Im not sure if it is a bug, but ive noticed inserters and poles rank up quicker than should be, i have my settings setup for ~5 minutes per upgrade yet, poles and inserters almost always get to legendary within 5 mins instead, Also should inserters rank up without power as well?

Hi! The mod doesn't work quite that way - sorry this is a problem with my description.

Based on the description of what you are expecting, this other mod is conceptually along the lines of what you are thinking about: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/upgradeable-quality - it's time based, and machines need to be working/connected to power to progress. It's more straightforward in how it works.

Ok here is why this mod isn't behaving as you would expect. Inserters get upgraded by using credits from your assemblers. Assemblers and furnaces are the source of upgrades for the whole factory.

With the setting of 5 minutes, an assembler with crafting speed 1 takes 5 minutes to create upgrade credits. But an assembler with crafting speed 10 or 100 only takes a few seconds to generate credits. So if you have a hundred assemblers that are legendary and have high crafting speeds (10 or 100 or higher), then they are generating thousands of credits per second.

If most of your other entities like inserters are already upgraded, then there is only one place for the upgrade credits to go -> the new entities you are placing. So they upgrade really fast.

A couple things to try to balance it better:
- use 1 - 3 hours per credit instead; at crafting speed 10 it's still just a few minutes (1 hour / crafting speed 10 == 6 minutes per credit per assembler)
- increase the cost per quality level setting to something like 50 or more. This will slow down credit generation of the faster entities that are at legendary
- lower the percentage chance of success
- decrease or disable luck (quality chance accumulation rate) - this will make it less likely that the credits work

Anyway, I've been working on trying to make the controls more straightforward. I think the credit system is kinda hard to follow in general.

I could totally add the setting of requiring entities be connected to the power network to be eligible.
Also was thinking of moving the balance controls (hours per credit etc) to map settings, so you can change things during a game to test out what settings would work best for your play style.

I'm open to ideas on making this more straightforward.

I'd be curious what made you decide to use this quality control mod verses some of the others? I can be sure to keep those features as I work to streamline things.

So in poor mans terms everything contributes to the leveling up of buildings instead of each items focusing on itself.

Yeah, that's a good description. I'll keep working to make it more intuitive and to make the controls better.