Factorio Forums

Stargateur wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2026 1:14 am Space factory is a big trouble for factorio, specially now they give us trading between platform, space platform remove most of the logistic problem, you have one unit that do what you want it to do and you can scale just by copy paste the ship, without any logistical challenge that come with this scaling. Space casino are removed because it's broke the game entirely, even with blueprint, people need to do logistic between their blueprint, with ship you don't have to do anything, copy paste, work, nothing more is needed.

That's more of a fundamental issue with space platforms in general though. They're expected to be closed loops for the most part, which means any blueprint you grab from Internet can be used in your game with little effort.

Many in favor of space casino argue that mod could disable it. And now using a mod to enable it is not acceptable ! Pure hypocrisy !

Many in favor of space casinos argue that you could just not build one if you don't want to.

(and honestly anyone who argue space casino is hard to do is blind)

"Hard" is subjective, but it's certainly harder to design a space casino than an upcycler.

ivan_349876 wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2026 3:41 pm

(and honestly anyone who argue space casino is hard to do is blind)

"Hard" is subjective, but it's certainly harder to design a space casino than an upcycler.

All of the challenge is just in the "make an asteroid farming operation" right?

You're not positing that "turn these asteroids into legendary items" is harder to do with a reprocessing loop than other options, are you?

Because I think that's what the other person is talking about: they're not discussing where you're getting raw materials from. They're talking about the available methods for turning raw common materials into legendary ones.

Hurkyl wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2026 4:28 pm

ivan_349876 wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2026 3:41 pm

(and honestly anyone who argue space casino is hard to do is blind)

"Hard" is subjective, but it's certainly harder to design a space casino than an upcycler.

All of the challenge is just in the "make an asteroid farming operation" right?

You're not positing that "turn these asteroids into legendary items" is harder to do with a reprocessing loop than other options, are you?

Because I think that's what the other person is talking about: they're not discussing where you're getting raw materials from. They're talking about the available methods for turning raw common materials into legendary ones.

Reprocessing loops are indeed the easiest way to turn asteroids into legendary asteroids, but I don't see what point you're trying to make. Space casinos are what make grinding for legendary asteroids at all viable. In their absence, people won't fall back to upcycling asteroids on space platforms, they'll just do it on land where resources are far more abundant, because the real goal isn't to get legendary asteroids, it's to get legendary materials.

ivan_349876 wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2026 3:41 pm

(and honestly anyone who argue space casino is hard to do is blind)

"Hard" is subjective, but it's certainly harder to design a space casino than an upcycler.

That easier by far. Only people who only did space casino and didn't try to do other way to deal with quality in game would argue it's harder. I spend HOURS not I spend MONTHS to learn and design various way to do quality in the game, space casino take me like few minutes, it was trivial and was working without any problem. As an engineer, it's perfect, you have one unit that work perfectly but there was no challenge, no need to push it more. Didn't take rss from any bus, no space, no input, just output. If you call that hard you are just lying. But hard or not doesn't really change anything IMO, just that I saw this point of space casino being hard by people in favor of it and for me it's just a proof that these peoples are blind. And debate with people who don't see fact is pointless.

Thus as other and you said, one could just not do space casino and it's what I choice. I have mostly the same opinion then Tertius about wube having though this change better than us.

I will add one thing, IMO, if wube didn't removed space casino before it's because they think it was too big of a change without the 2.1. It was never intended that a way to generate quality raw was this better than other method in the game. It's obvious. But again I don't really care, I mod factorio like a mad man, and I do my own private balance of the game, cause I guess I have a little understanding of factorio after playing it for like 10 years whatever wube decide doesn't really affect me. But I think space casino is a failure of space age and remove it from default is a good thing.

ivan_349876 wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2026 6:45 pm

Hurkyl wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2026 4:28 pm

ivan_349876 wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2026 3:41 pm

(and honestly anyone who argue space casino is hard to do is blind)

"Hard" is subjective, but it's certainly harder to design a space casino than an upcycler.

All of the challenge is just in the "make an asteroid farming operation" right?

You're not positing that "turn these asteroids into legendary items" is harder to do with a reprocessing loop than other options, are you?

Because I think that's what the other person is talking about: they're not discussing where you're getting raw materials from. They're talking about the available methods for turning raw common materials into legendary ones.

Reprocessing loops are indeed the easiest way to turn asteroids into legendary asteroids, but I don't see what point you're trying to make. Space casinos are what make grinding for legendary asteroids at all viable. In their absence, people won't fall back to upcycling asteroids on space platforms, they'll just do it on land where resources are far more abundant, because the real goal isn't to get legendary asteroids, it's to get legendary materials.

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.

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.

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 2:57 am But the space casino is overpowered as a way to improve quality

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 2:57 am I suppose maybe it doesn't look overpowered in comparison to LDS with productivity research, but that's super overpowered too.

So? Which one is it? If everything is overpowered, then nothing is and it's actually balanced. That's what people have been getting at since a week on why this nerf is so weird.

radical_larry wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 8:37 am

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 2:57 am But the space casino is overpowered as a way to improve quality

Hurkyl wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 2:57 am I suppose maybe it doesn't look overpowered in comparison to LDS with productivity research, but that's super overpowered too.

So? Which one is it? If everything is overpowered, then nothing is and it's actually balanced. That's what people have been getting at since a week on why this nerf is so weird.

Space casino and LDS shuffle are not "everything".

And I totally agree that it's bizarre they decided to leave the foundry recipe for LDS alone. But what people "have been getting at" has definitely not been as narrowly scoped as you suggest.

There's not much discussions about that because I think people mostly don't have much disagreement over it. The only person I recall positively defending LDS has been from the "devs should never nerf things for game balance" camp.

You can use asteroid productivity research, with the 20% asteroid output in the normal crushing recipes. With enough research, you reach the same 80% output...

So there you go.

(although I think asteroid productivity shouldn't increase the chance of asteroid chunk output, that's like having productivity on Kovarex enrichment...)

Stargateur wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 2:38 am

ivan_349876 wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2026 3:41 pm

(and honestly anyone who argue space casino is hard to do is blind)

"Hard" is subjective, but it's certainly harder to design a space casino than an upcycler.

That easier by far. Only people who only did space casino and didn't try to do other way to deal with quality in game would argue it's harder

Only people who don't understand the word subjective would insist like that. It's really the bottom tiers of the arguments right there, if you play modded like a mad man and on your own private game, then your points can be safely ignored, especially since you explicitly said you had already said all your arguments in the other thread, proceeding to repeat them after you were explained how to make space casinos makes it look like you are not understanding what exactly was changed in the game x) It was shown in the other thread that space casino can be done in different ways , and some aren't removed, they are still in the game, if you reach high level of asteroid productivity in 2.1 you can do the same space casino as you could in 2.0. It's kinda baffling that despite the lengh of the other discussion that point still isn't understood apparently, i can understand from players just reading the FFF and reacting directly, if they had not gotten into such a lenghy discussion, but here i feel it's different.

Stargateur wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 2:38 am I have mostly the same opinion then Tertius about wube having though this change better than us.

That seem ovbvious in your case, but also a bit paradoxical to the assertivity with which you state your subjective understanding as a factual truth and insist on the time you spent playing as if it was an argument of the quality of any reasonning.

Hurkyl wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2026 4:28 pm You're not positing that "turn these asteroids into legendary items" is harder to do with a reprocessing loop than other options, are you?

Because I think that's what the other person is talking about: they're not discussing where you're getting raw materials from. They're talking about the available methods for turning raw common materials into legendary ones.

It may sound like a silly discussion but hey, it's how the other one went, why not compare with recycling ore directly ? which is just super easy obviously more than making a whole space platform for it x), Why not compare with Gleba blueprint that you can just plop wherever you want and send the science from there ? When i read the arguments :

Space factory is a big trouble for factorio, specially now they give us trading between platform, space platform remove most of the logistic problem, you have one unit that do what you want it to do and you can scale just by copy paste the ship, without any logistical challenge that come with this scaling.

I realized it was coming from somoeone who still doesn't understand maybe that it's actually unrelated to quality, that's just how space platform works, but not only space platforms you can do things like this : viewtopic.php?p=674277 pretty much anywhere.The argument about the extra logisitic that would alledgedly be required for blueprint is flawed and reveal imo a lack of understanding of what some other player would do.

The other discussion was more focussed on the different methods to achieve quality items available to the player, there are several ,including just recycling ore a simple method yet, i've aleady seen people refusing to admit it involve much less thought process than space platforms and instead repeat "space casino are easy" "upcycling is hard", a bit like broken record. You can also have a full factory with all intermediate qualities everywhere because you craft with every quality as intermediate,or some kind of middle ground like the classic recycler loop for the end product which seem to be the only point of reference for some players, but one can also LDS shuffles , and different methods of getting them from space, one that include the reprocessing recipe with quality module. Now with a broader view of what is available, it appears even more of a disfunctionnal argument ( imo) to point out what is easy and what is breaking logistic, because this setup is allowed : ( viewtopic.php?p=690032#p690032 ) Devs only removed "quality module in the crusher for the reprocessing receipe". They also explained what they mean by that in the FFF. And i expected anyone that has spend "HOURS" playing the game to be able to recognize the situation x). Space Casino aren't removed, they are accesible later with the regular asteroid processing, or to be made using recyclers and not crushers like in my example, the devs didn't remove the possibility to use quality module in crushers as i anticipated, only for one recipe from what i read in the FFF.

Obviously "hard" or "easy" is subjective, not understanding the concept can quickly lead to circular arguments , but also objectively, making something slower or available later isn't making it "harder" and objectively we can say that "space casino" aren't made "harder" when you use recycler instead of crusher, it's just "slower" but you can still copy paste the platform as many time as you want, and it still doesn't require any logistic.

ivan_349876 wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2026 6:45 pm Space casinos are what make grinding for legendary asteroids at all viable. In their absence, people won't fall back to upcycling asteroids on space platforms, they'll just do it on land where resources are far more abundant, because the real goal isn't to get legendary asteroids, it's to get legendary materials.

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.

If you want "fast early bootstrap" to me , the fastest (to me) has always been mining quality ore on Fulgora, so nothing changes here (again for me) , it's painful to scale, but as mentionned i would choose a different method if my goal was to scale things x).

FasterJump wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 10:38 am You can use asteroid productivity research, with the 20% asteroid output in the normal crushing recipes. With enough research, you reach the same 80% output...

Indeed !

Stargateur wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 2:38 am That easier by far. Only people who only did space casino and didn't try to do other way to deal with quality in game would argue it's harder. I spend HOURS not I spend MONTHS to learn and design various way to do quality in the game, space casino take me like few minutes

If designing an entire spaceship takes minutes for you, while designing an upcycler takes months, then you are very unique, and your experience can't really be applied to the general population.

The majority of players can design a circular upcycler, even with buffers for intermediates and overflow, quite quickly because it's a very straightforward process.

Quality bacteria is simply a quality bioflux upcycler, and, to be honest, forcing players to go to Gleba of all places is a questionable decision, to say the least.

Every other method is just an upcycler or an upcycler with extra steps. So the choice is either to design 4-5 upcyclers and a spaceship, or to design 6-7 upcyclers and an LDS infinity machine. And it was always a choice before. Now it's a decision made for you.

It's especially bad because it forces you to build a coal upcycler, which is the most disgusting thing to do and probably the only thing that actually required "fixing."

mmmPI wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 10:58 am

FasterJump wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 10:38 am You can use asteroid productivity research, with the 20% asteroid output in the normal crushing recipes. With enough research, you reach the same 80% output...

Indeed !

This is indeed why Factorio was always better for me than Satisfactory. In Factorio, you play the game. In Satisfactory, you struggle through the game so that you can play it only after you've already finished it. Unlike many people, I can't see much reason to play something I've already finished.

Moving the space casino from the game to after the game is indeed the reason for this whole backlash. A lot of people don't need infinite exponential scaling after the game. They want to use quality products in their factory during the game.

It is astounding how people in this thread can't even agree on some basic facts. So maybe giving your answer to the following questions could give a hint where the sticky points are (or at a minimum satisfy my curiosity ):

Are space casinos (aka creating legendary quality by upcycling asteroids)

A) outright impossible now

B) available later without changing the recipe, after some or a lot more rounds of infinity research

C) still possible from early on, they just need more asteroids as "fuel" since the "casino loop" output to input ratio is less than 100%

D) still possible from early on, but need a crusher for the quality generation as well?


Obviously more than one answer could be correct. If there is an E answer please add it as well. If you disagree on the definition of "space casino" above, please specify your own.

Before asking questions about the future, you should understand the current situation.

Casinos never had a 100% output-to-input ratio, only LDS/PU did.

Casinos can now only be built using crushing, but their output rate is close to that of simple washing. With repeatable research, this rate can be increased to match the output of the existing casinos once you are past the endgame and megabase stage.

Infinite exponential growth is unaffected because it's an issue with platforms, not casinos, and it can't be addressed without changing asteroid distribution.

Rinin wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 11:15 am If designing an entire spaceship takes minutes for you, while designing an upcycler takes months

Not what I said, as always people just lie and manipulate. "Arguing with fools is like playing chess with a pigeon; no matter how good you are, the bird is going to knock the pieces over, crap on the board, and strut around like it’s victorious." - Scott D. Weitzenhoffer

Stargateur wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 1:42 pm "Arguing with fools is like playing chess with a pigeon; no matter how good you are, the bird is going to knock the pieces over, crap on the board, and strut around like it’s victorious." - Scott D. Weitzenhoffer

So true, nice strutting btw

Stargateur wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 1:42 pm

Rinin wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 11:15 am If designing an entire spaceship takes minutes for you, while designing an upcycler takes months

Not what I said, as always people just lie and manipulate. "Arguing with fools is like playing chess with a pigeon; no matter how good you are, the bird is going to knock the pieces over, crap on the board, and strut around like it’s victorious." - Scott D. Weitzenhoffer

Ironically, you might be both right: that there is a lot to learn and work through, but also lots of people will just latch onto some surface thing and not peek any deeper.

Rinin wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 11:30 am

mmmPI wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 10:58 am

FasterJump wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 10:38 am You can use asteroid productivity research, with the 20% asteroid output in the normal crushing recipes. With enough research, you reach the same 80% output...

Indeed !

This is indeed why Factorio was always better for me than Satisfactory. In Factorio, you play the game. In Satisfactory, you struggle through the game so that you can play it only after you've already finished it. Unlike many people, I can't see much reason to play something I've already finished.

Moving the space casino from the game to after the game is indeed the reason for this whole backlash. A lot of people don't need infinite exponential scaling after the game. They want to use quality products in their factory during the game.

I don't know enough Satisfactory to compare, i understand what you say, i have already discussed with people feeling the same about foundations, you don't need them when you unlock them because the game is finished. To me i feel there is a bit of what you ask that is "impossible" and a bit of what you ask that is "already there". In a way you already have access to legendary stuff only on Aquilo, so "the game is almost over" you just need to reach the solar system edge, that could be seen as the only purpose of "legendary". You can't really use them all along, it's a bit impossible. I also think in this regard different forms of "space casino" were always "late game", designed at a point of a factory where you're willing to expand in the post-game, or like the goal you set for yourself, and indeed when you achieve it you have achieved the goal. That may sound weird but to consider the questions from meganothing, "space casino are still in the game", they can't really be removed, depending on what you call "space casino". Recognizing the math about exponential returns of infinite space platforms to then design an actual platform utilizing the concept is to me a whole lot of fun, it's like creating your casino, setting up the games, and knowing you will have infinite customer over time, so you have to design better platforms, to take even more advantage of the infinite asteroid flow.

In that regard, most of the fun to me is to be had while making the platforms, that wasn't removed from the game from what i understand from the FFF, not like if asteroid chunks couldn't be recycled for example, but even then you could argue the fun is to spent time making designs that will achieve the same objective : infinitly scalable easily pastable platforms with exponential returns x).

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. What matters somehow for sspeedrunners that would decide to tackle quality without any buffer in early game (like in fulgora), only start "quality" when legendary is available and try to get "everything legendary" or at least what is required for the achievement, "fast". ( already the "last thing to do before the game is over" ) Then i would rather consider the return on investement, over time , per module. Is it a good idea to put your first few legendary quality modules in a space platform ? you'd place them in EM plant making modules first, but then, when you start to have more ? ( again not considering the "already there part" where you could have started a platform with rare only from nauvis ) . I think Space Casinos then are still a viable option, it's kinda "average" as it was already in that some module are better placed in higher return on investment receipe, like EM plant, for holmium plate, but since 1 asteroid chunk is 50 ores, it still "convert" / "roll the dice" on a decent amount of material, more than if you were to put them in mining drills outputing on belts depending on your research level. And upcycling "ore" wether from space or on planet is still a viable systematic approach for quality instead of doing recycler loop for every end product, or picking up "some" receipe to upcycle "some" materials, based on incomplete math, intuition, and stuff read on the internet, like a "meta" that doesn't necessarily apply evewhere sometimes used because it's easy to learn about rather than because it is the proper tool for the job.

I also feel a lot of the strengh and weaknessess of the different methods rely on the execution much more than the methods itself. If it never clog, ever, because it's well designed and it's easy and straightforward to build, it may very well proove faster or more effective in a real game than a method that is "on paper" or mathematically more beneficial. A space platform has to deal with damages, bad logic in schedule, random spawn of asteroids. Stuff that you still need to take into account to make a nice design, which to me makes me think space casino aren't dead x).

On the other hand, if you wanted to have quality usable all along, then space casino were maybe actually detrimental to your experience, maybe you could consider an early bootstrap for quality on nauvis even before accessing space, or again, sorry if i insist with this but a quality bootstrap on Fulgora ? mining quality scrap can yield very fast the material from the end of the chain of higher quality. The idea would be to start the slow process earlier in the game, you do your "normal" game but with a steady and slow processs to gather material of "higher quality" running in the background, increase the buffer over time, and recycle the lower tier into the upper tier so that by the time you unlock legendary, you already have easy access to it without needing the space platforms. I understand that's not what you saw in the "space casinos" but that's how i saw them, i dont want to dismiss what you said, rather explain why for me it may be different.

It's maybe worth noting sometime just how much of vanilla Factorio is post-game.

The rocket is not very far away once you start unlocking purple and yellow science. Most of what requires purple and yellow science can reasonably be considered to effectively be post-game. Spidertrons, atomic bombs, artillery, top tier personal equipment, logistics network, blue belts....

mmmPI wrote: Fri Jun 19, 2026 2:31 pmit's easy to gather "more asteroids"

In the very end game we can simply recycle from raw material source directly instead of upcycling no matter where: in space or on the planet surface. And we can simply through away any byproduct we don't interested in. If the productivity is high enough, any raw material source effectively becomes infinite and gives astronomical amounts of material when processed. That's the reason why simple recycling works in the designs you mentioned above.

However, the problem with this argument, is that the road to this playthrough point requires grind. So, my answer relates to the gameplay steps, rather than theoretical possibilities of the end-game designs.

Allow me to explain what I mean. There are two interconnected gameplay factors. And both are important.

1) First, we need to get to the end-game somehow. By the "end game" I mean a state where most infinite techs are passed through "hundreds" (i.e. Mining Productivity >= 200 levels), and most items everywhere are legendary except Tech packs of course.

To get that much legendary items (assemblers, inserters, etc) you have to expand your factory using more or less repetitive designs based on non-legendary items at some stage of your playthrough: build large factory with repetitive blocks and through more and more raw material into the system. Or maybe do the same thing in space. The type of the surface does not matter here. Nor the type of setup (EMs or simple chests upcycling). That's what people usually refer to as "the factory must grow", but naturally it's a form of grind.

Some may argue that this design will yield more legendary items from the time being, while your infinite techs progressing. So, even if it's a "grind", it's not a linear grind.

That's true, but there is another factor that overshadows this argument.

2) In the post-game you need finite amount of legendary items, and nothing more. By the "post-game" I mean the state where you are traveling to the Shattered Planet to gather Promethium Science Packs regularly.

The amount of packs is naturally limited by the game engine's UPS. You cannot gather more than specific amount of Promethium Packs. Otherwise your computer simply blows up. Therefore you have to limit your factory grow by some very specific production limit. You simply will not be able to process more than this amount. Specific numbers depend on your computer's system configuration, but this factor is very real even for the high-end home desktops.

This means that in post-game you need just specific number of legendary items from which you would build your ideal and highly-optimized post-game factory. You don't need more than that. At least not on regular basis.

You probably wouldn't need space casinos or whatever things on this stage of playthough. You can build them of course, but you will not use their products in your regular processes. They would simply idle most of the time. As well as the large factory fields of upcyclers you built specifically to get to this stage.

Legendary items in Factorio Space Age is in fact finite challenge that you need to pass just once. It's not a part of the regular post-game design.

3) This leads to the main question of whether we should grind it during the entire playthrough up to the end- or post-game?

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.

The unique feature of space casinos was that it allows you to simplify this grinding step a little bit in the middle-end game - where all planets are managed, and most of the based techs are opened, but you didn't modernize your factory to legendary yet.

That's the point where you would normally start to grind base legendary materials, but with space casino you can simply do it faster. Still not for free. You have to design big space ship. But then it gives you notable yield of the base materials without the need to boringily upcycle them otherwise.

What's important here is that these are only base materials: copper, iron, sulfure, and coal. Anything else you still have to upcycle. So, it doesn't break the entire quality mechanics challenge, just reduces some amount of base grinding.

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?