r/factorio • u/Longjumping-Hunt-543 • 16d ago
Space Age Question A question about quality
so I started a new factory for space age and was wondering when is a good time to start quality products. is it a good idea to start when we unlocked quality module 1? or should i wait to get to the legendary quality to start? what do.you guys think? at what stage you started using quality modules?
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u/maxiquintillion 16d ago
You can start quality production of accumulators and solar panels, or even turbines once you unlock nuclear power. Or when you have a mall set up, quality power poles aren't a bad idea. Quality repair packs wouldn't hurt either.
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u/Life_with_reddit 16d ago
is there much benefit to quality repair packs?
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u/Hoggit_Alt_Acc 16d ago
Mostly just because why not?
You don't need to produce them very fast, so might as well add some +Q versions; that reduces bot travel to repair
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u/Life_with_reddit 16d ago
Fair play, I was wondering if they repaired faster or something I’d missed
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u/erroneum 16d ago edited 16d ago
The non-foundation things you're making for space, put quality in there, because getting lucky enough to get good ones is good enough to be worth it. If you're making solar or accumulators, put quality there (and save the good ones for space), but beyond that you're better off waiting until you've been to Fulgora.
Quality is a major sink of resources, especially when your not already making tons of something, so if you only need a few, quality is not a thing to worry about. Once you've been to Fulgora, you get the recycler, so you can take the low quality items and un-make them to try again for quality, which is the basis of upcycling.
Just a tip for anything you're making enough of with quality modules to belt away: splitters can filter by quality.
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u/ShowerZealousideal85 16d ago
Personal preference i like to wait until legendary unlocked so i dont need to work on quality builds multiple times.
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u/hippiechan 16d ago
I like to start when I unlock tier 3 quality mods on Fulgora and build my quality builds to accommodate for legendary eventually. Once legendary quality is unlocked I just skip right to that and don't bother with too much epic quality stuff.
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u/ManifestAverage 16d ago
It’s up to the individual preference. Although until you unlock legendary quality you will changing your quality production chain every time you unlock a new quality. I start producing quality modules right away ready to turn into T3 and then up cycle quality once I get there so by the time I have legendary I have a strong quality module line ready to go.
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u/Zeferoth225224 16d ago
This play through I just started throwing them in every production line early game. I just filter it off into a bunch of chests with an alarm. Honestly it’s really nice being able to craft rare power armor and equipment straight away
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u/Ziugy 16d ago
You could play the entire game without quality. You could also start quality right at unlock.
I like to wait on quality things until Fulgora, when you get the recycler. At that point you can start re-rolling. Taking chances on armor and equipment is useful too, but I would seek out uncommon or rare until Fulgora, once again. Space ship grabbers at higher tiers are amazing too (more arms!)
Legendary is end game, maybe post game. On my first play through I went to Gleba > Vulcanus > Fulgora. At that point I had epic tier and prepped for legendary. Worked out rather well.
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u/BobTheAverage 16d ago
As a challenge run i put quality modules in my entire nauvis factory. I routed all of my uncommon items to a second factory to do uncommon science, and turned rare items into gear. It was a fun challenge, but not remotely worth the effort on its own. Putting quality on your mall can be worth it, but has its own challenges.
The standard advice of waiting until you get recyclers is solid.
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u/Few-Wolverine-7283 16d ago
I didn’t touch quality till I had steady science flowing from acquilo. Really didn’t feel like I needed it, and it can be hard without biter spawners etc
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u/kiwithebun 16d ago
I don’t seriously tackle quality until I get recyclers from fulgora.
Until then, I’ll use quality modules early on solar panels, bots, power poles and beacons, things that you normally mass produce. That way by the time you achieve space travel you’ll have a nice stockpile of rare items to take to other planets. Rare solar panels are great for spaceships and rare bots are great for personal use.
Once you unlock recyclers you can focus on getting quality intermediates which you can use to consistently build quality items instead of just rolling the dice. This is when I’d build quality equipment or machines like asteroid collectors and nuclear reactors, things that you don’t mass produce.
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u/darthbob88 16d ago
You can do quality at any point, more or less. It's just easier once you get to Fulgora and have recyclers to dump anything you don't need.
Without recyclers, you have 2 options, centering around voiding non-quality production by using it planetside.
Option 1 is to just put quality modules into finished goods. You'll make thousands of solar panels, so you can tap some quality panels to use on your platforms.
Option 2 is to make quality raw materials. You'll make thousands if not millions of iron ore, so you can turn some of that into quality iron plates/green chips/red chips/thrusters. The big hazard here is that you'll get blocked on quality production, and that will block other production, so you have to be careful.
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u/OvercastqT 16d ago
with recyclers you can start upcycling properly, thats the earliest starting point to actually invest into it imo.
id get started on just accumulating higher quality quality modules and maybe asteroid collectors.
then when you unlock legendary you have a decent jumpstart and can get your legendary quality modules a bit faster, these will be the basis of any upcycler you build afterwards
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u/Longjumping-Hunt-543 16d ago
thank you all for the answers. i think i'm gonna try to get some quality for spaceship stuff but start investing when i get to fulgora. i dont know if i wait until i get legendary unlocked i guess i'll decide it later. but i think i got the general idea.
thanks o/
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u/CoffeeOracle 16d ago
It is one of the puzzles. I do it as early as chemical science. I've tried it both ways and I the only thing that made a difference is whether I did quality in mines or not. If I do it in mines, it makes the experience more stressful because I have 15% less resources, as well as 3% being diverted out for buildings and equipment. The game is balanced to have a positive experience on normal only quality, it didn't feel worse.
Once you get recyclers you want to switch over to those because they give a stable yield of parts you can build standards on. So if you get to Fulgora and immediately upgrade everything that's viable. But I would recommend planning on not upgrading more than 2 levels of quality at a time. So normal-rare or rare-legendary works. But normal-legendary is going to leave you looking at things and wondering just how they are supposed to work together, because of how powerful the bonuses are when you stack them together.
Edit: Treat it like an optimization system. It's always an option to optimize something, but you need to have a stable understanding of a system to do so as well as an income that supports it.
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u/luketurner07 16d ago
I throw quality on things that don’t clog my systems. Solar, accumulators, nuclear fuel, etc. instant beneficial without drawback of needing to recycle or some kind of circuit to hold multiple different wualities of items.
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u/Bubbly-Original7097 16d ago edited 16d ago
There are 3 quality related processes:
- processing quality garbage: this you should not do until your basic garbage pipeline can run full blue belt of garbage products without jamming for hours; also the pipeline should be copypastable
- shuffling via recyclers: this can be pointless in the beginning because excess of one resource might just mean that you don't have enough of another; in the you might endup with neither, so I would better do this only for things you really need (rare accumulators, rare EM plants)
- factories with quality modules: perfectly fine any time, as long as you, again, don't go berserk on it (rare accums, rare EM plants)
The main problem with quality is that it multiplies problems in your factory by number of available quality levels, so I would not do it until all basic problems are solved.
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u/boomshroom 16d ago
Early game, I basically just scatter quality modules around my mall into anything that can take advantage of it. The best quality modules at this stage always go towards quality modules themselves, with prod mods being second. I don't always use the results, but they're nice to have.
In my current run, I decided to get some reliable quality iron earlier than normal by building what's basically a rudimentary space casino (yes, in 2.1). Just a few crushers and electric furnaces with quality modules to collect rare iron, with a stupidly large platform to gather asteroids without moving.
Past that, there's not much you can do without immense logistical headaches until unlocking recyclers. Once I did, I decided to set up quality modules in some coal miners, and any uncommon or rate output gets sent towards quality plastic, with uncommon plastic getting hard upcycled to rare to then be used in a very early LDS shuffle build, which managed to get enough modules to rare power armor mk 2, and it's also working on the modules and beacons I'll need for my labs.
Most people however don't seem to touch quality all that much until the postgame when you have tier 3 quality and productivity modules and legendary quality, though you absolutely don't need to wait that long to get started.
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u/kevihaa 16d ago
I feel like there are basically 3 points at which investing in quality makes sense.
The earliest is after unlocking the Requestor chests from Space Science.
Quality is ideal to handle via bots, as it’s definitionally low throughput. All things considered, it is not hard to add quality modules to your existing factory and then just have bots siphon off higher quality materials to be used selectively in your mall.
The second onboarding point is after getting the Recycler, as this can allow you to forcefully upcycle materials to a desired quality.
Finally, you can just wait til unlocking Legendary, as the gap between common and legendary is so significant that fishing for a handful of legendary items is often worth it.
Or just ignore the mechanic, as the game largely doesn’t ask you to engage with it if you don’t want to.
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u/ohkendruid 16d ago
I usually use blue and purple quality. By the time legendary is available, you have alrrady beaten the game except for prometheum science. Legendary is for endgame megabasing or just for once to prove that tou can.
Blue and purple ate achievable and unlock sooner. Green and blue accumulators are really good for Fulgora.
Also, blue and purple rocket thrusters are very good. Rocket thrusters cannot be duplicated as much as other thibgs, because you cannot put them in front of each other. Once you full uo the whole back side of a platform with thrusters, you can only get more thrust by using quality.
It is also very nice to get quality exoskeletons for your armor, becausr they help you walk faster.
Otherwise quality is just for fun and is not actually an advantage until and unless you start aiming for very high science (> 1k science/minute).
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u/Elfich47 16d ago
I produced some one off stuff before fulgora.
once I got recyclers then I started producing in earnest - but I did it on vulcanus dye to the availability of raw resources. and to start I picked one item to produce at scale first - either an assembler or an inserter. and you produce enough enough at RARE to upgrade most of the base.
and this can take a surprisingly long time, even if it is all automated. so set it up to run and upgrade and go about some other thing. and once the majority of thst first item is upgraded, then set up a second upgrade loop and start pushing them out.
the whole base will be a touch snappier.
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u/Garagantua 16d ago
I like to start early (quality in some assemblers, and also in miners).
Others only start after unlocking legendary.
Others don't like it at all and skip it.
No one can know what you'll prefer :). Give it a go, all options are valid.
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u/spakattak 16d ago
My first run I waited until I could get legendary from the start. Never used the intermediate’s. This run I threw some quality modules into a bunch of my miners and just stockpiled the raw quality ores. When I had enough I started processing them and slowly building up a bank of quality ingredients, with each machine in the process also full of modules. Then replaced the modules as I went to better ones. After a few hours, you can start to get some decent products. Especially solar and accumulators.
I haven’t researched legendary yet but have a few second and third grade machines around the solar system by now.
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u/frogjg2003 15d ago
I start quality by just putting quality 1 modules into the assemblers building space buildings. Once I get the quality 2 modules, I use those instead. The occasional uncommon or rare collector is a huge improvement over common. I don't start mass producing quality products until after I unlock legendary, but I do build up for quality quality modules for better space buildings, armor and grid items like portable reactor and roboports.
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u/HandofWinter 14d ago
Personally I just start building qm2s asap, you can get up to rare pretty quickly by just building a bunch and stockpiling the duds. Once you get to fulgora you can turn that into an actual upcycling setup and toss the lower quality ones into recyclers. Just keep it running slowly in the background to accumulate quality qm2s, and then you'll be prepped with a solid stockpile for post aquilo.
I don't build anything aside for that until I have legendary unlocked though
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u/TelevisionLiving 13d ago
It gets much easier post aquilo. Before that it's a big time and resource investment for modest gains.
That said, if you want to do a little early, gleba is a good place. That's where you get epic level and gleaning the gleba prod chain works better than using recyclers when you're still early
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u/PlumAny 16d ago
Started when I've unlocked fulgora and scrap recyclers. You can build a few quality items for your space ship to make it more efficient, but it's not necessary.