Module slots for Agricultural Towers

[BraveCaperCat]

Currently, you cannot add module slots to prototypes of the AgriculturalTowerPrototype type, limiting the number of machines we can add module slots to.
The list of machines we can add modules to, as of 2.0.66, includes the following prototype types.

• AssemblingMachinePrototype
• FurnacePrototype
• MiningDrillPrototype
• RocketSiloPrototype
• LabPrototype
• BeaconPrototype

I'm just suggesting that you add agricultural towers to that list. That way, we'd have pretty much everything that can consume or generate items on the list, other than the ones that generate heat or steam. (that would be boilers and nuclear reactors)

[pastelstoic]

Aside from efficiency modules, no module type would have any effect on agricultural towers. They don't actually produce anything, they just automatically harvest plants.

[Amarula]

Hmm now I want a mod for a building based on an agritower that harvests trees to produce a given recipe like a wooden tank!

[BraveCaperCat]

Aside from efficiency modules, no module type would have any effect on agricultural towers. They don't actually produce anything, they just automatically harvest plants.

Productivity would allow the agricultural tower to produce more plants per operation
Speed would allow the agricultural tower to produce plants faster
Quality would make the agricultural tower produce higher quality plants

Why wouldn't any of these work?

[pastelstoic]

Productivity would allow the agricultural tower to produce more plants per operation
Speed would allow the agricultural tower to produce plants faster
Quality would make the agricultural tower produce higher quality plants

Why wouldn't any of these work?

Because code-wise, none of those things are determined by the tower, but by the plant itself. The devs would have to give towers a radial effect to make plants grow faster around it, or to modify what it actually collects, which is a lot of work for something with very niche payoff. They could do it, yes, but the reward wouldn't be worth the work.

Besides, existing mods with quality seeds growing quality plants do what you want in a different way.

[protocol_1903]

I could maybe see speed only affecting the movements of the tower, and productivity/quality only affecting when a tower harvests something but... eh. It seems like a lot of work for not much payoff. Not that I'm saying it wouldn't be cool, but probably out of scope.

[Amarula]

The devs would have to give towers a radial effect to make plants grow faster around it, or to modify what it actually collects

Ooooh now the agri tower is... a beacon! I like it!

[BraveCaperCat]

Productivity would allow the agricultural tower to produce more plants per operation
Speed would allow the agricultural tower to produce plants faster
Quality would make the agricultural tower produce higher quality plants

Why wouldn't any of these work?

Because code-wise, none of those things are determined by the tower, but by the plant itself. The devs would have to give towers a radial effect to make plants grow faster around it, or to modify what it actually collects, which is a lot of work for something with very niche payoff. They could do it, yes, but the reward wouldn't be worth the work.

Besides, existing mods with quality seeds growing quality plants do what you want in a different way.

You sure? I'm pretty sure that you don't have the code access needed to be able to be sure about that.

Speed would affect the speed at which the harvesting/planting arm moves forward/back and left/right, as well as the speed of the actual planting and harvesting operations themselves.
Productivity would just make the agricultural tower output more items than they'd normally output when harvesting.
And quality would allow the agricultural tower to produce higher quality items.

No, existing mods cannot do the quality effect on agricultural towers. There are 2 ways to get, for instance, an assembling machine to produce a quality output. You can either put quality products in, or you can insert quality modules. They are quite distinct.
The mods only allow me to do the first of those. The second is what I want from the quality modules' effect in agricultural towers, (like in every other machine) though the first effect being available directly via the modding API (that is, without workarounds) would be nice too.