Botanical Nursery affected by Beacons, but has no module slots

[JStMorgan]

Mod source

Factorio Mod Portal

Operating system

=Windows 10

What kind of issue is this?

• [ ] Compatibility
• [ ] Locale (names, descriptions, unknown keys)
• [ ] Graphical
• [ ] Crash
• [ ] Progression
• [X] Balance
• [ ] Pypostprocessing failure
• [ ] Other

What is the problem?

The Botanical Nursery does not have any Module slots at any Mk. level, and so should not be affected by Beacons. However, the Nursery breaks this Factorio-wide rule by being affected by Beacons (if placed within range of a properly-configured Beacon), which creates confusion for the player.

I can see two possible ways to address this discrepancy:

1. Give the Botanical Nursery a standard set of Module slots (one at Mk. I, two at Mk. II, etc.). In the interests of balance, the types of modules they accept could be restricted, as was recently done for the Electric Boiler.
2. Disallow the Botanical Nursery from being affected by Beacons.

Steps to reproduce

1. Place a Botanical Nursery. It is not necessary to set a recipe in the building.
2. Place and configure a Beacon such that the Nursery is in range.
3. Observe the effect.

Additional context

This Nursery receives a speed boost from the Diet Beacon, despite having no module slots.

Log file

factorio-current.log

[oorzkws]

3. Add a description saying they can be beaconed?

I think you have a good point that it breaks the design paradigm but I'm not sure if a rebalance is in order. I will also check if the module restrictions can be different from the effects accepted from beacons - if that can be done it would be a happy medium.

[ArchEzekiel]

Yeah I don't feel like this is a big deal, and there was also some discussion of switching the botanical nursery over to taking animal modules instead as well, to be more in theme with how animals work, so I'd argue this is pretty low priority

[maryrivlet]

It may be good to also consider the related issue that some botanical nursery exclusive recipes (seemingly at random) are tagged as "Affected by productivity" even though (as far as I know) because there are no module slots, it is impossible to actually use productivity with these recipes. Presumably just none of these should accept productivity, but it would matter more if module slots got added.

Examples: Rennea seeds, Tuuphra seeds; non-examples: Kicalk seeds, Cridren seeds

[EigensheepLambda]

Extra data point: the Retorter is another building with this behavior.

[darko-dll]

Also happens with fluid mining drills.

[notnotmelon]

I do not consider this as a bug. Removing this feature would dramatically increase the number of required fluid drills, retorters and botanical nurseries required to finish the pack. However I do agree that the communication is lacking.

Solutions include

• Adding module slots to these machines
• Updating the descriptions of effected machines

Likely it will be a mix of both. I also think it would be nice if eventually the botanical nursery required modules similar to the reproductive complex.