I struggle with DSP or games where I can't determine throughput of a building for that reason. It's hard to plan things when you don't know how much will be used. I like having numbers for these kinds of things.
In theory you can calculate throughput because they say for example that single production cycle takes 5 seconds, uses 3 units of substrate and produces two units of a product.
So input is 3/5×60 per minute and output is 2/5×60 per minute. But that's too much for me to be doing in my head all the time so I don't. Satisfaction is nice enough to just give you result and ensures it's somewhat round so you can do further calculations with it in your head.
Okay, I wasn't aware of this. I've played another game named Oddsparks Automation Adventure where the "conveyor belts" are individual units that carry items, and the throughput is calculated by how long the walking track is combined with how many units are on that track.
I don't really have the will to do the math in my head either, specially since things may change frequently as you upgrade/add/remove things and a throughput at one place causes a cascading change throughout the production chain.
