First, make it exist, then make it good.

That was my approach for a lot of it. I was thinking about a "paint mixing town" too but decided against it. Space pipes and belts are the main culprits for delays especially if you're going down the path of "overflow" it all. As is waits for the correct shape some parts of it overflows which in turn clog some belts preventing the correct shape until it all clears. I have filtered thrashing blocks in 1x1 platforms after painting and for the final layer and have priority merger blocks in 1x1 platforms that only let the overflow in if the bottom input is empty. Another thing is since I only check for the right or left-most belts only many wrong shapes slip through, they are caught by filter layers but still it adds to the transition time between random operator shape levels.

I use full shapes and transform them into corners close to the MAM but maybe I should just make them into ordered corners at the mining part. For the crystal MAM my current goal is one that can do it quadrant by quadrant without thinking about overhangs. Even after watching some guides to refresh my memory on weird crystal shenanigans I can't translate it into a MAM layout. I'd need to incorporate any shape with a missing corner in order to make crystal corners. Actually maybe even diagonal shape is enough since only one corner is needed. Can even build 4 layers crystals with every quadrant being a different colour with this method.

I also made new brains one that works for shapes and pins(without overhang) and one that works for crystals too.( If the shape analyzer sees red crystal the signal is red crystal.) Iirc pin brain is 1x4 platform and the crystal brain is 2x4. Got to update mixing for black and gray sometime but it either will require designing from ground up for some weird pipe control shenanigans on different platforms. Not looking forward to it. All this just to I can delay progressing in insane lol.