- 01Run a fixed interval
- 02Inspect queues and idle time
- 03Upgrade one stage
- 04Compare deliveries
Finding the bottleneck
A serial line is constrained by its slowest stage. Upgrading another stage can accumulate work in progress without increasing deliveries.
Play the lab
An original teaching experiment. Parameters explain a tradeoff and do not reproduce the referenced games.
Resource tradeoffs: from a mechanism to a small game →
The player's decision
Which stage deserves the only upgrade: extraction, processing or assembly?
Original scenario
Original setup: stages handle 4, 2 and 3 units per round. Upgrading the first piles up inventory; raising the second to 4 moves the bottleneck to the third.
Start with this prototype
Build a three-stage line showing capacity, queued inventory and deliveries. Grant one upgrade, then compare output over equal rounds. Advance by a button; omit money and power systems.
Change one variable
Tune buffer limits: infinite storage hides blockage, while tiny buffers may obscure steady flow.
What to observe in a playtest
Can players predict where inventory will accumulate, then identify a shifted bottleneck on the next run?
Take the full design card
Includes rules, scope, tuning questions and sources for further planning. It does not create a project automatically.
Original analysis · version 1
Common pitfall
Treating machine activity as overall efficiency rewards useless production. Measure delivered target goods.
Observations and sources
Cases refer to public documentation. Developers and community wikis are credited separately; document review is not a claim of hands-on testing.
- Factorio
Production statistics separate production and consumption, supporting rate comparisons instead of stock totals alone.
- Satisfactory
The production-line tutorial explains idle time through input rates and machine ratios.
Brief for the studio
Opens the AI studio with the brief below in the input. You can edit it. Nothing starts automatically.
Build a three-stage line showing capacity, queued inventory and deliveries. Grant one upgrade, then compare output over equal rounds. Advance by a button; omit money and power systems.
Covers are original AI-generated style illustrations. Game names reference publicly visible design choices and remain the property of their owners. This atlas does not supply screenshots or assets from those games. Prompts and combinations are original drafts for new games.