The +300% productivity cap should be documented in-game or removed

[Gaagaagiins]

So... it does show that there is a cap. Yet...

01-12-2025, 20-35-52.png (518.83 KiB) Viewed 290 times

Does it only communicate that the productivity bonus has reached its hard cap if the bonus reaches or exceeds +300%?

So, OP is slightly incorrect, in that the game does document the +300% cap, but only if you manage to reach/exceed it. But, I still think their overall point stands. Why not communicate the cap before that?

[Arcus]

So... it does show that there is a cap. Yet...

01-12-2025, 20-35-52.png

Does it only communicate that the productivity bonus has reached its hard cap if the bonus reaches or exceeds +300%?

So, OP is slightly incorrect, in that the game does document the +300% cap, but only if you manage to reach/exceed it. But, I still think their overall point stands. Why not communicate the cap before that?

You'll see it well before level 30 if you use productivity modules. Unless for some bizarre reason you don't use productivity modules but also pursue the infinite productivity techs.

[Gaagaagiins]

So... it does show that there is a cap. Yet...

01-12-2025, 20-35-52.png

Does it only communicate that the productivity bonus has reached its hard cap if the bonus reaches or exceeds +300%?

So, OP is slightly incorrect, in that the game does document the +300% cap, but only if you manage to reach/exceed it. But, I still think their overall point stands. Why not communicate the cap before that?

You'll see it well before level 30 if you use productivity modules. Unless for some bizarre reason you don't use productivity modules but also pursue the infinite productivity techs.

You'll see it no matter what way you exceed a +300% productivity cap, but again, that's not the issue. The issue is still that the cap exists, but the existence of the cap is not communicated to the player until it is reached or exceeded in any individual machine.

Again, I more or less agree with you when you point out that the hypothetical player who would put the kind of time into the game needed to even reach level 30 of an infinite research, but who also wouldn't be aware of the cap or notice once they'd reach it, may as well not exist. But before that point, all players have already been conditioned to expect that if a machine's performance metrics can be manipulated through beacons or modules, but it has a hard cap on how far that manipulation can go, that cap has been communicated somewhere other than the machine's tooltip once it has been reached.

I was slightly wrong earlier--the cap on power consumption reduction that Efficiency modifiers also isn't communicated in the tooltip until it has been reached (I was unknowingly looking at a machine that had reached the cap). So the tooltip behavior there is consistent, both the productivity cap and the power consumption reduction cap are concealed in the tooltip, and only revealed once they've been exceeded. Though, I think it's more than fair to say that it's trivial to reach that cap in comparison to reaching the productivity cap, given you can reach it by installing even just two Tier 2 Efficiency Modules into any machine that isn't having its energy consumption raised by any other effect, which is probably why I had thought it was communicated at any point power consumption is being modified somehow.

However, there's something else about that hard cap of a minimum of 20% power consumption that modules can reduce machines to that is relevant here, which is that that hard cap on power consumption reduction is explicitly mentioned in the Efficiency Module's item description, a perfectly logical and helpful place to signpost that information:

01-13-2025, 20-39-15.png (215.84 KiB) Viewed 192 times

...this is an undeniable inconsistency in how this kind of information is communicated. We have Efficiency Modules with a hard cap of effectiveness that is clearly communicated in the item description, Speed Modules with no cap even if it does exhibit diminishing returns therefore no cap is mentioned (but hey maybe it would be nice if the item description mentioned that bonuses to speed are subject to diminishing returns?), Quality Modules which I suppose have a soft cap based on how you can't put them in beacons and thus are limited by the number of module slots in any given machine, but which at least has no theoretical hard cap. It's only Productivity Modules that modify a performance metric, that both has a hard cap, but said hard cap is not communicated in the most obvious place it would be communicated, the item description of the tool most commonly used to improve that performance metric.

I mean, I am really splitting hairs about it at this point, but it would just make a lot of sense to me to change the item description to something like "Machine will create up to +300% extra products at a cost of increased energy consumption and reduced speed. Usable only on intermediate products," to make the information provided consistent with the hard cap for energy consumption reduction.

EDIT: Should be said that the OP of this thread also pointed out that discrepancy between the tooltips for Efficiency and Productivity Modules, and I just forgot they had long ago mentioned that lol. So my repetition of that information is I suppose an endorsement of the suggestion to make the module item descriptions consistent in this regard.