Should i make quality science ?

[hypadao]

It seems that quality science is at least twice as effective as normal science. However, productivity modules just generate more potential science, and shipping or building costs aren’t really an issue for me.

i would need to make quality intermediate products. But then i have a choice between recycle all the normal-quality intermediate products (which might be a big waste science) or deal with managing multiple tiers of science quality everywhere.

So what should i do ? Does anyone use quality science in the first place ?

[不思議種]

Productivity is much more efficient, it's only really worth considering if the ingredients can't be produced with productivity modules.

[Fel]

Productivity gives you less products (much bigger speed debuff) but more "free" ones, quality gives you more overall than pure productivity but at the cost of more materials (since the speed debuff is lower) and can't be boosted by speed modules.
No module gives you more than both but at the cost of more ingredients.
Speed modules give even more but again costing more materials (and energy).

If you are not going to use beacons for speed, the only advantage produyctivity has over quality is that it costs less ingredients per science packs overall but you are also producing less.

[Hurkyl]

Fel is talking on a per assembler basis. Once you abstract that out, by saying you're going to scale your construction to the numbers involved, both options give you more science per resource invested, but productivity throughout the production chain gives you more bonus.

(productivity is also cheaper to build -- since you can use speed module beacons to boost your builds -- and has easier logistics since you don't have to deal with the mismatching of intermediate qualities)

When you can't use productivity modules in the chain -- e.g. making the ingredients for logistic and production sciences -- quality does give you a boost. And if science production is your only concern, it's probably worth putting quality modules in the assemblers making those finished products and making quality science out of them. But specifically those assemblers: I'm prtty sure you'd still prefer productivity in, say, the advanced circuit makers.

Note that if you use the same quality bonus on the assemblers, the rate of production for the three ingredients to production science will match up, so you really wouldn't have to do any recycling. Unless you went through the effort of getting exact ratios and have some reason why things must never back up, so you would have to do some super rare recycling in case random fluctuations in production overflow your buffers.

That said, I'm still not sure you'd want to make quality logistics science, since I'd rather ship quality prod 1 modules off to the quality module factory.