BETA
Auto Best Quality
Your legendary assemblers are blueprinted and ready — but you only have uncommon
ones in stock. Your rare turrets at the front line just got destroyed and your
stockpile is depleted — a normal replacement is better than nothing. Your
production line needs rare productivity modules across 50 machines — but you only
have 20 rare in stock and the rest are uncommon. No problem: ABQ fills what it
can right now and steps up each machine automatically as better items arrive.
Auto Best Quality bridges the gap. It fills your blueprint ghosts and upgrade
orders with whatever quality is available in your logistics networks right now,
then automatically steps each building up as better items arrive — without you
lifting a finger.
How it works
Express your intent through blueprints or the upgrade planner as normal.
Auto Best Quality intercepts the resulting construction requests and substitutes
the best available quality if your target isn't in stock yet. As better items
arrive in your construction networks or space platform hubs, buildings and modules
are stepped up automatically: normal → uncommon → rare → epic → legendary.
Works for both entities and modules. Supports all surfaces including
space platforms.
How to interact with Auto Best Quality
Auto Best Quality works through your construction bots — the same system that
builds your blueprints. It monitors all your logistic networks across your
factory and your space platform hubs, and handles substitutions wherever
construction bots can reach. Express your intent using any of these methods and
it will handle the rest:
- Blueprints (placed as ghosts or on top of existing machines)
- Upgrade planner — entity quality upgrades and module slot rules
- Remote view (when a construction network covers the machine)
Limitations
-
Gradual, not instant. Factorio fires no event when items arrive in a
logistics network, so Auto Best Quality polls for new items every ~30 seconds
by default (configurable). Space platforms are an exception — it reacts
immediately when a cargo pod lands. Either way, a short detection delay has no
practical impact: the end result is always correct, just arrived at gradually.
Think of it as Auto Best Quality working quietly in the background at its own
pace, always converging toward your intended quality as items become available. -
Module proxy detection delay. Module requests via blueprint or upgrade
planner are detected within one scan cycle (default 10 seconds, configurable). -
Direct module insertion is not tracked. Inserting modules by hand or via
personal roboport bots bypasses the construction network entirely — Auto Best
Quality cannot see these changes and might overwrite your changes. Use blueprints or the upgrade planner instead.
Requirements
Requires Factorio 2.0 and the Quality mod (included with the Space Age
expansion).
Settings
All settings are configurable in Settings → Mod settings → Runtime without
restarting the game (except Enable Logging, which requires a mod reload).
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Max quality levels below target | 5 | How far below your target quality ABQ will substitute. Default of 5 covers the full range from normal to legendary. |
| Max quality levels above target | 0 | How far above your target quality ABQ will substitute. Default of 0 means it never wastes a higher-quality item as a stopgap. |
| Ghosts per tick (initial) | 20 | How many blueprint ghosts are processed per tick when a blueprint is first placed. Higher = faster blueprint processing but more UPS cost. |
| Ghosts per tick (retry) | 15 | How many pending ghosts are retried per tick during the periodic retry loop. Lower values reduce UPS spikes on large maps. |
| Fast retry interval | ~3 seconds | How often ABQ retries after a successful substitution. Short because more items may be immediately available for the next ghost. |
| Slow retry interval | ~30 seconds | How often ABQ checks when no progress was made — items simply aren't available yet. |
| Proxy scan interval | ~10 seconds | How often ABQ scans for new blueprint and upgrade planner module requests when nothing else is pending. |
| Proxy scan chunks per tick | 1 | How many map chunks are scanned per tick when looking for player-set module requests. Higher = faster detection but more UPS cost. |
| Enable Logging | Off | Enables detailed debug logging to factorio-current.log. Startup setting — requires mod reload. |
Status
This mod is currently in beta. The core entity substitution and step-up logic
is solid and well-tested. Module substitution in complex configurations — mixed
module types, non-trivial slot layouts, machines with pre-existing modules — is
the area most likely to have remaining edge cases. Bug reports and feedback are
very welcome.
Credits
NOiZE — mod design, Factorio modding, testing and game knowledge
Claude (Anthropic) — co-developer. The architecture, Lua implementation, and
iterative debugging of this mod were developed in close collaboration with Claude.
From the initial event-driven design through to the module slot logic, the
can_satisfy_request migration, and the PATH A/PATH B proxy system — Claude
wrote and debugged the majority of the code across an extended development
sessions.