Yeah, the cliff explosives being gated behind vulcanus sucks a bit but they made the cliffs a lot more bearable in 2.0
I think for a megabase run its a matter of how fast you can reach legendary and process everything in it and once you got that you can go really into megabasing this game.
Sadly they nerfed trains so hard by introducing Quality since everything got better but trains stayed the same which is a shame
Trains still got buffed by overhead rails. Those enable very compact designs, allow for easier hookups and reduce the usual intersection/signals pain by a lot.
I agree that no quality or endgame upgrades for trains is an odd choice, but I guess that's what the mods are for.
