A directed graph to represent arbitrary user-defined element-event relationships between fields that triggered changes in values depending on one or more events on other fields. Since the events could repeatedly cascade, skipping transient states drastically improved the performance.

I also avoid using exponential complexity all the time.

What you describe is far more often a CS guy looking for a way to apply his CS education instead of asking whether he's identified the correct problem, and frequently that's because, having only an academic CS background, it doesn't occur to him there might be a more serious underlying problem that has a better solution.

I don't know if it was your intention, but you're almost sounding like a CS education is a handicap to solving problems- this is at odds with my experience (I was an embedded developer before I earned my degree)