> One thing notable about Factorio's game mechanics is that crafting is idempotent
What do you mean by this? You craft a thing once, you have one thing. You craft it again, you now have two things. That doesn't sound idempotent to me.
What do you mean by this? You craft a thing once, you have one thing. You craft it again, you now have two things. That doesn't sound idempotent to me.
For example Copper Wire + Iron = Green Circuit.
There's no recipe chain that takes in Green Circuits and produces either Iron or Copper Wire.
So once produced, you need to find a higher function for your products. You can't 'unmake' through a cyclic recipe.
Contrast that to ONI's water cycle, where clean water gets made dirty then cleaned again.
So ultimately in Factorio everything is leading toward the only resources that get destroyed - Science, Rockets, or Coal (or other energy types).
There are Factorio mods that will give you access to recycling machines that will let you get back the ingredients that went in to making whatever it is that you put in to them.
So Factorio's recipes can be fully cyclic, if you want.