Factorio Forums

Decrease the base quality of asteroid crushers to -0.5 (internal value, displays as -5% in current game), so rare quality 2 modules or uncommon quality 3 modules are required to start a functional space casino while not decreasing the diversity of the game.

Interesting, when anti space casinos guys will realize that legendary copper, iron, plastic, etc are not problem at all with any method. Main shortage for legendary is holmium, tungsten, etc. Unique resources that are absent in space. Stop tilting at windmills and focus on real problems.

angramania wrote: Fri Mar 06, 2026 7:19 pm Interesting, when anti space casinos guys will realize that legendary copper, iron, plastic, etc are not problem at all with any method. Main shortage for legendary is holmium, tungsten, etc. Unique resources that are absent in space. Stop tilting at windmills and focus on real problems.

I don’t see how upcycling vanilla items is any easier/different from from upcycling Space Age ones. It’s the same process, so the complexity is the same. The reason space casino and LDS shuffle need attention is because they use a significantly simpler process and still have hugely good performance. That’s like if electric furnaces were more efficient than foundries, or if basic oil processing produced much more gas than advanced.

CyberCider wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 12:33 pm I don’t see how upcycling vanilla items is any easier/different from from upcycling Space Age ones. It’s the same process, so the complexity is the same. The reason space casino and LDS shuffle need attention is because they use a significantly simpler process and still have hugely good performance.

Direct upcycling of iron/copper plates is complex? Just assemble and disassemble copper cables and iron gears. Even blue science pack is more complex. I doubt that anyone care about complexity. Main question is about resource efficiency. But copper, iron, plastic are infinite. Both in space and on some planets. So there is no real difference between space casino and upcycling. Holmium and tungsten are different. They are very limited and you really should care about efficiency. But space casino can't help you with that.

angramania wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2026 6:35 pm Direct upcycling of iron/copper plates is complex? Just assemble and disassemble copper cables and iron gears. Even blue science pack is more complex. I doubt that anyone care about complexity. Main question is about resource efficiency. But copper, iron, plastic are infinite. Both in space and on some planets. So there is no real difference between space casino and upcycling. Holmium and tungsten are different. They are very limited and you really should care about efficiency. But space casino can't help you with that.

Well, if you want resource efficiency, then you should be using upcyclers such as blue circuits and LDS, because those can reach 300% productivity. And unlike gears and cables, those have multiple ingredients. This makes them a lot more complex that space casino, especially since the ratio between the ingredients is probabilistic. Space casino has no distinct ingredients or products, the recipe both inputs and outputs asteroids. You just put an asteroid through the same recipe over and over again, you don’t need to build anything besides different variants of that one recipe. If you have one asteroid, you can already put it in the crusher, there are no other ingredients to wait for. You have to sort the asteroids, sure, but you also do that in any upcycler that’s decently good. And if you have an excess of one asteroid, you can turn it into exactly the one you want, while with most regular items you can’t do that. You can’t turn a copper cable into a steel plate, you need to make logistics that will take it to its proper place. Space casino also only handles ores, it doesn’t require any logistical inputs. While an upcycler for a product requires a whole real factory to produce all of the common items that go into it.

I don’t find resources to be limited at all, in any situation. Space Age, for some reason, decided to make mining productivity so easy to obtain that all resources have basically become infinite. My guess is that the developers changed their minds about depleting resources being a mechanic in the game, so they soft-removed it by making it so easy to overcome. To me, the main figure of merit for a quality production line is how expensive it is to build, because that determines how quickly I can scale it up. That means the goal is high throughput, to minimize the number of machines. And that leads to interestint choices of recipe, such as blue underground belts for gears/iron, big power poles for steel, heat exchangers for copper, etc.

I doubt that anyone care about complexity.

Then what do you think the developers are even doing all day? What is a factory game about if not complexity? Factorio has always been about designing factories that become better and better as they become more complex to design. They produce more advanced science packs, are faster, and are more resource efficient (in the base game, where resource depletion is a real concern). But only if you extract more different resources, produce more complex products, change the ratios with productivity modules, change the layouts with beacons, etc.

Sorry but I do not see what is complex in brute force upcycling. All you need is upcyclers(EM plant, AM3, biochamber), recyclers, provider chests, request chests, bots. Repeat for intermediate quality levels. Bots do all sorting. As I said, blue science is more complex at the moment you get it. You do not have bots and chests in space, so casino looks more complex to setup. And of course all complexity is gone after you have created blueprints. From this moment only efficiency plays role. That's why I said, that almost nobody really cares about complexity of space casinos compared to brute force upcycling. And suggestion in this topic also talk only about reducing efficiency, not about increasing complexity.

angramania wrote: Sun Mar 08, 2026 4:12 pm Sorry but I do not see what is complex in brute force upcycling. All you need is upcyclers(EM plant, AM3, biochamber), recyclers, provider chests, request chests, bots. Repeat for intermediate quality levels. Bots do all sorting. As I said, blue science is more complex at the moment you get it. You do not have bots and chests in space, so casino looks more complex to setup.

Casino is just so simple, I think most people wouldn’t use bots for it even if they could. Don’t get me wrong, upcycling (and Space Age as a whole) was definitely designed at a level of difficulty accessible for the average player. It’s definitely not overhaul-level complex. But space casino is just complete baby mode, it’s even simpler relative to everything else.

There’s also the matter of the larger scale, outside of the quality build itself. Upcycling consumes common quality items, so an actual base needs to be scaled and interconnected to allow for that. It also produces byproducts which need to be routed (for example, you use big power poles to upcycle steel plates, and that also produces copper cable and iron sticks). But space casino generates everything for itself on board, and allows you to rebalance all three asteroids between each other freely, to always get exactly the ratio you want. So to build an upcycler, you have to expand your base and set up some logistics. But to build a space casino you just set up the platform and you’re already done.

And of course all complexity is gone after you have created blueprints. From this moment only efficiency plays role. That's why I said, that almost nobody really cares about complexity of space casinos compared to brute force upcycling. And suggestion in this topic also talk only about reducing efficiency, not about increasing complexity.

Of course, but I’m just talking about the design stage. Everything in Factorio is designed once and then copy-pasted, that’s a given. But the efficiency of every possible method determines which one you will choose when designing. And it’s good game design for the most interesting method to be the most efficient one. Because it rewards players for engaging with the game and solving a challenge.

CyberCider wrote: Sun Mar 08, 2026 7:09 pm But space casino is just complete baby mode, it’s even simpler relative to everything else.

No, the simplest is to just upcycle the minerals at the mines, that's the least complexity. It's much easier than space casino, and much more UPS efficient, just overall better in every aspect in late game once you have so much productivity level it trivialize the ressource cost. It just can't be done for space Age item like holmium easily making "space age" item different than "non-space" age item

angramania wrote: Fri Mar 06, 2026 7:19 pm Interesting, when anti space casinos guys will realize that legendary copper, iron, plastic, etc are not problem at all with any method. Main shortage for legendary is holmium, tungsten, etc. Unique resources that are absent in space. Stop tilting at windmills and focus on real problems.

Yes !

If you remove space casino, you can still easily upcycle in space, it's just not as ups efficient but you can copy many times the same space platform, it's not even more complex, you just throw offboard the things that weren't upcycled in quality when processed, it's very much possible to continue using what makes space casino strong, which is unlimited ressources and easy scaling

Having a penalty on crushers for quality doesn't change the situation to me, space platform that upcycle quality things are already a late game thing, wether you have to wait a bit more before using them or not do not change them imo, they are not a thing that's OP early game, it's just one way to do for late game

mmmPI wrote: Mon Mar 09, 2026 1:48 am No, the simplest is to just upcycle the minerals at the mines, that's the least complexity. It's much easier than space casino, and much more UPS efficient, just overall better in every aspect in late game once you have so much productivity level it trivialize the ressource cost. It just can't be done for space Age item like holmium easily making "space age" item different than "non-space" age item

The key difference between ore recycling and space casino (and other exploits) is that ore recycling is terrible compared to upcycling. There are a few exceptions, but for the most major items like circuits, steel, gears, etc., it’s true. Ore recycling is simple but ineffective (ok), while space casino is simple and effective (not ok). In fact, that’s the exact way this post is aiming to adress the problem: By making casino less good, so its performance is appropriate for its complexity.

If you remove space casino, you can still easily upcycle in space, it's just not as ups efficient but you can copy many times the same space platform, it's not even more complex, you just throw offboard the things that weren't upcycled in quality when processed, it's very much possible to continue using what makes space casino strong, which is unlimited ressources and easy scaling

There’s not really any advantage to doing quality in space besides the OP efficiency of space casino. If that were to be nerfed, and space casino suddenly had to be built 5x larger, that would no longer be “easy scaling”. And in Space Age, resources are always practically unlimited. Theoretically only in space and on Gleba, but in practice everywhere.

CyberCider wrote: Mon Mar 09, 2026 6:51 am

mmmPI wrote: Mon Mar 09, 2026 1:48 am No, the simplest is to just upcycle the minerals at the mines, that's the least complexity. It's much easier than space casino, and much more UPS efficient, just overall better in every aspect in late game once you have so much productivity level it trivialize the ressource cost. It just can't be done for space Age item like holmium easily making "space age" item different than "non-space" age item

The key difference between ore recycling and space casino (and other exploits) is that ore recycling is terrible compared to upcycling. There are a few exceptions, but for the most major items like circuits, steel, gears, etc., it’s true. Ore recycling is simple but ineffective (ok), while space casino is simple and effective (not ok). In fact, that’s the exact way this post is aiming to adress the problem: By making casino less good, so its performance is appropriate for its complexity.

I'm seriously doubting if you have ever made a space casino. Considering simpler than a basic upcycling setup is crazy.