Burning the midnight oil
Factorio isn't a perfect game -- not even "perfect for me," in the sense that some narrative elements and improvements to tech-tree pacing could make it "more perfect for me." But, well, it's a good thing that I had this past week off of work and could spend multiple full days (and two all-nighters!) building a spaceship factory.
Calling my 60-hour creation a spaceship factory is absurdly reductive, but that reduction is the key to Factorio's charm. To create rocket fuel, you need light oil; for that, you need a chemical plant; for that, you need steel plates... ad infinitum. The layers upon layers of manufacturing objectives, not to mention the required research to unlock them (and the science packs to perform research!), are wonderfully clear in defining "what" you need to do and delightfully vague in "how" to bring it all together.
At their best, discrete components feel like meaningful objectives all on their own, like the firearm magazine which is a necessary staple while also building toward upgraded ammunition. Some components aren't so satisfying, like the aforementioned light oil and its refining counterpart heavy oil. But even then, the fact that every manufacturing problem breaks down into individual parts lends Factorio an addictive "just one more step" quality, which is what kept me playing into the wee hours of the morning.
I called out the game's pacing earlier, and there's one very specifically frustrating part of the tech tree that I'd suggest changing: the full utility of a logistic network (specifically the requester chest) isn't unlocked soon enough. Until you can use drones to ferry material from factory to factory, everything has to be done with conveyor belts, and the complexity of belt layouts required for some multi-stage manufacturing is a damn nightmare.
To highlight this, look at the tree of inputs for the utility science pack, and how many materials are shared by multiple layers. This science pack is required to research the ability to build a logistic network -- so you can't use a logistic network to build it, at least not at first.
Consequently, once I had finally unlocked requester boxes, I spent the better part of a day replacing my byzantine belt networks with flying drones. And then I discovered that I'd exceeded my electricity production, and had to expand my reactor complex.
I'll admit that this manner of "and then..." effect is often torturous; but I also really enjoyed it. Hell, unknown-unknown problem solving is part of what I'm paid to do.
Toward the end, or at least toward where I ended the game (after launching a rocket, you can keep going and build even more insane shit), I would also complain that some building processes just take too long. The raw time involved in making a rocket control unit, of which you need one thousand to launch the rocket, made this part of the game feel like an idler where I spent quite a while sitting and waiting.
I haven't even mentioned Factorio's combat, which ultimately doesn't feel like an important element. At first, defending yourself and your assembly lines from hostile bugs can be downright harrowing, but once you've got the manufacturing capacity to keep up some gun turrets - and once you learn that destroying nearby hives will effectively stop the attacks - combat becomes a very low priority.
Well, and you'll need to keep up an arms race as your increasing pollution levels lead to bigger and badder bugs. But once you can build a tank and load it with explosive shells nothing really stands a chance anymore.
So, yeah, there are parts I was underwhelmed by and parts that I definitely think could have been done better. But none of that changes the fact that Factorio is the first game in years that kept me up literally all night playing.
Better than: Infinifactory
Not as good as: Exapunks
As for what's next: when will Satisfactory leave early access?
Progress: Launched a rocket.