Realindustry lets you write the factory’s routine as a flowchart

Realindustry’s automation pitch has a useful verb in it: design. The official listing describes visual flowcharts containing production steps, waits, rest periods, loops, conditions and synchronization barriers. You are offered a way to specify a routine, rather than only buy a faster production rate.

Consider a hypothetical program that waits on a stock condition before allowing a parallel path to continue. The listing explicitly supports reacting to stock levels and synchronizing paths; it does not provide this particular recipe or guarantee that the arrangement is efficient. The interesting choice is what must be true before the next step can run.

Power supplies the complication. Colonists can be assigned manual schemes, while electronic automation cores go into individual facilities. The developer ties improvements in speed, batch capacity and parallel production to rising electricity demand. A program can therefore raise two separate questions: whether its logic is doing the right work, and whether the factory can support that work.

These features make the flowchart worth examining, but they do not prove that using it saves enough effort to feel worthwhile throughout the campaign. If the attraction is automation, inspect a working routine’s waiting states and power costs. A large resource count cannot answer that question for you.