Gleba has killed the game for me.

[Nemoricus]

They all spoiled. Here is the result. I blame Kovarex. I think he must be the masochist of the group. I imagine this was his idea, and furthermore his idea to make it a recipe for science. All those lines stop moving when your transport platform is en-route

Oh, I'm going to have some fun with this one later

nuke2.png

I prevent this sort of thing by never stopping science production. If the silos are full, the most spoiled packs are removed and cascaded down the line until they reach a holding area to let the excess packs spoil.

There's never a way for the line to fully back up.

[BlueTemplar]

You can also avoid it by

not having a line (direct insertion)

.
(Ok, technically you still probably need

at least 2 tiles of belt for the circular recipe, as well as the biochamber's buffers, but this can be handled with only a few laser turrets.

)

[adam_bise]

Prevent? Nay, I say amplify! Now I just need to figure out a freshness regulating hack that somehow splits and re-merges stacks to make all the stacks the same freshness... hmm.....

[Nemoricus]

You can also avoid it by

not having a line (direct insertion)

.
(Ok, technically you still probably need

at least 2 tiles of belt for the circular recipe, as well as the biochamber's buffers, but this can be handled with only a few laser turrets.

)

My method needs no laser turrets.

[EustaceCS]

I prevent this sort of thing by never stopping science production. If the silos are full, the most spoiled packs are removed and cascaded down the line until they reach a holding area to let the excess packs spoil.

That's actually a good one.

Inserters can be configured to prefer most spoiled thing (and, since viewtopic.php?p=639262#p639262 , "most spoiled" is also expected to prefer actual spoilage above all things - but this kink can be ironed out by whitelist filters...)
+ storage big enough (stationary cargo wagon) can serve multiple crafting machines with different per-inserter rules
+ crafted spoilables inherit average spoilage percent of its spoilable components
= the most spoiled eggs (in combo with most spoiled bioflux) are utilized first in dedicated egg recycling biolabs, science packs made with these spoil first, while most fresh egg+salad is being used for "proper" sciene packs designated for shipping, no problem!
No wires necessary, just making sure that there are always more bioflux than eggs in biochamber-serving wagons is enough.

Sir/ma'am, you have my respect. You've literally made Gleba playable for me. Couldn't find the solution for my level of laziness. And this one is exactly on my level of laziness.

[Nemoricus]

Sir/ma'am, you have my respect. You've literally made Gleba playable for me. Couldn't find the solution for my level of laziness. And this one is exactly on my level of laziness.

Inserters being able to remove items from rocket silos was the main insight for me. Once I realized that it made designing a set up that ensures the silos only hold the freshest science packs much easier.

And if the packs spoil in the silo there are heating towers adjacent to the silos for immediate disposal. It ideally wouldn't reach that point, but since I don't have an exact ratio of science production to rocket silos, I accept that there's going to be some losses.

[adam_bise]

Inserters can be configured to prefer most spoiled

HAH! totally missed that one. NICE

[BlueTemplar]

You can also avoid it by

not having a line (direct insertion)

.
(Ok, technically you still probably need

at least 2 tiles of belt for the circular recipe, as well as the biochamber's buffers, but this can be handled with only a few laser turrets.

)

My method needs no laser turrets.

Well, it's not like I stop my agriscience production either...

Also remember that producing the initial ingredients for science causes pollen spread, so as long as you run production you'll probably need some kind of turret somewhere anyway (or patrolling to kill new rafts).

Might as well slap down a few in range of where live eggs are.

[Nemoricus]

I have no static defence and have only been attacked once so far. I do have some spidertrons guarding the agricultural areas to act as a rapid response force.

[CheeseMcBurger]

Gleba fucking sucks! There are so many reason it sucks, I really don't care to write them all down. Fuck Gleba and fuck the fucking Stompers and shit!

[adam_bise]

Gleba fucking sucks! There are so many reason it sucks, I really don't care to write them all down. Fuck Gleba and fuck the fucking Stompers and shit!

Lol stompers are easy

[J-H]

You can kill a stomper with nothing but two onboard lasers and a couple of exoskeletons for speed.
It just takes a bit.

[MisterDoctor]

Gleba fucking sucks! There are so many reason it sucks, I really don't care to write them all down. Fuck Gleba and fuck the fucking Stompers and shit!

I'm the opposite on Gleba but I do understand the frustration/disappointment

[Clair]

I think the one change that'd make Gleba more fun, is removing time-based and pollen-based evolution, and instead basing it on how much Agriculture Science you used.

Time-based evolution starts when the player arrives, which feels awful. It encourages players to arrive to Gleba last, and to over-prepare for it.

Pollen-based evolution punishes building a small factory to begin with and experimenting with the loop. When I played Gleba, I had to spend many hours building an empty factory, no-power placards blinking, life-less belts, etc... It was so boring. Loading it up with fruit only for the fruit to waste would make the enemy too strong to deal with without rocket turrets sooner, so it had to be built that way. It felt like coding for weeks without ever hitting compile.

[BlueTemplar]

But it doesn't, since a small factory also means only a few trees needed, so the evolution from pollen is negligible.

You can build over to block trees from being planted.

And you've worsened the evolution from time issue that way.

[MisterDoctor]

removing time-based and pollen-based evolution...
Time-based evolution starts when the player arrives...

for me, I went to Gleba first, but I had sent a platform to Gleba before I went there myself, and that started the timer early. all I could see of Gleba was a black screen for a long time. it got all the way up to 24% evo by the time I actually landed there.

but it was not so bad. the stompers were almost unstoppable at first, but they only attack farms and

you can take them out with enough yellow bullet gun turrets anyway or just a bunch of rockets

and unlike other places, lots of the tech you get on Gleba actually directly helps you on Gleba.

I think I wish that the devs had worked on a more modern-style DLC and made it just early space and Gleba for now, and sold that for more like $15-20 USD.

I think they implemented WAY too much all at once, not allowing themselves any player feedback before continuing.

with the base game, they have been iterating on that part of the game for years and years. but with Space Age, they tried to make something of similar scale but to do it all at once, release it once, and barely iterate on it at all? I don't get it. approaching it this way, it is basically doomed to have serious issues.

another thing to keep in mind is that this is an expansion, and is post-rocket content. this should be more challenging than the base game.

[BlueTemplar]

What do you mean, we know that there was a LOT of iteration on the expansion, for years and years (also, remember the scrapped campaign ?)
https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-417

Or do you mean that there was no open iteration, only a closed beta one (which still is player feedback) ?

Yeah, releasing planets one by one would have been safer... but then I suspect it would also have been much harder to find the proper balance between them... do you know of mini-expansions like this that successfully pulled it out ?
(And might also have taken even more time, and we know that Wube is a bit tired of Factorio, so the later planets are likely to have suffered from that.)

[aka13]

I would not be so categorical, but I agree in general that more feedback loops with external players would have been nice. It was juggled around a lot in the closed beta, and imo still not enough, simply because of the pressing release date.
If such playtesting happened sooner, more radical changes would have been possible. Same with endgame, or quality as well. While it was really cool as a "wow"-factor not seeing the content alltogether before launch, I would have preferred voicing my concerns way earlier than that.

[fredthedeadhead]

Gleba is making zero sense to me at all. I would really appreciate a very significant look at the mechanics, to make them more incremental.

I need a way to get seeds. I keep running out. I've used a Biochamber, but it doesn't matter, I still run out of seeds.

They need to do something like add a recipe that turns a fruit directly into seeds.

[J-H]

Once you get several biochambers doing the processing, you end up drowning in seeds. It's like Kovarex Enrichment; just one doesn't generate excess fast enough to make much difference.

Also, have you tried putting productivity modules on your biochamber?