Friday Facts #375 - Quality

[lacika2000]

New Feature: Optional Recipe Components

In order to make higher quality versions, each recipe should allow extra "optional" components, such as blue circuits. Then, when selecting the recipe on an assembling machine (or whatever), we should be able to enable or disable the extra components, allowing the machine to make different quality versions.

Lets say, for example, I could make a Rare inserter by adding a Blue Circuit. The Inserter recipe should be updated to have Blue Circuit as an "optional" component, and the assembling machine would look like this (pretend the second green component is a blue one)



This allows "extending" the recipes for the quality system without adding a bunch of extra duplicates.

I really like this approach, so having an existing (or new and dedicated) intermediate that allows the player to push up quality by one slot. Redoing this step, or adding more of this "special sauce" would increase the quality by another step so, for example, you can get to L5 by changing the amount of 'Improvement Component' to max 4. The idea of using Blue Circuit is also very elegant as this component is used in late game for many high tier products.

I am still very much concerned about a random feature bloating the inventory and making blue printing a nightmare...

[aka13]

I wonder how many players quit after learning that nuclear processing is yielding shiny rocks at random that are absolutely necessary for optional nuclear power.

I legit find the original %-yield really stupid, not as in that it does not make sense, but that it is not fun at all from a gameplay perspective. And don't get me started on the gamblers fallacy, the fact that I can "roll" faster, does not change the chance of the event happening. Basically what happens is, I am gatekept by a technology, and the technology is gatekept by "wait a long time, you have no way to influence it except rolling more often".

Obviously, since that is a small niche recipe, that gets obsoleted by on-demand-kovarex-enrichment, I considered it a minor inconvenience.
If you belt on the same (ideologically) process to every recipe in the game, suddenly it's not a minor inconvenience, and suddenly not a small thing you can "ignore".

I have 13 years of world of tanks on my belt, and my eye twitches when I see "+-25%" in any game.

[lacika2000]

It would be more intuitive if the first tier of quality just had no symbol/dot at all, meaning "no particular quality". The dots can be viewed rather as badges this way. Also there is no need to explain/argue why the dots of Q1 items are not visible in the world and why the symbols you're seeing in the world start with the two-dotted ones.
Also, it is easier to apply the known tier2color scheme from factorio, assuming we don't get further tiers of belts. It could then look something like this:
factorio-fff-quality.png

^^^THIS^^^

Starting with two dots as a visible sign of higher quality is not elegant, see military ranks, for example: privates have no star or stripe.

[Losash]

< tons of questions which have all been answered in the original blog post, i wonder how our civilization will advance when people will learn to read and carefully look at provided videos >

1) Tier 3 quality module is 2.5% chance. Tier 3 quality module of legendary quality is 2.5 * 2.5 = 6.25% chance. Maximum chance in a single machine is thus 25%.
2) Items of different qualities are not stackable.
3) It doesn't matter that you can't get close to 100% quality increase. You use the recycler. Ratios are there essentially just to increase production cost of your item. But things which are made once and used forever like modules/buildings/equipment are always beneficial even if they cost astronomical amounts of resources to make. Because they are just better, increasing UPS, resource consumption efficiency, space usage, player experience, and so on.

[Winnkys]

Can't say I'm excited by the news. I probably won't use it. Although I don't like using beacons or modules, and not a fan of the way nuclear works either. So I'm defiantly not the target audience for this update. So I'm glade to see that its optional.

Hoping for some more exciting news next week.

[lacika2000]

I am very happy to see that the devs are putting in long days & nights to think deeply about the gameplay in Factorio. This is very heartwarming to see. I am genuinely excited about the upcoming SA, with all the new features included.

The jury is still out on 'quality' (better names, please ), as I will not be able handle even more clutter in the inventory without hardcore modding my vanilla game to have a giant inventory grid of 40x40 by default.

Without sounding sarcastic, I really hope that the devs have already another FFF coming up that will finally resolve the long-standing nightmarish issues and inconsistencies around fluid handling (e.g., emptying or filling a storage tank), and that they have put at least the same amount of thinking effort and brain cycle time resolving this, as they spend on new features.

[Droneboat]

kovarex wrote:
Generally, just adding a huge amount of recipes isn't really adding to the game at this point, as we feel that the game already has enough, especially when we consider Space Age specific ones not yet revealed.

But if you look at the electronic circuits loop, you have 4 assemblers with different tier recipes (I assume that after you choose an item then you choose tier for recipe in the assembler), which means they added 4 extra recipes (different types of recipes, but still recipes) for each item in the game, which is literally the opposite of what they wanted to do.

And how is this feature "Optional" when the only other option is to play without way better buildings, equipment and other stuff? To make it truly optional there has to be an option to get these things without Quality feature, like before you star a map, you choose to play with or without this feature, and if without then only entities that get boosts from tiers have tier recipes, but inputs are x times more expensive than previous tiers to follow the

legendary items are 56 times more expensive than normal items

. And yes, with quality modules (and some other methods not shown in this FFF) that amount could be reduced, but since you lose a lot of resources in recyclers, both methods would be more or less even.

[bluemonk]

1) Tier 3 quality module is 2.5% chance. Tier 3 quality module of legendary quality is 2.5 * 2.5 = 6.25% chance. Maximum chance in a single machine is thus 25%.[...]
3) It doesn't matter that you can't get close to 100% quality increase. [...]

1) Thanks for pointing this out. Really did not see this in the OP. Will double check.
2) I can agree with you gameplay wise that 25% is fine. But I can not agree with you "story"-wise it is. It just does not feel right, that the highest quality machine, that is using highest quality material will only produce 25% of perfect output. - Sames result different story: It would feel much better, if we could get close to 100%, but machine would slow down to 25%. - I know this might sound weird, because the result will be the same, but it feeld more "right".

Edit: Two more Questions.

1) This is all about normal Quality Modules Tier 1 - 3. But what about Legendary Quality Modules? (Used in the video in the factory on the right https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/blog-sy ... uction.mp4 ). Legendary is said to have an effect of + 150%. Is this how you get to 25%? (10% + 1,5 * 10% = 25%)

2) The Chart in the Blogpost only shows Inputs up to Epic. What is the probability when the input is legendary? And why is there no legendary iron plate shown in the chart?

Edit2: Third Question

3) How will the chance be calculated if have to input parts with different quality levels?

[Losash]

2) I can agree with you gameplay wise that 25% is fine. But I can not agree with you "story"-wise it is. It just does not feel right, that the highest quality machine, that is using highest quality material will only produce 25% of perfect output. - Sames result different story: It would feel much better, if we could get close to 100%, but machine would slow down to 25%. - I know this might sound weird, because the result will be the same, but it feeld more "right".

It's not 25% perfect output either. It is 75% of times you get output quality the same level as input components and 25% of times higher quality. Though it's not clear from the blog post example if a quality level skip ahead is then 2.5% (10 times smaller) or its 25% of 25%, which is 6.25% in this case. If that is true, inputting first quality components, you will get second quality item 18,75% of times, third quality item 4,6575% of times, and so on.

The game is not a realism simulator even if you want it to be. I've explained to you that the whole system has nothing random to it because of back loops to recycle, and it's only purpose is to make strong items tricky and expensive to produce.

[mpl560]

Recycler, great.

Quality, absolutely horrendous idea.

Why bad?
1. This is not vertical upgrade, nor is it horizontal.
2. The visuals are bad.
3. Adds nothing to the game, but a headache.
4. Ruins blueprints sharing.
5. Sabotages playerbase.
6. Completely wrong style.

Now for exposition...
I felt the idea was bad, but didn't have the words to describe why.
Looked through what people said for just 10 minutes and wrote those six, very sound reasons.
For those who would not want to go through pages and pages of comments to figure out what the heck am I talking about...

1. This is not vertical upgrade, nor is it horizontal.
- It's as the author said, we can go horizontal, by building more bruner mining drills. Or we can go vertical by researching electric mining drill and replacing two burner ones with electrical ones. AT A COST OF SPACE. We can further go vertical by adding modules to the electric mining drills. What about quality? We want all electric mines to be legendary, vertical it is! It's gonna take a lot of research and materials to reach there. Ah, but we also want ALL belts to be legendary too, and inserters and power plants and water pumps and normal pipes too. That's going horizontal. You want everything everywhere and it doesn't need to be optimized.

2. The visuals are bad.
- It clutters the view. If something screams for my attention, it should inform me about something. Just look at those game gifs. Everywhere dots of quality. So much information. I ask myself, where is my box with iron plates, I am looking for one specific icon painted over my iron chest? Well, you will need few lamps to light up your boxe to find it, because "alt" hotkey will not gonna be of much help with quality cluttering your view.

3. Adds nothing to the game, but a headache.
- As many, many people said it, spaghetti. I need to do new math to balance the new input/output. Need to calculate all of it again, after a small change. this gonna happen for every change. Why it adds nothing? Mods. Bob, space and so on add electric mining drill mk2, mk3 and so on. It's pretty much what quality will also do. Better versions of an item. Except, the quality applies to every single item. What a mess.

4. Ruins blueprints sharing.
- You want to optimize blueprints for which quality level? Or maybe some will have quality 5 and the rest 2 or 1 to save resources? Or maybe you will go primal and make blueprints without quality, just like in the original factorio (the one we have right now)? You want a blueprint? Ask yourself this, how many quality modules you have, what quality are those modules, how many and what quality assembly machines you have, how many and what quality belts you have, so on and so forth... Now, you finally figured all this out, you have the best blueprint you can have. Good for you. Now you start a new game and this blueprint requires you to play milion hours, because it has all legendary items only. You didn't save anything worse. Okay, no problem, you will find something online. Oh this one has 1 legendary assembly machine, nope. This one has only legendary modules, nope. This one has uncommon everything, nope. This one is just perfect, it has no quality whatsoever, why is it so complex and big and not optimized at all, who made this beast, nope. Back to looking for something fitting.

5. Sabotages playerbase.
- Quality will be main game feature. Despite what people claim, majority of the players will NOT turn it off if they don't like it. That's a hard fact. Which means, that all those players will go through this quality feature. Look how many people are already complaining. Most of those players will also NOT turn it off and play with quality, despite complaining about it right now. Now, here is the thing, they will hate this feature, but they will play it and they will complain even more at the same time. Self forced frustrations to vent.

6. Completely wrong style.
- Random is 100% not factorio style. You do not want random chance to get better quality, you want a recipe for better quality. The uranium got a pass on this, because it was an exception. There is no good iron ore, bad iron ore. Just uranium. It's unique to uranium. So it's fine. Now, now you will have good and bad iron ores, good and bad inserters... To obtain the ones you see as good, you will have to invest in something someone called deterministic chance, as in 1000 go in, 10 go out. Yeee, this is just a pretty dressed up concept. Like political correctness. No matter how smart you sound about it, an egg is still an egg. 1% or 0.1% chance to get something, is still a chance. It's still an mmo and gacha thing.

[Losash]

1. This is not vertical upgrade, nor is it horizontal.
2. The visuals are bad.
3. Adds nothing to the game, but a headache.
4. Ruins blueprints sharing.
5. Sabotages playerbase.
6. Completely wrong style.

1. This is vertical upgrade. Your take about legendary belts just tells me once again you can't read, because post stated belt speed is not increased with quality. Only health which honestly does not matter.
2. Visuals are a subject to change + they will probably make dot icons high-res.
3. Your logic can be applied to any update or feature. Download Factorio beta 0.1 and relax.
4. They've definitly thought of it and solved the problem. You really think you are smarter than them?
5. Sorts playerbase into categories of gigachad megabasers who praise the feature and casual newbies who hate without even reading the post properly.
6. One more troll saying it's "gacha" and it's not funny anymore. Install an IQ module into your head beacon and stop trolling, this "gacha" take is not new and I've already p***ed on it in above posts.

[Losash]

- Quality will be main game feature.

Also you are completely delusional here. The Expansion will have much larger and more complex features than this, and I'm looking forward to the amount of tears those announces will bring to newbies faces, if such a small system brought such a butthurt.

[Losash]

Edit: Two more Questions.

1) This is all about normal Quality Modules Tier 1 - 3. But what about Legendary Quality Modules? (Used in the video in the factory on the right https://cdn.factorio.com/assets/blog-sy ... uction.mp4 ). Legendary is said to have an effect of + 150%. Is this how you get to 25%? (10% + 1,5 * 10% = 25%)

2) The Chart in the Blogpost only shows Inputs up to Epic. What is the probability when the input is legendary? And why is there no legendary iron plate shown in the chart?

Edit2: Third Question

3) How will the chance be calculated if have to input parts with different quality levels?

1) yes, +150% = x2.5.
2) Legendary plate will produce legendary gear only and 100% of times. This is also why in the video they don't have any modules inserted in a machine which makes legendary green circuits.
3) You can't input different quality items. You select a specific recipe. Watch electronics production video.

[KuuLightwing]

"Its optional, but actually it mandatory!"

It is optional if you are a casual who just wants to complete the "storyline". It is mandatory if you want to go bigger or more efficient. What's the problem with reading what you've quoted? My post says exactly that. If you dislike the system, okay, you can play without it. Problems?

Which is exactly why saying "it's optional" is not a valid argument if the person who expresses their dislike of the system wants to build bigger bases. Assuming that every critic just wants to "finish the game" is incorrect.

[tuhe]

I never used landmines in my 900h in this game and I know that i hate them! It drives me nuts landmines are the best strategy for a normal setting speedrun, thereby not making them "optional" at all!

Landmines also turn the game into world of tanks and introduce randomness because I cannot predict a biter will trigger any single landmine (don't ask me to build several mines). This makes landmines rng, basically turning the game into baldurs gate 1!

Wube needs to remove landmines or give me a refund!

[Losash]

As you are ultimately arguing on a topic of your original first post, I'll reply to it instead of trying to convince you that it is indeed a proper defense to say it's optional against some delusional players who can't figure out common sense.

1. I don't like is that it's essentially another tier system on top of other tier systems. I think it's not elegant from the perspective of the overall game structure, as different tier systems serve essentially the same purpose - make better versions of existing machines. This also creates unnecessary granularity to the tiers of the same machine or module. I don't think that factorio supports such granularity particularly well.

2. I don't like the visual design aspect - they are the same model with an icon attached to them. A more "honest" tier system would probably at least include new models and new animations, allowing visually differentiate different tiers of machines. Perhaps it is a necessity because of the way it is designed, but it doesn't make it any better as a result.

3. I frankly don't find the idea of just adding more tiers all that interesting to begin with. It is something that many mods do, and it's fine, but I personally hoped for more unique solutions for vertical scaling rather than just providing the same pieces with bigger numbers. Beacons and modules is an attempt of just that in vanilla, though I suppose it's a system with its own pain points. But in the end a "legendary" assembler Mk.III is no different than some modded assembler Mk. V with 150% more speed. So I do not see it as an improvement over just adding more tiers to existing tier systems.

4. The process itself - it's not necessarily the RNG that concerns me, what I don't like is that it's just one process applied to everything. In the end your only solution is to shove quality modules into machines and filter out the desired quality, recycling the rest. There will be questions as to whether it should be used in intermediates or final products, but it will be resolved rather quickly and optimal solution will be found. Frankly I just find it rather dull to have the same process used for everything. I wouldn't mind this process to be present in the game as a part of a production chain, but not universally applied to everything.

5. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with it before recycler is unlocked, as I don't see the benefit of having random and unpredictable quantities of machines that are slightly better than the rest, I'd either plan around specific quality that I can mass produce, or not use it at all until I can have some predictable amount of machines.

6. I don't see what is the reason to have five tiers instead of, say, three, as process of acquiring better tiers doesn't seem notably different from previous steps. That seems like padding to me.

1) You don't know what do you want yourself. Anything apart your personal likings will be "bad" and you can't figure out what do you want. Yes, the new system is tiers over tiers and it's fine because building tier system can't be replaced with 0% - 150% quality range, some buildings has to have tiers which represent a higher stat range and/or other mechanics like module insertion. Perfect example is Assembly tier 1-3. It's like a bicycle with a front and back gears, which combine into your bicycle having X * Y gears total, and I don't see any problems with that.
2) You clearly have no idea how Factorio works internally if you ask for this. This will take 2 years of work of artists department alone. Also this is funny how the same people like you cry about "they spent time on making this feature". Yes, very little time compared to complexity and new content this change introduced.
3) Are you really comparing mods to the base game in a topic about a base game? What...?
4) Once again:

P.S. Once again a reminder that even if quality system affects science packs, and if it does the same x2.5 at max quality as in other spots, it is obvious even now that +100% from productivity modules at each intermediate stage will heavily outclass that potential bonus. And the whole quality system usage is going to be revolving around a small portion of the factory, which produces armor, equipment, building materials and modules. Quality is great in things which are made once (for large price) and then used for infinite production of something else - either it's components (produced by machines and their bonuses) or player experience (produced by better equipment).

3) It doesn't matter that you can't get close to 100% quality increase. You use the recycler. Ratios are there essentially just to increase production cost of your item. But things which are made once and used forever like modules/buildings/equipment are always beneficial even if they cost astronomical amounts of resources to make. Because they are just better, increasing UPS, resource consumption efficiency, space usage, player experience, and so on.

5) You are overthinking. You are supposed to use common quality items everywhere, occasionally storing rare ones for later if you wish so.

P.S. 6) is the only valid take.

[EvanT]

Which is exactly why saying "it's optional" is not a valid argument if the person who expresses their dislike of the system wants to build bigger bases. Assuming that every critic just wants to "finish the game" is incorrect.

I have a belt/train only 2.4 kSPM vanilla base without modules and beacons.

Drones are not used beyond the mall or perimitter defence.

[mmmPI]

2) The Chart in the Blogpost only shows Inputs up to Epic. What is the probability when the input is legendary? And why is there no legendary iron plate shown in the chart?

3) How will the chance be calculated if have to input parts with different quality levels?

2) i think legendary iron plate are not in the graph because it would have 100% chance to yield a legendary iron gear, it would add an empty lane to the table.

3) Maybe it is the probability of individual pieces that are represented as if they had weight, so if you were to need 10 iron plates for a gear, you can have half of them of say quality 1 and half of them quality 2, then the probability for the end result would be 50% to get a result as if you were only using quality 1 and 50% chance to get a result as if you were only using quality 2.

and if that would be 8 and 2 iron plates of different quality it would be 80% and 20% chance ?

[fiery_salmon]

I will not play game with gacha/lootbox names in it
Yes, I am deeply allergic to this theme.

I'm not sure if it's a weekend day at the circus today, or can you please delete the base 1.1 game from your Steam account and log off forums, because 0.7% U-235 chance already exists there in nuclear chain? "Oh that was not gacha!" - yeah? Tell me differences? Quality system being gacha is the fattest trolling one could provide here. Good job.

1) I am not using Steam at all.

2) I mentioned that I hate gacha/lootbox names. I am not hating randomness, but that specific misuse of randomness, enough to contaminate names strongly associated with it. Though I have doubts about this quality mechanic.

Obviously too lazy to wait for a year and check, but you will be among the first minute buyers of the Expansion no matter the nonsense you've just typed. The same story with the guy I've argued with previously here.

I added TODO to reply to this message, unless thread will autoclose (and then I will try to figure a way to do this).

I am not doing preorders or early orders, I will wait for reviews anyway.

Please stop assuming that everyone is like you.

[mmmPI]

Ah, but we also want ALL belts to be legendary too, and inserters and power plants and water pumps and normal pipes too. That's going horizontal. You want everything everywhere and it doesn't need to be optimized.

4. Ruins blueprints sharing.
Now you start a new game and this blueprint requires you to play milion hours, because it has all legendary items only

without optimization :

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