House Fire Overhaul Mod

A Factorio mod that overhauls the quality and recycling systems, introduces new technologies, and makes various other gameplay tweaks. "House fire" because it burns a lot of things down to overhaul them. Note that I've really only uploaded this mod to the portal to make it easier to distribute to my friends when we are running multiplayer servers, so I don't plan to take requests for changes or to make fixes to make it compatible with other mods.

Quality Changes

• Single-Tier Upgrades: Quality modules can only upgrade an item by one tier at a time.
  • The rare chance to skip quality tiers (e.g., jumping from Common to Epic) has been removed.
  • You must progress through each quality tier sequentially to reach Legendary.
• Quality Upgrade/Downgrade Tool: A new planner tool to easily adjust the quality of placed entities.
  • Left-click & drag: Upgrades selected entities by one quality tier.
  • Right-click & drag: Downgrades selected entities by one quality tier.
  • Shift + Left-click: Cancels pending quality changes.
  • Note: This tool will ignore entities already marked for a standard building upgrade.

Quality Upgrading Machines

Three new furnace-type entities allow you to directly upgrade the quality of raw resources. While vanilla methods (quality modules and recycling loops) still work, these machines are intended to be your primary method for generating high-quality materials:

• Quality Forge: Upgrades ores, scrap, and calcite.
• Quality Crusher: Upgrades asteroid chunks.
• Quality Biochamber: Upgrades wood, yumako, jellynuts, biter eggs, ice, and fish.

Mechanics:

• Guaranteed Upgrades: These machines guarantee a quality increase. Because of this, Quality Modules cannot be used in them (though Speed and Productivity modules are fully supported).
• Conversion Ratio: The default conversion ratio is 4:1 (e.g., 4 Common items yield 1 Uncommon item).
  • This ratio can be adjusted in the mod settings.
  • At the default 4:1 ratio, it takes 256 Common items to produce 1 Legendary item.

Item Quality Bonuses

Higher quality tiers now provide new or enhanced bonuses to the following items:

• Heat Pipes: +1 range per quality level.
• Underground Pipes: +2 range per quality level.
• Underground Belts: +1 range per quality level.
• Lamps: +6 range per quality level.
• Night Vision Equipment: Turns on faster and provides brighter vision. Legendary quality turns on instantly and makes night look like day.
• Rocket Silos: +1,000 lift weight capacity per quality level, and faster door opening speeds.
• Combat Capsules (Destroyer, Distractor, Defender): Multiplies the number of spawned robots by the quality level.
• Poison Capsules: Increases both the effect radius and spawn count.
• Space Platform Hubs: Increases storage capacity and repair speed.
  • Upgrading: Send a higher-quality space platform starter pack to an existing platform to upgrade its hub (this will only apply if the new starter pack is a higher quality than the current hub).

Note: Implementing these quality bonuses requires generating unique items/entities for each quality tier. For technical details, see the Modding API: Quality Proxies section.

Quality-Scaled Liquid Recipes

Recipes that take solid item inputs but only output liquids now have alternative variants that scale liquid output with input quality.

• Output Scaling: Higher-quality inputs produce more liquid output.
• Efficiency: The efficiency of the liquid output based on the total common quality input that would be needed to create that quality level. Configurable in mod settings (defaults to 85%).
  • For example, if the output ratio is 4, to get to legendary you need 256 common items to make one legendary item. If that one legendary item is needed in a recipe, the liquid output will be 256 * 0.85 * <base-output-amount>. Meaning it would be better to use common items to create the liquid. The benefit of the higher quality recipes is the output per second is higher.
  • You can set the efficiency to 100 if you don't want any loss from upgrading the quality of ingredients.
  • I would recommend lower efficiencies for higher output ratios, otherwise the liquid output per second starts to get a bit extreme.
• A setting allows the crafting time to be increased as well, which can help reduce the massive output per second and keep things more reasonable.
• Recipe Selection: Standard quality modules are disabled for these recipes. To use higher-quality inputs, you must manually select the corresponding recipe variant (found under the House Fire Quality Group).

Quality Liquid-to-Solid Recipes

In vanilla, recipes that only have liquid inputs cannot output higher quality items since liquids are locked to "Common" quality.

• New alternative variants have been added (found under the House Fire Quality Group) that require more of the liquid input, but output an item at a higher quality.
• For example, at the default increase (400% per quality level), to produce legendary sulfur, 630 Water and 630 Petroleum Gas are needed.
• Multiplier: Configurable in mod settings (defaults to 400% per quality level).

Other Quality Changes

Additional bonuses granted by higher quality tiers:

• Furnaces, Assembling Machines, Mining Drills, Rocket Silos, Beacons, and Labs: +1 module slot per quality level.
• Labs: Reduced science drain.
• Mining Drills: Increased mining radius (applies to non-burner drills).
• Beacons: Increased supply area.
• Rocket Silos: Faster engine starting speed and rocket rising speed.
• Asteroid Collectors: Increased arm inventory size.
• Roboports: Increased number of charging stations (applies to regular roboports).

Recycling Changes

• Non-Recyclable Items: Blueprints, filled barrels, and certain other non-physical items can no longer be recycled.
• Crafting Time Scaling: Recycling speed now scales with the number of outputs from the original recipe. For example, recycling Concrete is 10x faster because the original recipe crafts 10 Concrete at once.

Removing Randomness from Recycling

Factorio is based on predictable, calculable ratios. However, vanilla recycling introduces randomness (e.g., a 25% chance to get an item back), which breaks exact ratio calculations. This mod removes that randomness by multiplying inputs, outputs, and crafting times so that all recycling yields an exact, guaranteed amount.

• Standard Recycling Example:
  • Vanilla: 1 Iron Plate (0.2s) -> 25% chance to output 1 Iron Plate.
  • Modded: 4 Iron Plates (0.8s) -> 100% chance to output exactly 1 Iron Plate.
• Scrap Recycling:
  • Now requires 100 Scrap and takes 20 seconds per cycle (at crafting speed 1).
  • This perfectly scales the original fractional probabilities into exact, guaranteed integer outputs, maintaining the exact same overall output ratios and production speed.

Note: Asteroid chunk crushing, asteroid reprocessing, and uranium processing have been left untouched. Their randomness feels intentional and is an expected part of those specific logistical challenges.

Technology Changes

New Technology Caps

Certain infinite technologies have been capped where the scaling breaks down or stops providing actual benefits:

• Productivity: Capped for specific items (e.g., steel, rocket fuel) to match machine internal limits. (Research and Mining Productivity remain uncapped).
• Robot Follower Count: Capped, as it eventually becomes impossible to launch robots fast enough to reach extreme limits.
• Artillery Shell & Railgun Speed: Capped, as the effective in-game speed eventually hits a ceiling.
• Worker Robot Speed: Capped as a logical limit for extreme speeds.

Expanded & Infinite Technologies

New levels and infinite research options have been added for the following:

• Laboratory Speed
• Worker Robot Capacity
• Worker Robot Battery (Infinite)
• Follower Robot Lifetime (Extended & Infinite levels)
• Turret Damage: Infinite scaling for Rocket, Railgun, and Artillery turrets (stacks with ammo damage).
• Physical Gun Speed: Affects bullets, shotguns, cannons, rockets, flamethrowers, and beams.
• Laser Shooting Speed
• Beacon Distribution: Infinite scaling for the bonus beacons apply to buildings.
• Inserter Capacity
• Train Braking Force
• Character Enhancements: A single, expensive technology that increases running speed, build distance, reach, and crafting speed.
• Cargo Bay Unloading Distance (Infinite)
• Cargo Landing Pads: Infinite technology for the max number of pads per planet.
• Quality Machine Productivity: Increases the productivity of the quality forge/crusher/biochamber recipes (Max 30 levels for up to 300% productivity).

Other Changes

• Agricultural Towers: Now feature 1 module slot by default, with additional slots unlocked at higher quality tiers.
  • Accepts all module types (speed, productivity, efficiency, quality).
  • Note: When using Productivity modules, the bonus progress bar does not visually appear in the UI, but it still correctly produces extra items.
• Clean Tiles: All placed tiles will automatically clear ground decorations beneath them, ensuring your factory floors look clean and pristine.
• Players do not receive the default gun/ammo when respawning after a death.

Credits & Disclaimers

• Original Art Assets: Owned by Wube Software, which served as the basis for the Quality Forge, Crusher, and Biochamber graphics.
• AI was used to assist in modifying and generating the final assets.
• This mod will likely not work with other mods that make changes/adjustments to recycling or quality.
• Feel free to use the source code for this mod without attribution. Graphics may also be used, but credit to Wube for the original art must be given.
• This mod may not work if added to an existing save. It should replace buildings and equipment that have quality versions, but recipes may not be updated correctly.

Modding API: Quality Proxies

Creating quality versions of items that have enhanced physical stats (like increased underground pipe distance) requires workarounds in Factorio's engine. This mod handles this by dynamically creating and swapping semi-hidden proxy items/entities.

Core API Functions

• create_quality_item: Generates a hidden entity, item, and recipe for each quality tier above Normal. It fires a callback passing these prototypes so you can adjust their properties.
• create_quality_equipment: Works identically, but is tailored for equipment (e.g., Night Vision).
• create_quality_capsule: Works identically, but for capsules (does not create an entity, only an item and recipe).

The Proxy Swapping Logic

To make these enhanced items function seamlessly, the mod constantly swaps between the "real" item (needed in inventories for logistics/crafting) and the "proxy" item (needed in the player's hand so you see the correct building stats, like range, while dragging).

The mod intercepts dozens of edge cases to ensure the item in your hand is the proxy, but the item in an inventory is always the real one:

• Swapped to Proxy (When Held):
  • Picking an item up from an inventory.
  • Pressing Q to pipet an entity.
  • Using ALT + Scroll Wheel to adjust held quality.
  • Quickbar slots dynamically update to show the proxy tooltip when held.
• Swapped to Real (When Stored/Dropped):
  • Placing items into any inventory (Chests, Vehicles, Rocket Silos, Space Platforms, etc.).
  • Dropping items (Z) onto the ground, belts, or inserters.
  • Fast-transferring (CTRL + Click) or moving items to trash slots.
  • Player death (items are restored before the corpse spawns).
  • Placing items into logistic request slots.

Many of the above situations must also work when handling ghosts.

Additional Notes

• Upgrade Planner: Automatically upgrades items to the next quality tier if the original item lacks a standard next_upgrade (e.g., Underground Pipes will upgrade quality, while Yellow Belts will still upgrade to Red Belts).
• Auto-Refill: If you run out of a proxy item while building, the mod will automatically find another stack of the real item in your inventory and swap it into your hand (if possible).
• Equipment & Ghosts: Unlike buildings, equipment can't be placed by a different item. Because of this, ghosts of proxy equipment placed in grids are reverted to normal ghosts. When construction robots finally build the ghost, the mod swaps it back to the enhanced proxy equipment.
• Logistics Requests: If you are requesting an item, the request is placed for the regular item. If you pick up the stack, it becomes the hidden proxy item, which makes your inventory look like it has fewer items than you actually have. Robots will attempt to fulfill the request.