[2020] My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.

When I created the modules for the first time, it could go into everything and also beacons.It was super fun at start, but very quickly collapsed into the best strategy, which was everything made in an assembling machine with 12 becaons with productivity modules around, so the productivity bonus would be maximized. The fact, that you would basically have to build all the factory this way if you wanted to maximize the productivity would make the factories and the gameplay kind of ... stupid.

Weird things could also happen regarding relative item values. When you create fast transport belt from normal belt + some gear wheels, it is obvious, that the fast belt is more expensive. But ... with enough of productivity (I don't know where exactly is the turning point, but probably below 500% productivity), the the fast transport belt could actually be cheaper than the basic one which is really weird to be honest.

Because of the two problems above, we didn't know what to do, as we didn't want to ruin the whole game just to have one gimmick, but, we wanted to keep the productivity modules in as they are really nice addition to the strategy of the game, this is how the current rules emerged.

Since the intermediates are more abstract, it is kind of fine, that suddenly you can make more iron plates from iron ore, or more gears from iron etc. and we felt that this rule is also nice as it promotes different approaches for different parts of the factory.

But I agree, that the UI should have some indication a list of icons in the productivity module tooltip at least.