> No matter what your opinion on determinism is, the point I made that what OP is doing is very unlike a predictable and deterministic factory game still stands.

I didn't mention determinism or predictability.

I said "It feels like playing factorio: whatever is manual needs to be automated away.".

I'm sure you can find many differences between Factorio and what I'm doing.

> If you gave an engineer a non-deterministic solution and a deterministic solution to the exact same problem, which do you think they would prefer? Would they willingly remove determinism from a system?

We choose non-determinism in our systems a lot, because we get better outcomes in other aspects.

* Non-deterministic network latency: Packet switching rather than circuit switching.

* Multi-tasking operating contending for the same resources.

* Multi process programs whose interleaving/execution is non-deterministic.

* Profile guided optimisation, depends on the profile.

* The entire field of randomised algorithms.

I prefer deterministic processes, but if the benefits of non-deterministic processes are significant enough, I pick non-deterministic.