Some feelings and suggestions about playing SA

[tomoya92]

Factory is a game of building production lines, and I think many players like to build bigger and bigger factories through quantification. The sense of achievement when watching their own factory produce 10k or even more technology bottles per minute is very satisfying

1. The beacon has changed from linear markup to non-linear markup
The non-linear addition of beacons can even result in a situation where adding beacons actually slows down

2. The output of the quality module is a probability event
Machines that receive quality module bonuses cannot be accurately quantified because the quality they produce is a probability event, and in order to obtain a large amount of quality raw materials, they can only use recycling machines to continuously recycle them, which is also limited by luck. It is completely a waste of time

In the game of defeating monsters and exploding equipment, probability can bring players a gambling like pleasure, but I don't think using probability in factory games is a very wise choice

As a player who loves building assembly lines, I feel terrible about uncertain things

3. Boxes cannot be placed on space platforms
The box cannot be placed on the space platform because it is too light, but the inserter are fine. They are obviously the same weight

4. Inserter cannot pick up items from the cargo bay
Can I understand that this is an official coercion for players to study belt hybrid transportation?

some suggestions:
1. The beacon recovers linear bonuses, but the more bonus machines around the beacon, the higher the energy consumption required
2. Change the quality items to something similar to Kovarex enrichment process, so that low-quality items can be transformed into high-quality items. The current quality setting has resulted in the inability to afford it in the early stages, and in the later stages, legendary quality is directly applied, and several intermediate qualities are directly recycled
3. Space platform hopes to place chest
4. Hope to pick up items from the cargo bay

[MisterDoctor]

2: yeah I'm not quite sold on quality. I tried it a bit and... I just get slightly better items very very rarely? So what I have to just pump out huge amounts of items to hopefully get some nicer ones? That does not seem very fun. I suppose maybe for equipment where I only need a couple items it makes a little sense, but still, making hundreds and hundreds to try to get better rolls? definitely strange concept in this game. as you say I guess the recycler will deal with the waste products.

3: this is just for balance reasons I think. would let you store/pile up too many items making the space logistics not as complex. you are supposed to have to think about how to deal with overflowing items and not just shove them in boxes.

4: I just discovered this today. I was a little bewildered. I suppose it is for similar reasons as #3? But not sure. It means cargo bays lower the number of tiles that you can interact with the hub on... I don't really like that but not sure if intended or not. feels like it shouldn't be but maybe if you could then you'd just make dozens of cargo bays and it would be like having chests. maybe should just cap the number of them that you can have or something?

[Tertius]

About 2: Machines with quality modules don't output quality arbitrarily. If you process single items, ok, it is. But if you process items in bulk, it's totally predictable and deterministic how many items you will receive unmodified and how many with higher quality. If there is a quality bonus of 10%, and you process 10000 normal items, you will get as output 9000 normal items, 900 uncommon items, 90 rare, 9 epic, and 1 legendary.
It might be +- a few, but in general that's it.

If you don't need all the 9999 non-legendary items but just the one legendary, recycle all except the legendary.
Keep in mind the input defines the minimum quality of the output, so if you input legendary ingredients, you don't need any quality module at all: the output will automatically be legendary. So it might be worth to not recycle upgraded items but instead use them. Just accepting normal to legendary and throwing away everything else is an extremely bad ratio, instead it's wise to use upgraded intermediates everywhere throughout the intermediates chain and just throw away the end product if it's too low of a quality for you.

[BlueTemplar]

Yeah, with enough items, the randomness smooths out (fluctuations being √n), as tested in practice :
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=120584

The non-linear addition of beacons can even result in a situation where adding beacons actually slows down

How ? Isn't that a monotonic function ??

I just get slightly better items very very rarely?

What else would you expect with (what I assume are) 2 mk1 normal quality modules ?

4. — worse : you would have chests teleporting items from one side of the station to another, removing the need for belts.

Change the quality items to something similar to Kovarex enrichment process, so that low-quality items can be transformed into high-quality items.

How would that be different from the current upcycling loop ?

[Daid]

3. Boxes cannot be placed on space platforms
The box cannot be placed on the space platform because it is too light, but the inserter are fine. They are obviously the same weight

There is (to me) obvious gameplay reason for this. It's actually something that is ingrained in all of the spaceage new parts. "Design differently". Space platforms and all the planets, all require you to design differently then on other places. Spoilage, scrap, liquid metal, freezing structures, all require you to rethink how you design factories. Same for the platform limitations. You cannot slam down the same design everywhere, and that's very intentional.

For the boxes, it's also to make your platform more crowded and compact.

4. Inserter cannot pick up items from the cargo bay
Can I understand that this is an official coercion for players to study belt hybrid transportation?

My spaceship design has dedicated half-belts per item type, so no need for fancy sushi belts.

But I think the main reason for no cargo-bay insertion access is to prevent the type of "hyper transport" that you sort of can do with cargo wagons. If you could insert/remove from the cargo bays it would allow you to use those as really fast transportation.

[EustaceCS]

2. The output of the quality module is a probability event
Machines that receive quality module bonuses cannot be accurately quantified because the quality they produce is a probability event, and in order to obtain a large amount of quality raw materials, they can only use recycling machines to continuously recycle them, which is also limited by luck. It is completely a waste of time

Big numbers produce reliable results. Even slightly better on average, since bonus rolls (roll to get Rare from Common, as example) seem to reduce "same quality" output chance even further.
If in some setup big numbers don't produce reliable results - it's worth posting a bug report about that.
Randomized outputs existed before Space Age, see Kovarex enrichment tech.

3. Boxes cannot be placed on space platforms
The box cannot be placed on the space platform because it is too light, but the inserter are fine. They are obviously the same weight

4. Inserter cannot pick up items from the cargo bay
Can I understand that this is an official coercion for players to study belt hybrid transportation?

Yes.

2. Change the quality items to something similar to Kovarex enrichment process, so that low-quality items can be transformed into high-quality items.

Recycler CAN have Quality modules installed. For exactly this reason, among other things.

3. Space platform hopes to place chest
4. Hope to pick up items from the cargo bay

You have 8x8 sized chest with 59 slots and an option to expand at your space platform's core.
Unless you obliviously close all sides, it's perfectly accessible.
Cargo bays must be contigous with hub and each other but can be daisy-chained as necessary without artifical limitations. And underground belts do work in space (where "ground" to place these "under" is present, of course).