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I totally understand that they have a higher "research value", so you produce more research points per science pack. What I don't get is why you'd allow them to be made in the first place, much less intentionally try to produce them:

1. You can trivially make more common science packs than quality packs, for fewer raw resources. Using prod and speed modules will net you at least an order of magnitude more science packs versus using quality modules and recycling to get all quality packs. A 2x/3x/4x/6x boost in "research value" is pointless if you can just produce 20x as many science packs.
    
2. If you don't ensure that all science packs are of the same quality (i.e. just let the RNG do its thing), then you also you can't reliably balance production between different science packs. This just adds more complexity around dealing with spoilage in the agricultural science pack production chain, in addition to still being less efficient overall. And pretty much makes any kind of sushi belt setup for labs so complicated it's not worth it.
    
3. Even if you don't care about balancing science pack output, and are fine with the occasional quality science pack mixing in with the common ones, it would likely have been better to use the quality ingredients used to make those science packs to make other things instead.

My conclusion is that either I'm totally missing some important piece of information, or quality science is actually a trap that should be intentionally avoided?

I can see a use for them in green and purple science, where the items going into them can't take production modules.

You cannot downgrade quality of things.

You always need basic quality for rocket parts.

You want to put quality module in mining drill for things that require quality.

You are left with increasing amount of quality material that pile up with ratios that do not exactly or not at all correspond to what you want.

Science is a ressource sink, you make quality science pack to void some quality things that you have in excess.

That's one reason i did quality science pack that i still find valid, particularly on Fulgora.


I also did legendary blue science on Gleba because i wanted to keep the same spaceplatform that served me well from the start, the kind of stubborness that sometimes makes you take 3 4 5 6 bags instead of doing 2 trips you know, but it was almost full capacity, and i couldn't fit like 18000K science or so, instead i went for 3 K legendary blue. I wouldn't consider this a valid a reason to make quality science pack, but it was combined with the fact that i wanted to make Gleba the planets of robots so i had my legendary bot factory there, and i only found out how to make the bacteria farm stop/resume production too late when i had already around 150K legendary iron ore sitting in chests. I do not regret setting up the legendary science, turned out pretty useful to "steal" some material from its prodution chain for 1-time use elsewhere and it again voided my accumulated iron ore, i could have left it in chest, space is "more" infinite in Gleba than in Fulgora, but it felt good near end game to finally clean up the mess and not remember it as a failure x)

Edit: also 1/6 th of the time to load the ship of blue science, so the spoilable one wasn't too delayed by it

produce science with quality shine when you have quality ingredient and use productivity module, having +100% productivity on a legendary science craft mean you produce a science at 600% twice. If you produce quality stuff without recycling in your factory it's insane. So quality science is wonderful to make the best use of resource when you have too much of quality stuff.

mmmPI wrote: Mon Dec 02, 2024 1:21 am You are left with increasing amount of quality material that pile up with ratios that do not exactly or not at all correspond to what you want.

Science is a ressource sink, you make quality science pack to void some quality things that you have in excess.

All the replies are basically saying something similar to this -- that quality science packs are a place to get rid of excess quality ingredients. But this also highlights the exact problem I'm talking about.

If you aren't being super careful about keeping all your ratios in sync, everywhere, you'll end up with extras of some ingredients and not others. This already happened prior to space age, so it's something we're all used to dealing with. For example, in the early game maybe you are producing red science faster than green science, and so your red science production line backs up. Not a problem unless you designed your factory poorly and this causes something to lock up somewhere.

My point is that quality only makes this problem worse. If you have extra quality ingredients, and make quality science packs for some kinds of science but not others, then it just magnifies the imbalances. The only upside I can see is if you aren't producing enough of a particular science pack, making quality versions of that science pack might help lessen the shortfall. But it's a lot simpler and more reliable just to scale up production instead.

I guess the place I see these imbalances being an actual problem (and why I asked in the first place) is with agricultural science. After thinking about it more though, I suppose the answer is that you just have to ensure your production rate of agricultural science is always less than all the other science packs, if you don't want to deal with agricultural science backing up and spoiling. I'm starting to see the appeal of cross-planet circuit signals now.

On the contrary, it has to be significantly higher than all other packs, so that you pulse-produce and turn off when not needed

spacedog wrote: Tue Dec 03, 2024 5:41 pm My point is that quality only makes this problem worse. If you have extra quality ingredients, and make quality science packs for some kinds of science but not others, then it just magnifies the imbalances. The only upside I can see is if you aren't producing enough of a particular science pack, making quality versions of that science pack might help lessen the shortfall. But it's a lot simpler and more reliable just to scale up production instead.

I tried to explain that it's actually the opposite for me. If i ever have an imbalance of something, i can transform some things into higher quality, to "consume them" faster. If you need holmium on fulgora for example, you need to void maybe everything else, maybe more copper than iron, what you "void" you could instead make into quality science pack, that's a ressource sink, a way to mitigate the imbalance. If it's imbalance of quality product that are piling up it's even more straightforward to just make them into science sometimes.

I'm using quality module in mining drills in Fulgora ,you can end up with "too much" quality material, but require "normal quality" to launch rocket so i turn some of the unused quality material into science instead of voiding them when they pile up and i'm not using them for modules , this way i can guarantee no clogging for my "normal quality" flow of holmium.

The quality science would be some "extra" that arrive occasionnaly, consumed with priority, made from resources that would otherwise have risk clogging some system.

aka13 wrote: Tue Dec 03, 2024 6:14 pm On the contrary, it has to be significantly higher than all other packs, so that you pulse-produce and turn off when not needed

I also did the significantly higher approach at first, but not because i could pulse produce, just because the science packs were not super fresh so i needed more of them compared to the others to keep science flowing

It also make sense to me that someone would have a lower production of agri science pack than the others, considering you may not want to do infinite research that require them ,and once you have what you need , you don't want a large footprint factory that produces only spoilage.

Never attempted quality spoilable science pack directly, only legendary blue science on gleba was made from quality spoilable. But that would increase the duration for freshness. It didn't seem worth it for me to try and achieve this for the purpose of the extended freshness.