I've finally gotten far enough into Satisfactory to start enjoying myself! It took a little, but it was worth it. Incidentally, thanks
fantomena and
ISee for your advice a few nights ago. Teching straight to solid biofuel and using the to-do list to keep the early game organized made a big difference.
I think the game's tutorial hurts it. It's slow, and it forces you to burn lots of leaves while you go through it. Once you're done, you've chewed up a lot of the surrounding environment, so even if you immediately tech to solid biofuel, you're still going to have to go out of the way to pick up more fuel. Further, the tutorial doesn't include the tech for foundations, so I spent way too much time trying to figure out good building placements before realizing that it didn't matter and I should just tear down everything from the tutorial and start over. It all just feels so tedious, and there's nothing really interesting going on during this.
So after 5 hours of irritation, I started up a fresh save, skipped the tutorial, and immediately rushed to solid biofuel, foundations, and logistics 1. From there, I set up some stuff to produce a ton of concrete, then just built a massive foundation. With all that setup out of the way, I could start focusing on building, and the game became way more fun.
I don't have a lot yet, just a decently optimized setup for producing the materials for the first Space Elevator project.
Of course, that's just what the devs want you to think the game is like. This is the real Satisfactory:
Alt-tabbing and opening paint and a spreadsheet. True gaming perfection.