Curved quality chance: normal to uncommon should be more likely than epic to legendary

[h.q.droid]

After having played online with a periodically resetting map side by side with my very-late-game legendary megabase, I think I saw quality with a new angle. Currently people rarely bother with uncommon / rare because they have too little payoff for the relative cost. On the contrary, legendary feels too easy to some people since by the time you do it, you already have most of the late-game vertical scaling and you have more waste product to spare.

My suggestion is to make the quality chance heterogeneous, decreasing with respect to the recipe level. For example, a common quality module 3 on a common recipe could give the same chance as a legendary quality module 3 on an epic recipe (6.2%), but decreases to the current level (2.5%) or lower (~1%) when the common module is used on an epic recipe. Higher quality quality modules could have the same base number, just slower decrease w.r.t. recipe quality, with legendary quality modules giving the same number for all recipes.

That would allow a starting base to reasonably upgrade to uncommon / rare quality once that's unlocked, without undermining the challenge at higher levels. Since the only additional dependency is the recipe, the final quality chance can be precomputed at recipe selection without affecting the inner manufacturing loop's performance.

[crimsonarmy]

This is a cool concept. I am not sure why the legendary module should give the same chance for everything though?

[eugenekay]

This could be accomplished in a Mod by adding "In-Between" Quality Levels which provide no additional benefits, eg:

• Normal
• Uncommon
• Uncommon+
• Rare
• Rare+
• Rare++
• Epic
• Epic+
• Epic++
• Epic+++
• Legendary

This is similar to QualityPlus, but without raising the bonuses for the intermediate Levels. Interesting Idea!

[h.q.droid]

This is a cool concept. I am not sure why the legendary module should give the same chance for everything though?

Well, my idea is that by the time you have a legendary module, the challenge difficulty should converge to the current state as it's an OK-ish anchor point.

This could be accomplished in a Mod by adding "In-Between" Quality Levels which provide no additional benefits, eg:

• Normal
• Uncommon
• Uncommon+
• Rare
• Rare+
• Rare++
• Epic
• Epic+
• Epic++
• Epic+++
• Legendary

This is similar to QualityPlus, but without raising the bonuses for the intermediate Levels. Interesting Idea!

That would be a huge increase in difficulty though due to the extra recycling needed. Say if you have an assembly plant with 100% quality with 0% productivity, adding those levels would decrease the legendary yield from 1/256 to 1/4194304. And increasing recycler productivity can have other implications.

[eugenekay]

That would be a huge increase in difficulty though due to the extra recycling needed. Say if you have an assembly plant with 100% quality with 0% productivity, adding those levels would decrease the legendary yield from 1/256 to 1/4194304. And increasing recycler productivity can have other implications.

The Quality Property for next_probability can be increased to compensate; which is part of what the linked Mod already does for this reason.

[Hurkyl]

That would allow a starting base to reasonably upgrade to uncommon / rare quality once that's unlocked, without undermining the challenge at higher levels. Since the only additional dependency is the recipe, the final quality chance can be precomputed at recipe selection without affecting the inner manufacturing loop's performance.

What are you imagining when you say "upgrade"?

Are you looking for gameplay like "Sure, I'll put rare productivity modules in my labs and rare furnaces on my platforms"?

Or are you looking for gameplay like "Okay, all my science is made with rare assemblers with rare productivity modules supported with rare beacons holding rare speed modules", and I have rare MKII armor with rare equipment?

I think the former is already valuable, and is certainly worth the cost (for the specific example, the cost is essentially "free" at the tier 1 level, and the tier 2 level mainly costs making some red/blue circuits with quality modules).

The latter, I think is a Bad Idea. "Upgrade everything" should very much be a post-scarcity thing, not normal gameplay.