Is there a way to play this stand-alone, so that it is the only planet and we spawn here? I like the idea of the wave defense, but not sure I want to set up a nauvis factory first.

I tried with the "any planet start" mod, but this isn't listed as a starting planet. If it makes sense to try to start here, I think it needs to register with the any planet start API?

I dont know how that mod work. But difficulty here was designed for level 5 bullet damage and rockets already launched. Start here probably is not an option

I think the any planet start mod lets you supply a list of techs to unlock at start for that planet. If I was to write the code for your mod to make it able to register with any planet start, would you be OK with including that? It seems to be some additional code in data.lua, settings.lua and some other minor changes that I've not worked out yet.

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/any-planet-start

I am partly there. I've got the any planet mod to start on Erimos. However, it is just giving us a normal crash site but on the Erimos surface. We've got your music and your planetary artwork. But I think there must be some event I need to poke at to trigger it into your wave defense mode. I'm on a fairly small square map. There is no gui or buttons or first wave stage. There is an event aps-post-init that I can hook into so that we kick things off.