Quality Maintenance
Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2026 4:47 pm
So I've had this idea for a while about a way to make high quality builds more challenging and interesting. I feel like the current quality implementation has little player agency: your end goal is to build a legendary factory, that can be a fraction of the size while producing 10 times more than normal, you set it up and then forget about it while it produces obscene amounts of resources that end up mostly spent on science.
The idea is so that machines and installed modules would slowly lose quality the longer they are actively working, rather than quality being permanent.
If left unchecked, quality buildings could eventually revert back to normal, and potentially even below, into worn/damaged states if it is left running long enough. Idle machines would not degrade, so the system would represent actual usage rather than simply the passage of time.
To fully automate the solution, construction bots could automatically replace degraded buildings and modules with replacements from logistic storage, with configurable minimum-quality thresholds (e.g. automatically replace anything below Rare), allowing players to build factories that maintain themselves.
The goal of the mod would be to turn high-quality equipment into something that requires ongoing resource investment and maintenance, creating new logistical challenges and presenting the choice between a normal factory that is cheap to maintain, and a high quality factory that requires significant infrastructure to operate.
I don't have any previus modding experience, maybe this idea has already been suggested but it can't be implemented easily. I have seen other mods implementing some bits of the idea, but not this whole "package" of changes, that's why I figured I'd ask here and see what people think.
The idea is so that machines and installed modules would slowly lose quality the longer they are actively working, rather than quality being permanent.
If left unchecked, quality buildings could eventually revert back to normal, and potentially even below, into worn/damaged states if it is left running long enough. Idle machines would not degrade, so the system would represent actual usage rather than simply the passage of time.
To fully automate the solution, construction bots could automatically replace degraded buildings and modules with replacements from logistic storage, with configurable minimum-quality thresholds (e.g. automatically replace anything below Rare), allowing players to build factories that maintain themselves.
The goal of the mod would be to turn high-quality equipment into something that requires ongoing resource investment and maintenance, creating new logistical challenges and presenting the choice between a normal factory that is cheap to maintain, and a high quality factory that requires significant infrastructure to operate.
I don't have any previus modding experience, maybe this idea has already been suggested but it can't be implemented easily. I have seen other mods implementing some bits of the idea, but not this whole "package" of changes, that's why I figured I'd ask here and see what people think.