I started from scratch on the latest version to give this another go with the numerous changes.
I thought I'd note some of my thoughts for feedback.

-I think it may be better to start with a single construction permit draft with or instead of mechanical printer. This puts the first batch of 5 miners into play earlier, and helps with idle anxiety while the player reads through everything.
-There is what I feel to be a knot in progression at the start, where you really need to wait for many researches to proceed with doing anything with the first.
For example, Assembling machines are useless until you can automate the work orders. You cannot automate them even slightly until you have greenhouse, admin sci pack, printing technology. But if we got greenhouse and print tech earlier, we could have already been working on that and utilizing our research earlier. If mechanical printer could do, say, a quite inefficient recipe for work orders, then admin bureaucracy could be moved before automation allowing every stage to be utilized effectively as you go. Currently in both my playthroughs I've ended up just handcrafting science and just stockpiling until all of those researches are done, as individually that can't achieve any advancement in their current order.

-when you have your first biter wave come in, there's always a confusion as to how to get rid of the ones that interact with your factory before your apology operation is set up. you get them filed, then throw them back into the admin desk... but your biters are already past there. The hover-over of the biter implies that they are only stopping a building because they're waiting on the apology. I think one of the structures, or the biter hover-over at that point needs to explicitly state they need the throwable to move them back to the admin desk. Currently it seems like a "recoverable" state and you end up fiddling with them for too long on your first go. To that, I think the beuro promise desperately needs art different from the blank paper. Up until this point you're just flipping through the tabs working away, and for myself at least after first glance on this playthough I considered it also blank paper on that tab, and it made me think the throwable had moved somewhere up the research tree since last play.

The promise also does not explicitly state what it does- sends them back to the biter admin desk, adding to the lack of clarity of which will achieve the desired goal.

I would suggest all biter-interacting only constructables to go under the military tab. It would make the most sense for a player to look for any "deal with biter" things there. As it stands you're keeping it quite clean with all "your" stuff in its own tab, which indeed made me omit looking at military where you have a singular item in early game. You're blocking any military functionality anyways with the biter changes, so that tab really is all yours.

Also, the printer sound in a full furnace stack setup is certainly an evil, hateful, painful sound. I get exactly where you're going with it, and like what it's trying to do, but it's just so sharp.
Your administrative office sounds absolutely wonderful in a full stack though.

EDIT: I had a big chunk gushing over just how wonderful the pneumatic tubes would be for sushi, but upon extensive(ish) testing for throughput, I've found it's likely only working due to some bugs that are not really solvable to become the FUN way of granting the glory of sushi tube. So in an effort to fix for the intended way:
-Solidifer on both sides of the belt does not always correctly output to each side of said belt. E.g. if I have red belts, I need 4 solidifers to max thoroughput. In a number of cases all 4 will output to the left side of the belt
-If the liquifier adds any contamin to the pipe, the solidifers are very prone to locking up, but not in a recoverable way. If the liquifer checked the pipe contents before picking up, there would be no way to enter this fail case (rip sushi)
-Based on the description of the structure, Compacted Rubble and Dubious Data should not be able to enter the pipes.
-SFX playing is extremely inconsistent, and usually not present. Based on needing 4+ at a point to saturate a belt, it's probably better to just remove the sound altogether if it is not tested for that setup.

If the pipe was running in integers, and the liq/solidifiers ran in whole single units.... sushi pipe would work, right? hmmmmm

Hi ! Thanks a lot for your detailed feedback !

The only reason you start with a printer instead of a form, is because you could instantly crafts all your iron into belts and not have enough to afford a printer, therefore ending your game instantly. Adding a tip for something this trivial this early in the game feels like an anti-pattern, but maybe you could start with both ? I just want to avoid frustration of locking you outside of the mod because you didn't take the time to fully try to understand it.

For the work orders I am mitigated. I mean I hear you, and I mostly do the same, but at the same time I am torn by 2 problems.
First, having an inefficient recipe for the work order in the burner printer would not be thematics, as the printer would take dubious data and do what, hammer it on the paper ? I know it's trivial but I'd like to keep a certain consistency across recipes and one rule I fixed myself is that printers only can take paper / forms and ink as input and output forms. Then having another recipe for the work order only for the burner printer would create yet another way of crafting a form, and this early in the mod it could get confusing as to why you have 2 different recipes for something so trivial.
Secondly, the only thing that is preventing you from fully automating work orders is the greenhouse and wood production to automate paper, but as paper is so easy to handcraft I feel like it is more interesting in the early game to just handed paper in a few places rather than automating it, which requires already quite a lot of resources.
I get what you mean, I do the same on my regular games with red science, usually I only start building real automation once I unlocked green science. I think you can still create basic helpers with handfeeding / handcrafting...

For the biters you make an excellent point, so first thing I put a real icon for the bureaucratic promise in 0.3.0. I tried to add a tip to explain what is going on but the API does not allow that, so I will work on making the hover more useful as to what is going on, maybe rewrite parts of the initial tips as well.

Then for the organization of items again you are right, I moved all the resolution paperwork, admin station and resolution office to the military tab in 0.3.0 !

Now the sounds, I agree it was driving me crazy as well, the thing is that it is much harder than you think to find good free printer sound samples, but I think I finally got the right ones, let me know what you think of them :)

Finally the tubes ! This was there and I didn't really looked at it for a while, to be honest I stole it from Pneumatic Transport Repressurized but it was not meant to support what Administratorio requires. So I remade it entirely from scratch, now the pipe system works as you would expect, you can put lots of form in, take them out where you want, got rid of the unreliable "spit" system. It is much more versatile, also much much more reliable and even added some tech around it as I can now easily control the system (spoiler: the pipes are just a decoration). So have a go at it, sushi the pipe as much as you want, use it for efficient transportation, I'm sure you will like it (I hope so because it took me 2 entire days).

Again thanks a lot for your feedback, I'm open to discussion about what we discussed :)

I was already reading your patch notes at work before you'd even finished writing this response. Thanks for taking my thoughts into consideration.

The work order thing is mostly that I found I was always 3 rows deep of hand crafts needing to be done and no way to do the usual "basic mall" for belts and the like due to the sheer number of intermediaries that needed to be hand crafted. That's kind of absolutely the point of the mod, but it in the end just meant I was kind of not playing the mod and clicking on inventory icons to build everything for way too long. So my suggestion for the alt recipe was mostly just trying to think of a solution to get that early game temp basebuilding phase back on the table. But I don't disagree that it dilutes the actual goal of what the mod is presenting. The early game cost for making a work order manually is exacerbated by needing to get certain parts from machines, so the time you spend to prepare them you end up just saying "I'll do it myself". On another restart I think maybe I would feed a starter mall with manual work orders and see how it goes, but a lot of mod players are a one-and-done deal if they're not feeling it, so I was looking at the handcraft hell knot issue from that perspective.

The starting items thing was mainly about the number of miners available while still mucking about. With two added ores, giving the players enough to interact with everything, or to make a 2 miner coal "snake" at least felt like it would be a lot more breathing room to sit back and read everything. I suggested a construction permit draft to not just give it to them but still force some immediate interaction with the mod, while not requiring them to fully understand and extract the paper/data immediately.

I hear you about the sound issue. Anything I make generally just ends up... not having sound due to me just trying to put off that inevitable pain. The new print sounds are great - culminates to a steady drone in a stack and has a satisfying thunk.

You will absolutely not get feedback on the tubes from me yet because boy do I want to play with that first. A lot. Sushis back on the menu boys. I will say though I immediately noticed non-paper will brick an intake, rather than the inserter ignoring it. I can't tell if it's intended, but if its a limitation I'd just flavor it in the description warning anything larger than a form chalks up the intakes.

Side note, I've done a lot of restarts and have not gotten super late. Based on my bad uneducated math, coal needs are through the roof with a serious factory. Maybe I haven't caught a separate ink recipe? The bulk printing still needs advanced circuits which reganomics its way back to coal costs. I can't say if a default settings change for coal patch density is warranted but it's certainly my most concerning resource. The screenshot from winzaphie had some very questionable infinite ore patch looking patches (sorry if i'm wrong! :v ), so I don't know how much has really been noted on that front so far.

That is correct. I used infinite resources. If you do not use infinite resources, the resource patch runs out quite quickly. :(

I will add a few starting carbon-offset-certificates that you recover from the crash so you can get set up a bit faster and definitely a second burner miner would be great to have, will add it as well.

For the coal, it is intended to be a bit shorter than usual, but in the early game you get wood as a crappy infinite fuel to replace a bit of coal, and then you can burn wood into coal after green science meaning infinite coal production (25 wood + 1 carbon offset certificate -> 5 coals, meaning its +3 total coal)

There it is. Honestly being aware of the coal recipe is so important I'd be happy to pay research for it individually just for the pleasure of having a big fat coal image on the research tree that can't be missed since its a pretty clear goal research that you're going to design your greenhouse space needs around.

You have no need for anything within corporate hospitality immediately upon hitting steady green science (because you can finally begin fleshing out your base) so I have left it until I'm actually bothering to set up red circuits

For the wood fuel... :bad math zone: 1 wood is 70% of a batch smelt. 32s for batch smelt. so about 1 wood per 22.4s per miner Lets say we do a half-stack of every resource instead of the full 48 (that would be 48 for steel for the direct feed) - 168 furnaces for half a yellow belt of everything(ish, and that would match steel furnace stack with its increased efficiency). so 168 wood per 22.4s. 7.5/s, so 48 greenhouses. Then you have a basic form stack to fill a yellow belt - another 6 wood/s, another 36 greenhouses. We're up to 6510kw for those greenhouses, so a bit over 7 steam engines -> I think that's another 3.15 wood/s so 20 more greenhouses?

Just for basic loop and one mod resource you're at 104 greenhouses if you want to keep your coal safe for the mod's requirements. Most mods the second I see greenhouse it's on the fuel line but this one I did not due to the greenhouse count required (judged just from the output rate, I hadn't done the math, if its even right, until now)

25 wood -> 5 coal is a MJ loss (that's fine) so that recipe doesn't really come into play as a solution for that calculation as wood directly is still better.

So even before we're making mass wood for that infinite coal we're over 100 greenhouses. I don't think an infinite coal setup should be small by any means, but it starts to make most of your warehouse really same-y and bland when over 60% of it is just a sea of the same building.

Steel furnaces would be 62.5 for a yellow belt requiring 240 greenhouses which is about enough for an ink stack, lol.

I know I'm not presenting solutions here, just trying to explain the thought behind why I avoided it. Shit now I'm gonna be late for work :x

Looking at the new ratios. I think if it was the first time playing the mod I'd napkin math the 0.25/per very favorably towards mass use now. Two yellow belts for 60 greenhouse is a nice round number to commit to, and likely holds until speed modules if the footprint is annoying enough.
I think you were fine having the Charcoal at requiring red green admin science, the coal patch doesn't get stressed quite that quickly off the bat and keeps players from overengineering too early and burning out.

I went to restart again and see the early game once more with all the changes and noticed the 3 carbon certs, but no second burner that you mentioned - Was just missed?

You're right I think I first experimented moving the tech then lower down the costs instead but forgot to put the tech back where it was. For the burner miner I just forgot it lol

Alright I'm not going to format this too much, this will more or less just be my raw notes while playing. Currently I'm really not enjoying the biter interaction pre admin office desk and find trying to integrate it is putting me much slower than before, but due to the "slowdown" mostly being walking back-and-forth, it does not feel slower in an engaging way. (e.g. AAI industries is slower but... it's direct and immediate engagement with what is making it slower). Based on the tech tree this should resolve itself in later, but I'm once again looking at hand crafting to be the optimal solution for a tech knot rather than interacting with the mod. Now just for different reasons. Overall I went from one factory constantly shutting down (smelt certs) to two separated factories constantly shutting down, and the cost to integrate them could instead directly be hand crafted into science to solve the problem instead of engaging with the problem it presents.

• 3 burners I'm guessing wasn't intended, you wanted to set to 2 but forgot the starting one is on the player. GOD I LIKE 3 BURNERS THOUGH.

• biter admin desk needs to state initial capacity I could have swore it was 4, but they're picketing me at 3 held. Just description stuff.

• making biters need to run the biter handler doesn't feel great. To make that work the whole thing has to be off outside of early game vision, so you'll never know if you're in an overflow state until pickets begin. Maybe just a UI element stating how many are currently in a queue?

• with how far you have to walk for them it would be nice if you could add 110 or 115% movespeed raw stone paving

• having had to deal with pickets more with the changes, I notice the whistling is very sharp

• Field office having feedback as to why there's no biter at a station would be nice (like the "its night" text on other machines) Especially a "no biters in range" or blocking building if that's the case. A range overlay like electricity or roboports would work too.

• Even on desert, I can't even place the thing in camera distance. Any resource lacking once you're out there is a full round trip. I found i was ending up losing a TON more time than last version just trying to keep it all operational. I had much more success just hand crafting the carbon offsets, and again due to distance incorporating a belt to feed in and out that distance was just not feasible (again better to spend all those resource and craft time just... making things by hand).
  I'd say range should to be in chunks, and given to the player in both chunks and number (for players who don't know chunk size, but see them on the map). currently its a little under 2.5 chunks distance, assuming on average the biter is middle of their chunk. I'd really like to have seen that at 5.5 chunks, and think a huge range boost would make this all much more manageable. Looking at a customized default as a solution instead - the biters actually being closer when you reduce starting size seems to be very inconsistent, so not a good direction to go there.

okay moving past that feedback I think the big question is should you remove hand crafting on most of this. All of my feedback is really coming down to your added interactions are invalidated by being unable to compete with just clicking the craft button. Enforcing interaction enforces a style of gameplay that may be more in line with what the mod is trying to go for. Currently having 50% uptime on hand-fed machines far away has me looking to create the 170 admin sci packs there only. On the other hand removing the hand crafting can feel awful in the moment to moment gameplay of "just needing one more thing" to continue your current task. I think the automation just needs to reasonably keep up or out-pace the hand crafting.

My alternate suggestion to the range thing would be to have the further down the line functionality present immediately, but using serf/slave/something biters as the initial functionality with 50% or less move and/or craft speed. That way you can also directly upgrade the build rather than refactoring it as well.

Hi stravut thanks for the feedback.

Yes I get what you feel, the start is even slower now, and I will tweak it but hear my vision.

First of all about the 2.5 chunk distance, it is a perf problem, I have a plan to address it and increase the distance, just for now I wanted to publish and get feedback, but I totally agree this should be bumped to at least 5 chunks radius.

For the handcrafting, I get what you mean but I think that automating is already more interesting. For administrative science pack you already can't handraft them, so you have to use the field office to make it. For the rest, every time I launched a play test I started to think vanilla, and wanted to reach "complete loop automation" ASAP and not even bother thinking what was before (RIP burner inserter) but here I think there is so much to handle that doing a half handfed / half crappy starter base really helps you otherwise it indeed feels slow because you want to rush the loop and can't do it as fast as in vanilla. Plus there is another issue, if you want to rush the field office era, you are gonna end up with your biter recruitment tech unlocked, but not enough money to hire enough biters to really start scaling, which means that the field office is not immediately obsolete once you went through a certain tech, you need to scale a bit slower. At least that is what I had in mind but I get this might not be clear / fun enough.
The idea was also that you have to build kind of in between the ore patches and the biters, to start, too close to the biters you will generate too much pollution too fast, too far away your field offices will not be efficient, but this would require a field office that has a bigger reach indeed. This creates the overflow out of vision issue that I did not think about while crafting it, will investigate a way of monitoring what's happening.

A point of the field office informational message, again I am edging what factorio engine allows me to do without having to update every field office basically every tick, but I will work on a better UI without touching performance too much.

3 burner is intended to make the start a bit less painful, especially to immediately get easy coal and not handmine like a dummy for an hour on your coal patch while nothing is happening, you can immediately start a snake and mine some iron or bullshit and get a bit quicker into the game.

Biter admin desk is indeed 4 slots capacity at start, might be a typo somewhere though.

For the sound I agree, will improve on that.

Thanks a lot for your feedback, more is very welcome !

This is feedback about producing engagement with what the mod has to offer in the first stage of the game rather than having players instead work around it. I was mainly trying to get across my issue with the slowness not being "the mod makes me not as fast as xyz!", be it vanilla or a previous iteration but what I am doing that is making it feel slow. The alternative, hand crafting, is also not engaging me with the mod.

If your end goal is also significantly further distance then most of this becomes resolved.

Based on your note about money, I'm not sure if you noticed you can just place biter admin desks directly on top of a nest to get as much money as you need without causing protests or needing pollution? Since both inserters and the stations do not cause pollution it's safe to saturate a nest with biter admin desks. You only need a single belt of forms and data to a nest, otherwise its a very easy closed loop to have running. I know this thread has me bemoaning the first 90 minutes of gameplay a whole lot but I've done a fair bit else past that.

I hear you really, I removed the ability to handcraft provisional approvals, but doing so for the construction permit and the safety waiver would require a bigger rework of the early game because they are needed to get electricity, and electricity id needed to have the field office working, meaning that either electricity would not require forms to be crafted which is too bad, or the field office would not require electricity to operate, which would be bit cheaty I guess...

Anyway I found a way of doubling the maximum reach of field office without impacting the performance too much, that should help the early game hopefully !