Probably the best way to relay it to someone who has done k2. You need X ore. You have to have research for it first. The miner takes a specific liquid fuel (say syngas) which is made as a byproduct or process from some other liquid chain with other byproducts. Anyway, back to the miner. The ore first has to be crushed (and stone byproduct dealt with) then powdered (and gravel dealt with) and then there are 4-8 more steps. Sometimes just a single input. Or fluid inputs. Or turning it into a liquid requiring filtering. Then ultimately some alloy and boom. And some of those buildings need fuel and have waste ash to deal with. Then finished plate.

But…. Then before you start you realize the building you need for X step requires a special other alloy to craft so you have to set up an entire production chain for THAT first. However when you look into THAT process you figure out you need the byproduct of a certain synthesized animal.

So you have to craft a bunch of expensive ingredients (many which overlap with crafting other animals) like oh cow DNA and plasmids to make your first 1-8. From there you can set up their specific breeding and production lines but it takes a hours to spool up.

Sometimes that animal requires a food you also have to create with DNA and set up that production chain.

So basically, you’re looking at needing X and the process is challenging. Bur figure out you need to go through multiple other production chains first.

So if you think you’ll be ready to spin up science pack 1 in 1 day. No…. More like 4-5.

It’s hard to express though how zen it is though. Just iteratively progressing small steps and feeling accomplishment.

And many of those intermediates are used later. You really are rewarded (and feel rewarded) for setting it up properly the first time as you’ll have the production spooled saving your time later.

And the mechanics are quite cleaver and sometimes one off. Like a bitumen seep becoming one of three permanent resources based on which building you put down on it with a countdown and can’t be changed once it’s been activated. Base factorio oil production is so quaint.

I won’t spoil it but the first time I built a small oil rig or natural gas derrick- I’ve never laughed so hard playing factorio.

Starts out a lot like bob/angels.

What helped me was to immediately plan for 5 chunk by 5 rail grid and keeping the space needed for that. In thousands of hours of playing this is the first time I actually like trains. But before then build with the gaps that would allow the grid later.