Gleba early game should be made easier significantly

[angramania]

A mod that drastically changes the pacing and structure of the game is hardly relevant to a discussion around balancing.

But it allows to feel real difficulty of planets and avoid false statements like one I have cited in my previous post. Vulcanus is not easy, Gleba is not hard. Vulcanus is just the least innovative of three planets and Gleba is the most. And it is not fair to compare any of them to Nauvis.

[Tinyboss]

But it allows to feel real difficulty of planets and avoid false statements like one I have cited in my previous post.

The "real difficulty" is the difficulty in unmodded vanilla. The statement was not false whatsoever.

I also don't think it's clear that Gleba is more innovative than Fulgora. You still get power in the same way, you still run production chains from simple ingredients to complex. Spoilage and nutrients are new, but kind of on top of the standard mechanics. Fulgora turns everything upside down. I would put them about equal in terms of innovation, and Vulcanus far, far back.

[Hares]

The "real difficulty" is the difficulty in unmodded vanilla. The statement was not false whatsoever.

The "Real™ Difficulty" is the unmodded 1.1 vanilla. Can't get to play it because of lack of 2.0 QoL.

[Tinyboss]

The "Real™ Difficulty" is the unmodded 1.1 vanilla. Can't get to play it because of lack of 2.0 QoL.

The real difficulty of the new planets is in 1.1? I can't tell what you're trying to say.

[angramania]

The "real difficulty" is the difficulty in unmodded vanilla. The statement was not false whatsoever.

Ok. In this case any of three planet is easier than Nauvis. Cause you need to produce only one science pack on each of them and these science pack have very simple recipes. Gleba is trivial if you import rocket parts components and export bioflux and science pack. All you need is two agricultural towers and several biochambers, process both fruits to bioflux, create nutrients from bioflux. eggs from bioflux and nutrients, science pack from eggs, bioflux and nutrients. It is simpler than blue science.

I also don't think it's clear that Gleba is more innovative than Fulgora. You still get power in the same way, you still run production chains from simple ingredients to complex. Spoilage and nutrients are new, but kind of on top of the standard mechanics. Fulgora turns everything upside down. I would put them about equal in terms of innovation, and Vulcanus far, far back.

On Fulgora you still run run production chains from simple ingredients to complex. Just some ingredients and even complex products you get from recycling, so you need only two new recipes, one for recycling scrap and one for recycling everything else. On Gleba and Vulcanus you have more new recipes and chains.

[Givikap120]

“Limited by your plants growing”? What does this mean? In fact, Gleba resources are “more infinite” than Vulcanus resources, since the lava stuff requires calcite. Gleba plants grow with no input, you only need planting area (it’s not hard to get and you don’t need much) and defenses from enemies. Sure, tesla and artillery weapons help against pentapods, but they’re certainly not necessary. By the time you reach high pentapod evolution, you will probably have at least one of those two anyway.

I don't think it's reasonable to compare billion of calcite per second on 10M patches with 700% productivity bonuses and free lava ready to be turned in 1000 iron per second with gleba where there's 0 tech that improve your production, modules have no effects of growing, and growing facilities are very painful to setup before you can turn entire biome in arable land (so in the late game).
I can make like 5 mining outposts on nauvis before I will be able to make 1 good-sized gleba farming outpost that will output like 10x less resources than one outpost on nauvis.
There's no point in truly infinite resources when you get 0 of them and it's very hard to scale (even space platforms are easier to scale than gleba and they also have infinite resources).

Like gleba is literally the only planet where you can't speedup base resource production with technologies/modules/quality. The fact that gleba is also the most painful to scale is not a coincidence.
And this is in addition to fact that it's the hardest mid-game planet to start on (I would say that Aquilo is harder to start, but here you at least don't punished as severely for your mistakes).

[Givikap120]

Okay, my suggestion to balance planets (maybe I will make a mod later that does this):

Vulcanus:
- output of lava to iron/copper is reduced in 4 times
- 4x more lava required for iron/copper recipes
- 4x less steam produced by acid neutralization
- solar panels output 2 times less energy than before
This is addressing issue of everything being too free on Vulcanus.
It's still the most powerful production planet but at least the difference would not be that huge, when energy, iron and copper are not so free.
Oil balance is already fine, so it's not touched.

Fulgora:
- bots are 2x slower and take 4x more energy than on other planets because of electrical interference in the atmosphere
Nerfs bot-based factories that make early game on Fulgora too easy. Other Fulgora solutions are decently balanced.

Gleba:
- increase basic seed production
- slowdown nutrients and processed fruit spoiling time in 4 times
- slowdown evolution (iirc this was already made in the recent patch, but I haven't tested it)
- remove spoiling scaling from science pack research value
- add infinite tech that's increasing fruit output from 1 tree. Name it like "better fertilizer"
- higher quality seeding towers have significantly more range and speed
First 3 are addressing painful start problem, when last 2 make it less painful to scale gleba production. 4th one is just annoying and feels like mocking "ha-ha, those science packs are the most painful and you also need 2x more of them compared to every other science pack".

Aquilo and Nauvis are fine as is.