Campaign requires very little automation

[autopoiesis]

Maybe this is just because of my playstyle, but when I played the campaign, something felt very unfactorio about it. The first thing I did after automating red science in the new base was automate ammo and then turrets, and the rest of the campaign for me was focused on automating more turrets and more ammo, until I more or less had a wall of turrets to kill everything that came at me, and a ton of ammo to supply them all.

By the time I finished the campaign I that's pretty much all I had, with the intermediaries being produced in small setups where I would insert stuff into assemblers by hand or directly from smelters. (Part of this being from the inability to use splitters or undergrounds) The fact that the tutorial focuses so much on getting production of turrets and ammo and nothing else feels very unlike how factorio is usually played, since in most games you have some time to set up a decent amount of automation before biters become enough of a threat that you need lots of turrets and lots of ammo. I feel like a lot of players may get the impression that biters are a massive constant threat, rather than a slight pressure to keep you moving like they are in most games. Moreover, what's more worrisome to me is that lots of players may go through the campaign without ever having to try themselves against the more complicated logistic and automation challenges that factorio has to offer.

My suggestion is to keep most of the tutorial the way it is, but to put in more intermediate stages between the destruction of the first base and the biter-wave defense phase of the tutorial, and during this time ramp up biter difficulty more gradually. For example, before having the player make turrets and ammo, it may be better to lead them into automating inserters and transport belts, which would not only prepare them for auto-loading turrets, but also prepare them for green science and encourage more complicated and interesting play. It also may be a good idea to lead the player into automating walls or stone bricks, since how to make them doesn't seem clear in the tutorial, and the fact that they are tremendously useful really isn't mentioned.

It might also help if the safe area already came with a few turrets and walls - this would teach the player how to do base defense organically as I think most players would try to copy what's already placed. And if you do introduce more intermediate stages, it will help take off the pressure until the waves of biters get larger, and make sure that new players dont die as easily.

Overall, I'm honestly not sure why the tutorial focuses so much on biters and combat. Biters are certainly an important part of factorio - they put a size constraint on your factory and makes sure that you are being somewhat efficient with your pollution and use of resources; however, they're not the main part of factorio for me - automation and logistics are. Shouldn't there be a chunk of the tutorial focused on how to solve those puzzles? I do understand that biters are a good way of having people ramp up production, but usually in factorio ramping up production also comes alongside with a ramp up in the complexity of automation, and these two things together (production and automation) make up a very satisfying gameplay loop in factorio that isn't really present in the tutorial.

Also as a side note, I don't know if the tutorial right now is the final planned size of the demo, but if it is, it may be better to cut off the tech tree right before blue science rather than right after green science. Blue science, at least to me, is when the transition from early game into mid game happens, and as such would make the most logical stopping point for the demo. It would still allow players to experience some of the more complicated and interesting aspects of factorio without giving them the entire experience. I dont think it would give players too much of the game, but it would give a wider reach of what factorio has to offer.