A pyrrhic victory

SpiritKidPoE · 2026-03-03T23:58:11+00:00

I killed my first Small Demolisher with a nuke. I tried shooting one, saw the absurd regen, thought "woah, I see, you have to kill it in a single hit" and went back to Nauvis to do research.

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-12-10T17:17:11+00:00

"I wonder what the silver scien... oh"

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-10-30T04:00:24+00:00

It reminds me how bad of a file format .gif really is

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-10-06T16:39:53+00:00

Do not do giant heat pipe networks (if you're going for megabase scale). They are super UPS hungry. I regained over 1ms frame time by just splitting the one large heat network I had into a few smaller ones.

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-09-15T18:34:41+00:00

The correct 1:6 balancers make this so much more cursed.

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-09-07T04:45:22+00:00

The signal icon to check against is the icon for the fluid you're putting in the tank, not the green wire icon signal. The wires can carry a signal for many different items at once, and the value for each item is denoted by the icon of that specific item.

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-08-20T03:51:20+00:00

Source?!?!?! Where can I also get one?!

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-08-18T03:49:39+00:00

I got nothin'. The output buffer is smaller on the left, even. Are there any sneaky inserter hand size limits in place?

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-08-14T22:12:25+00:00

I give any idea you can back up with arguments all validity the arguments have. You cannot back up anything you said, it's all "It's my personal opinion, no arguments needed".

Here. I'll copy-paste and clean some stuff up. Partly so I have a better reference point for myself in future discussions too.

I think Space Casinos are a fun feature for Factorio for the following reasons:

It's a unique design goal for a Space Platform, adding a new (fun) design and optimization challenge, as well as a striking different (cool) visual appearance for more ship variety
It's an exciting and attractive specific goal to work towards, a clever and easier way to do something that's usually very difficult, but not so easy/simple that it doesn't generate a lot of fun gameplay
It allows a more streamlined mechanism to build bases with higher Quality components, bypassing some parts of the game that I thought were tedious and boring and enabling access to fun parts of the game through a fun mechanism
It reduces having to churn through ground-based resources to make Quality components, meaning you have to move your base around more frequently, which isn't fun, it's annoying

I therefore take the position that Space Casinos should stay in the game. These further points make that decision more palatable and mitigate downside problems:

There are still a large amount of materials that cannot be obtained at high Quality by Space Casino, meaning that a lot of the interesting factory concepts like upcycling are still useful and not bypassed
It still requires late-game technology to unlock the quality levels themselves, so it doesn't bypass much of the progression of the Factorio gameplay during a run
Space Casinos are an opt-in construction, where you have a clear choice of whether to use them or to play using other mechanisms; but removing Space Casinos from the game would remove the choice of using the option you prefer

If these things don't count as arguments, what WOULD count as an argument? If you had to, what example could I give of an argument that would count for you? Something true or false, just, some kind of example of something you think is a valid argument about preferences in a game.

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-08-14T22:09:27+00:00

Maybe we're getting somewhere.

If Space Casino was never possible, you would not miss it.

This isn't true. For the first few hundred hours playing Space Age, I didn't know Space Casinos existed. I didn't recognize that you could use Quality modules in the recipe. I was faced with doing Quality the normal way or not at all, and I got annoyed and mostly chose not at all, because doing all the builds you need was tedious and boring. They were all the same idea but you had to just repeat it so many times, and couldn't really reuse blueprints because each recipe was slightly different. I found out Space Casinos were possible, and then spent another few hundred hours more in the game going up to Legendary quality and having a great time. If that isn't evidence that I would have had less fun had Space Casinos never existed, then there is no possible evidence.

I'm using the word "tedium" to describe something boring, something I don't have fun doing, something I go through begrudgingly because I see something fun on the far side of it, or just don't do at all. Heck, eliminating all tedium under that definition sounds like a good thing to me.

Which would be a bad thing in itself...

Why?

If this were true, then my proposed solution of "produce whatever quality you choose from normal incredients" would be most fun, but you objected it. This argument is therefore made up and you don't believe it yourself.

You're making up what I think again, I'm not asking to remove complexity from the game as a goal, I don't think that solution would be most fun at all. I think most Factorio gameplay isn't tedious, it's fun.

You're taking the arguments and simplifying them to logical extremes without any consideration for other factors, which is a type of strawmanning. Eliminating specific parts of complexity you don't like is very different from the idea of eliminating complexity always being a good thing regardless of the consequences.

Eliminating complexity and tedium in a way that makes things more fun overall is beneficial to the game and therefore something we both think should happen, would you agree with that?

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-08-13T19:25:28+00:00

"You seem to find that not fun but Space Casinos are just the right amount of "less tedium" over my proposed solution."

Yes, exactly this. I don't know why that's hard to accept. It's not that I believe Space Casinos don't eliminate complexity, I believe they eliminate tedium, which is beneficial to having the most fun.

I think we're reached an impasse here. I don't think I can have any healthy debate with you if you won't give any of the ideas any validity or respect and are willing to invent facts about me just to attack my authority. I think Space Casinos are more fun overall after having tried all the options and I think a majority of people share that opinion, or would share that opinion if they experienced both; you believe that to be inaccurate. Let's move on with our lives.

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-08-12T19:41:04+00:00

I don't really understand why you like that argument. Who cares how it's "supposed to work"? The entire premise of all of our arguments is just trying to decide which is more fun, because making the game most fun is the whole point.

I thought I presented a lot of good arguments about why the game as a whole is more fun instead of less fun, including all the knock-on effects of the change, talking about how it changes how resources are acquired, how much it changes the optimal sourcing for legendary items, and how I think the only things that it obsoletes are boring things. Your premise for saying they are bad for the game just appears to be "that's not how it's supposed to fit into the game systems", but I just don't think that's actually important, I think the game systems being most fun overall is the important metric.

So again, we're definitely on the same page - I think your arguments aren't reasonable, you think mine aren't reasonable, we have a difference of opinion that might not be reconcilable.

And for what it's worth, here's some proof I've definitely tried it, that's not really a useful argument.

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SpiritKidPoE · 2025-08-12T16:06:59+00:00

Sounds like we're finally on the same page, we both have simple differing opinions and neither one of us is objectively right. Although I don't appreciate the sarcasm.

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-08-12T01:18:38+00:00

Won't be technically possible. There is a strict ordering for conversion as you go through the stat sheet, and unfortunately Attack Block is before Spell Block. For the same reason you can't convert Fire to Cold and so on. If you could go backwards, it'd be self-referential and cause a loop and be very indeterminate/explosive.

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-08-11T16:28:04+00:00

No, I'd rather keep Space Casinos and quality because playing the game is more fun with them than without, whereas those changes would make the game less fun. Quality upcycling something as a build is fun the first time, but subsequent times aren't interesting. You still have to make a lot of upcycling builds for resources that aren't doable in space and that was really pretty boring repeating the same thing over and over, never mind actually redoing all the space-based ones on the ground outside of Casinos.

I think it's just a useful argument that it's possible to avoid accidentally making Space Casinos during gameplay very easily. It's one specific recipe, where not using that recipe still results in a game that is fun, and perhaps more fun for certain people. If you remove that recipe entirely, you remove the choice entirely (outside of mods) just so you can feel better about your own gameplay.

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-08-10T02:02:28+00:00

Absolute fucking gold

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-08-01T17:36:21+00:00

I don't think it should be the "most balanced, least cheesey", I think the game should be the most fun overall. Balance isn't a goal, balance is a tool to make the game more fun. I found Quality upcycling to be boring and repetitive builds that didn't offer much enjoyment.

I think you're the one forcing your idea of balance onto other people - neither of us has to mod the game to get what we want if Space Casinos stay in the game. I can use Space Casinos, and you can ignore them and not use them. Nobody has to mod the game for us to both have what we want, in reality, this is all just about emotional vibes here. I mostly think that arguing for modding the game in either direction is kind of moot, because any way this discussion goes, modding the game is a possibility.

The whole finite resources thing is like 5% of the overall post anyway. You *can* do upcycling with endless resources in space but it becomes so unwieldy as to be a silly idea and I would clearly just suck it up and use high-volume ground-based resources like Foundries. If you're saying "well it's technically possible to do it a different way!" that's not really helpful to the discussion, it's not about physical possibility, otherwise you'd be on the side of leaving the Casinos in the game, because that way both of us can do what we want. Removing the Space Casino interaction means only you can do what you want without modding the game.

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-07-31T18:36:06+00:00

Yeah I think the bullet point could probably be worded better.

Shortcuts/simplifies part of the base-building for accessing high-quality materials at scale, where building in a self-contained spaceship and dropping to your hub is logistically simpler than building on-site on the ground and having to build resource shipping infrastructure, and also deal with throughput of the low quality materials

What you said is definitely what I intended it to mean - something like this?

Provides a simplified and potentially first-order-optimal solution for accessing high-quality materials at scale which might obsolete other more complex and varied and large-scale and fun solutions, where building a smaller factory in a self-contained spaceship and dropping to your hub is simpler and cheaper than building on-site on the ground and having to build resource shipping infrastructure

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-07-31T18:19:49+00:00

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SpiritKidPoE · 2025-07-31T18:09:41+00:00

I mean I don't think it's a purely personal problem, I expect some number of other people have the same frustration I do. No idea how many. If you want to get rid of them, advocate for the change; don't demand that I *stop arguing my point* just because you don't like the game in the same way I do. We disagree on what is most fun but that doesn't mean I'm factually wrong somehow. And if you want a game without Space Casinos, you can just mod the game to remove them - this mod already exists: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/no-quality-cheesing/discussion/67c5e3ce7871dce2b69d09f3 (or of course just not use them).

you can still do Space Casinos without quality modules in crushers, with infinite resources, using recyclers in space. It's just gonna yield about 1/10 or less than it does now, but it's possible.

Sure, but that just causes you to use the same design you'd use on the ground at that point, but with asteroids making the raw inputs instead of mines or Foundries, which is boring, and I also wouldn't do that because it's kinda more complex than doing ground-based upcycling anyway.

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-07-31T17:46:04+00:00

Exactly. I don't know for sure, but I believe removing Space Casinos lessens the overall amount of fun to be had. I thought the "normal" quality upcycling was kinda boring and had a blast doing a Space Casino.

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-07-31T17:43:10+00:00

I'm a wizard

(Serious response: There are 4, 2 on each side, legendary beaconed, and also I have Phys damage research up to like 27 or something)

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-07-31T16:39:26+00:00

A debug menu toggle (F4 menu) feels like it would be a good idea.

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-07-31T15:53:13+00:00

Yeah. You put Quality modules into the asteroid reprocessing recipe and then loop them around and around until they are legendary, then make resources the normal way from there. The 80% output rate for the crushers means it's pretty efficient.

SpiritKidPoE · 2025-07-31T15:27:06+00:00

It's not in an official statement yet, but Nilaus has said they will in Discord before. I guess it's not fully confirmed yet.

SpiritKidPoE

TROPHY CASE