Even though it is many orders of magnitude simpler than the real-world equivalent, I find that there is no better way of grasping the logistics of modern civilization than playing Factorio.

In fact, it's probably in the Goldilocks zone: easy enough to play, but complicated enough to convey the kind of resource, energy and transport logistics involved in scaling a multi-step production process. It is like an illustrative toy model.

The aliens even give the game a satisfying environmental and political dimension, though the mechanics in this respect are more straightforward, i.e., just kill the aliens. Though emitting less pollution with solar also helps.