Honestly? Minecraft vanilla. Partially because it is not an automation game at it's core.

I enjoyed peppering our lands with automated chicken cookers, cactus farms in the sky, gold farms exploiting portal mechanics, and of course an automated transport system.

That it's not an automation system at it's core meant there was inherent value in automating things, to be able to focus on all the other, non-automation stuff.

That it's an game of endless exploration meant I could redo the same (or similar) designs all over when we moved to a new region, and still visit the old machines on journeys.

It was fun to think about how regional peculiarities and peculiarities of specific blocks could be combined to achieve certain outcomes.

Satisfactory.. because it's 3d factorio

Mindustry. Don't have a reason. I just enjoy it

Dyson sphere Program is phenomenal

Oxygen not Included. You get a few clones on an asteroid and have to keep them alive. You can survive without automation but barely. The automation stuff is mostly circuits you build in order to not waste power.

You end up building nightmare spegetti monster machines because your fucked up and opened a volcano 20 hours ago and the only thing stopping your base from getting to hot to grow food is the toilet water getting dumped into the new steam chamber.

The real learning curve is thermal dynamics.

I liked prison architect, rimworld and oxigen not included. But everyone lack of something, they are limiteded by frustrating progress that make me as player feeling exhausted after one or two projects. While factorio have actually a good automation and line of program.

Infinifactory is a great puzzle game

I love shapez.io and Opus Magnum - I'm more on the minimalist side of the genre, I guess.

I played a lot of Satisfactory, it’s awesome, especially in multiplayer. I also dabbled a bit into Dyson Sphere Program, also quite fun, cause of the different perspective and the whole planetary aspect. Haven’t played it for a while though, no idea about the current state of the game.

Captain of Industry has been my recent favorite. It has very elaborate productions chains, and it has terrain manipulation that forces you to actually mine for resources and dump rock and slag in the sea for more land.

Autonauts is really good. You build and program bots which you then use to build up your production capabilities.

Dyson sphere program. You just need a little bit of space to be able to retroactively add belts into existing stuff because of the 3d belt placement and logistic drones are cheap, so you can ship loads of stuff with them. It lends itself wonderfully to spaghetti factories, which is my favorite kind of factory.

It's also absolutely beautiful. You can just stop and watch the glowy cubes flow at night or witness an incredible sunrise over the factory. And that gets better as you progress because, well, you're building a dyson sphere.

Definitely Satisfactory. They've been consistently setting a gold standard for developer openness and communication, just as much as Factorio did. And the game is great, too.

Desynced looks like my new favorite. I haven't played it yet.