"This was during some sort of story-driven tutorial in which biters would swarm a base after a few minutes of play, so research wasn't relevant"
I have heard of this issue, and have seen a screenshot of someone else in the demo where the game placed the biters way, way, way too close to the player's base. That's just unfair, especially for a newcomer to the game.
I'd consider this a bug in the demo, and would report it as such to the developers.
In my own playthrough of the demo, about a year or two ago, I did not have this issue. The biters were well away from my base, and I had ample time to research the technology I'd need to beat them by the time they became a serious threat. I think they must have messed up the demo sometime after that.
The workaround for this is to play the full game, and forget the demo. There are plenty of tutorial videos on youtube which you can watch which will help you with any part of the game you don't understand, and in the full game you can choose a map that doesn't have any biters near by (or even make them peaceful so you don't have to worry about them at all).
I was playing the purchased game, so it wasn't a demo.
It was on a level where you had to reach a computer in some crashed rocket, if I recall correctly. You had to build turrets and keep them filled with ammo, but you started in a corner of the map with no base or raw materials, so you really had to move quickly before the ammo the game gave you to start with ran out and you became overwhelmed. You also had to use grenades to take out a biter nest so you could get to the rocket, and had a limited number of those too. So it was basically an action game rather than a building game at that point and a very badly balanced one.
But like I said I felt there were a lot of other issues. I really wanted to like the game, but "solid" wasn't the impression it left me with.
I have heard of this issue, and have seen a screenshot of someone else in the demo where the game placed the biters way, way, way too close to the player's base. That's just unfair, especially for a newcomer to the game.
I'd consider this a bug in the demo, and would report it as such to the developers.
In my own playthrough of the demo, about a year or two ago, I did not have this issue. The biters were well away from my base, and I had ample time to research the technology I'd need to beat them by the time they became a serious threat. I think they must have messed up the demo sometime after that.
The workaround for this is to play the full game, and forget the demo. There are plenty of tutorial videos on youtube which you can watch which will help you with any part of the game you don't understand, and in the full game you can choose a map that doesn't have any biters near by (or even make them peaceful so you don't have to worry about them at all).