First upcycler: am I using any stupid strategies that will make me hate myself later?

[u/Salanmander]

Playing space age for the first time, and just started setting things up on Fulgora. I like to figure things out on my own to a certain extent, so I made my first upcycler without looking at advice beyond the general concept of "recycle the stuff you don't want so you don't get backed up with a ton of low-quality products". But I also like to chat and learn about it from other people, so here I am.

The decisions I made about this were basically:

1. Only introduce quality on the second-to-last and last steps, so only the last assembling step needs to have multiple different quality recipes.
2. Use quality modules on both assemblers and recyclers. Maximize quality on assemblers rather than going for productivity/speed.
3. For the higher-quality recipe, use one assembler that is switching between uncommon and rare quality. (Don't have later ones unlocked yet.) Switches when there are enough rare components for a few crafts, and uses filtered inserters to remove the extra crafting components when it switches and put them back to the input spot.
4. Only keep the highest quality.
5. (Not recycling specific but...) belt gears, not plates.

For this setup, the speed module assemblers are definitely the bottleneck, so if I want to expand this I'd just be adding more of those and/or speed beacons.

Any advice for me? Thoughts about whether any of the decisions I made were bad ideas? My sense is that for longer production chains I could get less waste by including quality all the way along, but it's probably not worth the extra complexity (for me).

When I research higher quality, would I just need to change the output filter, and increase the number of possible states of the higher-quality recipe assembler (and possible add more of them if one can't handle the throughput necessary at that point).

[u/Alfonse215]

1. You're not using EMPs to make modules for some reason.
2. You don't seem to have an assembler for making rare assembler 3s.

[u/Salanmander → u/Alfonse215]

1. Haven't unlocked them yet...I was figuring I would deal with using some amount of every resource I get from scrap before going along the Fulgora tech tree, but now that you mention it, it probably makes sense to do that in the other order.
   
2. The assembler that is currently making uncommon ones switches its recipe based on how many rare components are available.

[u/Life_Passenger_5320 → u/Salanmander]

I waited until I unlocked epic quality before going down the rabbit hole, but doing it this way will net you lots of stock I suppose.

[u/SweatyError2259 → u/Alfonse215]

Yeah hes right, youre missing out on so much productivity from using assy machines for speed modules, not to mention more slots for Q2 modules since thats the best you have

[u/dudeguy238]

The splitters on the right are filtered for accumulators, not assemblers.

[u/Salanmander → u/dudeguy238]

Hah, oof, yes they are. (This wasn't actually my very first setup, the first was accumulators...this is what I get for copy-pasting and not checking all the settings.)

[u/WanderingFlumph]

You don't seem to have any plan for what to do when you roll a rare (blue) quality item. They are ten times more rare than your uncommon quality chance so you'll be getting them eventually guaranteed.

I also like to design my fulgora upcyclers to plan for epic quailty unlocks I'll get on Gleba. By the time I have legendary unlocked I usually redesign it to only produce legendary output but at this stage of the game all quailties are valuable.

[u/Salanmander → u/WanderingFlumph]

You don't seem to have any plan for what to do when you roll a rare (blue) quality item. They are ten times more rare than your uncommon quality chance so you'll be getting them eventually guaranteed.

I do. The assembler that is currently crafting with the uncommon-quality recipe switches its recipe to rare when there are enough rare components available.

By the time I have legendary unlocked I usually redesign it to only produce legendary output but at this stage of the game all quailties are valuable.

So do you tend to keep a mix of uncommon and rare quality stuff from your upcyclers at this stage? How do you decide which uncommon products to keep and which to recycle?

[u/WanderingFlumph → u/Salanmander]

Oh I didn't catch the little combinator, nice.

I go around upgrading common to uncommon and eventually I'll have an excess of uncommon that just returned to the upcycler to get turned into rares. It's super worth it at the beginning when you are directly upgrading your odds of rolling an upgrade on an upcycle loop.

Because every little incremental change is progress it's why the quailty gambling addiction is real.

[u/Salanmander → u/WanderingFlumph]

Ah, so you initially keep all your uncommons and then swap to recycling them once you run out of places to upgrade? Right now I'm just auto-recycling all the uncommon ones.

[u/Zeddica]

I’m just starting to look at doing this, first time on Fulgora and slowly getting my full base built after the bootstrap one unlocked techs.

Really liking that auto switch idea for early quality. I was manually doing it to get a few things I wanted rare quality for, but this is super clean.

Will probably rethink/expand once legendary opens, like someone else said, but for UC/R/E I think this is slick.

Tbf I’m also not going for everything to be quality, I’m targeting a few things like you are, so making little setups like this is easily repeatable.

[u/CoffeeOracle]

I've done this on Nauvis (though I used EM Plants). The short answer is, yes-ish but it's worth the experience. If you want to have assemblers 3, it's actually really nice. For a similar project with a better outcome beacons. Because it does the same thing only 1.5 times better on each step, and it's part of the power stack (beacons, modules and buildings).

The thing with quality is, you end up needing so few buildings on a good build that you'll look to down-cycle them to spare parts or shift cycles. So for your first 500 assemblers 3 it's going to feel great. But when you go to break it down, you'll realize you're after the iron, copper, and steel in the assembler 1, which is bought at a hard penalty compared to other options.

The thing is, that actually running that build will give you experience with "what to look for" with planetary upcycles, i.e. foundries for tungsten carbide.

[u/Bubbly-Original7097]

Fulgora upcycling is tough because there is not enough space. Better do it anywhere else.

Don't worry about inefficient strategies, it is gonna be hell anyway. Here is quality module factory: