Try playing with the mod Rampant with extra water to make a more mazey map. Deathworld settings if you can/want. It changes the mentality away from spreadsheet megabase optimization minmaxxing to instead be tower defense "slap something together and get it done, soldier!".

Makes it way more enjoyable for me as it gets rid of the perfection mentality and beings it back to being a game again. Things dont need to be perfect, and if you try to do so the bugs will just punish your fiddling by smashing your base. You gotta do things well enough to work but at a pace fast enough to stay alive. Whole different game. Way more fun, imo.

I recently played a game with Rampant PLUS a mod called Bobs/Angels that makes the recipes more convoluted and hard. Was an amazing time. Here is the end base after 250 hrs in all its messy glory

24/7 there was hordes of bugs assaulting the walls with crazy abilities. If a train didn't pull up with bullets every few minutes the walls crumble