Hi,

I did some test as yield from this was unnaturally low. And I think default settings are just not right. I converted 1 million of ores with 2 different tests.

1. quality condenser test

Outcome is as expected with 1 legendary module, 4 steps is: 1000000 * 0.0625^4 is about 15, and indeed data was converging to 15 legendary ores per 1 million normal. So that's 0.000015

1. 4*legendary module with single recycles test: chest -> recycler -> chest.

and the yield was as follow in order of quality: 188k 56k 5.5k 535 61
which matches the math on https://wiki.factorio.com/Quality

If we upcycle further so that we are left with only legendary, the final yield is about 350 ledengary ores, or 0.00035 which is very close to 0.000375 that factorio wiki specifies.

So not only you get so 4 times more raw legendary from recycler, but you also have other qualities that you can upcycle again and get more legendary from 1 million normal ores. So ultimately quality condenser on default settings is more that 20 times worse than brute force upcycling.

Summary:
Changing number of module slots from 1 to 2, yields about 244 ores. It's still less than theoretical 375 from recycling, but it's a fair price to pay for convenience and UPS save. Setting base quality to 1.3% will get you closer to recycler to 362 legendary ores.

Now I'm not mathematician, so you may want to verify it. But it seems my practical tests do match theoretical calculations.

ps. And thanks for great mod. After solving upcycling once in my life, I don't really want to go back to it anymore xD

interesting, i figured that since a recycler has 4 module slots and a 1 in 4 chance to output that having just 1 module slot and a guaranteed chance is fairly identical, but i suppose i made a mistake somewhere in that thought process?

Yeah. I think thought error was that, recycler upgrade by ONE TIER ONLY. So if you put common ore, then you can ONLY get up to uncommon and nothing higher. But you get in about 75% common item back, and the rest 25% is split with other qualities. So you have 22.32% chance to get uncommon, 2.232% for rare and 0.0248% for legendary FROM A SINGLE PASS. With condenser you can ONLY get to uncommon in single pass. Then things just compound into huge error, since recycler "bonus" is applied to every upcycle.

Then there still may be some cases where this will fail. I mean, your current condenser will work just right when you feed machine with epic items. You will get 6.25% of items back as legendary, and with recycler you will get 0.25*0.25 - so same value. I think my math and 2 module only will work well if we assume we always feed machine with common and get back legendary. If you recycle up to say rare, and then you feed into condenser with "my" math, I think you will get higher yield of legendary. Which means 2 module condenser is cheesable.

But then again, if you gonna cheese like that, you can just straight away get some "cheat" mods lol.