I thought having less pipes and having to boot-strap to buying stuff was interesting, but on reflection, I'm not completely sure the game is better for it, as it just takes time away from doing what you actually want to be doing on a level. On the other hand, having a little scarcity is probably good, I did like being rewarded with a feeling of "now I can build absolutely anything" once I got my income stream built up, whereas on the first levels I sometimes ran into a "oh, I don't quite have enough pipes to build what I'm trying to build, and have no money" situation, and the scarcity forced me (in later levels) to find a workaround for that problem... so, maybe I've argued myself back into thinking it's a good thing, hah! Anyway, just some more vague feedback to (not?) help you decide what to do =).
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I think the scarcity probably works better if you have more time to work with it. Thus it would make a lot more sense to give you more time on the later levels. As it is it's a challenge to be able to build up enough money quickly enough to be able to do interesting things with it later on in a level that's super scarce . One thing that didn't really come through here very clearly is that it's meant to have a fast and frenetic build phrase followed by a three times more important automated phase where the game runs with whatever layout you have. That's also probably the secret as to why the rotator is useful. As is I think the automated phase is actually super brief .