It's closer to redstone, but it's a more complicated system. It's like ladder logic in industrial control but with a couple hundred integer-valued registers per circuit network that the "combinators" update every game tick. The combinators include arithmetic and boolean operations, and you can set them to be performed on two or all of the registers.

It was fun figuring out how to make an automated system that feeds nuclear reactors with fuel to supply my base with just the right amount of steam for the generators, signaling an alarm in case of over utilization.