The very early game where you build the HUB is kind of a hit-you-over-the-head-with-it style tutorial. "Get some iron, it comes from nodes. Use your screwdriver chisel thing. Then bring it over to the workbench and hand craft it into ingots. Then handcraft those ingots into plates, Boom, upgrade unlocked. Now you can have one biomass burner and you can have a smelter and constructor. These will do some of this work for you.

I’d say this phase truly ends once you have coal power unlocked, as you can then FULLY automate a factory.

As for handcrafting, throughout the entire game it’s “turn up to the workbench with the right ingredients in hand and hold the Craft button.” It’s kinda supposed to be the wrong way to do things because it’s an automation game, the game is saying to you “do you really want to stand here doing nothing but hearing ting ting ting or do you want to go build a factory to do this for you?”

The difficulty does ramp up in terms of factory recipes, as you start getting into situations where processes have byproducts you have to deal with, etc.

Compared to Factorio, you might have fewer total machines, like the last time i played through Factorio I had several thousand electric furnaces making iron alone, I’ve probably got 200 or so in Satisfactory. But given the alternate recipe system and the 3D nature of things it’ll still keep you busy.