q2: a few times. at least once each until i got the ability for ants to carry two resources at a time. then i began to lose steam and figured it wasn't that important to further optimize everything.
q1: hmm. this is a good question but i am not sure i can give a good answer. so maybe i'm not right about my diagnosis and should have not made one? overall, paths seemed like a nice way to visualize specifying specific sequences of actions, but something about it bugged me. i will describe some moments from my play experience:
i yearned for a way to split the flow of ants in a more mathematically pleasing way, but did not want to draw a supremely excessive number of paths - e.g. perfectly optimizing a den that wants 16 of one and 18 of another is only possible by drawing 8+9 paths... i suppose that is not a control scheme thing.
at times i wanted to send ants down specific paths to balance numbers out but i couldn't do that without destroying paths which i didn't want to do.
i did not figure out how to add nodes to a path between existing nodes, i was kinda checking out mentally at this point.
i found a trick where i could send an ant to grab a resource and plant it, and have that one ant repeat the action in that path a few times, to craft quickly. that felt like an exploit, but a good/fun one.
i did not feel very rewarded for trying to make perfect flows. seemed like more of a sheer numbers/waiting game.
this one is hard to get my hands on, i'll try though. in comparing your game to other games i have played, the node-path-ant-control is the only way to gain resource and perform actions, so i must wait for everything. i like when i have a body, and the factorizing supplements that, makes me more powerful. (e.g. i can pick up and deliver coal myself, but it is less work to get ants to help me.) not sure if this is useful, as it describes a fairly different dynamic... as i said at the start im not much of a factory gamer and for me it checks out that the root of my complaint is "im forced to play a factory game with no player-avatar-action component" ;P
hope that was useful.