Production chains

Each producer holds a recipe (input amounts, output amounts, cycle time), an input buffer, an output buffer, and a progress timer. Each tick, if inputs and power or labor are present and the output buffer has room, progress advances; on completion inputs are consumed and outputs added. Chained producers form a directed graph from raw resources to finished goods whose steady-state throughput is set by recipe ratios and the slowest stage. The Settlers (1993) chains wheat through a mill to a bakery; Anno 1800 gives each building a fixed cycle time so players build in ratios; Factorio and Satisfactory expose rates directly and add alternate recipes, modules, and productivity bonuses. GlassBox, the SimCity (2013) engine, expresses production as rules that move or combine resources held in a unit's bins. Inputs: raw goods, labor, energy. Outputs: intermediate and final goods, plus a blocked or starved state per producer.

Building machines that build things. The player traces a desired product back through its tree, sizes each stage, and watches for the stage that starves or backs up. Satisfaction comes from a balanced line running unattended; tension comes from every new product adding a branch to an already crowded layout.

• recipe depth and branching factor of the dependency tree
• cycle times and ratios, and whether they are round numbers players can compute
• alternate recipes and multi-output recipes that create choices
• buffer sizes at inputs and outputs
• modifiers such as modules, worker skill, or productivity bonuses
• how chains are displayed: hidden, per-building stats, or a full production overview

• A single optimal ratio per product, once solved, turns play into copying calculator output.
• Deep trees of single-use intermediates add layout work without adding decisions.
• Starvation far upstream is hard to diagnose without flow statistics, so players blame the wrong building.

• The slowest stage sets throughput, so the bottleneck moves each time players fix one, creating a chase loop.
• Shared intermediates create contention between chains and force priority decisions.
• Coupled with logistics, layout distance becomes part of the recipe cost.
• Machines that build machines produce exponential factory growth, capped by inputs, space, or threat.

• Can AI generate recipe graphs that are solvable, non-degenerate, and on-theme, cutting content cost for factory games?
• Do players learn chain design faster from flow visualizations or from AI explanations of bottlenecks?