To many ways to gridlock yourself and throw away saves.

Its just way to easy to grid lock yourself into oblivion.
Heres some examples. More in comments
1:
Got copper and Iron up and they're both making slag.
Very Quickly will you back up on slag just to run a couple buildings and trucks.
only way to remove slag is to crush it/store it then convert it into construction components
If you are full of construction components then you are screwed unless you constantly expand storage for it to let it keep running.
If you dont you will back up on slag.
Wont be able to make iron
cant make anymore parts
cant sustain miantenance

Also doesn't help that maintenance physically feeds into needing more maintenance.
2:
So you have the maintenance depot. It needs copper wires and machine parts
Those need maintenance to run assemblers
You need a sizable portion of your iron to sustain maintenance and a smaller amount of copper
so you make more iron smelting. Those need maintenance.
Now you make more slag
So you make more construction and crushing so you can keep getting iron. Those need maintenance.
Now you need more iron to cover the construction components as to not back up with slag and make more smelting. Those need maintenance.
Now you need more mining and trucks to sustain coal and iron inputs. Those need maintenance and fuel
Fuel system needs maintenance and has its own way of grid locking you separate from this.
now you need more than 1 maintenance building and now need more machine parts again. Run through that process all over again.

3: Fuel is extremely easy to grid lock
From the starting fuel you can run about 2 distillers and 6 pumps to feed them and make enough diesel to feed plenty of trucks and plenty of generators to sustain all that production you need for maintenance.
However once you run out you better hope 2 things. You got enough reserve to react, and you made a hill to the next oil patch on your island because the oil rig is useless for one reason.
the oil rig is useless because if you have the second stage of distillation and a cargo ship to run back and forth. Even if you have both slots for transporting oil IT TAKES FOREVER TO UNLOAD and the processing facility (stage one) wont be able to feed which means you need more than 1 ship.
Well more than 1 ship is ALOT OF DIESEL TO RUN so you end up eating all of your diesel just to move oil at a snails pace.
Run out of power because no diesel.
Trucks got no diesel
Iron doesnt work
Cant make maintenance
Sucks.

The only thing thatll work kind of is to manually use your exploration ship to move the oil because it takes less fuel to move the oil

4: Food is also easy to get grid locked on.
Add one more living area
Food looks fine still
Then growth slowly eats the food or rain is an issue because this is before you have access to water drilling so you run out of food. Which means you run out of workers quickly.
Everything halts
EVEN THE FOOD PRODUCTION
so good luck getting that to bounce back
No workers mean no production
Also means no fuel
and no miners making coal for fuel
which means no trucks moving food
No production means no food
Means no workers
There is absolutely no way to set up any system that can be run without the need to constantly watch over and manage it. And most of that manage is either spending it or making more storage if there is no good trades from towns.

My biggest issue is with Maintenance. Really want an option to start the game without it.

Not sure what to say about the other points but for number 1. I deal with slag by setting up a dumping area and let my trucks dump it once the storage gets so full.