Factorio Forums

Productivity modules could not be used with some recipes and it is not always clear. Typically, developers forbid individual recipes. I have some ideas how to organized it and slightly improve the game :

1. New slots for "Catalysts" in all production buildings. Specific Catalists are required to process recipes, they could be placed into machine like any ingradient, but they are not consumed.
   Kovarex: 3 U238 -> 1 U235 [under catalists 40 U235, 2 U238].
   Liquefaction: 10 coal, 50 steam -> 10 Heavy oil, 15 Light oil, 20 Gas [under catalist 25 Heavy oil].
   Possibly more recipes with catalysts will appear in future (or in mods).
   My special thanks for this idea : viewtopic.php?f=16&t=55361
2. New item category : materials. Productivity modules cannot be used in recipes that produce materials. Materials are :
   • all minable resources (iron/copper/uranium ore, coal, stone, wood, fish)
   • all liquids and gases (water, steam, crude/heavy/light oil, petroleum gas, libricant, sulfuric acid)
   • all liquids and gases in barrels
   • all floorings (bricks, [refined][hazard] concrete, landfill)
   • uranium 235/238
   • uranium fuel cells (used too)
   Questionable :
   • sulfur
   • sulfuric acid
   • all plates (iron/copper/steel)
   • plastic bars
   • solid/rocket/uranium fuel

I personally only doubt about plastic, everything else is materials and should not work with productivity.
I suppose you're concerned about seeing ores and plates here, but I included them because I would like to see some nontrivial ore refining (in vanilla game). And because it makes sense.
More ore through logistics, additional production steps and spending another resources. Not just "put these modules into drills and smelters".

P.S. No hard feelings to productivity modules, I just really think that game will be better this way.

If I'm not mistaken, the current productivity limitations are that you can use them on anything in intermediates except barrels and enrichment, the latter of which is fixed for 0.17 as it was a catalyst issue.

Barreling, Unbarreling, Making Barrels, Kovarex, Fuel Reprocessing (yes really!), Nuclear fuel, and the Satellite are all things on the Intermediates tab you cannot Productivity.

On the other hand, Productivity does work on Stone Brick smelting, which isn't actually on the intermediates tab.

Personally, I'd allow Productivity on everything that doesn't form some kind of loop like Barelling/Unbarelling. It's not a big change, and it could (though doesn't need to) be accounted for in resource costs, and it makes the whole thing much less confusing for new players. I'd also rename it to be Recycling (implying it is not creating new stuff for free, but reducing manufacturing waste, thus making it obvious it won't work on stuff that loops like barreling).

I have same thoughts as Wardaft's reply.
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=64606&p=396283#p396283

The productivity modules are supposed to be used in any recipe that is in intermediate products category. So i get confused, maybe satellite should be in another category.

Rather than describing the things they can be used on it could be solved in UI. Add a border to any item that is compatible with productivity modules and have the text for the modules say "Can be used on any recipe with an orange border".

turok403 wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2019 3:37 am The productivity modules are supposed to be used in any recipe that is in intermediate products category.

Actually that isn't correct. There is a whitelist of recipes where productivity modules are allowed. In general productivity modules can only be used for intermediate products, where an intermediate product is an item that is consumed by for another recipe. Hence bricks qualify. (You could argue that bricks should be placed in the intermediate tab). However not all recipes on the intermediate tab can use prod modules.

Reference: viewtopic.php?t=56612#p334754