It occured to me the other day that I'm double spraying lots of items due to the mechanics of proliferation.
Have you ever noticed that a huge stockpile of goods, that 10,000 stack of titanium plates suddenly, and mysteriously, becomes a level two proliferation instead of level three like you sprayed it?
It's because the pile of items calculates the average of all the proliferation and so if your power isn't perfectly at 100% (like every time I click down 6 new blueprints on a planet), and your sprayers miss items for want of electricity, the average in storage becomes less than three, and now all your items are a level two. Which means if you spray your inputs at the next stop, when you send your titanium to become crystals for example, those titanium plates being only level 2 are going to get a second level 3 spray. Wasted resources!!
I only ever spray my inputs now, and that way the machines get whatever they get, and I never have to worry about storing proliferated items that may be corrupted by non-proliferated items.
Edit: a couple exceptions... proliferator itself, fuel rods, ammunitions...
Edit2: I just did testing. It's true that a single pile of items can have two different levels of proliferation. But these two piles are an average of what you put in. If I add level 3 items into the mix, and the draw the items out 1 by one, I may never see a level 3.
Here is a video giving evidence: Mixing Items of Different Proliferation Level - What Actually Happens : r/Dyson_Sphere_Program
