What are my long-term goals after the tutorial objectives stop?

[Yinyang107]

Like, in Factorio, I'm building towards rockets. What am I going for here?

[Tankfriend]

You're also building towards rockets here.
Except you also have to manage population, supplying them with stuff, and managing pollution (which is, itself, the problem here, instead of eco-terrorist aliens).

[TargetLost]

After the rocket it might be interesting to fill up the mines you dag and flatten and green everything to create a nice and larger green island.
Island shapeing can keep you glued for a lot longer.

And you can try to go full solar power. Somehow solar is underverliming in this game. Therefore it takes a lot of land and effort/years.

Currently I am at 200MW solar. (peak)
My island consumptions is 100MW
(I never build the larger furnances and payed attention to power consumptions)

That seems to just add up with all the different weathers.
You need thermal storages for bridging the energy fluctuations of course.

[Wanderer]

The final, longest term goal is self-sufficiency, which requires trade routes. Only Sailor difficulty has unlimited mining, besides rock.

[Peter34]

I tend to think in terms of replacing all vehicles with tier-2 ones, so Trucks and Excavators instead of Pick-Ups and Small Excavators. You do this after you've set up Advanced Diesel (which IIRC is a Tutorial element).

After that your industry really gets going, because now you're going 3-3.5 times as much logistics as previously.

You need to look into setting up sustainable Tree growth as you eventually deforest your island. You don't have to start planting Trees early, but it's useful to have a storage of 180-720 Tree Seedlings ready. Once you can see that deforestation is soon going to be a thing, and knowing that Trees take 12 years to achieve full growth but you *can* harvest them earlier at a slight loss, you create one or two of the new Tree Planter vehicles and set them to work (I had one built waiting around for 30 years, not needing it yet, so eventually I scrapped it. It's a waste of vehicle cap until you need it).

After that you want to increate Food variety and especially population Health by providing Protein food (Tofu, Eggs, chicken Meat or Sausages) and improving food security by getting Wheat-Flour-Bread going.

Then you set up Glass making (you tend to do this after you've replaced most or all of your vehicles with T2 ones) so that you can produce Consumer Goods, especially those fancy rocking chairs made of glass.

Other things you can and should do include dealing with the Sour Water you get from your Advanced Refining (hint: Sulfur is useful), and (less urgently) finding a better use for Light Oil and Heavy Oil than just burning it in Flares.

After that I suppose comes setting up a Clinic supplies with Medical Supplies.

After that? More stuff, I guess. As others have said, the end goal is a Rocket launch, but I imagine that before that you might have to look into regular Trade Contracts to cover resource deficiencies. I've read that many players actively import Sour Water in the end game,to use to make Fertilizer (I told you Sulfur was useful), but I haven't played that far myself, although I expect to reach that point in a week or two. Or less.