Gleba is a problem

[pseudo3d]

I ruined my save file on Space Age because I got stuck in Gleba. Basically...
- Nauvis was not fully equipped to be left alone, as a result fuel for trains ran out, causing a chain reaction to kill the entire power
- Roboports were not adequately built out to supply remotely
- Almost nothing was packed for the trip save for a few inserters and belts

As a result, I was stuck on Gleba with no way of progression. I realized I could manually collect both plants and get the process started for bioflux, but without belts would be a cumbersome process, and the agricultural tower wasn't set up to sustainably harvest plants. Seeds would have to be manually sent over. Because the two were on the opposite sides of the map, it meant manually delivering seeds, and because the ground was so swampy, extensive landfill would have to be built. There are stone mines for that, but they need power, and the high cost of landfill means bulk mining, and you need fuel. Until you have a system completely set up to take the spoilage generated by your machines and feed them as fuel, there's no way to easily get set up.

It is possible to work your way out of it but it's also possible to ruin an entire "plantation" of plants by cutting them down and having them all spoil. Either way, it grinds down the game's pace as you struggle for hours just to get something that works. Within half an hour, a beginner could set up something basic and workable on Gleba, half an hour on Gleba and you'll still be carrying spoilage to feed stone burners. Very bad.

I don't know how this can be fixed but it does need to be.

[Stargateur]

it's possible to get started from zero on gleba, but yes the start of gleba is very very hard I didn't go on vulcanus yet but fulgora was by far more easy than gleba.

As for balancing, I feel you should just prepare better also your space platform can be a good passive support early.

[aka13]

Vulcanus from scratch is doable, but very tedious. You will have to mine a lot of rocks to kickstart everything.

[DragoonGXG]

Yeah, this rougelite is very brutal to newer players. Without prior knowledge, expect to restart a few times (previous saves hopefully).
For instance when I first left Nauvis I only had laser turrets...big mistake.
Upon arriving at my first planet Vulcanus, I managed to just barely jettison from my space platform before it was destroyed, stranding me.
Like you, I didn't setup the proper infrastructure to support remote operations.
With no way to get starting materials or the ability to kill the giant worms I had to restart.

Back to your point on Gleba, managing all of the new information (spoil system) was a big headache.
Personally, everything seems to spoil to quickly and the map that got generated for me left little room to get farming started.
Initially when I went there I didn't bring stone and still haven't found any resources sites of it on the planet, preventing me from making sufficient landfill to make a base of operation.
IF you want to share some Space Age tips and tricks, try checking out viewtopic.php?f=18&t=117167

[pseudo3d]

I will say Fulgora is much better; even if you forgot to pack adequately, scrap will provide you everything you need and once you get a few accumulators, power poles, lightning rods, and your first recycler you'll start seeing progress immediately.

[sarge945]

When you flew there, did your ship harvest space rocks to make ammo?

I set up a circuit on my ship to stop producing bullets when above 500 in storage, with any excess iron being sent down to the planet. While flying we need everything we can get, but in orbit you should need far more bullets than your iron can support, even with only 1 furnace. So you can limit your bullet production and send any produced iron down to the planet.

It's only a trickle but it helps a lot when bootstrapping a base.

[DarkShadow44]

I went to Gleba first, bringing nothing except for 20 construction bots (after I realized after a few hours how to get them down from orbit, lol).
I admit it's difficult to get started, took me quite a few hours. Although I cleared all nests in my pollution zone in Nauvis first, so I had as much time as I needed. Nauvis wasn't really my problem, the bigger issue was realizing that asteroids in Gleba orbit are not harmless like in Nauvis orbit...

I built my base on solid ground next to one wetland, then have a simple bidirectional train to solid ground next to another wetland, in hindsight it's pretty doable. I only needed a handful of landfill, and the entire game unlocked once I learned that bio-rocketfuel is the way to go here. Having plants spoil was never an issue for me, there is plenty more fruits to harvest on the map.

[vopo]

Yeah I'm over here just fighting for my life while my friend has breeze on all the other worlds lmao. I was hoping to not be bailed out but yeah it feels like a notable difficulty spike. I love the spoiling mechanics, don't love getting stomped and my base crushed while 5 turrets pump lead into the smallest stomper because I dared to turn on a single ag tower. Definitely feels like I'm missing something obvious, I was not expecting the land of fruit and nuts to be exponentially harder than the place where everything is on fire. Maybe I should be hand gathering fruits by hand to try and get rocket launchers online?

[smileynator]

Vulcanus from scratch is doable, but very tedious. You will have to mine a lot of rocks to kickstart everything.

I did this, it was more than fine enough, early iron from my space platform and a few belts was all i had because i also rushed into it, took a while to get going but nothing i didn't enjoy. I got home before christmas, eggman would be proud.

[Stargateur]

I will use this thread as a complain about biochamber, about all new OP building its the baddest by far. you can't use it on other planet except nauvis. It add complexity to all chemical recipe. I have hard time to justify the complexity just to have few more plastic or rocket fuel, when I have already tons of it with infinite research.

I feel it should not require nutriment for oil cracking and normal recipe rocket fuel. And biolab should require nutriment

[kiwidrew]

I used the "Any Planet Start" mod to begin the game on Gleba, and wow it is quite the experience!

Pollution output doesn't matter on this planet, so you can enjoy an extended "burner phase" of the game without worry. There is plenty of hand-minable iron and copper ore and vast quantities of wood and spoilage that can be harvested from the native plants so bootstrapping a small base is feasible. Power generation is the biggest issue, since there isn't a (good) way to automatically produce fuel. Solar panels put out a pathetic 30kw max but it's enough to run some inserters and a couple of assemblers. It didn't take too long to research most red/green tech and build up a stash of several thousand plates but it was a massive amount of running around mining rocks and trees!

Railways and circuit networks are IMHO essential on Gleba, the idea is that you want to do everything "just in time" due to spoilage. Don't let the ag tower harvest any fruits until the train is waiting at the station to pick them up. Don't let any intermediates sit on belts. Only use bioreactors for their unique recipes, many things can be made by an Assembler 2.

It's an entirely different kind of challenge to "normal" Factorio, the usual rules do not apply on Gleba! Definitely a very very difficult start.

[havarc]

Yes, Gleba is difficult and tedious, but that's the entire point of an expansion that costs more than the base game (and I love it)!
However, here's some tips, as I currently have a stable production chain within a six hour session dropping dry (no QA, PA2, exoskeletons, no bots or buildables), [Gleba Spoilers ahead!]:

• Biochambers are your highest priority, as the entire production chain revolves around them (see below)
• pentapods WILL be a problem, you have 15 minutes!
• filter for spoil everywhere in your chain
• if things are spoiling (or even resting too long) on the belt, put a buffer chest between this belt and the spoil belt, filtering the out-inserter on spoilage
• Spoilage to carbon is your best friend for power and early smelting
• minute spoil
  bacteria can decay in a chest before being deployed to the furnaces (inserter filters are universal now!)

Furthermore

Power generation is the biggest issue, since there isn't a (good) way to automatically produce fuel. Solar panels put out a pathetic 30kw max but it's enough to run some Inserters and a couple of assemblers. It didn't take too long to research most red/green tech and build up a stash of several thousand plates but it was a massive amount of running around mining rocks and trees!

The Boilers can take almost anything organic to power your factory, and setting up carbon power production within this setup feels like I have to clean the belt for excess more than comfortable.

[OKDW]

When played on normal settings (not peaceful), Factorio has always been a game which can technically be lost.

Luckily, the game already creates a fresh, permanent auto-save every time you travel to a new planet for the first time, so you always have that to roll back to. Maybe a few tweaks to the GUI could be helpful, like a confirmation box when dropping the player to a new surface, something along the lines of "Are you sure? You might not be able to get back to space for a while! Did you bring everything for a new base on this planet?"

[Bp_968]

Yeah I'm over here just fighting for my life while my friend has breeze on all the other worlds lmao. I was hoping to not be bailed out but yeah it feels like a notable difficulty spike. I love the spoiling mechanics, don't love getting stomped and my base crushed while 5 turrets pump lead into the smallest stomper because I dared to turn on a single ag tower. Definitely feels like I'm missing something obvious, I was not expecting the land of fruit and nuts to be exponentially harder than the place where everything is on fire. Maybe I should be hand gathering fruits by hand to try and get rocket launchers online?

We just arrived on gleba. But we didn't go *fast*. We have 3 fully autonomous spaceships carrying stuff between planets, a full quality line on fulgora, and a line producing most of what we want on vulcanis. I imported tesla towers to gleba and those murder anyone who comes for a visit. I setup a nuclear reactor from imported supplies but I think I'll switch to heating towers very quickly.

Having a *solid* industrial base at fulgora and nauvis make other planets much easier. I can launch 10-12 rockets at once on each planet so I can load a large spaceship very quickly.

If your having trouble killing the gleba bugs upgrade your laser and electro damage. Electro damage 5-6 and laser damage 10-11 seem to insta murder them. That combined with the mech suit stuffed with 4-5 rare mk2 shields and your pretty resistant.

I think I'm taking the long way to saying "go to fulgora first"

[JigSaW]

The planets should not be balanced for you going out of your way to rush for them and arriving with very little progress made on Nauvis. With that said tho, the game has almost a built-in easy mode - If any planet is too much of a hassle just make a good Nauvis base and send everything you need via platform delivery. As for realizing the planet is too much, bite the cost and send yourself a rocket silo/50 rocket parts materials, quickly build a rocket from pre-made ingredients, get out of there and come back stronger.

[Raphaello]

I think there should be some discouragement to choosing Gleba as the first planet. Newer players should get a red light somehow before they try doing so

Small initial zone with both fruits near the landing some would also be helpful. Going there naked now is a recipe for a lot of running back and forth.

[nicball]

I chose Gleba as my first planet and just arrived recently. Though my home production is fully automated, the space platform has too weak production power to sustain continuous flight.

I admit the recipes are confusing at first. There are so many cycles. I wandered back and forth not knowing where to start.

Until I decided to try out the new heating tower. Once you kickstart the first 500 C, it output almost infinite power (250% efficiency!). And the agricultural tower works in bulk too. A biochamber to process the fruits, a biochamber to produce nutrients, a few cycling belts to deal with spoils, then you have hundreds and hundreds of products.

Almost everything is burnable, so you'll never run out of fuel. And if some product is piling and blocking other things, just burn them! Excess heat is gone forever like nuclear power plants. And it's not wasteful like it sounds because agriculture is self sustaining, unlike minerals which has limited amount.

I am quite amazed how a handful of machines can produce so much. But since growable soil is rare, it's understandable.

The next problem is logistics, as resources are so far apart. But that's for tomorrow!

[Bp_968]

The planets should not be balanced for you going out of your way to rush for them and arriving with very little progress made on Nauvis. With that said tho, the game has almost a built-in easy mode - If any planet is too much of a hassle just make a good Nauvis base and send everything you need via platform delivery. As for realizing the planet is too much, bite the cost and send yourself a rocket silo/50 rocket parts materials, quickly build a rocket from pre-made ingredients, get out of there and come back stronger.

This is excellent advice. On every single planet me and my coop buddy visited i was on charge of "packing". And just like in real life our vehicle was busting at the seems (lol). One of the things I always brought was everything to hand make a rocket silo and all the parts for 1 or 2 launches so one or both of us could leave if we needed to.

We never needed to "bail" because nauvis and fulgora both were capable of launching *dozens* of rockets each in a few minutes time. That plus multiple space platforms meant anytime one of us needed more supplies they were only a few minutes away.

I still just ship rocket parts to aquilo. It might be possible to setup some orbital production facility above aquilo to make it self sufficient but I haven't gotten around to doing that yet.

I still need to figure out logistics a bit better first. I'd like to have it setup so I can just request something on one planet and it picks it up and drops it where it needs to go without me manually intervening. Not there yet though.