Appreciate the note. I'd say this is a case of "you break it, you get to keep the pieces" ;)
And combinatorial explosion makes it completely impractical for mod authors to test for people like me.
Worst case I'll just have to drop some mods if serious incompatibilities occur. I've also got quite a list of (potential) issues I need to properly check out and report, once I can find the time, hopefully later this month. But almost all were trivial things like "yellow inserters cost more than red ones", differing items with the same name from different mods, or that regular steel pipes can't input into assemblers (but underground pipes can, a perfectly acceptable workaround for me), that kinda thing. As you say, that's to be expected. To be honest, I was really surprised that the game even started when I added ~200 mods, including K2SO and like 15-20 for extra planets and such, my star map has about 35 things on it. I did have to remove a couple of small mods either immediately or with game/mod updates, but nothing essential. Factorio's mod system and the mod devs seem extremely accommodating to such shenanigans.
But for anyone else who's doing such things: I recommend backing up the mod directory every time before updating mods. Then if there's an incompatibility due to an update you can keep playing with the older mods until a fix is made.
Ironically: I DID have to drop some mods because the game wouldnt start or load saves anymore - but they were all small mods, not big ones.