Gleba has killed the game for me.

[fredthedeadhead]

I have another idea: Add a way of getting spoilage independently, without any research or advanced equipment.

Providing an easy, albeit inefficient, way to get power initially on Gleba via burning spoilage helps with getting power. It introduces spoilage as a useful material that the player should aim to use, and demonstrates how. This initial power generation mechanism is also interesting, because while the player might depend on it initially, they will find that they can remove it later (just like coal power on Nauvis), or improve it with the heating tower.

A few examples come to mind as to how to provide a way of getting spoilage:

1. Add 'spoilage' patches to the Gleba surface (maybe a forest died and rotted). These can be mined manually, or by mining machines.
2. Add a recipe to the biochamber: spoilage generation. The biochamber can slowly produce spoilage at a limited rate, without requiring any resources.
3. Add a recipe to the chemical plant that takes water, and produces spoilage by filtering the algae rich content of the water.

[fredthedeadhead]

Here's yet another crappy Gleba experience:

- I find there's some bugs encroaching on my border.
- I go and kill them.
- Neat, I have some pentapod eggs. I should make some biochambers while I have the chance.
- Bummer, I don't have enough iron plates to make any.
- My base doesn't have enough power to run the furnaces.
- Okay, so I should go and gather some burnables.
- This takes some time while, because I have to go far away to manually mine trees, because I harvested the closest ones, because I KEEP running out of power, because my tree farm doesn't work, because I don't have enough seeds.
- I run out of time, so the pentapod eggs spoil, so the effort was completely wasted.

Oh well.

[aka13]

I have no idea how one would build a base or mall on Gleba without external power. You could harvest and burn trees constantly, but that would cause amassive pollution cloud...
I tried honest to god, I did, with carbon, but after a lot of frustration and brownouts simply decided to import nuclear fuel. Gleba more dependant on external power for me than Aquilo.

[SirSmuggler]

Perhaps you could share a picture of your set up so we can figure out what the problem might be?

Sure, here's a pic. It shows that the biochamber has produced almost 4000 products, but the 2 tree farms are empty.

Not shown in the screenshot is a the regular power outage (I took the SS just between the 'power cut' icons blinking) because Gleba doesn't give enough seeds to actually start a base.

I think it looks similar to the setup you shared, but I'm not doubting that it is possible to get to that stage. But the problem is that it's taking hours and hours and HOURS to get ANY seeds. I literally can't play the factory building game.

I'm sad you have such a bad time on Gleba. I managed to get my base going, I did start with some imports tough, mainly small solar array (mabye 40 panels and 20 accumulators). I allso had my fancy Fulgora armor which probobly helped more then I realice.

As to the screenshot, I see one potetial problem. It looks like you store fruit in a chest and have an inserter takeing spoilage from that cehst. That would imply you harvest more fruit then you have time to process before it spoils. That would lead to seed loss if that is what is happening.
I have a circuit condtion on my agritower so it stops harvesting if my buffer (in my case the belt leading to the fruit processing) has enough fruit allready.

Hope you manage to turn it around!

[Visione]

Perhaps you could share a picture of your set up so we can figure out what the problem might be?

Sure, here's a pic. It shows that the biochamber has produced almost 4000 products, but the 2 tree farms are empty.

Not shown in the screen shot is a the regular power outage (I took the SS just between the 'power cut' icons blinking) because Gleba doesn't give enough seeds to actually start a base.

I think it looks similar to the set-up you shared, but I'm not doubting that it is possible to get to that stage. But the problem is that it's taking hours and hours and HOURS to get ANY seeds. I literally can't play the factory building game.

I would recommend that maybe it's better to not use the heating tower early on, its a bit of a trap. Yes, it has 250% efficiency, but it actually also consumes the input even if you draw no power. At low power draw, the heating tower is incredible inefficient! So early on, with a small base/lower power drawn, normal boilers and steam engines will be more efficient, and prevents you from burning everything into oblivion. (Unless you are really trying to get rid of something ofcourse.)

After that, go out in the world, and just farm Yumako tree's by hand/pers. robots, at least like ... 500/1k yumako's! Also farm spoilage by hand, this can be farmed from numerous plants. (maybe do the spoilage first) Put it all in that biochamber, and that nutrient assembler. Hopefully that's enough.

Without productivity, 1 seed should yield 50 yumako, which should on average, with no productivity at all, yield you 1 seed again, from the basic yamuko processing recipe. So, as long as none of your yumako's spoil (this is important), you should be able to get enough seeds to keep it going! You should get your spoilage, for nutrients, from some other source. If nutrients/spoilage is hard to maintain early on, you can use the yumako recipe in the assembler, you will have less productivity bonus. But even with no productivity, it should be able to sustain itself if you process all yumako and not let anything spoil!

[Nemoricus]

A couple of things I noticed:

1. It looks like you're relying on fruits spoiling to get the spoilage for nutrients, which is the worst possible way to go about it, since you're losing potential seeds that way. If you're going to use spoilage for nutrients, let the *mash* spoil and use that for nutrients.

2. Better still would be turning the mash into nutrients, which would just need one more biochamber.

3. You can eliminate the need for any biochambers while still getting a self sustaining build up by using assembling machines with productivity modules to process the fruits.

4. Processing fruits with productivity is the most important thing for getting seeds to expand production. If fruits are spoiling you don't have enough processing capacity for the amount of fruits you're making. Never let them spoil.

[Muche]

Sure, here's a pic. [...]

The issue in this setup is that it's using raw yumako to create nutrients for the biochamber.
4-prod-moduled biochamber does about 2 crafts per one nutrient. One nutrient is 10 spoilage. That's 10 yumako.
So it's using 22 yumako to produce 7 yumako mash and 7% of a yumako seed.
One full tree gives 50 fruit, so out of one tree it's producing about 15% of a seed.

You coult try to process yumako in AM3 (one tree -> about 1.24 seeds)

Gleba-YumakoLoop-AM3.jpg (495.34 KiB) Viewed 708 times

or create nutrients from yumako mash (one tree -> 1.74 seeds)

Gleba-YumakoLoop-Biochamber.jpg (488.58 KiB) Viewed 708 times

[Khazul]

It is sustainable as long as you have productivity modules in the step that processes the fruits or the biochamber's productivity bonus. Perhaps you could share a picture of your set up so we can figure out what the problem might be?

Productivity helps certainly, but the big thing is using efficiency modules.

Biochambers are powered by nutrients, not electricity. The 'power' consumption figure relates to nutrient based energy, not electrical energy. If you look on your power grid you will so no biochambers listed.

Efficiency modules reduce the nutrient requirements (signifcantly) from what I can tell. I tend to put 2x2* efficiency and 2x2* productivity in each one along with single beacon with another 2x2* efficiency. This combined brings the nutrient energy consumption down to the lowest possible (100KW).

With this it becomes trivial to have large number of biochambers fed from a small group of bioflux and spoilage to nutrient converters.

To those struggling:

Gleba is a pain in the ass if you are set in the old typical building mindsets for eg arrays of linear belted buildings surrounded by mass beacons etc as you will be relentlessly hammered by energy consumption (nutrients) and spoilage blocking belts etc especially when production exceeds demand and they back up which is the usual way to build. On Gleba you may want demand to exceed production slightly (ie opposite of normal) instead so stuff gets used quickly and doesnt spoil, belt dotn backup etc and stuff doesnt collect in logistics boxes to spoil. Speed modules are basically no go as they crank up nutrient cost massively. Minimising nutrient energy consumption seemed to be the key to getting production going quickly and effectively.
For spoilage I basically run sushi belts around small groups of low energy biochambers (8 usually) with inserters grabbing spoilage into provider chests so that logistics can clear them away ASAP.

Get bioflux up and running ASAP, then get bioflux to nutrients up and running. You will then have vast amounts of nutrients to power everything in conjunction with the efficiency and productivity modules.

I did briefly have a WTF for a while regarding seeds when I first got there, but after a long forage walkabout and hand crafting stuff as I went to clear inventory space gave me a load of nutrients, seeds, iron, copper, wood etc to get going.

I have to wonder if new players get on relatively better with Gleba as they wont have old build patterns and habits to mess everything up. OTOH, those with many hours will know the kind of tricks to help deal with the mindset shift.

[J-H]

Productivity helps certainly, but the big thing is using efficiency modules.

Biochambers are powered by nutrients, not electricity. The 'power' consumption figure relates to nutrient based energy, not electrical energy. If you look on your power grid you will so no biochambers listed.

Efficiency modules reduce the nutrient requirements (signifcantly) from what I can tell. I tend to put 2x2* efficiency and 2x2* productivity in each one along with single beacon with another 2x2* efficiency. This combined brings the nutrient energy consumption down to the lowest possible (100KW).

With this it becomes trivial to have large number of biochambers fed from a small group of bioflux and spoilage to nutrient converters.

Whoa, thanks! I didn't know this.

[Khazul]

Productivity helps certainly, but the big thing is using efficiency modules.

Biochambers are powered by nutrients, not electricity. The 'power' consumption figure relates to nutrient based energy, not electrical energy. If you look on your power grid you will so no biochambers listed.

Efficiency modules reduce the nutrient requirements (signifcantly) from what I can tell. I tend to put 2x2* efficiency and 2x2* productivity in each one along with single beacon with another 2x2* efficiency. This combined brings the nutrient energy consumption down to the lowest possible (100KW).

With this it becomes trivial to have large number of biochambers fed from a small group of bioflux and spoilage to nutrient converters.

Whoa, thanks! I didn't know this.

Just a quick test setup in a creative world using the mod 'Rate Calculator' to show me what resources are used. The recipe is Bioflux.
8x Biochamber with 4x2* productivity in each, no beacon:

12-02-2024, 21-42-43.png (113.28 KiB) Viewed 601 times

8x Biochamber with 4x2* productivity in each, beacon has 2x2* efficiency:

12-02-2024, 21-43-48.png (103.31 KiB) Viewed 601 times

8x Biochamber with 2x2* efficiency + 2x2* productivity in each, no beacon:

12-02-2024, 21-45-06.png (100.92 KiB) Viewed 601 times

8x Biochamber with 2x2* efficiency + 2x2* productivity in each, beacon has 2x2* efficiency:

12-02-2024, 21-45-52.png (98.77 KiB) Viewed 601 times

As expected, non nutrient resources consumed vs outputs and production rates vary with productivity, but see the huge change in nutrient consumption.

The one I generally use is the bottom one (exception for science and cant remember if anything else). The resource consumption difference isn't a big when I am not trying to compress belts (as compressed backed up belts on Gleba generally just means more spoilage, more trouble etc), but the nutrient consumption difference is huge.

[fredthedeadhead]

Thanks for the advice above, however, I can see two different perspectives on it.

One is that yes, Gleba is a system and it's possible to make it work. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to explain the solution. It's a shame it appears there is only one, and the game punishes experimentation by destroying the limited resources.

The other is from a general user's perspective: it is entirely opaque how to even get started on Gleba. It's an absolutely awful experience in comparison with the other planets. Nothing is explained. There's no Factoriopedia entries. The game doesn't provide enough primary resources to be able to experiment. When I have to resort to asking for help (which is not what I want to do in a puzzle game, I want to solve the puzzle myself), I get contradictory advice (which is it: biochambers are required, or assembly machines? The furnace is great, or it's not?) I have to somehow intuit that Gleba requires some advanced, late-tech tree equipment (which contradicts the information that each planet can be tackled in any order, and independently.)

I still feel really frustrated that I couldn't make any progress, and copying someone else's design is not enjoyable for me. So, I've decided to fix the nightmare that is Gleba in my own way! I've created a mod that adds two recipes:

- 10 fruit can be converted to 1 seed (either in assemblers or by hand)
- 200 water can be converted to 1 spoilage (in a chemical plant)

I've been using it for a short while, and now I feel like I can make some progress! I actually have trees and power! It gives me a solid base on which I can experiment and improve. It's a completely different game, and I don't feel like I have to know the answer to the puzzle before I can start solving it! My factory is very crappy, but that's okay, now I can tinker with it and actually make some progress.

I would also like to add my other ideas:

- Agri farms don't _always_ destroy trees, but instead can continually harvest fruit.
- Nutrients are not _required_, but without them a recipe is severely nerfed.

And I have another idea:

- Agri farms can farm regular trees too, and that will provide a stable source of wood for helping with power at the start.

It really sucks that I need to write my own mod to be able to play on Gleba, but whatever. I really hope that Gleba is fixed eventually.

[adam_bise]

Here's yet another crappy Gleba experience:

- I find there's some bugs encroaching on my border.
- I go and kill them.
- Neat, I have some pentapod eggs. I should make some biochambers while I have the chance.
- Bummer, I don't have enough iron plates to make any.
- My base doesn't have enough power to run the furnaces.
- Okay, so I should go and gather some burnables.
- This takes some time while, because I have to go far away to manually mine trees, because I harvested the closest ones, because I KEEP running out of power, because my tree farm doesn't work, because I don't have enough seeds.
- I run out of time, so the pentapod eggs spoil, so the effort was completely wasted.

Oh well.

What I did was get a bio chamber making rocket fuel ASAP. I still use rocket fuel as my primary power source. It doesn't take much to make a single bio chamber. If you had the resources to make furnaces then you could have easily made an automated rocket fuel setup. You say you have trouble finding burnables, but on Gleba that just doesn't make sense to me since literally everything is burnable.

[adam_bise]

I have no idea how one would build a base or mall on Gleba without external power. You could harvest and burn trees constantly, but that would cause amassive pollution cloud...
I tried honest to god, I did, with carbon, but after a lot of frustration and brownouts simply decided to import nuclear fuel. Gleba more dependant on external power for me than Aquilo.

lol you guys are funny. I have too much power in that sometimes my burnoff boilers back up. So I built an array of accus and switch my main boilers to cycle between charging and discharging the accus then my spoilage and waste burners can actually keep up getting rid of that free power. Lol import nuclear? That seems a little like importing sand to the desert.

Everything is burnable, and spoilable so think about it. If your belts are backing up, then put a de-prioritized splitter going to some boilers, now you have solved both your spoilage issue and your power issue.. You will need rocket fuel for silos anyway so may as well use that.

BTW there is no pollution on Gleba, only spores from harvesting Yumako and Jellynut.

[Khazul]

Thanks for the advice above, however, I can see two different perspectives on it.

One is that yes, Gleba is a system and it's possible to make it work. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to explain the solution. It's a shame it appears there is only one, and the game punishes experimentation by destroying the limited resources.

The other is from a general user's perspective: it is entirely opaque how to even get started on Gleba. It's an absolutely awful experience in comparison with the other planets. Nothing is explained. There's no Factoriopedia entries. The game doesn't provide enough primary resources to be able to experiment. When I have to resort to asking for help (which is not what I want to do in a puzzle game, I want to solve the puzzle myself), I get contradictory advice (which is it: biochambers are required, or assembly machines? The furnace is great, or it's not?) I have to somehow intuit that Gleba requires some advanced, late-tech tree equipment (which contradicts the information that each planet can be tackled in any order, and independently.)

I still feel really frustrated that I couldn't make any progress, and copying someone else's design is not enjoyable for me. So, I've decided to fix the nightmare that is Gleba in my own way! I've created a mod that adds two recipes:

- 10 fruit can be converted to 1 seed (either in assemblers or by hand)
- 200 water can be converted to 1 spoilage (in a chemical plant)

I've been using it for a short while, and now I feel like I can make some progress! I actually have trees and power! It gives me a solid base on which I can experiment and improve. It's a completely different game, and I don't feel like I have to know the answer to the puzzle before I can start solving it! My factory is very crappy, but that's okay, now I can tinker with it and actually make some progress.

I would also like to add my other ideas:

- Agri farms don't _always_ destroy trees, but instead can continually harvest fruit.
- Nutrients are not _required_, but without them a recipe is severely nerfed.

And I have another idea:

- Agri farms can farm regular trees too, and that will provide a stable source of wood for helping with power at the start.

It really sucks that I need to write my own mod to be able to play on Gleba, but whatever. I really hope that Gleba is fixed eventually.

Much as I like many mods, these feel more like cheats TBH, but each to their own.
It really doesnt take long to gather a bunch of local resource when you first arrive. Of course you need to realise certain things about the biomes and what is where. Just earlier in case I mis-remebered I went for a wonder for 10 mins hand gathering and came back with loads of processing products and good number of seeds from hand processing yumako and jellynuts and had loads of iron and copper and wood.

I get and agree about the lack of initial guidence but I cant say I ever felt a need to mod it and I am quite impatient at times, hate grinds etc. By the time you get to the game stage of travelling to planets - why on earth do people not take tech with them then complain it is a struggle to get going. Some like that fresh struggle on each planet, some dont. The game lets you decide if you want that or whether you want to take the bits for a large base with you as a quick start.

If power is such a big problem - take the bits and loads of fuel for a nuclear power plant (my quick start setup includes 160MW nuclear power, some smelters, silos and cargo hub+bays, so I just need to find resources and unlock tech and deal with the build style challenges - not power) - there is plenty of water and it isnt as if there are impacting limits on how big you make a ship or specifically how much cargo it can carry.

If you need to see someone do it to give you a kind of Eureka moment, then I might suggest hunting down some of Nilaus recent video on youtube. His approach to Gleba ended up being quite similar to mine in many ways, so it seems a decent enough source of guidence for anyone struggling (its a lets play, not a tutorial, but his stuff is informative for those who could use some help). Seems a shame to mod your way around it when it is doable without that much of a struggle. I get that sometimes it needs thigs to click into place or a big visual hint as typed words just dont bring it home.

While you can start from scratch on each planet (TBH, I never did, so not 100% sure about this), doing so seems like making your life much harder for no good reason. Maybe your base back at nauvis is not well developed and you cant support production for off-planet, + ships too minimal etc (I have no idea)? Before I left the planet I had a extensive rail based huge base with good production going (enough to handle 20+ 12 speed beacon rocket + productivity silos in continual use) and purple and yellow science pretty much all done because I had half an idea what was ahead (but no details of course).

As for planet ordering - yes in theory with in limits you can probably do them in whatever order you want (for the inner planets at least) but there is definitely an optimal or easiest order I think. I actually went to Gleba second, but after a look around and I thought sod this initially and hitched a ride back up, left the starter base there and went to Fulgora. But thats the advantage of bringing a load of stuff to get you going fast - you have that option. You are not stuck there for a long time. Rule #1 for me with the planets was bringing bits to get back off planet immediately if I realised that doing that planet at that time was a bad idea.

[Nemoricus]

When I have to resort to asking for help (which is not what I want to do in a puzzle game, I want to solve the puzzle myself), I get contradictory advice (which is it: biochambers are required, or assembly machines?)

*Productivity* is essentially required for sustainable fruit processing. The biochamber has an innate productivity bonus, but assembling machines with productivity modules can also serve this role.

Also, not letting fruits spoil. If fruits spoil that's lost chances to get seeds back, and can lead to a net loss.

The furnace is great, or it's not?

The heating tower *is* great. It's very convenient for disposing of excess production and spoilage. It also makes for a good power source when coupled with jellynuts.

It can also be used for builds that are specifically meant to accumulate seeds. Take the fruits, process them in a biochamber or assembling machine with productivity modules, store seeds not needed to replant the trees, and send the jelly/mash into a heating tower. This is effectively what my power build does.

I have to somehow intuit that Gleba requires some advanced, late-tech tree equipment (which contradicts the information that each planet can be tackled in any order, and independently.)

It requires nothing from the other planets. I used turbo transport belts when I was working on Gleba, but they weren't required at all. I could have done the builds with express belts instead, though I may have needed to split production lines where it would have overwhelmed the capacity of those belts. I used nothing else from other planets.

I did import infrastructure, but belts aside it was all things that could be produced on Nauvis alone, and I did not need nuclear power at any point.

[Muche]

There is an idea of Add a Yumako and Jellynut tree to the Gleba starting area, which would help by creating a small playground to figure Gleba recipes out. (Assuming all harvested fruit gets processed though.)

[mouzy]

IIRC there is a bug that can occasionally prevent tips and tricks entries from appearing (not sure if that's been fixed yet), but there are entries for Gleba that help to get started. Between those and the factoriopedia I think it gives pretty thorough info, but if they are missing for someone that could be a big issue.

[angramania]

The other is from a general user's perspective: it is entirely opaque how to even get started on Gleba. It's an absolutely awful experience in comparison with the other planets. Nothing is explained. There's no Factoriopedia entries.
I don't feel like I have to know the answer to the puzzle before I can start solving it!

There are factoriopedia entries for all techs/items/recipes. There several tips and tricks which include animated pictures with possible setups. And even tech tree shows you right way.
Could you please decide if you want to solve puzzle yourself or just want to get ready answer and mark that you "solved" it.

The game doesn't provide enough primary resources to be able to experiment.

Only if you are stubborn in doing everything wrong way. But it is exactly the same for any part of Factorio, not just Gleba.

I have to somehow intuit that Gleba requires some advanced, late-tech tree equipment (which contradicts the information that each planet can be tackled in any order, and independently.)

I have done it with "start any planet" mod. That means barehanded and no science at all.
It was quite surprise to discover that all three planet needed almost same time to get to red+green automated. I expected that it will take much less time on Fulgora or Vulcanus than on Gleba.

copying someone else's design is not enjoyable for me

There are so many ways to win Gleba. You do not need to copy anyone's design but make your own. You just need to open recipes in factoriopedia and read them attentively. Lets take energy for example
spoilage 250KJ. Too low.
carbon 2MJ. You can get one carbon from 4(do not forget biochamber 50% bonus productibity) spoilage. It doubles energy value. But 12s craft time may take too many nutrients to compensate it. Better use it for carbon fiber.
Yumako 2MJ. Not bad, but you loose seeds.
Yumako mash 1MJ. You get 3 yumako mash per one yumako. And you get seeds. But it spoils very fast so you need to burn it fast too.
Jellynut 10MJ. Good but you loose seeds.
Jelly 1MJ. You get only 6 jelly from jellynut. Pure waste.
Rocket fuel 100MJ. This one is a bit harder to calculate in head. But there are factory calculators. So it will take 3.82 Jellynut and 1.22 Yumako to produce. Burned directly they would provide less then 40MJ cause they spoil. Rocket fuel doesn't spoil and do not have reduced value if produced from partially spoiled ingredients. Obviously it is best candidate. One biochamber can produce 20 per minute - 33MW in boilers and 80MW in heating tower. Enough for small base producing 120SPM and rockets to transport it to platform.

- 10 fruit can be converted to 1 seed (either in assemblers or by hand)

Just use biochamber and you will have to burn excess seeds.

- 200 water can be converted to 1 spoilage (in a chemical plant)

What for? Well I sometimes have not enough spoilage for sulphur/carbon on Gleba but I can always reduce efficiency of my factory to get plenty of it. Or add one biochamber to produce nutrients for spoiling only. And looks like most people have opposite problem - too many spoilage.

- Agri farms don't _always_ destroy trees, but instead can continually harvest fruit.
- Nutrients are not _required_, but without them a recipe is severely nerfed.

And I have another idea:
- Agri farms can farm regular trees too, and that will provide a stable source of wood for helping with power at the start.

I have better idea - people should understand existing mechanics before generating ideas of "improvements".

[SirSmuggler]

why on earth do people not take tech with them then complain it is a struggle to get going.

When I landed on my first planet after Nauvis (Fulgora) I actualy thought you needed a landing pad to receive anything from orbit. So i had to start with nothing. Only after I had managed to make a some what decent starter base there did I realize you could just drop things from the platform

[SirSmuggler]

IIRC there is a bug that can occasionally prevent tips and tricks entries from appearing (not sure if that's been fixed yet), but there are entries for Gleba that help to get started. Between those and the factoriopedia I think it gives pretty thorough info, but if they are missing for someone that could be a big issue.

Mabye that is an issue. I did get a tone of "tips" poping up early game. But for Gleba specificaly I did not receive a single one. Come to think of it, I don't think I've seen any tips popups since first leaving Nauvis.

The in game wiki entries are all there though so all information I need is avalible and I have managed to get my bases going on all three "starter" planets.