This is an interesting kind of game. The drudgery of all the clicks and drags make you long for a more efficient way to get to the payoff of seeing new combinat

This is an interesting kind of game. The drudgery of all the clicks and drags make you long for a more efficient way to get to the payoff of seeing new combinations. But the more efficient the mechanics are, the less of a game it is and more of just a spreadsheet showing the combinations. You need a way to make the actual discovery process fun. So you could build a factorio-style pipeline that makes discovery more efficient over time. So that way the mind stays engaged for longer. I wonder what minimal set of game mechanics would fall out if you kept working on it.