Final Exam
A closed-book puzzle set covering balancer design, rail intersections, bottleneck identification and TPS diagnosis.
Due: 29 October 2026 · Weight: 40%
The brief#
Given diagrams and short scenarios, not a running game, solve each on paper.
There is no Factorio client in the exam room. Every puzzle — a balancer that needs proving fair, a rail intersection that needs a deadlock found in it, a production line with an unlabelled bottleneck, a base described just well enough to say why its TPS is low — is answered from the diagrams and numbers given. The exam tests whether the semester’s habits survive without the game in front of you to check them against.
What you submit#
Written answers to each puzzle in the set, submitted in the exam room under standard invigilated conditions.
The spec
The brief poses the problem and leaves room for a response. The spec is the fixed part: what a marker checks. Some lines can be checked mechanically; the rest call for judgement.
- answered individually, without external references, in the exam window
- each answer shows working, not just a final figure or diagram
- covers the full syllabus, not only the weeks nearest the exam
How it is marked
Judged on whether each puzzle's answer is correct and whether the working shows real understanding of the ratios or mechanics involved, not a memorised pattern that happens to fit.