After the DLC, I've tried to play several games on Hard difficulty as Tinkers on Huge maps. Their drawbacks are just too large in the early game.
The need to build population eats too much metal and doing it does not compensate for the lack of natural pop growth. Trying to research sprint to the Cloning tech takes too long. Game is already lost by then.
The 0.5 money and 0.25 science per Tinker pop is also very detrimental in the early game. The mobile stations perk is somewhat helpful in exploring. However, it's not nearly as good as some of the other race's perks.