like me, never cared enough to even try it. People who think its cheating won't do it. Also, its not exactly an early game strategy is it?

this is not a good argument. people are going to tend to use all the most powerful tools available to them regardless of whether or not it creates a more satisfying experience. Sure, some people do limit themselves and have fun doing so, but I know 99% of us are using what is provided.

anyway, this isn't even necessarily about Space Casino... I just think it's a bad and slightly entitled take. There are some great arguments people have made in favor of keeping them, though.

and I have to vent a little. this is not directed at nobody in particular:

You can do whatever you want!! Play in sandbox, use mods, use /c, copy others' blueprints. There are so many options to "play how you want". There is already a mod ready for 2.1 to enable Quality Modules.

and lastly...you will still be able to Space Casino!! they will still exist; it will just take more play time, which seems reasonable and appropriate for how powerful they are.

I would agree if quality, was actually an interesting and challenging addition to the game, but it's quite the opposite repetitive, grindy and flawed, but it's its rewards are to direable to miss them. Casinos were a band aid fix for parts of a broken system. Now what remains is only a wreck

[Leonord]

I posit that the number of people who react with "But how are we supposed to get quality items?!?!?!" is fairly solid evidence the existence of space casino is harming the game.

Whats harming the game is the lack of fun alternatives. Removing the only interesting alternative will not fix anything.

[Eulenberg]

Space Casinos are dead, long life the crushing ... ehm Space Casino

06-16-2026, 10-48-57.png (319.07 KiB) Viewed 180 times

[Rinin]

Anyway, people actualy can play however they want. Play in sandbox, use mods, use /c, copy others' blueprints. There are so many options to "play how you want". There is already a mod ready for 2.1 to enable Quality Modules.
appropriate for how powerful they are.

I want to play with casinos in vanilla, but I won't be able to because a moderately powerful mechanic was proclaimed too strong by people who haven't done the math.
The casino's only "flaw" is that it is cheaper in buildings and modules because it reuses the same building instead of requiring entire fields of them to match the same throughput. That means you build it and continue playing the game, instead of designing it and then taking a 5-hour coffee break while your bots finish constructing it, which is exactly as fun as it sounds.
Once you understand how it works, you simply place your upcycler 5 hours in advance and the problem is solved, just like preparing for the Kovarex process. Things that are actually too strong ok to be removed, not things merely called too strong.

And lastly, you will still be able to Space Casino according to people that have thought this out. It will just take more play time, which seems reasonable

According to people who really want to justify its removal. 300% productivity is already well past the endgame. We build the casino to play the game, not play the game to build the casino as some great final achievement after the problem has already been solved by other means years ago. It's like justifying moving a coal drill to Vulcanus. It is not reasonable, no, it's just turning automation game into another grinding game, just a litle bit, but in a wrong direction.


Someone mentioned the vibe factor, and I agree that a cool space harvester is infinitely cooler than producing legendary stuff from a scrap recycled 20 times over. Washing feels okay, upcycling feels odd.

One thing that would also solve it and feels good is fixing Gleba bacteria. It's such a cool idea that you have to breed a population of bacteria, and it produces your legendary stuff. And when it dies out, it's not just a blackout - it's a huge setback. It's a challenge with high stakes. If higher-quality bacteria die faster, that's an interesting problem to solve.
It was probably also considered too OP, which is why it was essentially removed by requiring legendary food from another boring upcycler.
But that's just a dream now, because a bio-planet without selection challenges (quality trees/eggs/bacteria) feels bad.

[Leonord]

The decision to prevent quality modules in asteroid reprocessing specifically is clearly because the return is way, way too high for what is intended with recycling for quality.

Are you sure about that?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... id=0#gid=0
Here's a chart with some data. Compare this to https://dfamonteiro.com/posts/factorio- ... recycling/
With legendary modules in both setups, the intended(tm) way of using something like EM plants + recyclers yields almost 4 times as many legendary resources per common input resource compared to a space casino. Cryoplants are more than 7 times as good.
EM plants also quickly become 100% efficient after some blue chip prod research. Removing quality modules from the reprocessing recipe means that you need to research ALL 40 levels of asteroid productivity to get that 2% legendary chunk conversion rate back, which was already pretty low compared to this standard method.
They didn't slightly nerf space casinos, they effectively removed them from the game in any capacity. Now it is strictly better to grind stuff on planets into higher quality materials at any point in the game.
I will keep believing this nerf is a knee-jerk reaction driven by people being mad about space casinos existing until someone comes forth with some numbers on how they are overpowered in any way compared to other methods in game. All I've read is that people feel like they're overpowered because they see everyone using them. Even more confusing is how the devs started believing this crowd of people when they should know better.

People are pretty bad at explaining and I too am not sure what specifically they believe the problem is, but I think the allegation with merit is, if any, one or both of:

• Upcycling with asteroid reprocessing has too broad a coverage. Because you make base resource, and all of the base resources, this single loop covers everything that doesn't require specialty resources, and furthermore shoves you into "upcycle the specialty resources to be paired with the stream of legendary base materials" rather than any other paradigm.
• The asteroid production chain has too big of a multiplier on your efforts (especially with productivity research).

And, incidentally, I too am really puzzled as to why they didn't do anything about being able to exploit liquid-to-solid alternate recipes in the foundry; maybe they have some other trick up their sleeve to be revealed in a later FFF? (I can, at least, understand why it would be difficult to find a good way to nerf the blue circuit issue)

It doesnt cover all the base materials. You are attributing half the problem to the casino while it actually is the lds shuffle. If you get the coal from somewhere else then you get all the materials anyway.

[arrowcircle]

I think removing space casinos is a bad thing.
Nilaus made great arguments. Its a challenge to setup with great reward. Compared to LDS Shuffle its much harder to achieve.
Just dont touch it

[Eulenberg]

Anyway, people actualy can play however they want. Play in sandbox, use mods, use /c, copy others' blueprints. There are so many options to "play how you want". There is already a mod ready for 2.1 to enable Quality Modules.
appropriate for how powerful they are.

I want to play with casinos in vanilla, but I won't be able to because a moderately powerful mechanic was proclaimed too strong by people who haven't done the math.
The casino's only "flaw" is that it is cheaper in buildings and modules because it reuses the same building instead of requiring entire fields of them to match the same throughput. That means you build it and continue playing the game, instead of designing it and then taking a 5-hour coffee break while your bots finish constructing it, which is exactly as fun as it sounds.
Once you understand how it works, you simply place your upcycler 5 hours in advance and the problem is solved, just like preparing for the Kovarex process. Things that are actually too strong ok to be removed, not things merely called too strong.

And lastly, you will still be able to Space Casino according to people that have thought this out. It will just take more play time, which seems reasonable

According to people who really want to justify its removal. 300% productivity is already well past the endgame. We build the casino to play the game, not play the game to build the casino as some great final achievement after the problem has already been solved by other means years ago. It's like justifying moving a coal drill to Vulcanus. It is not reasonable, no, it's just turning automation game into another grinding game, just a litle bit, but in a wrong direction.


Someone mentioned the vibe factor, and I agree that a cool space harvester is infinitely cooler than producing legendary stuff from a scrap recycled 20 times over. Washing feels okay, upcycling feels odd.

One thing that would also solve it and feels good is fixing Gleba bacteria. It's such a cool idea that you have to breed a population of bacteria, and it produces your legendary stuff. And when it dies out, it's not just a blackout - it's a huge setback. It's a challenge with high stakes. If higher-quality bacteria die faster, that's an interesting problem to solve.
It was probably also considered too OP, which is why it was essentially removed by requiring legendary food from another boring upcycler.
But that's just a dream now, because a bio-planet without selection challenges (quality trees/eggs/bacteria) feels bad.

Im in the pro- casino camp my self, and it to me some time to gather my toughts after i read the FFF, but i think you overlook something,
crushing Space Refineries (thats the new face name, because Casinos got removed) are not like LDS Shuffle its more like Blue chip at lower 300%, LDS at 290% prod you would need to resupply plastic, but in case of Blues the ratio raises from smth like 1000:1 to 1:1 (common input : legendary output), if you build a Space Refinery when you unlock all its requirements they are quite slow, but at +100% aka lvl 10 they are already superior to any upcycle nonsens, 300% only means they become as powerful as space casino are today because the return rate of the asteroid is the same (80%), but at at 50% return rate its already very strong, it can even work as low as 10%. that way if you build the casiono reasonably bit in the beginning it get better and better over the course of your playthrough. i mean who needed asteroid prod anyways it was quite useless in most cases and caused more issues than it was helpful at some space ships i made. yet it the casino ... ehm i mean Refineriy research

[urquelle]

I very rarely comment on forums or Factorio's subreddit, but this change really irked me to do it. I've been playing Factorio since 0.15, with thousands of hours sunk into the game throughout the years. I have never had this feeling before, but today I feel frustrated with the dev's actions. Not because I disagree on the principles, I am not in opposition to the developer balancing their game the way they see fit. I am frustrated because I view this decision as a product of inner-circle discord discourse that sidelined a large portion of the community. After 18 months of silence, to many of us, this comes out as a surprise and without any prior consideration. And after the developers stated their intent and the discussion on the topic actually began, they again went into silent mode.

As to the decision itself, many commenters have expressed valid concerns better than I could, so I won't add much else. I feel like this change removes something valuable from the game, which are casino-factories, without adding anything, which is surprising considering every prior update. This change also does not address 2 methods that were shown to be mathematically strictly superior to gather copper, steel, iron, and plastic, which are LDS and PU upcycling. So the balancing could not have been on mind with this change. Also, assuming this is everything the developers are to show for the quality system, this update failed to address most of the criticisms on quality, which means tiresome upcycling loops and RNG-based bootstraps are still the developer's desired way of progressing. In a game about efficiency and exponential scaling, this seems unthematic.

Lastly, it's quite embarrassing to see many vocal supporters of this change resorting to mockery instead of addressing the valid points raised, such as LDS remaining in the game and casinos requiring a substantial material and time investment to optimize.

I guess I will resort to using the mod anyway, since even though at this megabasing stage I could just brute-force direct quality mine, I'd hate to see my carefully designed ships go to waste. Now I got that off my chest.