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Enemies on peaceful, That's 100% kewl with me. Unless you need the enemies as part of the game you can even make them not be there. Done that myself, though it did feel a bit lacking when doing the research as there was no reason to do any of the military research. Probably just too many hours with biters in the background to adjust to their sudden absence. Still, it was fun to just build without concerns of defense. I even turned off pollution - what's the point without any enemies to care about it?
The idea is to make the game very chill. You can even have a minimalist base, to see how much you can accomplish with a small number of machines.
It is Ok if things work kind of slow, because you often get up and do something else, and let the game play itself. You can even be playing another game and let Factorio run in the background.
And, yeah, I wouldn't bother with the military tech. The point, I guess, is to progress through the game - launching your first rocket into space, and even doing the space age stuff, but in a minimalist kind of way and not worrying about any violence (attacks).
The game is running right now as I write this, and I have another game going as well (uh, "Fields of Mistria," but don't tell anyone! Ha ha).
Does sound a bit interesting, and somewhat similar to my typical game. A few points don't work in my style. Getting the bling, so far anyway, isn't there. There is the chance to earn achievements, yet they only happen once. Mass production 1 is awarded for making 10,000 green chips, but you don't get it again for every 10,000 more you make, and you don't get it again in the next game when you make 10,000 chips. (Yes, there are some mods, which I know nothing about, that add economics and they might have things earned for production.)
Another element missing in my play is the 'idle' part. In my experience there are some different traits for what I think of as an "idle game".
One such trait is that things just happen over time while the game is running, in the background or not: this 'town' produces 40 tokens per hour, for example.
- Factorio can be played like that, the factory will keep working without the player doing anything - if they built it well anyway.
Related, is another case where other things go up even when the game isn't running, just based on the clock. Cell to Singularity had something like that. You could close the game, change the clock on you phone, re-launch the game and have hundreds of what ever it was added to the game. Close the game, reset the phone's clock, re-launch the game and keep what ever it was you collected.
- Factorio, to my knowledge, has nothing like this, nor needs it.
Then there's the 'clicker' part, which seems common in many idle games. Here it seems to be an enhancement of the first thing. The town produces 40 tokens/hr, but if you click on the clock tower fast enough, and long enough, it can be 50 tokens/hr.
- This is kind of available in Factorio. You can hand-mine some iron ore and add it to the furnace which isn't getting ore from the drill as fast as it can smelt it and get 18 plates/min. instead of 15 plates/min. Other than in the very early 'burner phase' of the game, however, that's usually making the game slower than other options. In some of my early games I've hand-mined as much as 50 ore to "speed things along". Now I don't even bother with that.
I think hand-crafting fits into this idea as well. In the early game, especially the burner phase, hand-crafting can be faster then using the machines for making only a few things. That advantage soon goes away, however, once a decent starter setup is made. For me at least, hand-crafting after the beginning ends up with me doing nothing while I wait for the thing to be done. I don't like waiting.
My game does not run when I'm not playing it actively. If I switch to Steam Discussions, or make a snack, the game gets paused. (Disappointingly, however, Steam won't register that and will keep the play-time clock ticking even on the main menu - better for their marketing I guess.) I also pause the game when I want to think about what to do next (often with the technology screen) or plan out how I want to wiggle some more spaghetti onto the plate. Even in the early game, including the burner phase build up, I don't let the game idle. While it's mining and smelting iron I'm collecting rocks and trees, while items are in the hand-craft queue I'm collecting more rocks and trees or moving from the iron to the water to build the starter research and then more rocks and trees. I use lots of trees since I like using small poles when I can make them work rather than the medium poles, and there's never enough coal in the beginning anyway. I'm always eligible for the Lazy Bastard achievement, just because I am a lazy bastard, so to speak. The game I'm getting ready to start I've decided to be a bit less lazy; I'll do 109 hand-crafts rather than the 102.
Minimalist? Not on my map! Though, again, this game I will try to change my habits a bit. I'm a bit slow with the controls, and I build BIG. Tends to mean that I take a long time to "progress". Not sure how it will be with trigger techs now, but in the past I've had the red and green tech tree cleared out an hour or two before I get blue science going. That's because I make the red/green science production much bigger than it needs to be at that point. Typically I'm doing 60 SPM quite early - and it's not needed. Later, as anyone who's looked at my base screenshots, or the shared save, can affirm, my bases are not minimal at all. A recent game I had enough nuclear fuel production that I was using that in my 1400 boilers rather than solid fuel, as well as for all the trains. And that was done before I'd even fully automated yellow and purple science. That game ended up being more work to fix after 2.0 than it was worth, so it's a dead hen in my save collection.
Remove those elements, however, and my games are quite incremental. Perhaps even too incremental. I automate more and more, while building bigger and bigger, to produce more and more. All while I have no need for the 'more' made. There's no goal, not even launching the rocket, for the entire base other than to play the game and have fun. I had a game where I didn't launch the first rocket until 1000 hours. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2948379380
I don't have to build that way. I did manage to get a 100% run completed, after many months of repeated attempts.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3277473300
That of course is now history with the new achievements added for 2.0 and the DLC.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3357926419
All in all, I think most of your idea works well for one way to play Factorio and my way has similarities, in spirit anyway, even though I think I would do better to be more minimalist.
Game on.
The factory grows.
I'm continuing this play through I started yesterday. Yeah, used to always pause the game, when I was getting up from the computer, or multitasking on the computer.
This time, I'm saying that I am leaving it running, never pause. Also, no aliens to worry about.
My base is very minimal so far, just working on green science techs. I have queued up as many techs as possible, so they keep working if I am away when any one tech research is completed, at least until the queue is exhausted.
Right now I am just driving two science labs. The whole base is run on a single steam engine, with power to spare. A very Zen base. I take pride in my chill-ness.
I let the game run while I was sleeping, and I've researched 22 different techs.
i guess that's the bling for me, knocking off the various techs. But doing it in a way which is echo-friendly, barely disturbing the soil of Nauvis.
I guess it's more of a chill game for me and not too incremental.
....And then, eventually launch the rocket and proceed into space.
Before Space Age, it was seeing how quickly I could launch satellites. How many minutes between each launch. But then I'd usually play with aliens and pause frequently.
so seeing as it is even indirectly encouraged as a playstyle, i'd say it is a very reasonable approach to the game.
and it goes to show, once again, how many different ways this game can be enjoyed.
How about Lazy bastard, Getting on track like a pro, and There is no spoon (which requires enemies on and non-peaceful) in one round?
Because the time is so short for Getting on track like a pro (90 min.) the restrictions of Lazy bastard actually make that a bit harder to get. Not by a large margin, but enough to notice. Working with the LB restrictions actually helps for No spoon since not hand-crafting as often will increase the speed things get done. Of course, for either of those leaving the game running in the background is a sure-fire fail. Heavy use of pause, however, makes no difference.
Some even like to turn it into a tower defence game.
I even know someone, fool though I think they are, who plays deathworld with 600% biter base settings 17% starting area and 1000x science cost multiplier. And likes it !?!?!
With Space Age you can keep shrinking the size of your planetary bases as you produce more and more legendary machines. All you need on the planets at that point is things you can't produce on platform and a research park on Nauvis. I'm considering building most of my main non-science production on Fulgora since there are no enemies and no pollution/spore calculations.
I have played the game different ways, off and on for several years. Straight-play (before Space Age), just launch one rocket and call it good. See how quickly I can launch that rocket. Getting about 95% of the achievements. Build a mega base, with a full bus and all that stuff. Rocket rush, I really like the rocket rush scenario.
I'm still doing this play-through which I started a few days ago. I'm producing things kind of slowly, but at a reasonable rate, or what I see as reasonable. I'm not pausing, and letting the game run in the background. Peaceful mode.
One difficulty I run into is when a particular mining operation becomes exhausted, and everything comes to a standstill, which I will notice the next time I come back to check on my progress. So I often check on my mines. Making the rounds.
I have researched all the red/green/blue techs, except for leaving some out which I don't think I will need. I have even done some military research, for example to build grenades (to take out trees), or night vision goggles. I might want cliff grenades, but I set cliffs at minimum at game start.
I am currently cranking out purple tech, but barely enough to keep one research lab going. I'm ok with that for now. There are some other games I'd like to play at the same time, or talk to my son on the phone, or watch some TV, etc. The factory will keep running. Tortoise and hare. The game is running right now as I write this, and I can hear that buzzy hum of my research labs, a comforting sound.
Since you're running the production on low, it's unlikely the game will manage to exhaust two mine sites in one unattended session. You can establish a second mine site, and keep it closed until circuits detect a serious shortage from the main mine. You can then 'open' the second mine, and keep the first one running with higher priority until it is fully depleted, Once it produces nothing, even with higher priority, it will not prevent the second mine from supplying the base.
This can be done with trains or belts, which ever way you are doing things. Now that radar acts like a WiFi mesh you don't even have to run circuit wires all across the base to monitor or control either mine.
If you don't know circuits already, this will give you some reason to learn them. If you do know circuits, this will give you a reason to use them, and perhaps finally use the radar radio net.