Why is the Quality mod required for Space Age?

[Kyralessa]

From time to time people complain about the Quality mod, and an obvious solution, if they don't like it, is to play without it.

Except that if they're playing Space Age, they can't. Quality is marked as a required mod for Space Age.

My question is: Why?

It seems like you can finish Space Age without needing Quality. You can just leave it unresearched through the whole game.

So what's in the Quality mod that Space Age can't run without?

[Nemoricus]

viewtopic.php?t=122639

[jodokus31]

I'd guess, it's a dependency issue.
space age needs quality, because of recyclers for fulgora.
when you do vanilla with quality, you need recyclers, too.

recyclers can't be in space age only, so they are inside the quality mod.

Solution would be to extract recyclers as own mod, which can be used with spage-age alone.
Adding quality would depend on recyclers to be present.

Please correct me, if I talk non-sense

[eugenekay]

Because Quality was invented long before 1.0 was finished; it just did not get merged into the Game Engine until 2.0 / Space Age. The early design of Platforms goes all the way back to FFF-74, written in 2015. I can’t make out the text in the whiteboard photograph well enough to tell if Quality was mentioned at this point, but according to FFF-375:

Quality is the most mature feature of the expansion, because I was developing its first versions internally before the 1.0 release, and it was kept in a separate branch the whole time.
We were considering just putting it into the 1.0 release, but since we were already so behind our plan (similar story as with the space platform), and this is the kind of feature that tends to create unexpected problems (delays), it was decided to just wait with it for the expansion.

The Recycler is even mentioned in this post as being an important unlock for the Quality system, and that it occurs in a later part of the Expansion - what we now know to be Fulgora. Reserving the highest-quality items for Platform usage is also a great mechanic, since those are the most visible part of the Space Age mod the stats buff provides the most benefit. So it simply seems Ike that is how the expansion was always designed to work!

I am very glad that Quality & Elevated Railway were made to be separate “Mods” from the interplanetary content, since those are the sub-systems which are most useful without the new Planets. Spoilage could possibly have been made one as well - but it is better if that one stays on Gleba.

[coffee-factorio]

You don't need quality. The main thing you need to do is govern your speed, but you can reach the end game screen without quality being a part of your factory. Runtime was 92 hours for that game... although if I'm being honest I had two upcycler's running on the deck of that ship for a few hours because I did want to invest in the system post win.

You also need to accept or be unaware of the cost penalties for not using it. Edit: and if you are aware of those cost penalties, you're going to be rather stressed out.

I'm actually quite tickled by, because when I was about ten years younger I read a bit about technology and culture. They insisted on Marshall McCluhan at university. I prefer Jacques Ellul's work on it, I was introduced to him at a community college.

I find it rather bold to give a player an option to pick up a new technique or not, but force them to acknowledge it.
There's a few other things about it that I find less funny. But it's on track with what I read about technology. Since it's all open ended presentation, that's my write in answer. It's a metaphor for how technology evolves, and you always have to deal with that.

If Kovarex says what inspired him, I'll put it on my youtube channel. So he ought to know better.

[Kyralessa]

I'd guess, it's a dependency issue.
space age needs quality, because of recyclers for fulgora.
when you do vanilla with quality, you need recyclers, too.

recyclers can't be in space age only, so they are inside the quality mod.

Solution would be to extract recyclers as own mod, which can be used with spage-age alone.
Adding quality would depend on recyclers to be present.

Please correct me, if I talk non-sense

This makes sense.

You need recyclers for Space Age, and practically speaking you need recyclers to do Quality.

So in theory there could be a separate Recyclers mod, which both Quality and Space Age depend on.