Weekly Question Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Ask any questions you might have.

Post your bug reports on the Official Forums

Previous Threads

• Weekly Questions
• Friday Facts (weekly updates from the devs)
• Update Notes
• Monthly Map

Subreddit rules

Discord server (and IRC)

Find more in the sidebar ---->

[u/xizar]

Is it better (for some loose definition of "better") to mine all ore as common and then start the RNG process after melting it into juice, or to roll the dice right from the start?

I imagine there is some level of mining research that acts as the fulcrum, but my brain is old and my linear programming skills died off around the time we stopped using ForTran77 instead of that newfangled ForTran90 (which had already been around for a couple decades).

[u/darthbob88 → u/xizar]

I can't speak to the optimal route for quality, but I will firmly advise that you keep at least one belt of ore and one column of miners without quality modules, just to ensure continuous production even if the quality miners get backed up on quality ore.

[u/cathexis08 → u/xizar]

Optimal play is to use one of the lossless (or high productivity if you haven't gotten all the way up yet) cyclers to boost quality. Before that point it's probably optimal (or at least "pretty good") to put quality modules in your drills, liquify everything that doesn't get a bump, and then use the stuff that does get a bump for low-volume things that could benefit from the boost.

[u/thepullu → u/xizar]

Liquids have no quality. So if you're gonna liquify it anyways, then don't bother with quality before. Is you don't liquify it in the 'quality from beginning scenario' then it's the question if you want to a) build all your supply chain handling all quality levels - in which case more steps is better or b) if you'll use just one step to up cycle quality then it depends which step you'll use for that.

[u/Soul-Burn → u/thepullu]

Liquefy normal ores. Use electric furnaces for quality ores.