Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Remove the productivity cap, replace it with a negative productivity 'boost' to the recycling recipe

What?

Presently, productivity is capped at 300%, this was done primarily to prevent infinite loops from occurring via the recycler. What if instead of limiting how high productivity can go, the recycler was limited by how much it returns?

For the example I will use blue circuits;
With each research of processing unit productivity, the recipe will gain 10% productivity (100 * 1.1), but the recycling recipe will LOSE 10% productivity (into the negatives) (100 / 1.1)

A negative productivity would mean that for 100 items fed in, only 90 crafts would be performed (or perhaps the percent chance of getting stuff back decreases instead)

Why?

I for one, never liked the idea of a productivity cap. If your base is powerful enough to reach level 30, then let them go as far as they want.

This solution also has the side benefit of reducing the effectiveness of quality casinos and especially the LDS shuffle since they become net negative on resources again.

The only major downside that I see is that it could make fulgora a fair bit more difficult, but that could be compensated for by making scrap recycling prod research have a slower price curve.

Great idea tbh, for 2.1.

An absolutely correct solution has been proposed! I'm all for it. However, I have a question: is the mining drill limited to the same 300% productivity cap? If so, I think this limit should be removed entirely, since we aren't turning ore back into the ground! In this case, there won't be any infinite loops caused by the recycler. Please take this into account as well.

terradus wrote: Sat Apr 18, 2026 10:14 pm An absolutely correct solution has been proposed! I'm all for it. However, I have a question: is the mining drill limited to the same 300% productivity cap? If so, I think this limit should be removed entirely, since we aren't turning ore back into the ground! In this case, there won't be any infinite loops caused by the recycler. Please take this into account as well.

No, mining productivity is not capped the limit only applies to assembler type machines (including furnaces). I do not recall if scrap productivity has the cap either, but all others should, including rocket parts (which there could be an argument to remove that cap regardless)