Give my peaceful proclivities, the game essentially undermines itself because the native creatures apparently only attack once I start building things. So that means the ideal way to play is just not to build anything, completely undermining the point of the game. Fortunately there are settings to change how the game works and there are many mods. But there's still the problem that turning on peaceful mode means much of the tech tree is wasted. Part of the problem is that there's apparently no real reason to build anything. There's nothing driving actions in the game, apart from simply the urge to build. But this is at odds with the native creatures. So the peaceful method is to do nothing. The ideal scenario for me would seem to be a story in which the aliens are not just destroying my base once I start building, but are actually some kind of hostile invading force that is actively trying to kill me. Or maybe if I had a small society of humans that are threatened by native predatory creatures. I don't like games where I feel like I'm the "bad guy" and this game too often gives me that feeling. It's too bad because there's so much here that is extremely compelling to me. I suppose the Pacifist mod is the best path for me, as it removes military tech, but I would prefer the have the mililtary but in a game scenario that was purely defensive as opposed to the default which feels implicitly aggressive.

UPDATE
I finally was able to finish freeplay on default settings. What worked was maxing out game speed, starting out fairly slowly by manually mining a lot, and rushing research to all efficiency modules, electric furnaces and solar panels. I did get attacked once by an expansion that got too close so I packed up my entire operation and moved to an area that was not close to any nests and it ended up working until the end of the game. I don't know if I just got lucky or what, but I didn't even bother building any defenses, except for walls in the hope that they would deter invasions. So I guess for me the design of the game just isn't entirely what I'm looking for because I just really don't want to engage with the combat mechanics at all but it feels too limiting too play that way.

I took a sneak peak into this rabbit - hole of a game, playing the demo for two hours on the Switch and what can I say, but: I think, I saved myself.

After struggling with the controls for a while, I realized my own stupidity and optimized my play-style, as well as my small factory. And that is, what this game is all about: optimize into infinity.

I totally get, why people spend thousands of hours into this type of game, that looks and feels to me like a weird hybrid of Into the Breach, Frostpunk and Minecraft. It's the type of drug, I know, I would extremely enjoy, but just this bit too much. So for now, I stick to watching other people taking it.

I say for now, as I was not brave enough to abandoned this game, because a small, devilish part of my subconsciousness still hopes for a point of weakness and the sudden access to unlimited free-time.