Mining Productivity cost changing in 0.17.6

The .5 numbers were crazy low, although I still feel like the .6 numbers are a bit high

The entire point of mining productivity, as far as I can tell, is to ensure we don't spend our entire lives adding new ore patches because that gets old real quick.

I like the current ramp up profile, but I'd like to see it at around 75% of .6 levels

I was thought the same thing.

Or stay on 0.16 until you atleast in the hundreds on mining productivity.

If I were a new player I'd probably think it was pointless - it isn't immediately obvious it would pay off. Giving bigger initial bonuses helps make it seem worthwhile.

Me too. Late game it's the only research to do that still gives you instant gratification.

Actually... you're also wrong.

Here are the .16, .17.5, and .17.6 cumulative cost equations in order (note, all equations treat x as a .16 level, or +2% increase in mining productivity. .17 levels only occur at multiples of 5):

.16 cost = 100 * x * (x + 1)  / 2
.17.5 cost = 500 * x / 5 * (x / 5 + 1) / 2
.17.6 cost = 2500 * (x / 5 - 3) * ((x / 5 - 3) + 1) / 2 + 1750

These can be rewritten as:

.16 cost = 50x^2 + 50x
 .17.5 cost = 10x^2 + 50x
.17.6 cost = 50x^2 - 1250x + 9250

In terms of scaling cost, the only things that matter are the degree of the function and the leading coefficient. All functions are 2nd degree polynomials (the highest exponent of x is 2), so all we need compare if what we care about is long term scaling is their leading coefficients. This means that .16 and .17.6 are equal in this respect.

However, there's another little detail that is worth noting here, as it is considerably more relevant to those in their first few hundred mining productivity techs. If we look at the cost per 10%, we see something interesting. The total cost of a given set of 5 levels is:

.16 cost per 10% = 500x + 1500
.17.5 cost per 10% = 100x + 500
.17.6 cost per 10% = 500x - 5000

In other words, per you save 6500 science per 10% level because of the new curve's offset. As you scale toward infinity, this value is less and less apparent, but it's actually a pretty huge bonus for quite a while. Here's what you pay on .17.6 at certain levels:

30% prod = 14.6% cost
50% prod = 28.5% cost
100% prod = 56.3% cost
150% prod = 69.0% cost (nice)
200% prod = 76.1% cost
250% prod = 80.5% cost
300% prod = 83.6% cost
400% prod = 87.5% cost
500% prod = 89.9% cost
inf% prod = 100% cost

Anyways, as you can see, this is a significant boost to early techs that very slowly falls more in line with the old balance as you scale up.

I don't understand it, I thought it was awesome as it was.

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However I am confused your saying it will always be cheaper. After I migrate I will be on lvl 577

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(577-3)*2500 = 1.4 Million roughly

but here in 0.16

next 10% is 225k*5 = 1.12 Million

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So that's 300k more for the next 10%. Am I wrong? Do I just not understand?

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EDIT Clearly my maths was off here the costs are about the same

No, with the new 0.17.6 the research cost goes towards costing about 80% of what it did in 0.16 cumulatively https://imgur.com/a/0qNIJOE

Edit: If you get to Mining Prod 10,000% the cumulative cost in 17.6 would be 99.5% of 0.16.

Just load the save and see.. you don't have to overwrite the original save and you can revert to the old version..

1. I lost all productivity on my new world going from .17.4 to .17.5 so im pretty sure you will lose everything. Same as 0.16 bases lost all their laser turret bonusses.

Edit: conflicting reports, there is a form of transfer between research apparently. Maybe i was in buggy territory when i didnt hit infinite research yet when going from .4 to .5.

I upgraded my 0.16.x game to 0.17, I haven't updated to the 0.17.5 version yet so I don't know for sure how research will be affected.

However, I can answer a few of your other questions; you need to research all the new technologies, like the actual science flasks, I think low density structures, and a few more I forgot (at the time I had launched ~5 rockets and breezed to all the new research before I fixed refactered science production)

you won't lose your military science. It gets converted to the new bundled research.

As for the mining productivity, It's been mentioned that it gets converted, so your level 28,860 which currently gives a +5,772% bonus should become a level 577

That's just what I've heard here on reddit, though.

For those saying that all mining bonus will just be lost there is infact a forum post discussing how old saves will be handled and confirming at the moment you get level-3*10%

No you don't. You get exactly what you should as long as you researched beyond level 25: https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?p=406825#p406825

If you have it below level 25 you will get more than you had (usually 50%) if you load the save in 0.17.5. This has been solved for 0.17.6.

By the time a player reaches the 23rd level of mining productivity they are no longer a new player, honestly I think anyone who has launched a rocket has left new player territory, since they have overcome all of the games core challenges (except maybe biters). A new player will at most get 2 or 3 upgrades in mining productivity, and might not even notice the difference if it was still at the 2% change. However the 10% per level will let the player actually notice a difference with 2 or 3 levels of the upgrade.

.17.6 is still a much nicer curve for new players than .16. It starts you out at 14% of the total cost per mining efficiency increase, and slowly scales back up to 100%. It's not just the 1st 3 levels that are cheaper. Every level beyond is 6500 science cheaper than its corresponding .16 levels. This matters less over time, but early on, for the first 50 or so levels, you're going to see a nice boost.

It approached 80% cheaper. As the cost in .17.4 increased, the 100 science difference between levels became insignificant compared to the cost for a level, so the cost for five levels is approximately five times the cost of one level. In .17.5 you only pay for every fifth level for the same effect. So it gets closer to 20% of the cost.

I have a full explanation here, but the bottom line is that it slowly scales to the same cost, but you get a flat savings of 6500 science per level beyond level 3, so the cost efficiency scales scales back to the .16 values, but very slowly. Since sum 1-n is a quadratic function, linear gains don't mean much in the face of infinity, but when things are very finite, it's actually pretty nice. For the first 50 or so levels, you'll only have paid 90% of what you otherwise would have. The lower you are, the better.

Didn't you check the math? It's too cheap.

The experimental version is officially released. It's just not stable yet, so if you want it you have to opt-in by either downloading from the website, or enabling the beta option in steam.

And it's 0.17, not 1.7

The game is still in beta, so all the releases so far are 0.x, not 1.7 (0.1.0 being the first and 0.17.5 being the latest). It's using a common software versioning pattern of major.minor.patch - all versions with a 'major' of 0 are "pre-release" (aka beta) - which are all versions to have been released so far. The .17 release they haven't deemed "stable" yet and runs the chance of crashing frequently or corrupting save files, which is why you have to opt-in.

Eventually when they feel like it's a complete product, with a finished tutorial, decent balance, etc, they will release a 1.0 version.

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(also up-voted because I believe this question stems from misunderstanding and is not trolling)

enable the "experimental builds" in whatever you use to launch the game