Wish there was an.. easy mode, or something. Something that let me enjoy that feeling of my work - which i love - but with some simplifications to not exercise the same parts of my brain i'm trying to rest after a long days actual work hah.
Who knows, maybe it would be boring :shrug:
After that it's down (and up) to you. I've been able to play Factorio like it's I'm gardening - where I'm just chilling, poking at the puzzles - and other times I haven't been, even when I've got the biter problem resolved, and I'm doing what you described.
> I've been able to play Factorio like I'm gardening
On gardening, same advice would apply: choosing low maintenance, well fitted with the climate or “tough” species is underrated.
Going only for the visual aspect will easily make gardening a second job. Except it’s an actual living thing, and it’s more pressure than the bullshit deadline we have on our projects.
Step 1: Learn how to trim new plant (holy crap they're algorithmic fractals!). Step 2: Start trimming new plant. Step 3: Go stare at newly-prior plant a few minutes a day, see how it's doing. 10/10 would recommend.
But after that I like to "speedrun" the game to see how quickly I can launch the rocket. My best time is only about 11-12 hours, so it's far off any kind of world record time, but it makes the game a lot more fun when I have a goal in mind, instead of just endlessly optimizing etc.
They add chaos and something else to focus on and if they're making things too hard then you can adjust the difficulty.
And then it quickly turned into a second job. I had to decided whether I wanted to devote time to Factorio optimization problems, or ...anything else in life.
I chose life :)
(it's not sort of my thing but if it's your sort of thing I suspect his endorsement is more relevant)
[0] https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=13864128...
The smaller sidetracks are more satisfying knowing others won't have to deal with them, and if others are doing the same thing they're less frequent allowing you to tackle the larger goals more often.
Something that did work as "fun" for me was Infinifactory, even though thematically the game is all about it being a job, it's puzzle nature is less daunting than being a sheer optimization problem.
That, and the incredible "Create Mod" for Minecraft, which gives you all sorts of mechanical gizmos. I find it more interesting because building a machine that does something is the primary focus, instead of linking machines together optimally, and the fact that your automations help you achieve the other open-ended goals of Minecraft
Now there's always something I want to be doing, but that's another problem.
It's an amazing game. It felt very stimulating the first few hours. Then it became work, and now I don't think I will ever start it anymore.
If you're the type of person enjoying a game that is like work but without productivity, "fun" and "mindless" are contradictory attributes. Don't fight yourself. The thinking is the enjoyable part.
I wrote a computer solver for Sudoku and that was enough for me, I feel no need to ever play again ;-)
I play ALOT of Sudoku and the game now for me is optimizing my own thoughts while I play. Moving from a random search and find function, to a structure queries that solve the puzzles quicker and quicker. Sort of like a rubix cube. I focus on beating my best time and making it easier and easier.