Blueprints and construction bots, plus the well-thought-out and extensively battle-tested set of keyboard commands for them, are basically a brain-game interface for Factorio on the level that Vim is for text. For the grandparent’s “rip and replace coal burners” I am hitting mod-D and dragging a selection box over the offending area, then hover-Q on a nearby element I want to use and shift-click to plan it, once I have planned one instance of a subpattern its mod-C select, click hold and walk in a direction to tile it in one dimension, mod-C select, click hold walk to extend this over the other direction. It is now done, the bots will handle everything else - because Wube are an incredible bunch of UX engineers, I can place the new building before the old buildings are even removed, leave, and trust that everything will be done correctly. Highly recommend getting a “Starter Bots” mod that feels appropriately balanced.

Factorio rewards the players progression through the game by taking away points of pain. The helper bots being a key transition. Without that pain there would be no reward. The fact that refactoring is expensive in time and complexity is what makes it realistic - it makes the earlier decisions important and consequential.

You can always enter creative mode and make whatever changes you want in the game instantly, but in my experience that does make it less fun.

It's basically programming with really bad ergonomics. I'm a programmer by profession and I was immediately frustrated by Factorio because I realized I'd rather just write code and build a project because it would scratch the exact same itch while actually being useful.