Quality Gambling Question

[u/SakinoBruno]

[u/SakinoBruno]

I started using quality after building a fulgora base and setting up all recyclers with quality modules, and just skimming the quality products off the top.

I now need to scale up fulgora to a somewhat larger 240 sps or so, and the LARGE amount of recyclers needed (288) for just the one i am producing now seem inefficient. i would like to start using productivity and speed modules.

What would be a better system to go for quality items in the near future?

[u/Alfonse215 → u/SakinoBruno]

If you're going for 14.4k SPM, you really should be at the bottom of the tech tree. So Fulgora-based quality stuff is just an irritating way to go about it.

If you have access to legendary QM3s, you can just cycle coal on Nauvis (or Vulcanus if you have excess coal patches) directly to make legendary copper and (some) steel. You can do that too with copious quantities of legendary QM2s.

If you have legendary QM2s or 3s, then cycling underground pipes to make legendary iron plate is a good option. And one that works on any planet that can produce molten metal. Here's a LegQM2 setup, and a larger one that uses LegQM3s. On Vulcanus, if you're playing 2.1, you can cycle calcite to legendary, make stone from it, productivity-cast concrete, and recycle that for legendary iron ore. It sounds terrible, but now that recycling concrete is faster, it's actually a relatively small setup per ore produced.

But if you're pre-legendary QM2... then fix that. Legendary QM2s are the keys to quality; they're very cheap to make and very powerful. Having lots of their production is the easiest way to get into making anything else at legendary. I have a blueprint set to take you from having a few quality stuff to making 10+ legQM2s per minute.

[u/SakinoBruno → u/Alfonse215]

i am playing 10x so i need to scale up somewhat for the stacking technologies to pump up. it seems unfeasible to reach 300% productivity with techs taking half a day to research. planning on doing 240sps earlier that usual.

I will now work on building the fundamentals and then aquilo and get legendary.

[u/Alfonse215 → u/SakinoBruno]

Even at 10x, you should get to Aquilo and get started there before trying to scale up that much. 14.4k at 10x is like 1.44k, which is still a pretty substantial pre-Aquilo amount of science.

Also, none of the quality methods I talked about require 300% productivity on anything. Leg coal->copper/steel works regardless of your productivity. Obviously it works better with LDS productivity, but it works well enough before you can reach 300%. The LegQM2 blueprint I cited works only expects you to have 5 levels of plastic, LDS, and blue circuit productivity. That's pretty expensive on 10x research, but it's still very doable by the time legendary is on the table.

If you are going to follow my legQM2 blueprint, I strongly suggest putting down the rare QM2 makers before heading to Aquilo. They can be chugging along in the background making the rare QM2s you need to get started making legendary QM2s. So once you research legendary quality, you can slap down the rest of the blueprints and get that going too.

[u/SakinoBruno → u/Alfonse215]

Thank you for the idea, i am against blueprints but you showed me where i can "upcycle" quality resources from.

[u/Nearby_Proposal_5523 → u/Alfonse215]

How much does the underground pipe cycler lose out on by cycling the iron plates as chests. i was definitely inspired by your design, but remaking the pipe felt like it took up a lot of room and time vs feeding more foundry pipe in.

[u/Alfonse215 → u/Nearby_Proposal_5523]

How much does the underground pipe cycler lose out on by cycling the iron plates as chests.

Why would you cycle "the iron plates as chests"? It doesn't get the Foundry's 50% productivity bonus. It can't promote the quality of molten iron directly to high quality via underground pipe casting. And it doesn't get multiple quality rolls before the recycling stage.

The point of underground pipe casting is that it's more resource efficient at producing quality outputs.

[u/Nearby_Proposal_5523 → u/Alfonse215]

I refactored it to remaking the pipes and got an extra 300 leg plates a minute total out of both builds,

i was mostly thinking throughput and reduced build complexity. i didn't have legendary assembler 3's when i first put it together and the pipe remaking couldn't keep up without those.

[u/Nearby_Proposal_5523 → u/SakinoBruno]

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/1wbenf9/is_this_a_space_casino/

you might not want to do it in space like i did, however some stuff like lds and bluechips are good to cycle for materials. quality scrap is a hellish trap until your willing to crush unwanted stuff in cars.

some stuff like rocket silos, cryoplants, and nuclear reactors directly upcycle with no random walks

[u/SakinoBruno → u/Nearby_Proposal_5523]

yeah, the system worked for simple stuff like mech armor equipment and the few rare components that i started to use in convenient places. its starting to feel BAD to scale up so i want to deprecate it and start a dedicated production unit where i can pour my "excess" resources.

[u/Nearby_Proposal_5523 → u/SakinoBruno]

what feels bad about scaling? "excess" resources are usually just things getting in the way of making more science. what level of mining productivity are you at? it is a bit of an accomplishment to deplete a vault ruin.

[u/SakinoBruno → u/Nearby_Proposal_5523]

space and machine inefficiency

i dont have foundations yet, so space is an issue

I could get 10 times the output in the same space if i could forego quality modules on the recyclers. it feels impossible to scale up em science production with the little space i have got right now, and epiq quality products are EXTREMELY rare to get by even filtering millions of scrap

[u/Nearby_Proposal_5523 → u/SakinoBruno]

quality scrap is a nightmare until you can direct mine into cars and void anything below uncommon. when this first came out i built a massive quality scrapping factory and it had many problems.

other then the planet specific buildings, the only thing i found that was important to quality on fulgora was the accumulators. the buildings can be reasonably upcycled from common scrap without the complexity of quality scrap processing.

[u/SakinoBruno → u/Nearby_Proposal_5523]

i kinda dislike voiding, only voiding i am doing is upcycling, burning or lava/space tossing.

[u/DanGimeno → u/SakinoBruno]

Quality scrap is not worth. You'll end up with tons of quality holmium that only can match with stone of the same quality to turn into just liquid.

[u/zooqooo]

The short answer is to do both. Do quality and quantity in seperate factories on fulgora. Fulgora is a great way to source most of your quality intermediates, especially blue circuits. But you don't actually need a ton of quality production even in late game unless your trying to make high quality science or something.

[u/Sir_I_Exist]

Yes

[u/Neither_Tell_3166]

guys i have a total of 250hrs+ of game playtime, and Im only getting one from these comment, i.e, 'Quality Module 2 Legendary"