Judgmenl posted...
I like simple gameplay loops.
Factorio's core gameplay loop is a pretty simple matter of identifying bottlenecks and fixing them. There are a lot of different tools available to solve those bottlenecks, but the loop still boils down to that simple process. By the nature of its continual expansion, each time you solve a bottleneck something new ends up bottlenecking the inexorable growth of the factory, and that's what makes it so compelling: Until you reach whatever ultimate goal you set for yourself (whether that's launching a rocket, launching a million rockets, some arbitrary science per minute target, or building a ray casting engine to play Doom), it's just a steady stream of solving bite-sized problems that give tangible progress toward something more.
Judgmenl posted...
The game has too many mechanics for my liking.
It can be overwhelming to look at the big picture and try to comprehend everything that's going on, but the mechanics are really very simple. At every level, it's just inputs and outputs, whether that's putting ore into a furnace and getting out plates, or combining a dozen different items together in three different production chains spanning several machine types to build a rocket. Mechanically, it all boils down to:
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Move items around with belts, trains, or bots (each of which has advantages and disadvantages that are fairly intuitive, none of which are actually mandatory if you struggle with or don't like them)
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Move fluids around with pipes and trains
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Use inserters/pipe connections to put items/fluids into machines and take out the desired products
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Make sure you're generating enough power (which mostly involves a combination of the above mechanics)
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Apply diplomacy to the natives as needed (optional, enemies can be completely turned off if you would rather just build)
That's really it. The complexity comes in figuring out how to connect each step together and how to get the quantities needed, not in the core mechanics involved. That complexity builds quite gradually, too, with your first science pack being just two ingredients and one processing step past the smelting, and each subsequent one mostly requiring you to automate the production of items that you're already going to want to automate at that stage of the game (like belts and inserters for the second one). You're never going to be thrown into the middle of an existing factory and required to fix it. There can be a few hiccups along the way, like nuclear power isn't overly intuitive and you'll probably end up just getting the ratios from the wiki, and train signalling can get tricky if you build a more complex network, but none of that is actually required to launch a rocket and you can therefore take it at your own pace (or skip it entirely, if you'd rather).
I and others keep recommending it to you because it lines up with your interests in programming and problem solving. A
huge
portion of the game's fanbase is either programmers or engineers, so for a software engineer, the recommendation is pretty obvious. Toss in that you've mentioned liking problem solving and getting enjoyment out of games where you can engineer a solution that automates large chunks of the game for you, and a game about engineering solutions to automation problems (especially when it's a really good game of that sort) is a no-brainer. But you don't have to take our word for it. There's a free demo that walks through the early steps of that automation. My understanding is that the sample of combat the demo provides is a bit more intense than it is in the actual game (at least on default settings), but otherwise it's a great demo and will give you an accurate picture of what the full game experience is like. Give it a try, the only thing you've got to lose is an hour or two if you don't like it (or several thousand if you do).
https://factorio.com/download