Upgrade recipes with Upgrade Planner (Quality !)

[BlueTemplar]

Upgrade planners can already upgrade entities,
and modules within entities.
The next step is to allow upgrading recipes within entities.

It wouldn't have been of that much use before
(except I guess in mods with a lot of item tiers),
but it becomes very necessary now that there's a second dimension to upgrades, with SA's Quality.

I guess this would require some kind of checkmark «Upgrade recipes rather than entities» at the bottom of the menu for custom Upgrade Planners ?

[dragon_gawain]

mmk, glad I found this so I don't need to make a duplicate!

TL;DR

Upgrade planner/parameterized blueprint should be able to alter quality of entities

What?

I want to be able to set quality of all recipes (and quality priority output of splitters) via either parameterized blueprint, or via an upgrade planner.

When I'm building multiple parallel factories to deal with quality, often I end up with the exact same design for the non-common quality factories. Going through each one and changing the quality of every machine and filter is a pain.

Therefore, changing the quality that a machine accepts/a splitter (and possibly even inserters) filter out should be something that I can easily change.

Note that this is a direct shift from one setting to another. So if I have a splitter filter filtering uncommon out, and another set to 'all quality' (see picture 2), the all quality one should not be changed.

Why?

See picture 1 for example.

Explanation of picture:
I've been making a quality science factory on Vulcanus, and the left side is common quality, while the right side is all the other qualities. uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary all have the exact same building layout, with the only difference being the machines are accepting different quality of inputs, and the splitter filters are filtering out different tiers of items.



It's a pain needing to go through the whole setup 3 times (not counting the time I initially set up the build) and change every single recipe and splitter filter by hand.

[BlueTemplar]

Thanks, you were much better at explaining the (same) context than me !

The second (lower) splitter also shows a quality only filter, which I use a lot in these parallel factories. Being able to quickly set those is part of the suggestion.

Wow, this potentially deserves its own thread :
«Upgrade filters with Upgrade planner» !
(Or maybe not, since it works so much better together in this context ?)

And yeah, I can totally see how you sometimes would want to do "all of the above", so instead of :

I guess this would require some kind of checkmark «Upgrade recipes rather than entities» at the bottom of the menu for custom Upgrade Planners ?

It probably should rather be 3/4 checkboxes with :

Upgrade :
☒ entities
(☐ modules) ?
☐ recipes
☐ filters

Also, related :
Allow custom Upgrade Planners to generically upgrade Quality

[dragon_gawain]

I don't think checkboxes is a good idea.

My first thought had been to do this via parameterized blueprints, and the upgrade planner idea had only come to me later, but either way, it's the same core.

If I go with the upgrade planner UI, I'd want to do something like

Screenshot 2024-11-05 173218.png (10.43 KiB) Viewed 5777 times

and just drag that all over the parallel factory to upgrade it.

Then I could have a second one that could look like this

Screenshot 2024-11-05 173218_2.png (11.01 KiB) Viewed 5777 times

And this would upgrade any filter that is based on quality, so:

* Splitter filters (if it's only quality, or quality + item, but NOT any quality. NO quality = normal, so that would be affected)
* Assembling machine recipes (this is the one you originally suggested)
* Filter inserters (if any of the filters are checking for the FROM quality, they should be changed)

There are some edge cases, such as if you're checking for greater than/less than quality, but I think those should also be upgraded..


For the modules, that can already by done. They even added in the 'no module' icon so you can easily remove all modules, or add modules when there are none.
For the filters, you can currently change what item an inserter/splitter is filtering, and you can even change the quality, but only if there's an item. If you're filtering for pure quality, then you can't change it (blueprint claims 'Nothing to parametrise') (which, side note, is a typo. Should say parameterize. But that's something else that I'll post on the bug forum now that I've noticed it.. I retract that cause some research shows it to be an accepted alternate spelling)

Taking a look at that related thread, it's almost what I'm suggesting, but not quite. That suggestion is to upgrade buildings, not recipes/filters.
The two are somewhat conflicting and would require some generic "structure" and generic "filter" and generic "recipe" icon. Ahh, ok, that's you meant with checkboxes! I get it now. I would do it as generic icons (kinda like the signals/unsorted tabs that show up in a few UIs) rather than checkboxes. More detailed control to do it as icons cause checkboxes would apply to the whole planner whereas icons would let you target only specific upgrades (i.e. can upgrade a filter from uncommon to rare at the same time as upgrading common buildings to uncommon).

OK, this was a bit rambling (I tend to think things through as I type up replies and leave my whole thought process there so you can see where I got my thoughts from), so I hope it all makes sense!

[Galdoc]

Glad I searched; had this exact request. <3

[qzjul]

I have the same request, with a couple of additional thoughts.

I generally like the checkbox ideas, like for the Deconstruction planner:

01-31-2025, 16-24-07.png (17.25 KiB) Viewed 4380 times

But additionally I'd like a checkbox/section for "Upgrade filters"; and "Upgrade signals"

I have mall blueprints i've made where the assembler recipe matches the filtered item in a storage chest, which matches the (item) < (number of items) limit on the filter; and the filter is Normal quality; and > normal quality is put to an active provider chest. I want to make an upgrade planner that bumps the quality of all of the above items from normal to uncommon, etc; and right-click downgrades the lot as well.


PS: FURTHER for blueprints (i know this is outside the scope), it'd sure be nice to use quality as a variable.

[DarkIrek]

Why doesn't this have more support? Its extremely tedious to change tens of recipes for each rarity.

[mmmPI]

Why doesn't this have more support? Its extremely tedious to change tens of recipes for each rarity.

You may use the hotkey to "copy paste" (shift right click/left click ) a receipe from a machine to another, and keep it pressed to change a whole row, also works when copy pasting an assembly with a certain receipe "over" another one and some people also use the "set receipe from circuit" to the assembly, and connect them with a constant combinator, so you can change the receipe only in one place. I'm not saying it replace the suggestion, but the way you phrased your support made me think maybe there were some tips that can make it less tedious you didn't know.

Currently i don't think it's possible in game to set filter for splitters that are of more than 1 quality level, ( like "all rare and better quality green circuit goes to the left" ) [at least with circuits] so even with the suggestion there would sill maybe be some manual fiddling to do. To me the most valuable here would be for the inserters which often time have different filters and are placed next to each other so you can't easily "drag and drop" the new filter, you have to copy paste several time 2 then 4 then 8 and so on if you want to change a whole lane.

[dragon_gawain]

So, I genuinely forget if you can hook splitters up to circuits (I think you can?), but I do know for sure that with filter splitters, you can do *X quality and better*.

[mmmPI]

So, I genuinely forget if you can hook splitters up to circuits (I think you can?), but I do know for sure that with filter splitters, you can do *X quality and better*.

You can hook splitters to circuits, but it's quite new and i'm not too familiar with it, though i'm pretty sure i remember you CAN do "X quality and better" in "general", but not for a specific item, for example "all rare and above green circuit" which sometimes when doing those quality shenaningans with circuits, can be annoying. It's the images of the proposed upgrade planner with the icon "only quality" that made me think of it. What i said about using constant combinator is only a limited workaround, because you can not emit a signal for ""all rare and above green circuit" and subsquently use it for splitters. If there is a such a thing as upgrade planner for quality, i'm just mentionning this to make sure there is no dead angle that are left

[dragon_gawain]

yeah, that sounds about right! Splitter filter was only 'quality X and above' or 'item of specific quality/any quality' last I played factorio.
to do 'quality X and above for specific item', you could stack two splitters one right after the other, but like, that feels jank.. (though taking a look back at the pictures I put in with my first post to this thread, it does indeed look like I did the stacked splitter method, just with some extra belts in the middle)

But yeah, for sure a good call out! Being able to filter by quality ranged item would be a nice feature for these quality factories!

[DarkIrek]

Why doesn't this have more support? Its extremely tedious to change tens of recipes for each rarity.

You may use the hotkey to "copy paste" (shift right click/left click ) a receipe from a machine to another, and keep it pressed to change a whole row, also works when copy pasting an assembly with a certain receipe "over" another one and some people also use the "set receipe from circuit" to the assembly, and connect them with a constant combinator, so you can change the receipe only in one place. I'm not saying it replace the suggestion, but the way you phrased your support made me think maybe there were some tips that can make it less tedious you didn't know.

You can do everything by hand without using upgrade planner at all but we don't have to click million times to achieve something if we use it. If I have a whole factory section I would like to change the rarity of recipes it crafts I would have to go and manually change every recipe to different rarity or fiddle with circuits when it could be one click and drag.

Factorio feels like a well oiled machine everything is so easy to do but quality breaks that for me. It has so many exceptions and so much brainless fiddling that doesn't exist in other parts of the game.

[mmmPI]

Factorio feels like a well oiled machine everything is so easy to do but quality breaks that for me. It has so many exceptions and so much brainless fiddling that doesn't exist in other parts of the game.

I have not contradicted that ! To me an upgrade planner for quality "may not be enough", it would be new method to deal with it , while some of the existing method maybe could also receive some attention or they may lack behind.

But on the other hand , quality being fiddly, to me feels like it reached its goal x)