Factorio Forums

TL;DR;
Change the productivity bonus from 1x(outputs) to 1x(outputs-inputs)

Details
The introduction of the "Kovarex enrichment process" highlighted that the bonus calculation for productivity modules breaks when a recipe has the same item in both its inputs and outputs.
Examples With the current bonus behavior, you get a free set of outputs every time the productivity bar fills, a massive windfall of u235. If the calculation was changed to be (outputs - inputs) the bonus would only be 1 u235, a reasonable gain.
Why change after the 15.2 Kovarex fix?This change would fix all future and mod recipes that fall into same input and output category without having to arbitrarily mark each recipe not compatible with productivity modules.

Having a bonus calculation that behaves in a way that is more consistent with player expectations will reduce the number of exceptional cases for both the base game and mods.

Actually, its the other way around, Mods have to ENABLE compatibility with the productivity modules.


But yes, I agree.

Ranakastrasz wrote:Actually, its the other way around, Mods have to ENABLE compatibility with the productivity modules.


But yes, I agree.

ah, thanks! reworded to account for that.

Yea, as soon as you get into modding, you find out Productivity modules are Opt-in, not Opt-out. I really didn't expect that.

I had the same thought and did a search to see if anyone suggested this already. Disabling use of productivity modules in the Kovarex Process just seems like a quick fix to me rather than a solution. The Net Gain effect would require changing the mechanic to work for looping recipes, but it would not affect any recipes that currently use productivity modules like Iron Gears.