I get that yeah but the game is first and foremost sold as a Factorio copy but with a lot of stuff on top, I think you describe the same feeling if you start that game thinking its about automation but it takes hours for a noob to get their first green/blue/red chip lines.

I don't want to shill it too much, its not like the payoff isn't there, you do get to build do a lot of stuff but I agree it can be a bit difficult to endure dozens of hours to get to the cool end game and there is a hard barrier to overcome which is interstellar travel.

Maybe you're not aware but the scaling gets realy absurd too in the late game you're literally building entire planets from a single blueprint in a couple of minutes while yeah, its silly you have to waste 10-20 hours doing a lot of manual/low scale stuff at the early game.

On the other hand it is still better than all these meta progression roguelikes that waste even more time making you fail just to get the basic tools and how the game is meant to be played.

These factory games otoh can be completed from your very first save, it just takes a lot of time.