I initially played through the tutorial levels (that you can get for free) before buying the full game, and I think that helped a lot; it's a very keyboard-cent

I initially played through the tutorial levels (that you can get for free) before buying the full game, and I think that helped a lot; it's a very keyboard-centric interface that takes awhile to get used to and isn't likely to appeal to everyone. But the tutorials are pretty good. Also, a lot of the stuff that's kind of tedious and awkward, like laying out complex belt systems, gets a lot easier when you get construction bots and can start building from blueprints. It's like a different game from that point. A theme of the game seems to be to make the player do things that are hard or laborious but which can be accomplished in an easier way by using the the tools at hand more effectively, or eventually the problems can be worked around with new technology. It's not quite like a puzzle game where you have to solve each problem in front of you correctly before you can advance; rather you can keep advancing until the point where you're overwhelmed by technical debt (e.g. you end up spending most of your time running around fixing train deadlocks). Not everything that's awkward or hard is a deliberate game mechanic, though. In the 1.1 release they've said they're planning to change some things that have been pain points for users.