My only goal on this was to achieve pseudoperiod 8, and it is done!

There's a lot left unoptimized, I procrastinated a lot because I never developed a clean way to deal with all the extra atoms flying around.

The basic idea for the encoding starts with the idea of binary coded decimals.  If the first atom is salt, the remaining four can be split into pairs, and each encodes one metal up to copper.  This can be done in two parallel pipelines at the bottom of the solution.  The order of Tin->Lead->Copper->Iron just happened to be what was easiest for me to code, and note that the bottom pipeline encodes in reverse.

Importantly, this binary-coded metal can be done in pseudoperiod 8 if we project *and* purify, pulling lead and quicksilver at the maximum rate.  This gave me my target.

How to encode the remaining 16 values, though?

My breakthrough came when I realized the remaining 16 would all have either silver or gold.  When the first atom is fire, the bottom pipeline makes lead/tin/copper/iron as usual.  However, the meaning of the other two atoms changes.  One of them indicates whether to pull silver or gold off the wheel, while the other will flip the output if it is fire.

This yields the very weird encoding you see here.



===== 'NEW SOLUTION 4 (Copy) (Copy) (Copy) (Copy)' =====
 0.	salt-salt-salt-salt-salt	 => 	Tin-Tin
 1.	salt-salt-salt-salt-FIRE	 => 	Tin-Lead
 2.	salt-salt-salt-FIRE-salt	 => 	Tin-Copper
 3.	salt-salt-salt-FIRE-FIRE	 => 	Tin-Iron
 4.	salt-salt-FIRE-salt-salt	 => 	Copper-Tin
 5.	salt-salt-FIRE-salt-FIRE	 => 	Copper-Lead
 6.	salt-salt-FIRE-FIRE-salt	 => 	Copper-Copper
 7.	salt-salt-FIRE-FIRE-FIRE	 => 	Copper-Iron
 8.	salt-FIRE-salt-salt-salt	 => 	Lead-Tin
 9.	salt-FIRE-salt-salt-FIRE	 => 	Lead-Lead
10.	salt-FIRE-salt-FIRE-salt	 => 	Lead-Copper
11.	salt-FIRE-salt-FIRE-FIRE	 => 	Lead-Iron
12.	salt-FIRE-FIRE-salt-salt	 => 	Iron-Tin
13.	salt-FIRE-FIRE-salt-FIRE	 => 	Iron-Lead
14.	salt-FIRE-FIRE-FIRE-salt	 => 	Iron-Copper
15.	salt-FIRE-FIRE-FIRE-FIRE	 => 	Iron-Iron
16.	FIRE-salt-salt-salt-salt	 => 	Silver-Tin
17.	FIRE-salt-salt-salt-FIRE	 => 	Silver-Lead
18.	FIRE-salt-salt-FIRE-salt	 => 	Silver-Copper
19.	FIRE-salt-salt-FIRE-FIRE	 => 	Silver-Iron
20.	FIRE-salt-FIRE-salt-salt	 => 	Tin-Silver
21.	FIRE-salt-FIRE-salt-FIRE	 => 	Lead-Silver
22.	FIRE-salt-FIRE-FIRE-salt	 => 	Copper-Silver
23.	FIRE-salt-FIRE-FIRE-FIRE	 => 	Iron-Silver
24.	FIRE-FIRE-salt-salt-salt	 => 	Gold-Tin
25.	FIRE-FIRE-salt-salt-FIRE	 => 	Gold-Lead
26.	FIRE-FIRE-salt-FIRE-salt	 => 	Gold-Copper
27.	FIRE-FIRE-salt-FIRE-FIRE	 => 	Gold-Iron
28.	FIRE-FIRE-FIRE-salt-salt	 => 	Tin-Gold
29.	FIRE-FIRE-FIRE-salt-FIRE	 => 	Lead-Gold
30.	FIRE-FIRE-FIRE-FIRE-salt	 => 	Copper-Gold
31.	FIRE-FIRE-FIRE-FIRE-FIRE	 => 	Iron-Gold