Recycle Superconductor

[mar3usmc]

I don't think the making of the superconductor is chemistry or smelting. Why can't we recycle this to get back Holmium Plates for use in a Quality Upgrade system?

[Maltsi]

Probably for balance, because you can easily reach 100%+ prod on that recipe, which means you would get 4 superconductors from each craft, which in turn would give you back enough materials to craft again. And after 100% prod, every now and then you would get extra resources back which makes it net positive loop

[WalrusJones]

Originally posted by Maltsi:

Probably for balance, because you can easily reach 100%+ prod on that recipe, which means you would get 4 superconductors from each craft, which in turn would give you back enough materials to craft again.

Recyclers account for multi-outputs which is why wire and concrete recycling gives nearly nothing.

[PunCrathod]

Last time I checked recyclers only give 25% of resources back(recycler productivity research and modules only have an effect when recycling scrap) so you need 300%+ productivity to get a net positive loop. And there just happens to be a cap of 300% for productivity in vanilla. It's like the devs thought of recyclers making free items from nothing and made it impossible.

[Maltsi]

Originally posted by PunCrathod:

Last time I checked recyclers only give 25% of resources back(recycler productivity research and modules only have an effect when recycling scrap) so you need 300%+ productivity to get a net positive loop. And there just happens to be a cap of 300% for productivity in vanilla. It's like the devs thought of recyclers making free items from nothing and made it impossible.

Superconductors make 2 at a time. So with only 100% you would gain enough to get all mats back. With legendary prods and EM plant, you can get 175% which would be net positive

[不思議種]

The devs decided to do so because all the other unique tier 3 module ingredients recycle into themselves.

[Chindraba]

Originally posted by Maltsi:

Originally posted by PunCrathod:

Last time I checked recyclers only give 25% of resources back(recycler productivity research and modules only have an effect when recycling scrap) so you need 300%+ productivity to get a net positive loop. And there just happens to be a cap of 300% for productivity in vanilla. It's like the devs thought of recyclers making free items from nothing and made it impossible.

Superconductors make 2 at a time. So with only 100% you would gain enough to get all mats back. With legendary prods and EM plant, you can get 175% which would be net positive

When a recipe gives 2, or more, items per craft you also need 2, or more, items in the recycler to get 25% back. Only 1 superconductor in the recycler would be like a 12.5% return. Something easy to test this with is copper cable, 2 per craft from 1 copper plate. 1000 (5 stacks) should give ~125 copper plate.

[Maltsi]

Originally posted by Chindraba:

Originally posted by Maltsi:

Superconductors make 2 at a time. So with only 100% you would gain enough to get all mats back. With legendary prods and EM plant, you can get 175% which would be net positive

When a recipe gives 2, or more, items per craft you also need 2, or more, items in the recycler to get 25% back. Only 1 superconductor in the recycler would be like a 12.5% return. Something easy to test this with is copper cable, 2 per craft from 1 copper plate. 1000 (5 stacks) should give ~125 copper plate.

Ah that makes sense. No idea then why they decided to make it like this.

[PunCrathod]

Originally posted by Maltsi:

Originally posted by Chindraba:

When a recipe gives 2, or more, items per craft you also need 2, or more, items in the recycler to get 25% back. Only 1 superconductor in the recycler would be like a 12.5% return. Something easy to test this with is copper cable, 2 per craft from 1 copper plate. 1000 (5 stacks) should give ~125 copper plate.

Ah that makes sense. No idea then why they decided to make it like this.

My guess is that it makes the 300% cap for productivity easier to understand. If they instead had disabled recycling for anything that could make a positive feedbackloop or set the productivity caps per recipe it would make things look more arbitrary. The current way makes everything look consistent.

[Chindraba]

As to why it doesn't recycle at all, I have no clue. It could be an oversight, it could be a bug, or it could be intentional for some reason. Options include, as noted above, that the tier-3 unique items are that way - though the tungsten seems to also be made in a recycle friendly manner, and I'm clueless as to what a spoilage could recycle to. The reason also could be to protect the scarcity of holmium plates, or in the other case the scarcity of tungsten ore.

[Aranador]

It may even be that Holmium plates come from a fluid, so recycling things with holmium in them, gives nothing because you dont get fluids back. But more likely, it is because they wanted holmium to be proper scarce.

[PunCrathod]

Factorio staff- "The reason they aren’t is because all tier 3 modules have their unique ingredient not recycle into ingredients but into itself. We could revisit for the suprconductor though."
https://forums.factorio.com/116375

[mar3usmc]

Oh wow, I just tried recycling holmium plates! I thought it give nothing back because it is formed from liquid, but it does give back plates. MUCH easier to upgrade quality this way!

[Aestrea]

Just produce quality electromagnetic plants and scrap them for quality holmium if you really wanted that holmium for something else like a quality mech since it pretty much guarantees you a hefty bulk of holmium of that quality.

[mar3usmc]

Originally posted by Aestrea:

Just produce quality electromagnetic plants and scrap them for quality holmium if you really wanted that holmium for something else like a quality mech since it pretty much guarantees you a hefty bulk of holmium of that quality.

Yea, that is not bad. I think the best way to go about quality is to keep sending components up the system with branches depending if it got upgraded or not, rather than just keep recycling components until you get the quality desired. Definitely more statistically efficient way to go about it.

[RiO]

Originally posted by mar3usmc:

Oh wow, I just tried recycling holmium plates! I thought it give nothing back because it is formed from liquid, but it does give back plates. MUCH easier to upgrade quality this way!

It's a trap.
It's easy to recycle into higher qualities that way, but it wastes tons and tons of holmium plate in the process, since it's a single phase solution which only adds quality while recycling.

Instead, you want to create and recycle capacitors to obtain higher-quality holmium. Reason being: you can add quality modules to those on the recycle phase as well as the crafting phase; and they're still made in an EM plant, so you keep the innate 50% prod bonus going as well. Another option is going through tesla guns; which is pretty much the same.


Gotta say though; rare quality mech armor is a game changer and totally worth the early-game quality grind for rare holmium components.
Its equipment grid fits 3 fission reactors in a row. And if you manage to make rare ones for them, that's 3.6 MW equipment grid juice to work with. Or if you want to, you can stack two rows for a total of six for 7.2 MW and you'd still have enough space left for 3 exoskeletons, 4 roboports, a shield, and an assortment of batteries.

Or you sacrifice a pair of legs (you can make the other two rare anyway, for a 94% speed bonus in total) and you get space for more shields and personal laser defense.

(Not that you'd really need it. Because the tesla gun absolutely dominates in open combat.)