Yep that’s how I see it. The belts are Kafka, factories are microservices, etc. You have to manage backpressure, throughput, scaling and such just like that kind of environment.
I actually used to build all my factories around a huge central belt, until I first designed a few microservices for a toy project. Then I found myself splitting components into separate pods, using trains and logic circuits to manage their independent resource needs. Nothing deliberate, just my mind following the path of least resistance. Factory after that, it was back to the main belt.
Do people play with unlimited resources? It seems by the time I build a belt system fields are tapped out. It just isn't worth it.
You need to explore around. There are very rich fields far away from your base. You need to setup outpost with train delivery and that'll allow to run for a very long time before those fields will expire. And then with bots it's just a matter of copy-paste new base and connect it to your railway system.
And you get research that vastly improves how much you are getting out of a field, at least (post-)end-game.
I usually up resource richness at map creation, so that the fields last longer. I I think it doesn't take away from the game, because the size of the fields is still limiting, so there's need for exploration.
I find myself building a main belt almost immediately, pretty much right after getting a basic factory down. Really it's because my first base or two was just terrible spaghetti and when I was a new player I thought I could fix that by going with a central belt right off the bat. Since then I've loosened up much more, but I still like a central belt when I get the chance.
I build a belt system, and then bring in more raw resources by train when I deplete the starting-area fields.