Firstly, do not allow the early access status of Factorio to deter you. The game is stable, compelling, and in free-play mode has no obvious shortfalls. Indeed, the only real indicator of incompleteness I came across in my first 70h of play was a somewhat imbalanced campaign mode, which was supposed to act as a tutorial.

Factorio sets grind and tedium up as the enemies, before providing you with an increasingly sophisticated arsenal of tools to eliminate them. But it also forces you to adapt, as changes in availability of ore, attacks from the local fauna, changes in the demands within you factory, or poorly considered 'optimisations' cause your previously finely-tuned systems to begin falling over.

By setting efficiency as the goal, the game doesn't force you to get things perfect. A factory with wastage here and there will still work, albeit slower, allowing you to muddle through as you work out how thing 'should' be done. Over the course of your first game you'll discover new solutions, and will inevitably rip up huge swathes of your factory to implement the latest and greatest idea. Sometimes you'll be wrong, and they entire system will grind to a halt and stuff gums up. Importantly this experimentation is cheap, and a building can be ripped up and replaced for free. This is remarkably freeing, and opens up constant tweaking and adjustment, as well as the occasionally 'hacky' hotfix when you try to get a proper solution in place.

Firstly, do not allow the early access status of Factorio to deter you. The game is stable, compelling, and in free-play mode has no obvious shortfalls. Indeed, the only real indicator of incompleteness I came across in my first 70h of play was a somewhat imbalanced campaign mode, which was supposed to act as a tutorial. Factorio sets grind and tedium up as the enemies, before providing you with an increasingly sophisticated arsenal of tools to eliminate them. But it also forces you to adapt, as changes in availability of ore, attacks from the local fauna, changes in the demands within you factory, or poorly considered 'optimisations' cause your previously finely-tuned systems to begin falling over. By setting efficiency as the goal, the game doesn't force you to get things perfect. A factory with wastage here and there will still work, albeit slower, allowing you to muddle through as you work out how thing 'should' be done. Over the course of your first game you'll discover new solutions, and will inevitably rip up huge swathes of your factory to implement the latest and greatest idea. Sometimes you'll be wrong, and they entire system will grind to a halt and stuff gums up. Importantly this experimentation is cheap, and a building can be ripped up and replaced for free. This is remarkably freeing, and opens up constant tweaking and adjustment, as well as the occasionally 'hacky' hotfix when you try to get a proper solution in place.