Factorio Forums

Remove the LDS Quality Loop by Replacing Solid Plastic with Liquid Plastic

TL;DR: The Legendary LDS loop is currently a much stronger quality exploit than space casinos, yet remains untouched. Replacing solid plastic in the Foundry LDS recipe with liquid plastic would eliminate the loop while preserving the Foundry’s intended production bonus.

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LDS Shuffle

It feels a little strange that space casinos are being nerfed while the arguably more exploitable LDS quality loop is left untouched.

Currently, the Foundry’s LDS recipe can produce 4× Legendary LDS from 1× Legendary Plastic Bar.

Those 4× Legendary LDS can then be recycled at 25%, yielding:
1× Legendary Steel
1× Legendary Copper
1× Legendary Plastic Bar

The Legendary Plastic Bar can then be fed back into the Foundry, creating a closed loop that generates Legendary Copper and Legendary Steel indefinitely.

One possible solution would be to modify the Foundry LDS recipe so that it consumes liquid plastic rather than plastic bars. Since liquids do not carry quality, this would prevent quality amplification through the LDS loop while retaining the Foundry’s productivity bonus.

The main downside is that this would require a way to produce liquid plastic, either:

* A new Chemical Plant recipe (Plastic Bars → Liquid Plastic), or
* A Foundry recipe that converts Plastic Bars into Liquid Plastic before LDS production.

This seems like a relatively clean solution that addresses the exploit without removing any interesting gameplay.

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Space Casinos & Space Factories

Regarding space casinos, I think the nerf is largely justified. However, reaching a self-sustaining quality production setup in space is also a satisfying late-game objective.

With the addition of platform-to-platform logistics in 2.1, another possible approach would be to continue allowing Quality Modules in Asteroid Crushers, but prevent asteroids or asteroid-derived ores from being dropped back to planets.

This would preserve quality generation in space while requiring players to process those materials into higher-tier products before exporting them. It keeps the challenge and reward of space-based quality production while preventing it from becoming a trivial source of planetary resources.

The difference is the LDS shuffle requires huge amounts of expensive infinite research to reach +300% productivity on your cast LDS recipe. By the time you're in a position to exploit it, you've got a factory that can certainly produce legendary stuff legitimately, so it's useful but not game-breaking. It also only produces quality copper and steel.

The space casino, on the other hand, can be done as soon as you have the industry to mass-produce crushers, grabbers, and quality module 3s, and produces iron ore, copper ore, ice, sulfur, carbon, and calcite (and thus everything that can be derived from those). It effectively makes the normal upcycling process entirely obsolete for anything that doesn't require stone, solid fuel, or one of the non-Nauvisian unique resources.

LDS shuffle is still relatively strong at 0% productivity research; the possibility of 300% productivity just maximizes the way some foundry alternate recipes let you bypass lower quality steps for upcycling metals.

And there aren't many good choices for upcycling plastic so the game is even pushes you towards taking advantage of it.