I'm waving the gold flag because this is clearly the best solution of mine. And also because I surrender. I figured I would keep my period low in order to save on instructions when it came time to minimize R, but this may have turned out to be very expensive. I very nearly switched to 32p (and 32R for the metal) in order to not require a second stick but I estimated that to be likely worse than adding 10-20 arms. Now I'm not so sure. I may try to make a 32p from scratch after this but if you're reading this I didn't have enough time.