As I started to collect ideas in this matter, I feel like some polished parts of the text could be fff material as it is tomorrow, so sorry if some of you read it twice
There is nice article about gamer types here:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6 ... hp?print=1
The op is obviously mainly an achiever (same as I'm, maybe more like %50 achiever 25%explorer 25%killer), so I would rather try to take this as inspiration what could the game offer to achiever than to just tell to him (and thousands of potential other players), that this is just a sandbox, so it is their problem when they are not satisfied.
As achiever I understand his feelings in this matter, and one of the (many) things I wanted to have for Factorio to be different than just industrially modded minecraft was the satisfaction for achievers like me. This is the reason why the player is under pressure of biters that evolve over time instead of having all the time on the world to play and fiddle with factory setups. Achiever wants to fight through the obstacles to the goal, but the goal has to be difficult to get, because it is not interesting enough otherwise. When I played Starcraft II mission on brutal and I won on the first try, I was dissatisfied, because it was too easy. When I had to fail 3 times to understand the level mechanics and requirements to be able to beat the level after another 2 tries, that was the thing I loved. I loved that I had to thing about timings and different approaches of problems and combine my choices in a way that works.
And how to do it? How to satisfy us, achievers, in Factorio? How to do it, so non-achievers or beginners will not be discouraged?
a) Provide much more balanced starting conditions on freeplay (some way of balancing nearby resources to contain the same amounts at least), or/and provide way to share starting conditions (string containing the starting random seed and settings) and play on the predefined settings.
b) Add difficulty settings for the freeplay (they are not now) that would really make a difference in more aspects of the game, like enemy evolution/expansion speed, aggressiveness, pollution spread etc.
c) Provide something measurable that could be achieved (apart just finishing the game), trying to minimize the time seems like one of the possible solutions, because I really love the kind of thinking, what should I invent first, and what should I automate first, timings etc, when everything matters, because every minute will affect the final score.
d) Provide something like achievements, It is quite mainstream these days, but I believe that there is good reason for it. It just satisfies us, achievers, and gives us directions. If these achievements really meant something, like finish the game under X hours on preset settings. Finish campaign missions under X time. Finish game without killing single biter nest. Accumulate 1 000 000 electronic circuits under X hours (or fastest possible time), or the other way around, accumulate the biggest amount of something in specified amount of time. Make online leaderboards of the these on our site (as we have already accounts for players). And I'm sure there is much more we can do in this direction. Wow, the more I think about this, the more I want this
The good part is, that this will still not conflict with non-achievers to play on peacful/easy mode without stress. Just doing the factory for the sake of it. It is important, because the more types of players we can interest, the better for Factorio.