One annoying aspect in Factorio in the short time that I have played it was that there is a player character, who needs to move to each location before an object can be placed there. It adds a degree of tedium in building, if having requiring the player sprite to move about..
I agree, but it forces the player to do something about it.
After a few hours in a game, I typically develop an autonomous train network with various train stations. I build one for my own personal train (which gets loaded with all the stuff I might need for an outpost). I can call that train to my location, provided I'm near a train track, by setting a temporary station and manually asking my train to pick me up there.
I must admit, navigating my world in a high speed train (eventually, my train gets fuelled from nuclear cells) is exhilarating.
Late-game mechanics (bots, etc) actually turn the game into an RTS and allow you to grow from this 'move around your factory' gameplay mode into 'plan and deploy dozens of remote factories straight from the map view'.
The game does introduce a few ways to deal with this: there's cars and trains for getting around fast, but also you can command construction bots from any distance if they're in an area with radar coverage. It is a bit limited, but it does give some encouragement to create controllable long-range contraptions.
yeah, I use "longreach" and don't feel guilty about it at all. You can also build ghost items from the map view, which bots will fill in. For really remote areas I still do have to find the right train to ride, but this mainly solves it. Never hearing that beeping sound while building locally is totally worth it.
Apparently the devs added a reach limit to prevent people from keeping their factory going by manual loading for hours and hours; since I don't do that, there's no harm in it.
I wish the gameplay could have done without that player agent in view and be playable in an eye-in-the-sky type of view point, like Cities Skylines or the Simcitys.
