[throwaway888abc]

>Before the optimization, the game took 113 seconds to startup1. After the optimization, the game only took 30 seconds. The script takes 230 seconds to run, much higher than the time taken for the game to load probably because the game only loads parts of the files whereas the script always loads the entire file contents into RAM.

Basically, if you want just play:

Time to play - Your script - 230s + 30s = 260s total

Time to play - Filesystem - 113s = 113s total

For permanent speedup, lets make Factorio fly with ZFS and ARC/L2ARC:

https://www.45drives.com/community/articles/zfs-caching/

[ProcNetWireless]

I typically power on my PC, attend to other tasks, and by the time I return, the system would have completed the boot process. While the script may take 260s, it runs in the background.