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The Blog post has an interesting quote that I think has been overlooked that I believe is worth talking about:
It is also notable that we created a quality penalty on speed modules, because haste makes waste, and we wanted to reduce the number of places where beacons full of speed modules is the best way to go.
I think this is a big talking point mostly due to the role of both speed modules and beacons in Factorio. The reason I think this is important is looking at where beacons are used most in the game: Science packs.
Science packs are THE resource that matters. It's what we measure the size of every mega factory. It's what most of a factory is used to create. So, how does quality impact science packs?
What we know about quality is that is downright expensive. Working with the only numbers we were given, a 10% chance to upgrade with a 75% loss is, if my math is correct, a 4.5x cost increase per quality level. If we guesstimate the fact that recyclers can weirdly also upgrade items and legendary quality modules % are currently undefined but probably a lot better, we'll bump it to a generous 2x the expense per level under optimal conditions.
In short, an estimation sees to get to "legendary" quality, we should expect a (2^4) 16x increase in resources per item at these optimal conditions. We can expect this to be done at the earliest acceptable crafting point as all legendary ingredients craft a legendary item, so it should be considered a 1-time cost.
The other number we were given was the fact that 4 production modules can now reach an incredible 100% production bonus, a 60% buff, which can be applied at every step of the intermediary production line. The downside of production modules is their speed debuff, which leads to the presence of speed beacons.
However, with speed modules now lowering quality, we either have to:
- Use quality modules to offset the cost, losing us 25% production per X Speed Modules due to both requiring the building slot
- Ignore quality and just use common quality ingredients to remove the downside.
To me, this is a fundamental problem with how I think quality will be used in mega-factories and post-game as a whole, as the latter will be always more valuable for science packs. The buff in value required to make legendary-quality science packs to equal the worth in additional resources, factory size, total craft time and production loss would need to be crazy to compete (150% does not seem realistic). In quality vs. quantity, it's hard to see a scenario where quantity doesn't win here. It's not just optional, it's un-optimal.
"But what non-intermediate items that benifit with quailty?"
Weirdly this speed module debuff makes speed beacons required if you want to boost them significantly. Instead of slotting your 4 slots with speed modules, you would now have to slot them with a balance of quality and speed modules to counteract the new debuffs and not accidentally de-rank your item, which could actually add speed beacons to the factory as you give the building slots to the quality modules. It sounds like a very strange and unintended dynamic.
But, this is all theory based on the FFF. I'd love to see if others see a future that I missed where quality will be more than a side project for your bot malls. Maybe the numbers ARE crazy and I hope that Quality vs. Quantity is a fair fight where both are viable factory methods with Pros and Cons. The quality buffs are really cool and I want it to be more than just a mechanic for malls.
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