alt Hacker NewsThat was exactly my thought when reading the headline, before even looking into the article. Sure it's still somewhat complex to get to a rocket launch, but without the biters where is the challenge, other than complexity? It's like a big excel sheet with conveyor belts, pipes and electricity poles at that point only.
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> where is the challenge, other than complexity
Patience, for one. I reach a point where I'm looking at a mess of coal-fed sorters that need a complete rip-and-replace with electric ones, and that's usually the point where I close the game and go back to something easier like Kenshi.
The biters are just a line item in the spreadsheet. Early players might build a wall with an ammo belt, for example. There's lots of options that don't involve responding in real-time.
Though these days I just manually clear the pollution cloud with a pocket full of turrets. The forward deployed engineer model, if you will.
Its puzzle solving. For a lot of people, that _is_ the fun part.
The more interesting challenge is the one you eliminated, complexity, in getting efficient logistics and arrangements. Dyson Sphere Program (until late in its existence) and Satisfactory don't have waves of enemies attacking your bases but remain challenging and a satisfying puzzle. I remember I used a constraint solver to help me optimize some late game recipes for Satisfactory.