[aphantastic]

Mindusry scratches the same itch, but in perhaps a slightly more appealing way for me at least. Rather than the entire game being dedicated to creating one massive monolith dedicated to the one goal of rocket building or whatever, there are many different levels each where you’re just playing classic tower defense and using the layout of the map to your advantage to extract resources and kill bad guys. It’s casual and FOSS.

[ivanjermakov]

I think Factorio, Mindustry and Satisfactory is a "choose one" trio for any gamer to like. They share similar goals (factory building), but approaches are quite different.

[lostmsu]

Not sure what "choose one" means here. I liked Factorio and Satisfactory, but didn't like Mindustry.

[ivanjermakov]

I meant that out of this 3 games you'll find one you like when looking for factory building games.

[hnben]

the expansion adds some of these aspects.

> there are many different levels each

the expansion adds separate planets and multiple space-platforms. So it moves away from the monolith and towards multiple smaller factories. (In the end-game you probably and up with a massive monolith again, but until then you will have multiple medium-sized factories).

> ... classic tower defense and using the layout of the map to your advantage to extract resources and kill bad guys

Each new area add some unique defense-need, e.g. in space you have to shoot at incoming asteroids, and on the lava-planet, you have to build temporary mining-outposts, that get eaten by worms after a couple of minutes. (The other planes probably add something like that too, but I haven't played so far yet)

[fragmede]

hopefully not a spoiler given the name, but the space mod that was released on Monday opens new planets to explore, after you manage to build the rocket to space on the first level, so it's no longer an "entire game being dedicated to creating one massive monolith dedicated to the one goal of rocket building"