in the end, its the spoilage mechanic that kills my motivation. it feels like a solution looking for a problem.

the devs were not concerned about unlimited resources on vulcanus, but its an issue on gleba
i can drop ice cubes down to the surface of the lava planet and leave them there for ever ...

I agree that Gleba is a miserable experience for me as well. I tried the whole land there with nothing but some bots and my suit of armour. but after failing for several hours just trying to get somthing running, i just scummed and imported a roboport network.

I at least have what feels like a ...

The real problem is beacons.

To make belts more effective, remove beacons from the game. Add in higher level assemblers.

Ie mk 4:craft speed 3. 8 module slots
Mk 5: crsft speed 5 16 module slots.
N.b made up numbers

At the moment, the only posible way to feesable feed a gully beacon/module ...