Thanks for the sharp eye! I’ll look into the managers' code, I might have missed something there... Also, about the lift logic: it actually checks for materials before going down, but in the late game, if there are too many miners adding materials, it never gets to return to the base! That’s why I implemented it that way for now. However, I agree there’s probably a better way to balance it, and I’ll work on improving it for the next update. Thanks for the technical feedback, it helps a lot!
More testing on my end and I've been unable to reproduce the seeming reduction from managers, but they also don't seem to buff anything.
For the lift, I can see some options. One is to simply have it go down to every level, gathering everything until full or it reaches the current bottom, picking up all resource on the level as it reaches it, then also pickup up resource on the way back up (only changing direction 1 time per trip). This would result in occasionally (likely only 1 time right after its first built) traveling to the lowest level without there being anything. Another option is that it checks if there are any resources on any levels below, then traveled down to the next level, gathers, then checks again for any lower levels. This would avoid the occasional pointless travel to the lowest level. Again, only changing directions 1 time and picking up resources on the way back up should work. The current system could also be improved if it just picked up from both sides every time it travels down to it.