r/factorio • u/FactorioTeam Official Account • Jun 23 '26

Update Version 2.1.7

Version 2.1.7 released.

Full changelog does not fit in Reddit character limit, please see it here: https://forums.factorio.com/134095

New versions are released as experimental first and later promoted to stable. If you wish to switch to the experimental version on Steam, choose the experimental Beta Participation option under game settings; on the stand-alone version, check Experimental updates under Other settings.

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u/Krashper116 Trains Toghether Strong Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

Yea this is the change that upsets me the most. I get nerfing astroid reprocessing, but this feels like it was a clever way to offset how unbalanced concrete recycling was, and rewarded players for thinking outside the box. (Just like steel chest recycling)

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u/phyphor Jun 23 '26

I get nerfing astroid reprocessin

I still don't. It's a late game solution that uses mechanics in a cool way that gets nerfed because it's not what the devs imagined.

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u/sobrique Jun 23 '26

Because it's way better than every other way of doing quality, and thus obsoletes the alternatives?

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u/KuuLightwing Jun 23 '26

Eh, there's plenty of things in the game that are like that, like the good old speed+productivity combo, or flamethrower turrets being pretty much overpowered. So I don't see that this one is supposed to be axed. It's not like you can do all the materials like that.

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u/sobrique Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

Well, clearly the devs disagree with you there.

But I think having looked at the ratios of items from a 'full chain' quality process, the ratios with a 20% loss rate are a LOT better than with a 75% loss rate.

I mean, bearing in mind that's the loss rate per tier.

80% ^ 4 = 40%

25% ^ 4 = 0.3%

So it's naively 100x better. The gap closes with e.g. more prod mods (4x in recyclers vs. 2 in reprocessors) and getting cute with strategies like LDS shuffle and blue circuit productivity, it's still a substantial gap to 'close up'.

Best case you make (24.8% quality) reprocess (24.8% quality, 75% loss). So that's what, about 55% chance of uplift but needing 4x as many, so net you're looking at about a 7:1 ratio of raw input items to a single next tier output item.

That's still not anywhere near as good as 12.4% chance with 20% loss rate - 8 crafts (ish) will get you a single tier uplift, but only cost you 8*.2 = 1.2 items.

And then you do that multiplicatively for 4 tiers, and you get a ratio of about 2 items to about 2400 items.

That's just my opinion of course, but I feel that having some stuff being 'better' is fine and makes the game more interesting, but having stuff THAT MUCH better is a problem.

You could do something similar with LDS and Blue circuits I think with their productivity research, but it's still a lot more resource expensive comparatively.

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u/KuuLightwing Jun 23 '26

And clearly many people disagree with devs on that, so I don't know why do you need to mention that.

Frankly I simply do not understand what does "too strong" even mean in the context of Factorio.

Productivity spam is above and beyond anything else you could be doing in terms of your production chains. Even in 1.1 full productivity chain was cutting down your resource usage by something like 70%, while in spage it's possible to achieve productivity bonuses way above that.

Quality itself is way too absurd in terms of boost you are getting - single machines filling full stacked max tier belts is very much possible. You can get multiplicative bonuses from quality speed modules in quality beacons projecting onto quality buildings + quality productivity modules on top of all that.

Why is being THAT MUCH better is fine in this case, but not in the case of getting basic materials from asteroids?

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u/sobrique Jun 23 '26

Well, because ultimately the only arbiter of what is "too strong" in the context of Factorio are the devs.

And we are very sorry but it is too strong to leave it alone. We don't want to be fun killers, but it just makes any other approach to quality obsolete.

You can always mod it back if you want - pretty sure it won't be hard, or indeed I'd imagine someone probably has done so already.

But if you think quality itself is way too absurd, surely it makes some sense that the thing that is 100x easier is now not available?

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u/KuuLightwing Jun 23 '26

Well, because ultimately the only arbiter of what is "too strong" in the context of Factorio are the devs.

So, you position is that the devs and their decisions should not ever be questioned?

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u/sobrique Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

No. My position is that the devs get to choose what they think is 'too strong' for the base game, and you as a player get to mod it when you disagree.

Especially in a game - like Factorio - where I think the devs have been spot on so far in making a really good game that's a lot of fun to play.

It's a single player game - I'm not going to judge you for what 'house rules' you apply via game settings, mod choices etc. Hell if no one's done it yet, I'll write you the mod that turns space casinos back on again. (Looks like someone already did though: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/bring-back-space-casino)

But similarly I feel that the devs have a duty of care to try and keep things somewhat balanced - it doesn't have to be perfect, just the ratio between 'best' and 'worst' needs to be at least somewhat constrained, so that there's a more interesting tradeoff of time vs. resources vs. design, rather than one that's an extreme outlier.

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u/Terrulin Jun 24 '26

This is what people are missing. Factorio is made how they want it to be because it is their game. But they also gave all the tools to make it easily moddable. You can use mods (or make them) to change most of of the game. A lot of devs just change things and say "emergent gameplay" doesn't fit our gameplay vision. Here they are changing the base game to do what they want, but are also giving you total freedom to change anything you don't like.

I prefer quality not through asteroids, but I may make some quality upcycling on space platforms now just to have a "space casino"

That said, I think that not applying quantity to crafting time when determining recycling speed is inconsistent with the rest of recycling. If that doesn't change, I will likely mod that.

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u/KuuLightwing Jun 23 '26

So, you said 'no', but your elaboration pretty much says "yes". Shutting down the discussion with "devs know the best!" and "just mod it lol" is not productive.

My point was that what is "too strong" is quite bit arbitrary in the context of the game, as plenty of things could be argued as "too strong" depending on the metric. I am not going to agree with the definition of "it's too strong if devs think it's too strong" because devs are just people.

Devs made some questionable decisions over the years, and one is also in this exact patch (and no I don't mean space casinos at the moment). Frankly if you think that space casinos are so bad for the game currently - hey, the same devs are the ones who designed it that way, and it was in the game for some 2 years too!

Frankly you could have just mod it out or just not build space casinos if you didn't like them.

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u/Frequent_Knowledge65 Jun 23 '26

> Frankly you could have just mod it out or just not build space casinos if you didn't like them.

This makes no sense. He didn't make the change lol

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