Except for the simplest puzzles, you always have to sacrifice the others to minimize one. For example, area and cost oftentimes have very similar designs, exce

Except for the simplest puzzles, you always have to sacrifice the others to minimize one. For example, area and cost oftentimes have very similar designs, except to minimize your cost you're going to be using a plain arm with tracks, but to minimize area you're going to be using an extendable arm. The extendable arm costs 40 and can oftentimes be manipulated to use no extra space, whereas the plain arm costs 20 but if you need to use tracks they're just +5 each. But if you have to use a track you're definitely using extra area. And cycle time is completely at odds with both area and cost. Using a single arm to do everything will never win on cycle time because a single arm can't keep up with how fast the game produces reagents - you need two arms for that.