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That's the truly new gameplay that the DLC is bringing (in my mind).
The new environmental effects (lightning -- dunno if there are others?) I think are great too -- hopefully the new engine allows modders to add in more environmental punishment like flooding/droughts, acid rain (damaging buildings), wind (affecting bot flights), extreme heat/cold (and maybe nuclear reactor explosions from overheating), and whatever else the community can think up.
Everything else is just new production chains for new items, and there are plenty of community mods that do that already. The new planets are nice, but ultimately just decoration -- but gladly accepted to keep the game looking fresh.
I not so hyped on the DLC itself (ok, I'm hyped), but I'm more hyped with what the modding community is going to do on top of it.
I'll take a stab at it. Quality is a buff to stats, so everything you produce has the default "normal" quality -- and then, rarely, you might produce a higher quality item from chance alone. The law of large numbers says that you can predict how many quality items will be produced over a large average. Example: an "Uncommon Iron Plate" as compared to 99.9% of the time the regular "Normal Iron Plate"s are produced by a furnace. The quality mechanic is then to pool the uncommon iron plates together (after they are randomly, but predictably produced) with the hopes of building an "Uncommon Electrical Furnace" that will produce more percentage of Uncommon Iron Plates with sometimes a "Rare Iron Plate" (and of couse a ♥♥♥♥-ton of "Normal" iron plates that you no longer care about). Rinse and repeat to slowly upgrade your factory from producing "Normal" items to higher quality (rarer items) -- and there 4 tiers above Normal: Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary.
Anyhow, its a huge trap (IMHO), because your factory must over-produce massive amounts low-quality items/intermediates and recycle the "low quality" overproduction in recycler farms. A recycler will give back 25% of the thing being recycled -- so for every 4 items recycled, you only get back the materials to make 1. You'll need this large production/recycler loops to grind your way up to higher quality tiers.
If you want the highest quality (Legendary) Assembly Building, your first need to grind your way up to Legendary Furnaces (to produce Legendary Iron Plates) -- because to build a Legendary Assembly Building, you need those Legendary iron plates, and Legendary gear wheels, and Legendary green circuits <-- at least this is how I've understood how it work. I may be totally wrong with how it actually works, but do not think I'm wrong about the grind involved.
This quality grind, ultimately, is counter to the original Factorio philosophy. Though I'm sure it can be argued that achieving high SPM numbers is also a huge grind in and of itself by stamping out megabase blueprints.
its a different mechanic, yes .. and what it influences in your gameplay is dependent on how you use it. But it's not the "complete opposite" of the vanilla game or something like that.
don't get me wrong, if you/he doesn't like that mechanic, you don't like it. But saying "counter to the philosophy" i still don't see.
I cannot talk for Khaylain, and as far as I know his posts he seems to be too reasonable for the take, but alas! A very popular take on why Quality is a no-no is because randomness. Simple as that. Fletch pointed out why that is BS - namely law of large numbers - but people still feel strongly about it.
Another popular take was that "OMG LOOTBOX", and it was as deep as you think it is.
As far as I'm concerned, quality is the same old thing we always did, just now with recipes iterating over themselves a lot. Not a biggie, but that is just me.
Its a cheesy copy of World of Warcraft[wowpedia.fandom.com].
Anyhow, since the Quality mechanic is optional, I'm not a hater because I (most likely) will simply never touch it after the first couple of days of release experimentation. For those that like it, I hope you enjoy it!
Yeah, I agree. Kovarex enrichment (loop) process is similar to farm out U-235 -- the big difference is the 75% wastage from recyclers to farm quality, whereas Kovarex wastes nothing. Infinite researches are another similar grind..
You have a few things wrong. First: 99.9% of items being normal is waaaay off. Even the basic tier 1 quality mods add I think 1% chance of higher quality each. So you're looking at 4% chance on an assembler full of them. And it goes up from there with higher tier quality mods, higher quality (on the quality mods themselves), and more advanced machines. Higher quality isn't some extreme rarity, it's something you can produce reliably when you're churning out hundreds of things anyway.
Also: legendary smelters don't produce legendary plates. They just make regular plates faster. You don't need to bother with quality smelters unless you care about your smelter speed, you probably want to use your quality intermediates on something more meaningful (like personal armor/weapons, or space platform components).
Also also: recycling loops that waste most resources in the quest for perfect quality aren't the only way to use the system. You can just put cheap quality 1's in all your intermediates - smelters, iron gear and green chip assemblers, etc. - and skim off the occasional higher quality intermediate, with the normal quality going into science/belts/etc. as usual. I suspect you're right that quality recycling loops will be a trap unless you're in the late/end game, but that doesn't mean you can't touch the quality system at all until then.
Finally, an opinion: I can't think of anything more on-theme for Factorio than legendary-quality-seeking recycling loops in the post-endgame. You're dumping massive quantities of raw resources into achieving small increases in performance.. it's basically the same end result as infinite research. Just a lot more tricky to setup efficiently, which IMO is a good thing. Grinding away infinite research has always been my least favorite part of the game, but recycling loops sound a bit more interesting.
It would be interesting to see the math for the amount of raw resources it will take (on average) to produce a single Legendary Tier-3 Quality Module -- I think the numbers will be enormous. :)
Aye, but I am talking about the ratios you'd most likely be using when using the new machines on the new planets, and the setups people gravitate towards to accomplish it. Ratios wouldn't matter too much later on in the game, sure, but having ratios spoiled would likely still do a significant bit of the legwork of figuring setups for yourself.
Gtfo
I was, when first announced, really looking forward to the expansion and to Space Age. The more details we got in the FFFs about SA the less interested I became. My plans for playing SA keep changing, and getting less likely. I'd originally intended to play a full game, start to finish and perhaps beyond, as soon as SA was available. Now I'm not sure I'll play it at all, and if I do, there's no assurance I'll finish it. I'm somewhat interested by the extra levels of logistic challenge with multiple planets and space platforms. The full game play of the planets, however, is seeming less interesting. I find the quality mechanic, on its own, more interesting than the full SA experience. I will probably, eventually, end up using quality in the base game rather than in SA.
All that said, for my personal choices, I still think that for players who like using overhaul mods Space Age will be super. I'm confident that the entire experience is excellent. WUBE does nothing but excellence. It will be my first choice if I ever do want an overhaul mod. It's just not my choice for now.
I think it will be a tricky thing to calculate, because there's several ways you can approach it. You could, for example: make intermediates (green chips, etc.) with quality mods, and any that aren't at least quality 2 you toss on the bus to make science. Then make tier 1 mods with quality 2 ingredients and quality mods, giving you a guarantee of quality 2 tier 1 mods, and a chance at quality 3 tier 1 mods. Then you junk any that aren't quality 3. Repeat to get quality 4 tier 2 mods, and then quality 5 tier 3 mods - basically try to go up 1 quality level per module tier.
But consider that you're usually mass producing green chips in vast quantities for science and such, and that quality mods can make products (more rarely) jump up 2+ quality levels. So maybe you siphon off only the quality 3+ green chips, with the rest going into science. Now you're starting off at quality 3 before you even make a tier 1 module, you only need to go up two more quality levels on the modules themselves. So maybe you aim for legendary quality tier 2 modules, so the legendary tier 3's are guaranteed and there's less waste at that step.
But maybe it's easier (if probably more wasteful?) to setup a loop that just guarantees legendary green chips, legendary red chips, etc. Because once you have those, you can make a variety of legendary products instantly as-needed, from tier 3 modules to power armor to spaceship parts.
But maybe you want to go back a step, and quality mod your smelters, and filter off the quality 2 plates to have a better chance at quality 3 green chips.. and maybe you can quality mod miners too, and get quality ore?
Also: do you want to go full quality mods, or mixed quality+prod mods? Consider that prod offsets the recycling waste, and gives you more chances at quality stuff, even though the quality chance per item is lower. Someone on reddit did the math and it's not straightforward, the ideal ratio is a quality/prod mix that varies depending on machine type (module slots and inherent productivity matter) and whether you're aiming for legendary or 'just' epic or rare. Maybe in a given recipe chain, it's more efficient to full prod some steps, and full quality other steps.
Anyway it seems like an intricate system with many different approaches possible. I'm one of those people who will fall into the trap of being stuck on Nauvis until I have a full rare quality spaceship.