Strongly agree. SBT really is puzzling and (IMO) overcomplicated. Someone is working on an experimental alternative called CBT which is pure Scala (as in: less DSL like syntax)
CBT is very developer friendly, fast, simple, easy to use. Join us on gitter https://gitter.im/cvogt/cbt or check out my Scala Days talk about it :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5COKEp7ItZk