Hi Robert,
Thanks for the feedback and taking time to test. Yeah it is strange that it behaves differently on my end as I am also using 3.1.4.
Sorry for being a bit vague though, but my problem wasn't about the basemaps not returning results, actually I don't want them drilled for info by the widget, hence my use of <excludebasemaps> tag to true. My problem was the presence/ absence of a particular basemap somehow affects the functionality of the identify widget across my operational layers regardless if <excludebasemaps>,<onlythese>, <excludelayer> settings were set appropriately (I think). I'll check my config again, thanks.
Cheers,
Janssen