Tried several more runs, I can get to zone ~15 pretty consistently if I try (and I scum for a good first zone) but not a single attempt where I managed to complete a mission and unlock a warp tech. Problems include:
The mission I did to get the factory floor unlock before now required 213 steel, instead of 153 repair kits. Not having invested 1000+ iron in useless steel, I couldn't get it.
The mission to power the reactor now requires 8 steam engines running full blast for 100 seconds, instead of like, 1 for 50. Despite massively overpreparing for what I expected the challenge to be, I ran out of ammo at about 80% charge.
Runs where every 3rd level was either ocean or barren, preventing me from gathering any fucking resources.
Magical fucking biter swarms of 50+ out of nowhere after total radio silence or packs of 2 at a time for 10 minutes, utterly overwhelming my defenses. Got to watch them despawn in front of my eyes after killing me. That's GOT to be some scripted horseshit.
Respawning to get spawn camped by my own fucking turret, now under enemy control apparently. Sure, that seems fair why not.
Having the warp start itself with a 1 minute countdown when I'm 3 minutes away from the base looking for a mission site.
The concept is so fucking compelling, finding critical random technology unlocks by doing challenging missions on random worlds. But you just constantly get dickpunched when you do anything except farm iron to replace ammo for like 4 minutes and then move on. It takes like 2-3 zones to amass enough resources to attempt a mission and then if it fails you're back to square one with nothing saved up except now the enemies are scaling faster. And now that I've got a handle on the early game it feels really fucking tedious to keep doing it after a run is ruined. When played properly basically nothing interesting happens for the first hour or so.
That's what I like about this game. There is always a trade off for choosing a primary goal, and secondary goals must suffer.
Look forward to trying this soonish.
My only gripe with factorio is the inability to "stack" conveyor belts or pipes. A third dimension to build would be nice. No other 3D automation / "factory" has the depth of factorio though.
