Factorio Forums

mmmPI wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 1:45 pm

coffee-factorio wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 1:27 pm I'm not sure it is well known that you can make a build before you do an LDS shuffle with some outstanding characteristics.

The setup you linked is possible since release and is well known, but it makes little sense to claim you can do it before LDS shuffle imo.

An em plant has five slots for productivity modules. As such it can get a 175% research because it has a natural +50% production bonus. A foundry has 150% native productivity bonus as well, meaning that it has 150% research. This means that if you add 130% research, you hit the 300% research limit 2 levels earlier than you would if you used a foundry. So you can build a production line that shreds blue chips into raw materials 2 levels earlier.

You've never read that post. That's noted in the first three sections.

Nidan wrote: Wed Jan 22, 2025 7:12 pm 5 legendary prod modules add another +125%, pushing the total over the cap of +300% / x4.

This works for all recipes where you can reach the +300% prod cap and get the ingredients back by recycling.

If you are not familiar with thing, you would do well to not rush to conclusions.

coffee-factorio wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 2:06 pm

mmmPI wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 1:45 pm

coffee-factorio wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 1:27 pm I'm not sure it is well known that you can make a build before you do an LDS shuffle with some outstanding characteristics.

The setup you linked is possible since release and is well known, but it makes little sense to claim you can do it before LDS shuffle imo.

An em plant has five slots for productivity modules. As such it can get a 175% research because it has a natural +50% production bonus. A foundry has 150% native productivity bonus as well, meaning that it has 150% research. This means that if you add 130% research, you hit the 300% research limit 2 levels earlier than you would if you used a foundry. So you can build a production line that shreds blue chips into raw materials 2 levels earlier.

You've never read that post. That's noted in the first three sections.

That illustrate well why it makes little sense to me, you are just counting the level of researchs and conclude that because the EM plant have 1 more module slots.

That makes no sense to me because you can use such builds even before having all the research level, it's less efficient but you can use them for sure.

coffee-factorio wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 2:06 pm

Nidan wrote: Wed Jan 22, 2025 7:12 pm 5 legendary prod modules add another +125%, pushing the total over the cap of +300% / x4.
This works for all recipes where you can reach the +300% prod cap and get the ingredients back by recycling.

If you are not familiar with thing, you would do well to not rush to conclusions.

what Nidan said is correct though

To clear up some confusion:
LDS can be upcycled at a 1:1 rate (like blue circuits); this is very strong. However, the casting LDS recipe takes molten metals. This allows for setting up a foundry to produce legendary LDS, recycle it, and feed the legendary plastic back in; this profits legendary copper and steel without any upcycling (this is the absolutely broken part).

crimsonarmy wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 3:28 pm To clear up some confusion:
LDS can be upcycled at a 1:1 rate (like blue circuits); this is very strong. However, the casting LDS recipe takes molten metals. This allows for setting up a foundry to produce legendary LDS, recycle it, and feed the legendary plastic back in; this profits legendary copper and steel without any upcycling (this is the absolutely broken part).

Fully agree that's what i was saying before the non-sensical interruption

mmmPI wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 12:46 pm I feel here it depends on how/why you use the LDS shuffle, if you use it to get quality LDS that's not "cheaty" to me and very similar to blue circuits, but LDS shuffle can also be used to generate easily quality steel or copper out of very little to no input with research, it's not just doing a 1=>1 upcycle, this i found much more un-balanced than the asteroid recycler. I wouldn't use a mod to re-introduce LDS shuffle if it's removed or altered, but i'd be tempted to do so for asteroid recycler depending on how the re-balance is handled, cuz even if it's not that hard, it involve some law of large numbers that i found are interesting to use in a puzzle.

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 11:32 am

CyberCider wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 7:40 am You agree with me on LDS shuffle, but you seem to compare it to blue circuit upcycling

With 300% productivity, the bonus items you get out of the craft exactly (on average) balance the loss you get from the recycler, so you get a 1:1 ratio between normal blue circuit inputs and legendary blue circuit outputs.

Well I know that, but that’s just your reward for finishing tons of research. The 1:1 part isn’t what’s wrong with LDS shuffle, it’s the fact that you don’t need an upcycler to do it. The loss of complexity is what makes it broken, not the loss of resource requirements. It’s also way easier to scale as it requires fewer machines and way fewer legendary modules.

mmmPI wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 12:46 pm

CyberCider wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 7:40 am That’s like saying only purple science should be produced via actual recipe, the others should be made of nothing but water. It’s different, it adds variety, you’ve already built production for purple so “there’s no getting away from it”. But would this change, all science packs except for purple being made of water, make the game better? I hope you agree that it wouldn’t.

think simpler is indeed wrong, if it’s strong.

To me it sound more like the opposite, you have made your production line for all the sciences, and late game there's a new way that unlock to make purple science out of water. which is easier and stronger and different than the other methods, which acts as reward and increases the variety of viable builds. Not too dissimilar to how fusion power is "simple" yet very strong, potentially replacing all other source of energy in the "post late game", but you need to have started with other source of power.

Power generation cannot be compared to quality production, they’re fundamentally different things with fundamentally different balancing. Second of all, while fusion is simpler than nuclear, it’s definitely more complex than Vulcanus, Gleba, Fulgora and early Aquilo power. And even compared to nuclear, it’s only simpler in terms of logistics. It has built in smart consumption, no spent cells, no water requirement in space, sure. But there is more substance to fusion design than there is to fission design, its internal complexity is higher. So with all this in mind, there isn’t nearly as clear of a difference as there is between upcycling and asteroids.

Anyway, I think we have different understandings of how progression through alternate processes works. The more advanced, later unlocked processes should have superior efficiency and/or throughput, yes. But they should always have greater or at least comparable complexity. Advanced oil processing produces more gas, but it involves cracking. Foundries don’t turn ore into gears, they keep the same amount of steps. Except plates are replaced with a liquid and, most importantly, calcite becomes required. They do drop the simplicity of LDS specifically, but that’s only a minor feature. Same with biochambers and oil. When a better process is unlocked intended to replace a previous process, it should never be simpler than the basic process. That would simply be nonsensical in a game like factorio which is all about complexity. It would be a progression backwards instead of forwards.

crimsonarmy wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 3:28 pm To clear up some confusion:
LDS can be upcycled at a 1:1 rate (like blue circuits); this is very strong. However, the casting LDS recipe takes molten metals. This allows for setting up a foundry to produce legendary LDS, recycle it, and feed the legendary plastic back in; this profits legendary copper and steel without any upcycling (this is the absolutely broken part).

It produces a fascinating scenario. By using about a hundred legendary plastic, the LDS cast recipe can recycle the plastic until the RNG destroys it with noise, at the full rate of the building. You see about 320 copper plates per minute out for 4000 copper fluid a minute at level 15. In comparison a LDS item build does that rate of copper if you optimize it well at level 22 productivity or so, although at level 20 you should be able to see similar.

This is in comparison to the 6.5 ipm you get out of copper plates when you invest 1.2k fluids per minute into it. You get about 0.8 ipm of steel out before you start adding in productivity for 1800 fluids. Nothing can manufacture steel from plates, so productivity doesn't benefit it (edit: except in the initial production phase, where the benefit is much less). A shuffle takes 1300 iron fluid to make 33.5 steel per minute.

Since the action is unaffected by quality you can scale vertically using speed modules. It's less effective in terms of quantity of plates produced but its so easy to scale that doesn't mean so much. I believe that was noted as I was writing this, I'm a slow.

However, if you attempt to use the full casting build instead of just the shuffle section, you can't optimize fluid use by putting productivity into the casting steps on copper or steel. And so you take in 5 plastic, but get the full fluid bill of the cast recipe. It's effect on the amount of resources you have to invest in a line is horrifying since at 300% productivity each step has to run at full blast, and produces copper and steel you have to upcycle using less productive techniques. The scale of the thing is hilarious

People don't think LDS shuffle is overpowered at 0% productivity research?

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 5:04 pm People don't think LDS shuffle is overpowered at 0% productivity research?

It's an interesting question, I don't think it's been explored.

The reason why would be that the cast recipe penalizes you for using less space and plastic, it actually won't benefit you to pursue it at that research level. Actually, both the LDS recipes can potentially be worse than say EM plants for copper because the EM plant both has a high productivity bonus and copper casting can be optimized by applying productivity or quality modules.

You should see a geometrically increasing benefit though which ends at the 1 : 1 use behavior. It would shred plastic faster at lower levels but then go to using only the amount that would be accounted for by random noise.

I feel like I should bring this back to rerolling though. Without checking too deeply, it's about a 1 in 47 edit rate coming off the reroll step. Editted because I rechecked a source on it. https://dfamonteiro.com/posts/factorio- ... lity-level

If your target is iron, great. That's probably default ~1/2 an ips (30 ipm) because you get 20 iron back per recipe, plus a decent rate of productivity from random asteroids.

If your target is copper... then it's 5/47 ~> 1/9 copper a back and a lot of junk ore you have to chuck off. So it comes down to how 400% from rerolling effects the chunks coming back randomly. If someone could say that was a simple multiplicative bonus it would be productive.

coffee-factorio wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 5:16 pm

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 5:04 pm People don't think LDS shuffle is overpowered at 0% productivity research?

It's an interesting question, I don't think it's been explored.

The reason why would be that the cast recipe penalizes you for using less space and plastic, it actually won't benefit you to pursue it at that research level. Actually, both the LDS recipes can potentially be worse than say EM plants for copper because the EM plant both has a high productivity bonus and copper casting can be optimized by applying productivity or quality modules.

You should see a geometrically increasing benefit though which ends at the 1 : 1 use behavior. It would shred plastic faster at lower levels but then go to using only the amount that would be accounted for by random noise.

I think you're still really overlooking the free quality upgrade. While you're upcycling plastic the system spits out endless quantities of quality copper and steel that don't go back into the system since you keep pumping in qualityless molten metals in their place; a far far better proposition than casting wire or steel plates from scratch.

coffee-factorio wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 5:23 pm I feel like I should bring this back to rerolling though. Without checking too deeply, it's about a 1 in 47 edit rate coming off the reroll step. Editted because I rechecked a source on it. https://dfamonteiro.com/posts/factorio- ... lity-level

In fact, if people aren't concerned about LDS shuffle at 0% productivity, I find it completely bizarre that asteroid reprocessing is even on the radar as something to worry about.

If your target is iron, great. That's probably default ~1/2 an ips (30 ipm) because you get 20 iron back per recipe, plus a decent rate of productivity from random asteroids.

If your target is copper... then it's 5/47 ~> 1/9 copper a back and a lot of junk ore you have to chuck off. So it comes down to how 400% from rerolling effects the chunks coming back randomly. If someone could say that was a simple multiplicative bonus it would be productive.

And on the (basic) asteroid crushing recipes with +300% productivity*, I feel like that's about the same as the LDS shuffle with 0% -- you're still getting the 1/47.70 return (which, IIRC, is a little better than an recycler loop with +100% productivity and a little worse than one with +150% productivity), but you're getting free quality iron much like the LDS shuffle is mostly free copper/steel.

*: which I assume the productivity crafts can have returned asteroids at the same rate as the normal crafts

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 5:41 pm

coffee-factorio wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 5:16 pm

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 5:04 pm People don't think LDS shuffle is overpowered at 0% productivity research?

It's an interesting question, I don't think it's been explored.

The reason why would be that the cast recipe penalizes you for using less space and plastic, it actually won't benefit you to pursue it at that research level. Actually, both the LDS recipes can potentially be worse than say EM plants for copper because the EM plant both has a high productivity bonus and copper casting can be optimized by applying productivity or quality modules.

You should see a geometrically increasing benefit though which ends at the 1 : 1 use behavior. It would shred plastic faster at lower levels but then go to using only the amount that would be accounted for by random noise.

I think you're still really overlooking the free quality upgrade. While you're upcycling plastic the system spits out endless quantities of quality copper and steel that don't go back into the system since you keep pumping in qualityless molten metals in their place; a far far better proposition than casting wire or steel plates from scratch.

I'm aware of it. I benchmarked base on amount of fluids used actually.

The thing the shuffle can't do is optimize with productivity. If you buy 4 LDS for 250 fluid/s, and 4 productivity modules it's the same as if you buy 4 LDS for 250 a second fluids at max research.

And foundries can't work with solid parts, they only cast. Which produces a truly horrifying result since you use 250 fluids to cast with plastic, while a bunch of normal to epic materials simply vibe. And the line does this at a 1x rate so you get billed for material you've already produced multiple times.

In comparison, you can buy 20 copper plates for about 4800 fluid per minute; edit 80 fluids per second. But you won't run an item build like a shuffle at productivity research 15 till research level 20. And it won't scale up to the full rate of the shuffle easily, even though when you do apples to apples comparisons of the rates of material performed it isn't as efficient.

Right from the get go though, a reroller is going to hide it's performance minus because it will handle asteroids that produce a large quantity of ores. An some things it does, like making sulfur? Nothing else works that way, at least not without checking it rather carefully. Edit: and you can work productivity into every level of production after ores to reduce the overall negative effect.

CyberCider wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 4:41 pm Power generation cannot be compared to quality production, they’re fundamentally different things with fundamentally different balancing.

You compared quality production to science production, so i'm going say this is not a valid argument it's just semantic. You can compare them easily, i did.

CyberCider wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 4:41 pm Second of all, while fusion is simpler than nuclear, it’s definitely more complex than Vulcanus, Gleba, Fulgora and early Aquilo power. And even compared to nuclear, it’s only simpler in terms of logistics. It has built in smart consumption, no spent cells, no water requirement in space, sure. But there is more substance to fusion design than there is to fission design, its internal complexity is higher. So with all this in mind, there isn’t nearly as clear of a difference as there is between upcycling and asteroids.

You are comparing power generation and quality production, contradicting your previous statement. But thank you for making the effort to follow the reasonning, however I don't believe fusion is more internally complex than nuclear, and the logistic of cells is similar. I believe it's ok for the "balance" if late game tech make certain things easier, that's the design intent behind foundations it seems to me, available late game, and removing some complexities of what was earlier.

CyberCider wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 4:41 pm Anyway, I think we have different understandings of how progression through alternate processes works.

Yes, otherwise there wouldn't be a discussion

CyberCider wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 4:41 pm When a better process is unlocked intended to replace a previous process, it should never be simpler than the basic process. That would simply be nonsensical in a game like factorio which is all about complexity. It would be a progression backwards instead of forwards.

I disagree, the simpler form of power is solar, and it comes after the regular engines. And look at the logistic robots ! How many players uses them as soon as possible because they make things "more simple" or "easier" ? And the weapons systems too, the more you progress the easier it is to defend your base, there are couple things that get simpler with progression, and i think quality could totally be one of those.

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 5:04 pm People don't think LDS shuffle is overpowered at 0% productivity research?

For having used it, it's not OP at that level of productivity imo , because it turns plastic into copper and steel, but the ratio isn't good and i feel plastic is more valuable than copper or steel that you can have in large quantity in Vulcanus already. Now with just a couple productivity research, you can turn plastic into much more copper and steel, even if it's not 1:1 for plastic upcycling yet, it now has the potential to turn something like 1 plastic into 10 copper and 10 steel ,and even if those are "less valuable", they are not 10x times.

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 5:41 pm I think you're still really overlooking the free quality upgrade. While you're upcycling plastic the system spits out endless quantities of quality copper and steel that don't go back into the system since you keep pumping in qualityless molten metals in their place; a far far better proposition than casting wire or steel plates from scratch.

That's what makes it OP i agree ! Depending on how you personnaly value the plastic needed as input, versus the copper and steel you get.

coffee-factorio wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 7:18 pm I'm aware of it. I benchmarked base on amount of fluids used actually.

But why ? What's the point ? low quality fluid you can have in infinite quantity for almost no cost and is very easy to scale, it's much more logical to me to just disregard the amount of fluid consumed, because it's not important to care about ressource efficiency for something that's infinite. It would be better to think about either the initial cost of the setup,( potentially a ratio with the initial cost/output, to search for the fastest Return On Investement) if you want to go fast like speedrunners, or to optimize for UPS/ compactness if you want to have large base. There's like no valid reasonning i can see that would make people try to optimize the amount of fluid consumed.

I believe it also a flaw of your analysis about asteroid rerolling, if you use 10% or 20% more asteroid, to reduce the size of your platform by 50% and keep the same output, it's just better, because no-one care about the efficiency of the input, be them infinite fluid, or asteroids.

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 11:32 am

CyberCider wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 7:40 am You agree with me on LDS shuffle, but you seem to compare it to blue circuit upcycling

With 300% productivity, the bonus items you get out of the craft exactly (on average) balance the loss you get from the recycler, so you get a 1:1 ratio between normal blue circuit inputs and legendary blue circuit outputs.

Yeah, this is my stance. 300% productivity (on anything) is broken. That said, it's not broken enough for me to complain about - it takes so much research to get there, that it's basically irrelevant.

CyberCider wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 4:41 pm When a better process is unlocked intended to replace a previous process, it should never be simpler than the basic process. That would simply be nonsensical in a game like factorio which is all about complexity. It would be a progression backwards instead of forwards.

I'm gonna have to disagree with you there. The "better" process has to be better by some metric - which is usually a reduction in complexity. The complicated processes are used to unlock the better ones, and then abandoned. You see this everywhere with the quality mod. Quality machines mean fewer machines, which require fewer modules, which require less complexity, but harder logistics (speed of input/output). The lack of complexity is exactly what quality achieves. It's not wrong, it's the entire point.

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 5:41 pm In fact, if people aren't concerned about LDS shuffle at 0% productivity, I find it completely bizarre that asteroid reprocessing is even on the radar as something to worry about.

No argument here. If you don't like it, maybe don't play with the mod? Some people gonna complain no matter what you do.

evandy wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 7:47 pm

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 11:32 am

CyberCider wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 7:40 am You agree with me on LDS shuffle, but you seem to compare it to blue circuit upcycling

With 300% productivity, the bonus items you get out of the craft exactly (on average) balance the loss you get from the recycler, so you get a 1:1 ratio between normal blue circuit inputs and legendary blue circuit outputs.

Yeah, this is my stance. 300% productivity (on anything) is broken. That said, it's not broken enough for me to complain about - it takes so much research to get there, that it's basically irrelevant.

That make sense to me as a stance about "the other 300% productivity research that are not LDS".

But it's not saying wether or not you feel LDS shuffle should in this case be considered even "more broken", because you don't need to reach the 1=>1 ratio in plastic, ( 300% productivity required) to already be able to have a 1 plastic => "many" copper & steel.

mmmPI wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 7:57 pm

evandy wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 7:47 pm Yeah, this is my stance. 300% productivity (on anything) is broken. That said, it's not broken enough for me to complain about - it takes so much research to get there, that it's basically irrelevant.

That make sense to me as a stance about "the other 300% productivity research that are not LDS".

But it's not saying wether or not you feel LDS shuffle should in this case be considered even "more broken", because you don't need to reach the 1=>1 ratio in plastic, ( 300% productivity required) to already be able to have a 1 plastic => "many" copper & steel.

Yeah, fair point. I didn't say anything, because this thread is on asteroid recycling. But here's my thoughts on the LDS shuffle: Before you manage to scale moderately big, getting quality coal to make quality plastic is hard and slow. Blue chip recycling got me most of my early modules - and there is a notable deficit of red circuits to make quality modules via that route. You know what you need to make red circuits? Quality plastic. By the time I had enough spare plastic to get infinite copper from LDS, I didn't really need it.

Is it broken? Sure, technically. But I don't see any good way around it, without creating quality fluids which the devs obviously avoided, quite on purpose. The existence of the foundery recipe for LDS in the early game is too important to nerf it. If the result is the LDS shuffle in the post-post game, it's a trade I'm okay with.

As a result I don't see it as much point to worry about it except in the broader context of 300% productivity as a whole. Until you get (close to) that 300% level, there are more critical uses for the plastic, and you can't do much with that copper except toss it in the lava without other resources anyways.

coffee-factorio wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 7:18 pm

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 5:41 pmI think you're still really overlooking the free quality upgrade. While you're upcycling plastic the system spits out endless quantities of quality copper and steel that don't go back into the system since you keep pumping in qualityless molten metals in their place; a far far better proposition than casting wire or steel plates from scratch.

And foundries can't work with solid parts, they only cast. Which produces a truly horrifying result since you use 250 fluids to cast with plastic, while a bunch of normal to epic materials simply vibe. And the line does this at a 1x rate so you get billed for material you've already produced multiple times.

Your analysis need proofreading so I really can't make out what you're thinking, but I think this is our main disconnect. The point isn't to let the quality copper sit around vibing: it now feeds into your system using EM plants to upcycle copper, or whatever other process needs quality copper injections to stay balanced.

Effectively, rather than that epic copper plate having to go back into the plastic upcycling process, you get to pay for a normal copper plate to use in its place and keep the epic one to use elsewhere.

mmmPI wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 7:46 pm For having used it, it's not OP at that level of productivity imo , because it turns plastic into copper and steel, but the ratio isn't good and i feel plastic is more valuable than copper or steel that you can have in large quantity in Vulcanus already. Now with just a couple productivity research, you can turn plastic into much more copper and steel, even if it's not 1:1 for plastic upcycling yet, it now has the potential to turn something like 1 plastic into 10 copper and 10 steel ,and even if those are "less valuable", they are not 10x times.

It's an upcycler: it's turning plastic into higher quality plastic. But you get a mass of free quality upgrades on copper and steel as a bonus, which knocks cost/benefit completely out of the park in comparison with anything else you might want to upcycle at that point in the game.

mmmPI wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 7:46 pm But why ? What's the point ? low quality fluid you can have in infinite quantity for almost no cost and is very easy to scale, it's much more logical to me to just disregard the amount of fluid consumed, because it's not important to care about ressource efficiency for something that's infinite.

At some point, scaling by multiplying by a number bigger than 1 (and maybe a lot bigger than one) is going to be much much easier than scaling by continuing to add the same thing repeatedly.

But anyways, I missed that the thread of discussion has moved away from lower-tech situations and is centered on how things degenerate as you near max productivity, and am now informed, so I'll drop that topic unless someone really wants to talk more about it.

evandy wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 8:07 pm Yeah, fair point. I didn't say anything, because this thread is on asteroid recycling. But here's my thoughts on the LDS shuffle: Before you manage to scale moderately big, getting quality coal to make quality plastic is hard and slow. Blue chip recycling got me most of my early modules - and there is a notable deficit of red circuits to make quality modules via that route. You know what you need to make red circuits? Quality plastic. By the time I had enough spare plastic to get infinite copper from LDS, I didn't really need it.

Is it broken? Sure, technically. But I don't see any good way around it, without creating quality fluids which the devs obviously avoided, quite on purpose. The existence of the foundery recipe for LDS in the early game is too important to nerf it. If the result is the LDS shuffle in the post-post game, it's a trade I'm okay with.

As a result I don't see it as much point to worry about it except in the broader context of 300% productivity as a whole. Until you get (close to) that 300% level, there are more critical uses for the plastic, and you can't do much with that copper except toss it in the lava without other resources anyways.

Sorry for requesting you to do off-topic about LDS , i understand, it's not really the main topic, but i felt a little related on a more general "quality" theme, to compare the different method left if the suggestion from this thread is implemented.

Thanks for explaining your views on it. In one way, i understand because i also tossed a lot of copper and/or steel in lava when using the LDS shuffle and felt like it gave me a good way to have something i was already forced to produced, and i don't always tear up older things to implement the latest tech. In another way, the situation where you have "plenty of copper and steel for free", doesn't mean you need to toss one or the other, it could also be seen as : "now just find a cheaty way for quality iron/coal and you're good to go". ( and this is where i see the asteroid shuffle shine ).

That leaves uranium as the only raw ressource without "easy late-game upcycling" to me , and i feel it's interesting because it incentivizes players to (ab)use different upcycling techniques for different materials.

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 8:23 pm

mmmPI wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 7:46 pm For having used it, it's not OP at that level of productivity imo , because it turns plastic into copper and steel, but the ratio isn't good and i feel plastic is more valuable than copper or steel that you can have in large quantity in Vulcanus already. Now with just a couple productivity research, you can turn plastic into much more copper and steel, even if it's not 1:1 for plastic upcycling yet, it now has the potential to turn something like 1 plastic into 10 copper and 10 steel ,and even if those are "less valuable", they are not 10x times.

It's an upcycler: it's turning plastic into higher quality plastic. But you get a mass of free quality upgrades on copper and steel as a bonus, which knocks cost/benefit completely out of the park in comparison with anything else you might want to upcycle at that point in the game.

I understand what you are saying, but if you consider just plastic, it's more expensive/complex to setup up LDS shuffle than just plastic or even coal upcycler to me. That's why i see the value in the copper and steel there ( not a "good" plastic upcycler) . That's what you get from the extra cost, and i feel it's not all that much early game, so i don't find it that OP in early game.

Now if you do set this up, maybe you can avoid "plastic productivity research" entirely, that's another thing.

Maybe it's me who value more "individual block that produce a single product with no by product", i rank higher the complexity of having iron copper and plastic for the LDS shuffle, and then tossing the non-desired ressoources in lava, when you can lazily upcycle coal in a very inefficient way right at the mines and use super long belt for that quality coal. ( early game only ! x)

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 8:23 pm

mmmPI wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 7:46 pm But why ? What's the point ? low quality fluid you can have in infinite quantity for almost no cost and is very easy to scale, it's much more logical to me to just disregard the amount of fluid consumed, because it's not important to care about ressource efficiency for something that's infinite.

At some point, scaling by multiplying by a number bigger than 1 (and maybe a lot bigger than one) is going to be much much easier than scaling by continuing to add the same small number repeatedly.

You need to explain a bit more how this leads to optimizing for consuming the least amount of fluid. Because to me that doesn't add up. What you need to do to optimize the fluid consumption may makes expanding "easier" , but it's already "easy" to expand at this stage, what you want is to expand "efficently" imo, not "fast", or you'd reach faster the limit of your computer and you'd have lower number than if you optimized for UPS. The thing that should be optimized imo is UPS if you want to scale. Even if that means you pay 10x time the price for a setup that has the same output per minute or consume 10x as much fluid, if your UPS are better, then do this, using robots make any scaling easy at this stage.

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 8:35 pm But anyways, I missed that the thread of discussion has moved away from lower-tech situations and is centered on how things degenerate as you near max productivity, and am now informed, so I'll drop that topic unless someone really wants to talk more about it.

Ah that's unfortunate, because it's both side of the balance, the early game counts as much as the late game to different players.

mmmPI wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 8:56 pm That leaves uranium as the only raw ressource without "easy late-game upcycling" to me , and i feel it's interesting because it incentivizes players to (ab)use different upcycling techniques for different materials.

I kind of see it as uranium being more like the planet specific resource on Nauvis.

crimsonarmy wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 9:26 pm

mmmPI wrote: Fri Aug 15, 2025 8:56 pm That leaves uranium as the only raw ressource without "easy late-game upcycling" to me , and i feel it's interesting because it incentivizes players to (ab)use different upcycling techniques for different materials.

I kind of see it as uranium being more like the planet specific resource on Nauvis.

more than what ?