There may be spoilers below. You've been warned.

I love this concept. Adding a tower defense to Factorio is an awesome change. I did, however, have a few issues/feedback/etc.:
1) BattleData spoiling is a neat functionality, but ought to be toggle-able. It ONLY works if you're 100% active, and know exactly what you're doing and how you're going to set things up. By the time I had my base operational, I'd cleared the collectors near me, and traveling to/from distant ones made doing science research basically impossible.
2) The map forces you into playing in a very specific way. You HAVE to be 100% active, as I mentioned before. I think changing it to be stand-alone, and having the military weapons research you added, and some alternative recipes would be friendlier for users, since Castra is now basically a requirement to develop before I go to Aquilo, since Railguns are paywalled behind Lithium batteries (which can only be made there).
3) The recipe change is also brutal for anyone who (like me) adds the planet mid-game for some new challenges. I now have several forms of research that need 400k+ battlefield science in order for them to advance. That's a steep wall to climb over.
4) Lastly, there's no mod menu that lets me configure things to be more (or less) friendly. Having some options to configure items would solve much of what I've detailed here.

I do greatly enjoy it, though! I think forges will wind up being a center piece of my future space exploration.