That actually sounds like fun.

I've actually been working on an ant settlement sim in godot, but it's closer to dwarf fortress than factorio

So we're just playing as the biters instead?

Give Microtopia a look. It's ant colony as a factory sim and it's really quite good.

I doubt it. There's already several first person Factory games. Also, they don't hit like Factorio does. First person is just so fundamentally limited that, as popular as they are, because they're prettier, I don't think it works as well.

Top down, especially 2d, let's the scale be so much larger, and makes it easy to plan and interact with. You can easily copy and paste massive factories. Even the best version of this in first person let's you only copy small sections. The closest 3D one to the scale of Factorio is the space robot one (I can't recall the name), but it's a third person somewhat top-down view. There's a reason why people still say Factorio is the best factory game, despite having so many options inspired by it.

I am going to check out that Satisfactory. That sounds interesting.

Idisagree completely with your second point, fuck that I want it bigger.

The sheer amount of effort that went into optimization makes me wonder if they could ever replicate something like that.

I imagine the LDS shuffle and maybe fluid voiding will be targeted as well.

I'm at 415 hours into my Satisfactory save and just got to the final final steps. So it's a good time sink. An awesome sink. I've been keeping an eye on Dyson Sphere Program, myself. Never played but it looks neat.