particle nodes not nodal? Why?

So I've always wondered, why particle nodes aren't nodal in processing.

for example.

take an emitter - turbulence - spawn - render

the spawned particles will be affected by the turbulence? Even though they come after the turbulence in the flow. I can work around this with sets, but why do I have to?

Also why can't particle tools be branched? It would be so useful to be able to branch them.

Thanks
Chris

oh, also why are the "seeds" always different?

as in, I can't render particle setups on multiple machines, each machine renders it differently.

Particles were designed that way, as for why, or how it got there, I don't know.
As for network rendering, this should not be a problem, I do that all the time.
Can you explain the 'seeds always different' comment?

You can and should use sets if you want apply an effect only for desired particles event.. It is like grouping particles and then apply forces (or any effects) just for exact group of particles.
As for branching - there is a particles merge node, which works fine (then use sets again for effects applying).
I wasn't have any problems with seeds and this is strange to hear that you can't render particles on farm..

Yeah, I had that problem also, it always seems I was the only one noticing it. If I recall correctly it's the pflock node that's broken. It resets the seed somehow so that you can't render on the farm. I submitted this as a bug back in Fusion 6.4..so going on 3+ years now. I know I submitted comps...maybe even movies to prove it.
Another issue associated with that is that it would break the caching system. My thought was, well if's it changing seed each time, then I can cache it. But that didn't work. the cached particles were completely different from previews.
I haven't rechecked it in Fu8, but it sounds like what you're describing Chris.