I felt the same as you in the tutorials, wound up stopping around the 4th tutorial and dropping it for months, and disliking the biters immensely. I wanted to t

I felt the same as you in the tutorials, wound up stopping around the 4th tutorial and dropping it for months, and disliking the biters immensely. I wanted to tinker, not fight. A friend convinced me to give it another go later on in a multiplayer game and I got hooked. ---- The biters are more enjoyable when you already know and understand the game systems. I agree they're very stressful when you also don't really know what you're doing yet with the game. I would suggest leaving them off for a first game if you're feeling they're stressful. I still prefer to play with them turned down, or to play a Rail World (where they exist, but don't expand back into cleared areas.), but I don't keep them off now. ------ Anyway, in terms of progression, it's somewhat important to explain that you haven't learned all the types of automation in the game, and that also changes their impact. There is also automated construction (and reconstruction) that eventually becomes possible. I don't have to piece back together some destroyed assembly line by hand because I missed an avenue for getting attacked, robots do it for me so long as I have repair packs or replacement materials in inventory they have access to. The game at that point also supports things like copy/paste for entire designs and saving/importing blueprints. Have a great production setup and just need more of it? Copy-paste another row of it and hook up the inputs/outputs, not manually laying out 100 assembling machines, 200 inserters, etc.