I'm not the first by any means and my factory is a spaghetti mess with a crapload of problems all around the place. Specially with the last phase I just threw something together, manually fed manufacturers and handheld the factory so that it could finish the last few parts.
I didn't (yet) get all of the achievements (and I don't know if I'll ever get to that last one), but it's completed. Also I've got few things in MAM unopened, didn't even bother to check portals and there's some other content left to explore. With family and all the other things going on in life I mostly had few hours here and there over weekends to play, so it took some time, but it was a fun experience.
I think if I get back to that save file I'll need a fresh start at somewhere else on the map and build things with better planning, eventually replacing the current spaghetti. I started from the plains at south and plenty of the map is still pretty much untouched, apart from random power lines and radar towers dotted around.
I did play on early access too, but stopped on that save once devs announced a feature freeze before 1.0 release a while ago, so I had some idea on what I'm going for and it did really help on how to plan things for the future at least a bit, but eventually pretty much everything I built was too small and cramped.
Either way, as mentioned, it was fun. If any of the devs/team are reading, thank you for your work. I don't have all that much of spare time to play games and this was always fun to start and either just wander around gathering stuff, improving existing things or building new ones.
opinions on end game
In my opinion story part of the game, specially at the end, was a bit disappointing and left a lot of questions unanswered, but it was still fun and even rewarding to activate the space elevator last time.