The dripping buckets have differing drip rates. Over time, one will be heavier than the other.

I was never really happy with how this puzzle turned out. It really should have been a contraption. I kept thinking how to turn this into a puzzle. I guess all that was in vain. It is way too complicated and your exploits show just how problematic it is to turn a complicated contraption into a puzzle. This was a major turning point. Future puzzles were going to be less complicated.

By the way, did you mean to make it so that the water from the leaky buckets can sometimes block the raygun on the far left? I had to put a spare mirror above it to let the projectile pass.

https://youtu.be/arAyN148zYI

This level was basically a who's who of things you should not let the player do if you don't want them to cheat.

I have a new puzzle that should be a little easier:
http://www.steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails?id=827954120

I didn't like how I had the Flying Saucer configured. That was changed.

Another tweak was made. I'll eventually figure out the sweet spot.

The dripping buckets have differing drip rates, which affect their weight. I learned about this as early as the older TIM games.

This puzzle does use a lot of advanced and unusual techniques when parts are combined. Based on your current feedback, this might be a difficult puzzle to solve.

You are right. The blimp is the start of the puzzle. Pay close attention to the available parts.

Maybe your puzzle solving strategy is different than mine. I try to work backwards or figure out the middle before I start at the beginning if I find the start too difficult to find. From there, I place parts to eliminate them. Granted, this strategy doesn't work all the time as probably does yours. Red harrings can exist. I'll be honest here. No red harring as far as I can tell. I'm not too fond of doing this.

Also you may not know something I know how parts interact with other parts. I always have that in the back of my mind when solving puzzles.

Lets see if this advice helps you along. If you are still stuck, maybe you are right about too many parts taken away.

Well, the first thing I do is start the puzzle to see what parts move. That helps the player think what this part does and how it affects another part, which affects another part. You want players to get the AHA! moment where they discover the solution as they play. Having too many parts unlocked makes it hard to find how the contraption runs.

When playing this puzzle I thought the blimp was the start of the contraption because it was the only part that moved. I was also looking around the puzzle to see interactions.
-I saw the cannon pointed at the blaster but how do you fire the cannon?
-I saw that the bomb gets launched by the Jack-in-the-box but how do you activate it?
-The leaking buckets at the top left set off the dominoes which sets off the bombs. How am I suppose to weigh that bucket down though?

Players may ask themselves these kinds of questions to get the AHA! moment.

OK, the six remote bombs were reduced to one. As for starting the puzzle, I'm sure you know the trick to view the solution before actually solving it. Any ideas how to make the start more obvious? I've also experienced this with some of the official puzzles and a few of your puzzles.

Unfortunetly I wasn't able to solve the puzzle but I figured out you could blow up all the bricks in the top right with just three bombs. The extra bombs could provide unexpected solutions.

I was pretty confused where to even start on this puzzle. Try to make it easy where people start the contraption so they can think their way through the whole puzzle section by section.