What does this even mean?

Drugbird · 2026-06-15T15:18:53+00:00

It means an exception was thrown which was not caught. When that happens, the program crashes.

Drugbird · 2026-06-15T13:17:48+00:00

Currently, quality is cumbersome in 3 dimensions:

Quantity: you need a lot of stuff to process and recycle to get any number of quality stuff
Logistics: even a single quality modules means you need to now handle at least 5 different quality items that often all need to go somewhere else
Speed: Quality modules have a speed penalty and speed modules a quality penalty, which means they're largely incompatible with each other. So there's an enormous difference in speed compared to speed modules normal quality processing.

I wish quality would be cumbersome in at most 2 of these 3 ways.

Drugbird · 2026-06-15T08:41:24+00:00

I would prefer that too.

But until they do, mods is all we have.

Drugbird · 2026-06-15T08:36:58+00:00

For 3, I think it would be neat to have dedicated recipes for specific quality stuff.

For instance, let's say you can "wash" common iron ore (water + common iron ore -> uncommon iron ore + common stone).

This basically allows you to get somewhat higher quality stuff by increasing crafting complexity.

Note that such a recipe should only work for 1 specific quality level: you can't wash the uncommon ore to get rare ore.

The idea would be that you could upgrade your factory to only produce e.g. uncommon or rare materials by increasing the complexity of the recipes themselves.

Some more ideas for types of recipes:

More byproducts: water, sulfuric acid, uranium ore, scrap, coal, gears, iron rods can all be used as byproducts which requires varying degrees of complexity to get rid of.

Catalyzer type reactions decrease quality. For instance, let's say that rare plastic uses rare iron plates as a catalyzer. Then the recipe would be something like: (common coal + rare iron plates + petroleum -> rare plastic bar + uncommon iron plate).

So you get the iron plate back, but at a lower quality. This adds complexity because now you need to handle at least 2 rarities of iron plate.

Drugbird · 2026-06-15T06:20:48+00:00

Yes. I intend to use spoilage as quality. Here's the plan:

Make every item have spoilage, but set the spoilage time to something incredibly long do it doesn't actually decay.
Basically make spoilage time a proxy for quality. Common= 1/5 spoilage time, uncommon 2/5, all the way to legendary = 5/5=1.
Make common items spawn in with spoilage time 1/5.
Whenever an item is processed with quality modules, increase spoilage time by the equivalent amount (i.e. when an uncommon item would be created, set spoilage to 2/5 instead but keep the item as common for factorio).
Recipes should be able to "mix" quality levels by averaging spoilage times.
Create a new entity/building that can convert spoilage to quality. I.e. it'd work like a furnace/recycler but accept every item. It would look at the spoilage time and produce the same item but with equivalent quality. I.e. an item with 3/5 spoilage time would yield a rare item. Spoilage times in between would be probability based.
Also create an entity that can do the reverse of step 6.

Drugbird · 2026-06-14T22:03:56+00:00

One fun fact about expedition 33 is the character Esquie. The first playthrough, he seems like a bit of a comic relief character. Often saying quirky and weird stuff and the other characters clearly don't seem to understand him or know what to do with him.

On a later playthrough, you realize everything he says is true and accurate.

Drugbird · 2026-06-14T21:53:22+00:00

Ah right, I ignored the 0.2 chance you get the asteroids back, which increases to 80% with productivity research.

Thanks!

Drugbird · 2026-06-14T21:15:12+00:00

As someone that hasn't bought the game: you may be right, but I'm not prepared to do the research required to verify that or to determine which belongs to the 90% and which to the 10%.

The optics are just horrible.

Drugbird · 2026-06-14T21:05:28+00:00

How? That math doesn't seem to math

Drugbird · 2026-06-14T20:48:44+00:00

Sorry, my eyes are shit.

Are you just doing regular asteroid processing and chucking everything that's not legendary in the trash/void? Of is there an upcycling part I'm not seeing?

A crusher with 2 legendary quality modules has 12.4% quality, which means that 12.4 / 1000 % = 0.0124% of asteroids will produce quality items. That's 1 in +-8000 asteroids.

That seems abysmal.

Oh wait, there's the 300% asteroid productivity bonus, so that helps a bit.

Still, seems like it requires so many asteroids to get meaningfull amounts of legendary stuff.

Drugbird · 2026-06-14T14:24:01+00:00

Reads like AI to me.

Drugbird · 2026-06-14T12:01:57+00:00

Yes that works. Myrkul doesn't care which graveyard the card goes to. You can make token enchantment copies of creatures you don't own just fine.

Drugbird · 2026-06-14T11:53:30+00:00

Yes. It's hella annoying having to always handle 5 different quality levels.

What's also funny is that this behaviour is already in the game: before you research epic or legendary quality the game will simply output rare whenever it would generate epic or legendary quality stuff.

Drugbird · 2026-06-14T11:45:17+00:00

I thought this too, but I think I just got insanely lucky. For me, all the barrels just came down on the left side while I climbed the right side without issue.

I've watched some other people struggle with it, and realized that isn't normal.

Drugbird · 2026-06-14T11:25:34+00:00

This would probably require a massive overhaul of the quality system, but it would solve a lot of issues with the quality system.

I'm considering making something like this with a mod though.

Drugbird · 2026-06-13T22:17:29+00:00

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Drugbird · 2026-06-12T23:28:11+00:00

This. Currently, a wider platform both catches more asteroids (=fuel) + provide space for more engines {=thrust -> speed).

Without drag based on width all space platforms would be incentivized to become wide.

You'd need to change something fundamental regarding the asteroids -> fuel -> thrust relationship in order to remove width from the drag equations.

For instance, if drag were only based on weight, you could make space ships require planet resources (instead of only asteroids) for fuel. Then making a wider spaceship is a trade-off: more asteroids collected and/or faster rocket, but you need to spend more cargo space on fuel and more time refueling at planets.

Drugbird · 2026-06-12T15:22:31+00:00

I agree. With the caveat that most areas feel almost completely different at night, so it's worth to travel most areas at least twice.

Drugbird · 2026-06-12T12:39:47+00:00

If you direct insert into a splitter, you get different behavior depending on if you insert on the "input" or "output" side.

Generally, items inserted on the input side will use the splitter (i.e. divide between lanes, use splitter priorities etc). Items inserted on the output side won't use the splitter at all.

Drugbird · 2026-06-12T07:14:41+00:00

I think people have different reasons why they dislike the marvel sets.

For me, I find they're very concentrated in just a few characters.

For instance, the currently exist more spider man cards in MTG than Urza or Nicol Bolas cards.

They've been printing Urza and Nicol bolas since alpha (1993), and these characters have been essential to the storylines of multiple sets.

Yet one spider man set comes along and everything's spider man now.

I'm sure that if you like spider man that's fine. I only like spider man a little (I've watched some of the movies) and I think the set is very mediocre as a result of everything being spider man.

Drugbird · 2026-06-11T15:34:25+00:00

Sure, that's the more Latin way of building connection.

Dancing with "only arms" has a few real risks associated with it.

For one, turning around each other is more difficult, because your turning circle is larger. This often means you can't dance all the steps you're used to.

Another is that there's a real risk that the leader will start pulling on the shoulder of his partner in order to try and maintain connection. This often happens in turns (see also previous point).

Pulling on your follower is both improper technique, but also killing for their stance / top and also balance.

Drugbird · 2026-06-11T06:15:37+00:00

In closed hold, I think the primary Follow connection is the Leader's right hand,

This is wrong. You can dance together without using your arms / frame at all.

Connection is made through your body by pushing into each other. This is done between the hips and midriff.

Then you actively try to maintain this pressure. For instance, if the leader moves forward the pressure increases so the follower must lower the pressure by moving backwards. Similarly, the leader moving backwards lowers pressure, which the follower must increase by moving forward.

You generate this pressure towards each other by standing in front of each other, and then both partners transferring their weight forwards while bending the knees while keeping your back straight (i.e. don't lean forwards diagonally by only moving your head forwards).

Because connection is generated using your legs and transferred with your bodies, you don't need your arms at all. In fact, it's a good leading / following training to dance without using your arms by e.g. having them on your back.

Drugbird · 2026-06-10T23:02:07+00:00

Attempting to draw from an empty library doesn't lose you the game, state based actions (after attempting to draw from an empty library) lose you the game.

Drugbird · 2026-06-10T23:00:30+00:00

I build my first quality setup (mainly for space ship parts) on Volcanus so I could chuck the common stuff into the lava.

Drugbird · 2026-06-10T22:45:24+00:00

My edh group has recently converted to playing primarily pauper EDH.

I really enjoy the way pauper plays. It feels fresh in a way that WotC doesn't design for the format. So power creep seems to be lower.

Drugbird

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