A silly game

[fivemack]

Recently, thanks to mobbsy, I have been playing quite a lot of SpaceChem.

I suppose it's most like Peeko Computer on the BBC Micro, except that the machine model is multi-threaded (yay!) and lacks jump instructions (less yay); you're given a set of primitives with slightly awkward behaviour and a task to perform, and you have to write the best program to do the job. It seems that I can usually write programs that work, but they are much bigger and slower than the optimal ones whose existence is suggested at the end of the level; and the game doesn't tend to give you advice on style and efficiency.

See: large, slow acetylene and ammonia factories





I know that a lot of my friends play this; how does one build smaller, faster factories?

Comments

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

For the "Nothing Works" level - this isn't the optimal solution by any means... actually I'm now tempted to optimise a bit, but anyway:

I have a Disassembly reactor splitting the N₂ into two N, and another splitting the CH₄ into CH and 3xH. The C-H and N goes to an assembly reactor to form HCN in a predictable way. The H pipeline goes to an assembly reactor that turns H into H₂. I think you said it was the last which was problematic, my solution looks like this.

Edit:
I've just improved the CH₄ splitter, and now the whole solution looks a bit better. My CH₄ splitter now looks like this.