I've been playing Mindustry a lot lately, and while I've been enjoying it, it's just a different game than Factorio -- they scratch different, but similar, itch

I've been playing Mindustry a lot lately, and while I've been enjoying it, it's just a different game than Factorio -- they scratch different, but similar, itches. Factorio is about the long game, and your designs have to be able to scale, especially if you're going for mege-base scale. It's more about complex designs and a very deep tech tree and dependency hierarchy. It's about factory automation at its core, with some PvE/tower defense (optionally) thrown in. Mindustry is mostly a tower defense game at its core that uses automation/factory building to accomplish that goal. It simplifies a lot of things that are more of a challenge in Factorio. E.g. not needing inserters makes optimizations much easier. Also, the way building happens almost immediately and you don't need bots makes construction much easier. I like both quite a bit, but depending on what you're looking for, either game could be more enjoyable for you.