Increase Gleba seed production chance

[Green Cat]

The problem with the former is, that you will never get a stable 1:1 ratio, because it's up to the random number generator if you get a tree back or not.

AFAIK this is not random, factorio doesn't do random on this, it's just every X items you get Y items.

Did you not notice with the quality mecanics?

Someone clearly is in obssed with gacha game and did not see why it would be bad to do this with factorio.

Also, look up workcaholic. for reasons I don't understand, this is what we are forced to do. After all, it make no sense why we can't take more then 25 ammo but most other stuff are ok as they are.

Honestly, if they did a little ajustments, we could start playing on any of the planets. Aka the whole "start fresh" could have been a NG+ thing, so when we cross to other planets, we don't get any restriction/penalty for wanting to expande.

That said, I never understood, why did so many people want a "space" expansion? Just like how Gleba has different areas, we could have had just one massive planet with mutiple areas.

Anyways.

I to agree with increase from 2% to more

OR

to give a clear Tip and tricks regarding using the the biochamber

Thanks for all who pointed out as well as for thoes who confirmed

[mmmPI]

That said, I never understood, why did so many people want a "space" expansion? Just like how Gleba has different areas, we could have had just one massive planet with mutiple areas.

it would make it trivial to use train to carry the ressources around that was pointed to the player with similar difficulty of understanding during the FFF publications.

[BlueTemplar]

Honestly, if they did a little ajustments, we could start playing on any of the planets.

It would be nice if there were vanilla-SA scenarios that did this.
Maybe something in the future of v2 ?

(Mods will provide in the meantime, I'm sure !)

So if you want to add tip about such obvious thing like using biochambers to get net positive seed circle then you have to add tips above and a lot of other tips.

I guess there's really a balance to be had between explaining the (not so new by that point, they did manage to land on Gleba after all) player too little, or too much...

[Dixi]

Got same problem - runs out of seeds, because was using normal blue factories to reprocess fruits.
Searched for a while in tech tree, to find better seed production way, or a method to craft seeds, find none.
Only search in google gave links to forums and reddit, to solve the problem.

In whole I consider Gleba annoying part of the game. Everything else, so far (never been to frozen planet yet) is much better.

[Raphaello]

I found this not a big issue - I first started mashing the fruits in the assemblers but noticed that I can only get as many seeds as required to replant at best. I have accidentally sent some of the seed into furnaces and my production crashed.

I realized the problem and started using biochambers which push the probability up by 50% thanks to their productivity bonus and I am now producing a lot of seeds which must be burned.

It's a good learning, good new problem to solve and I consider 2% to be perfect ratio. You get 1 seed per 50 fruits in assembler which is sustainable. Use prod modules or biochamber to get more seeds.

Anyway, Gleba is very hard (also due to the enemies) compared to the rest of them - it was my 2nd planet and I spent A LOT of time on it (haven't been to Aquilo yet).

BTW, we need target selection on spidertrons to avoid wasting precious rockets on small crawlers!

[pipai]

2% is definitely not a perfect ratio, because if RNG only slightly doesn't go your way, you have to walk really far to get more fruits. There's just a lot of "traps" for new players on Gleba (including this one, which I got caught in), all of which are heavily punished. From a new player's perspective, there's just too many concepts to learn all at once, which leads to all the frustrations that were posted so far. On a side note, that's also why I think we need a better starting area (I posted about that here).

[MisterDoctor]

When I read that it's 2% out of 50 and realized that would average to zero gain, I expected to have this problem but then never did; seeds tend to overflow and you actually have to get rid of some not to stall.

Biochambers' innate 50% productivity to gain more seeds than you lose

oh that must be why. then what is the problem?

[Barthoze]

Biochambers' innate 50% productivity to gain more seeds than you lose

oh that must be why. then what is the problem?

The problem is the Biochamber production bonus reads as a footnote, and not as a fundamental stepping stone to progress and thrive on Gleba.

• People using Assembly machines to process fruits should never get stuck because they lack seeds for the next harvest.
• Gleba is already full of difficulties, this should not be one.

The bare minimum should be a more complete tip in the "Agriculture" section, with an added part such as

Process your harvest through Biological chambers to get more out of your fruits.

And OP's proposal to get 3% base rate of seeds is eminently reasonable.

[BlueTemplar]

People using Assembly machines to process fruits should never get stuck because they lack seeds for the next harvest.

Arguably they should get stuck
(on not being able to expand their treefarms without going out foraging, and occasionally, just to maintain them)
— if they are using assemblers (without productivity modules) for these two recipes, they are doing it very wrong, and it's better for the game to punish them early rather than lull them into a sense of progression that is going to be miserable compared to those players that realized how important productivity is for that recipe.

(Also, isn't a secondary planet a good time to teach how important productivity is, for players that might not have realized it yet ?)

As I already mentioned, yes to a more forceful tips&tricks about this :
EDIT :
For maximum impact, it could be a dedicated tips&tricks, which pops up when :
- the player selects one of the two recipes in an assembler (or biochamber), or
- one of two recipes completes, or
- one of the two recipes completes while producing a seed

[angramania]

[*]People using Assembly machines to process fruits should never get stuck because they lack seeds for the next harvest.
[*]Gleba is already full of difficulties, this should not be one.

[*]People using yellow ammo without damage upgrades against big biters should never get stuck because they lack damage to pierce armor
[*]Factorio is already full of difficulties, this should not be one.

The bare minimum should be a more complete tip in the "Agriculture" section, with an added part such as

Process your harvest through Biological chambers to get more out of your fruits.

There bare minimum is ability to read existing tips. At least the first sentence in the first tip about Gleba:
"Gleba is humid swampy planet with rich exotic vegetation that can be cultivated using Agriculture tower and processed in the Biochambers"
Do you see last word in this sentence?

And OP's proposal to get 3% base rate of seeds is eminently reasonable.

Even with existing 2% you are forced to burn excess seeds. I do not see any reason to make it worse. Existing ratio push player in right direction. Even most rigid players will learn it eventually. And they will use biochambers on second run and so on.

[Raphaello]

[*]People using Assembly machines to process fruits should never get stuck because they lack seeds for the next harvest.

1 seed gives 50 fruits, 50 fruits give 1 seed. They should not get stuck.

[BlueTemplar]

Eventually, they will :

[...]
On a repeated game, if the expected value is a net zero, then the gambler's ruin is almost certain.
[...]

But how long is this going to take ?
(And foraging the neighborhood for extra trees alleviates this, which is especially forgiving early on, with weaker enemies.)

[wingsbob]

I think there's some fundamental misunderstandings around probablity happening here

It's quite easy to roll a 6-sided die 6 times without getting a single 6. The odds of rolling not 6 is 5/6, the odds of doing that 6 times in a row is:
(5/6) * (5/6) * (5/6) * (5/6) * (5/6) * (5/6) or (5/6)^6

The odds of crafting the seed recipies 50 times and getting no seeds is (0.98^50), which works out at something like 36%, which is pretty substantial for people trying to get started at a relatively small scale

[BlueTemplar]

Yes, and with only a few attempts n, the expected value is much rougher, being on the order of √n
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk

(Thankfully, the trees tend to come in decently-sized clumps.)

[HadesSupreme]

I finished Gleba 1st try death world marathon only getting seeds from productivity modules in my assemblers. Let the weak perish.

[angramania]

I think there's some fundamental misunderstandings around probablity happening here

It's quite easy to roll a 6-sided die 6 times without getting a single 6. The odds of rolling not 6 is 5/6, the odds of doing that 6 times in a row is:
(5/6) * (5/6) * (5/6) * (5/6) * (5/6) * (5/6) or (5/6)^6

The odds of crafting the seed recipies 50 times and getting no seeds is (0.98^50), which works out at something like 36%, which is pretty substantial for people trying to get started at a relatively small scale

I will tell you great secret. You can farm another tree to get 50 more yumako. And if gods of random so strongly dislike you then you can farm third one and then forth one and so on. There are a lot of yumako/jellynut trees on Gleba, they are practically infinite.
And one really scary secret - ores on navius have 0% chance to return any sort of seeds. So you will never have a chance to "replant" them.

[Gotbread]

The problem is the Biochamber production bonus reads as a footnote, and not as a fundamental stepping stone to progress and thrive on Gleba.

Yes and no. People should notice very quickly that each planet has a "main building" you unlock, which gives you +50% productivity. Before even arriving on Gleba, i assumed that i will get "some biological" building, whatever it is, with +productivity bonus. So this was hardly a surprise.

Right now, the 2% are perfect. Why? They motivate explorative gameplay. When we first landed, we were messing around. Exploring. Trying things. Manually cutting the trees and testing the recipes via hand-crafting. We got some seeds back, but quickly noticed that the "1 tree -> 50 items -> 1 seed (on average) -> 1 tree" loop is tight. Once we got the first biochamber (and the game kinda pushed you towards it via the tech-tree) we quickly saw the 50% bonus and realized, thats the way to go. This moment of discovery was amazing, and going for any chain ratio higher than 1.0 would take this "discovery" away. Gleba is tricky, took us a bit to figure it out, but we had fun the entire time (only issue was finding stuff on the map if you dont know what you are looking for).

The way i see it:
- Crafting via hand: gets you started when you first land, to make the first mash and jelly. This is not meant to give a break-even or a gain. You are supposed to find new trees (which also encourages exploring)
- Crafting via the Biochamber: the way to go to gain seeds and make it sustainable
- Crafting via assembler: handy since it does not need nutrients, good for kickstarting, but it uses electricity.

This is a very good balance in my opinion. So the only "fix" required may be a more clear hint in the tips and tricks. However, that could be a double edged sword as it would spoil (pun intended) the mechanic. Figuring this on your own is so much more rewarding!

[mrvn]

Biochambers' innate 50% productivity to gain more seeds than you lose

oh that must be why. then what is the problem?

The problem is the Biochamber production bonus reads as a footnote, and not as a fundamental stepping stone to progress and thrive on Gleba.

• People using Assembly machines to process fruits should never get stuck because they lack seeds for the next harvest.
• Gleba is already full of difficulties, this should not be one.

The bare minimum should be a more complete tip in the "Agriculture" section, with an added part such as

Process your harvest through Biological chambers to get more out of your fruits.

And OP's proposal to get 3% base rate of seeds is eminently reasonable.

I'm fine with the 50% production bonus of Biochambers being a footnote. That's a nice thing to discover. But a prominent tip to use production modules in an assembler is an essential tip. The player probably doesn't have a Biochamber when he build his first tree farm so pointing to the Biochamber is of no help.

[BlueTemplar]

Hmm, you don't think the player is going to be curious enough to confront enemies (which will be near a raft) before that point ?
(And at which point they are quite weak.)

They might lose these first eggs to spoiling, but would know where to get more of them ?

(And as a reminder, some of the players that might need help with this, are also players that might not even have productivity modules researched...)

[mrvn]

Hmm, you don't think the player is going to be curious enough to confront enemies (which will be near a raft) before that point ?
(And at which point they are quite weak.)

They might lose these first eggs to spoiling, but would know where to get more of them ?

(And as a reminder, some of the players that might need help with this, are also players that might not even have productivity modules researched...)

You can skip productivity modules to reach Gleba. But it's 50 red+green science and you really do want productivity modules (2er modules even) in your rocket silo. New players may not know that, true.

But if they don't have productivity modules then researching them when the Tips&Tricks tell you that you should use them only takes a few minutes if you left your science setup on Nauvis in a functional state. Everyone has that many science packs lying on the belts by that time if you used any kind of automation for science. Otherwise: It's a Tip, not a requirement. Don't want to research productivity to ensure more seed produced than consumed then you do you. The point of it all is to take away the surprise of running out of seeds.