Gleba early game should be made easier significantly

[Givikap120]

I think early game on gleba should be made significantly easier, because it's very hard and frustrating to start without having good supply from other planets
Unlike other two where you get access to big amount of resources pretty quickly

There are 3 reasons for this:
- enemies
- difficult to get early automation on cuz everything will spoil
- very punishing for mistakes cuz everything will spoil

Potential solutions:
- slow down the evolution, especially with time, so your base will not get stomped early on (tho the reason for this is may be because I played on deathworld so I don't sure about it)
- more seeds from plants even without productivity
- slower spoiling rate when evolution is low
- some small patches of unspoilable resources (small iron and copper patches) to get early automation, and you can get big production only with bacterias

[danbopes]

1. Early game enemies are shockingly easy to kill on gleba. Watching YamaKara in YouTube, he singlehandedly destroyed nests and enemies with 2 personal laser defenses.
2/3. Spoilage is the whole point of gleba. The tutorials try to give you a deep dive into what's to be expected, and if you make it easier early game, you make it easier late game.

The only thing I feel that could be optimized is some way of reading spoilage levels from entities. Not being able to dump more spoiled items without just looping everything is kinda annoying.

[Givikap120]

Maybe for me enemies was hard because I played with deathworld setting.
But about spoiling:
Whatever it's main point or not - early game on Gleba is frustratingly hard compared to Vulcanus and Fulgora.
If you don't want this to be the case (and I don't) - you HAVE to make it easier.

On other planets it felt like "cool, now I have very cool possibilities like exporting big amount of resources from vulcanus or modules from fulgora".
On Gleba it felt like "oh, I have to get thru this sht to get my cool technologies and OP inserters".
If this was intended by developers - fine, but in my opinion all 3 planets should have similar level of difficulty.

[kpreid]

Watching YamaKara in YouTube, he singlehandedly destroyed nests and enemies with 2 personal laser defenses.

I think this sort of thing is part of the problem: the experience of Gleba is depends a lot on what technologies you have researched before going to Gleba (or can manage to research remotely while on Gleba) and what supplies you can drop to Gleba. For example, I didn't go to Gleba until I researched, not only laser defense, but also logistic robots and the mech armor. But I didn’t do that because I had a plan; I did it because I happened to decide to do the planets in the order of Vulcanus, Fulgora, then Gleba. If I hadn’t done that, and gone to Gleba first while I was still learning how to manage space platforms and what can be feasibly done in remote view, I'd have found it far more of a slog.

If you luck out on what you research first, or you know what you’re getting into, and you have a space platform that can bring you supplies, Gleba can be quite straightforward to build on. If you go to Gleba early, and have to figure it out as you go, then you may have a much more disastrous experience.

[ALDK]

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/spoilage-solution
My vision of problem of spoil.
Canning and freezing.

[BlueTemplar]

- slow down the evolution, especially with time, so your base will not get stomped early on (tho the reason for this is may be because I played on deathworld so I don't sure about it)

Lol, what did you expect, that's one of the biggest changes with DeathWorld :
Evolution :
- Time factor : ×5
- Destroy factor : unchanged
- Pollution factor : ×1.33...
(Amongst other changes...)

Have you tried it on default settings ?

Related :
Gleba has killed the game for me.

[HadesSupreme]

I did Gleba on deathworld with no airdropped resources or logistics network. It was pretty harrowing but I managed it even despite hours of time wasted learning the recipes.

I will say that the jump from the wrigglers to strafers to stompers is a big one each time. Strafers need lasers but stompers are mostly immune to lasers and turrets only have a split second to kill stompers with their limited range before being utterly blown apart by the dozens. You'd have to be pretty slow to not finish Gleba before mass amounts of stompers show up though. At the same time nerfing stompers to 60% laser resist would be reasonable IMO to not make the planet unfinishable. It's kind of strange that they have 0% resist to electricity but 80% to lasers right now, when tesla turrets are as far as the player is concerned basically just an improved laser turret.

[BlueTemplar]

Which needs Fulgora to unlock.
And there's probably a balance consideration between the automated Personal Laser Defense and the manual Discharge Defense ?

In other news I finally tried for the first time missile turrets (and artillery) : on a big stomper that was preventing me from taking out a nest.
(At 0.68 evolution, 95% of which from time... but then I'm also on DeathWorld Marathon, which might be easier than DeathWorld, despite the x4 science cost ?)

The mass armies, just like for Biters on Nauvis, are probably mostly a function of pollution, how slow you are shouldn't matter ?

(In fact, I expect that you would get much smaller armies, but with much more dangerous pentapods.)
After checking : huh, they do NOT work like biters for pollution cost, all stompers (respectively strafers, wrigglers) cost the same !

[CheeseMcBurger]

Whatever it's main point or not - early game on Gleba is frustratingly hard compared to Vulcanus and Fulgora.

I completely agree. I'ts not that I dislike the spoilage mechanic. It's that I feel that I can't progress, until I figured out every step of all the paths I must take, immediately.

On other planets I can progress very slowly. Figure out every ingredient by itself. Setup a miner, mine some scrap. Build a small holmium production. Superconductors. Supercapacitors. At my own pace.

On Gleba, I need Yumako and Jellynuts, but they spoil. So before it makes sense to mine that, I need to figure out what to build next and how to get rid of excess spoilage. Okay, so I start with Yumako. What's next for science? Bioflux. Ok great, now I need Jellynuts. And Nutrients. And take care of power. And spoilage. And biter attacks.

It's ALL AT ONCE or nothing will work. I have to setup an entire WORKING production network, before I can craft a single science.

This is nothing but frustrating.

[BlueTemplar]

Science is really the last thing you would do on the planets after Nauvis.

You still do have a point, because you still need to combine the two fruits for any decent iron and copper production.

But I'm not sure how you can do it easier without making it boring : Gleba used to have 12 different fruits, but supposedly the game was much more boring because they were just standalone :
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-414# ... %20journey

[Jarin]

2/3. Spoilage is the whole point of gleba. The tutorials try to give you a deep dive into what's to be expected

Escuse me, but... what deep-dive tutorials?

[Yoyobuae]

Would be nicer if the evolution curves where adjusted to be something more like Nauvis, where the stronger enemies are introduced gradually.

When you start on Nauvis there's only small biters, not even spitters spawn. In Gleba you could land, walk a stone's throw away and run into a stomper which murders you.

Or maybe have a starting area where only Small Egg Rafts spawn. That way you only need to deal with wigglers for a while, at least until spore cloud expands beyond that starting area.

[BlueTemplar]

Have you checked that it isn't already the case for the small rafts ?

Also, we're discussing Death World, so asking for weaker enemies seems a bit weird ?

[mako00]

Would be nicer if the evolution curves where adjusted to be something more like Nauvis, where the stronger enemies are introduced gradually.

Actually, Gleba enemies and spawn rates were rebalan ed in 2.0.17, so it should already feel smoother.

[EustaceCS]

I think early game on gleba should be made significantly easier, because it's very hard and frustrating to start without having good supply from other planets

Maybe for me enemies was hard because I played with deathworld setting.

"Make the game easier because I can't handle hardmode which I've selected".
mmmkay...

EARLY game on Gleba is actually easier than on Nauvis on default settings.
Stomatolites are relatively omnipresent and give enough ore to kickstart at least some industry quickly.
Pollution is only being emitted by 2 (two) types of entities which - in early game - cannot be used in the middle of your main base. So you don't need to secure WHOLE perimeter. And if you did made it to Gleba - you probably do have enough weapon tech to hold the perimeter in early game.
Rafts are much more docile than biter nest clusters.
Semi-infinite access to healing on the go AND to speed boost on the go helps with early fights alot. Pay the attention to item tooltips.

Spoilage is a real head scratcher, yes.
But all storage&transportation means have access to some form of spoilage filtering.
And it burns real good - if, for some reason, you don't want spare Nutrients.
If spoilage time of fresh harvest AND science packs is too fast for you - maybe your Gleba factory should be, well, you know, optimized? Maybe it's a bit overkill to request to make the game easier because of that, oblivious-hardmode aside?

[BlueTemplar]

Would be nicer if the evolution curves where adjusted to be something more like Nauvis, where the stronger enemies are introduced gradually.

Actually, Gleba enemies and spawn rates were rebalan ed in 2.0.17, so it should already feel smoother.

I don't know what they were before 2.0.17, but this isn't the case for enemy type now.
EDIT : (current) pic :

gleba_medium_raft_spawn.png (28.13 KiB) Viewed 1991 times

Note that the graph is bugged because it doesn't list Strafers (probably overwritten by Wrigglers ?) : their spawn chances — if not costs — are identical to Wrigglers.

[Yoyobuae]

Would be nicer if the evolution curves where adjusted to be something more like Nauvis, where the stronger enemies are introduced gradually.

Actually, Gleba enemies and spawn rates were rebalan ed in 2.0.17, so it should already feel smoother.

As the above reply says, the rebalance does not address the biggest issue that stompers can spawn from the first second you step down on Gleba.

[EustaceCS]

Well, yes, they can spawn (and spawn too damn close to starting area to my taste - but it's too subjective).

It is prudent to grab an armor with you on your first space voyage to anywhere since armor is one of VERY few things you can get shipped on your body. And armor takes whole rocket to ship it alone - so, worth wearing one in either case...
General all-purpose armor usually consists of some shield modules, some accumulators and some power source, for the sake of survivability.
Breaking news: shield-oriented armor tanks default stompers just fine while you're making impromptu weapons and some ammo to deal with this thing. Hella inconvenient - but it works.
If you got lucky and nabbed Uncommon grade armor, slam extra accumulators and solar panels into extra space - and you're nearly immortal (until you are not (read: getting too cocky at too many crabs at once)).

While stompers don't seem to lose you if you run away, 3 exoskeletons are just enough to outrun them.
1 Personal Laser Defence is still enough to get rid of them DESPITE their 80% laser resist.
Pre-top armor (Power Armor mk II) is very accessible on Navius, along with all these components.

Gleba is... very unfriendly to "naked and afraid" start.
Given how much of a roadblock a road to Gleba is due to how asteroids work, by the time you make it to it - you can afford (and usually should use) any means to mitigate risks.

Did you know that even in Worst Case Scenario you can dismantle a turret or three AND some ammo from your Space Taxi and order it in an orbital drop?
Remember to make a blueprint of your Taxi before doing so. You might want to make more of these.
And since parked taxi is not expected to see as many asteroids as taxi en route to anywhere (due to how asteroids work), it won't need ALL these turrets for awhile anyway.

[Yoyobuae]

Or just bring a car, lol:

Explanation: Someone decided that stomper's stomps do exclusively "Impact" type damage. Car (and other vehicles) have -50 impact dmg reduction. Only big stompers have enough damage to power thru that.


I mean, with the right knowledge beforehand it's easy to know what to do. It's just bad game design to assume the player to know everything before facing each challenge the game.

[BlueTemplar]

Heh, funny. I guess it mostly works on lone small stompers though ?

Good thing Factorio doesn't assume that then.

[...]

[...]
And since parked taxi is not expected to see as many asteroids as taxi en route to anywhere (due to how asteroids work), it won't need ALL these turrets for awhile anyway.

This assumes that your parked taxi can survive in Gleba's orbit until you can make a silo and rocket - so basically forever.