I share your skepticism on the closed-form model. I do think there are other opportunities to optimize a sufficiently remote base though. right now (as I unders

I share your skepticism on the closed-form model. I do think there are other opportunities to optimize a sufficiently remote base though. right now (as I understand it), factorio needs to keep anything that can affect the global train state and systems connected to the same pipes, belts, or electricity grid consistent on a per-tick basis. in practice, this is basically everything. but if a remote base had its own train state and all the belt/pipe/wire connections were internal, the updates could be deferred to a more convenient time and/or offloaded to a background thread. that base would only need to be consistent when the player is looking at it or a bulk transport vehicle arrives to pickup/dropoff goods.