You've described that you're hitting a wall in VRAM due to the sheer number of sprites the game requires. Going 3D is just a way to avoid that wall. Instead of a 16x12 grid of 32x32px sprites per tier of belt, each tier could have a single static 64x64 image of a belt drawn on a plane, animated by m...

Reading that thread, a lot of the participants strike me as having little to no experience in the subject. I'm no game developer myself, but as a programmer, I have no doubt whatsoever that a switch to 3D rendering would resolve all the memory and fidelity problems. The only issue is the difficulty ...

I'm inclined to agree that they aren't really worth the sum of their parts. They smelt as fast as steel furnaces, but take up much more space. If you form lines of furnaces as I do, that's a 66% speed penalty, meaning you'd need to use speed modules (Mk 2+) to give them any sort of edge. I'm not sur...