Great write up. Thank you. Really great!

I was reminded of the factorio blog. That game's such a huge optimization challenge even by today's standards and I believe works with the design.

One interesting thing I remember is if you have a long conveyor belt of 10,000 copper coils, you can basically simplify it to just be only the entry and exit tile are actually active. All the others don't actually have to move because nothing changes... As long as the belts are fully or uniformly saturated. So you avoid mechanics which would stop that.

I was pretty disappointed with how Factorio reworked how fluids worked in the expansion. The old system had its quirks and the new system is obviously more performant, but it throws realism out the window which is a bummer.