Hi silicone_girl,
With long breaks, I am still working on Factorico. Currently, core features are being reworked, so everything else is broken, so it will take a while to get some working version of the game. I am trying to make underlying systems flexible and scalable, as this will be necessary for future development. However, this is big challenge for beginner programmer. I had to scale down and simplify few things, but still trying to keep the game realistic and detailed as possible.
Factorico should definitely allow for multiple approaches in how would you like to "make the stuff". No need to go back in time, just look at countries with cheap labor, where assembly line can consist of conveyor belt with many workers around. Having different eras is also something I am definitely planning on, in far future. So you could progress from factory with smoking chimneys, full of dirty men, to the clean high-tech factory, full of robots, with almost no staff. One day...
So, Factorico is not dead, just the progress is really slow.