They need to rename Gleba to Bartleby

[unistrut]

Because you can sum that planet up as I would rather not.

600 hours in old Factorio, have a couple of friends with similar (or greater) hour counts. They got started before I did, so I heard them talking about various things before I got there.

I was always the one who did the most playing with circuits, so when I heard them saying "oh you have to use circuits on Gleba" I was intrigued.

Intrigued and nothing in the game indicated I was about to make a really poor decision.

So I went to Gleba first. I've stopped playing Factorio. It has admittedly made me way more productive in real life, but it's also killed my enjoyment of the game I have spent the most time in according to Steam. Like yeah, I could reload from an earlier save and go to another planet first, but that just delays having to come back to Gleba. I would rather not.

I think there's a bunch of reasons why that planet seems to kill the game for so many people:

1 - The terrain is just a mess. There are too many colors, borders are too chaotic, it's too hard to see the things you need. This causes several problems early on.
a - Unlocking several early technologies involves harvesting various resources. Good luck spotting those! I had a leg up since I already knew what a "stromatolite" was, but I still had problems identifying them from the background. I only spotted the first one by accidentally mousing over it and noticing the name.
b - There are multiple species of plants, some of which explode when harvested, and only two that are vital for your progress. They're at least slightly visually distinct on the mini-map but I still managed to walk past them for a bit because I figured "okay, more trees. Yay. I don't need more wood or rot right now."
c - "You can't build that there!" Just trying to get power started up was a pain. I brought equipment and burnables so I could set up steam power and I'd try and place an offshore pump and it would show it as green until I tried to build it and then get told "Oh, there's purple tentacles there! You can't build that." Cliffs are present, but almost impossible to see unless you're zoomed in.

2 - The in-game documentation is basically useless. It doesn't warn you that this is the hardest planet. The things you need to build don't seem to show you what you can build them with so you wind up placing an assembler and then trying to figure out why the recipe hasn't shown up. Do I need a chem plant? A refinery? One of the new buildings I don't have yet because I haven't made 500 piles of sludge I don't have a use for yet? Who knows! I certainly don't!
"Okay, I've made a farm. I'll place it. I've put seeds in it. Why isn't anything happening?" It's only after exiting the game and reading another guide that I learned that until you've researched some fancy dirt technology you need to place farms on specific terrain in order for them to work. Is this explained in-game? I couldn't find it.

3 - Rotting rates discourage experimentation. The above wouldn't be so bad except the ridiculous decay rates mean that when you're trying to trial and error your way through things you're constantly finding "oh, I need that thing. I think I've got one of those - no, I have a pile of mush. How did I get that again?"

4 - There are multiple optimizations you need to do that are not explained. You can find it on this very forum. Someone will post that "Gleba is terrible" and some reply will be "Oh, you need to <do thing that is not intuitively obvious and is certainly not documented in any clear fashion> and then it's super easy!"

5 - There doesn't seem to be any ramp up. In original Factorio, you started loading iron ore into coal fired furnaces and making simple belts and simple factories. Then you started generating electricity. Then you built more complexity on top of that and before you even realized it there was a massive sprawling factory of interlocking dependencies humming away. There doesn't seem to be any simple starting task on Gleba. No introduction to any of the entirely new gameplay concepts you need to use. If you try and make a factory that doesn't have multiple enhancements and optimizations you don't get a slow factory, you get a factory that doesn't work at all, produces mush or even worse active enemies, and you get to start all over. I've tried looking at guides for Gleba, but even ones that claim to be "beginning guides" or "rags to research" look like one of those Army powerpoints that people make fun of for their complexity and once again there is no obvious part that you can build and get working by itself at first. Just "here's a complex mess, you need to have all of it up and running at once".

6 - I guess the enemies are quite tough and fast evolving as well? I didn't really play that long before becoming discouraged and quitting, but I guess if you take too long trying to untangle this poorly documented mess your reward is being stomped into the mud by monsters that can step over walls and are 80% resistant to the weapon you're most likely going to be using? That certainly sounds like fun!

7 - Finally, the eggs hatch and attack you. Really seems to be one final "LOL how dare you try and enjoy this game" moment. You're wandering around, you find some enemies, you shoot said enemies, they drop a thing. You pick it up, put it in your pocket to figure out later. Then it hatches and attacks you. Screw you for not already knowing this thing that is once again not documented anywhere. Oh, by the way, you need thousands of those to do the research you need to do.

So yeah. I landed, I played for a few hours. I quit. I don't know if I'll ever play again. I guess congrats to the game devs for giving me more free time for other things.

[spacedog]

I will 1000% agree with your first point. And I don’t think you’ll find too many people defending that one either. I totally get the “messy tangled organic mess” vibe the devs were aiming for, and I guess to their credit they achieved that. But it’s also a masterclass in un-usability and visual fatigue. I can’t imagine how people with colorblindness or other visual/attention impairments can even play the game. Mods to the rescue I guess.

As for the other points, there are some people who actually enjoy a trial and error approach, even if it’s fairly punishing. Obviously that’s not for everyone, so I can understand why Gleba is frustrating for a lot of people.

Gleba is just more acutely symptomatic of the (IMO) larger problem with Space Age. Each planet (shattered planet included) presents its own unique “puzzle”, and unfortunately there’s a single very clearly intended solution to each of those those puzzles. You can try to solve them in other creative ways, and while it can be made to work with enough effort you’re really swimming upstream against what the game wants you to do. This is a departure from 1.0/1.1, and with Gleba in particular it has really caught a lot of people off guard. Gleba is actually fairly trivial to “beat” once you understand the intended solution, but (as you articulated so well) finding that requires a lot of “fumbling in the dark” failure first.

[trancexpress]

Gleba definitely took me the longest to adjust to. But right now I have a turret perimeter set up and my production set up, I've not gotten any attacks in weeks. Resources are infinite, so I'm not devoting any attention to Gleba, things just run there.

[Jay_Raynor]

1 - The terrain is just a mess. There are too many colors, borders are too chaotic, it's too hard to see the things you need. This causes several problems early on.
a - Unlocking several early technologies involves harvesting various resources. Good luck spotting those! I had a leg up since I already knew what a "stromatolite" was, but I still had problems identifying them from the background. I only spotted the first one by accidentally mousing over it and noticing the name.
b - There are multiple species of plants, some of which explode when harvested, and only two that are vital for your progress. They're at least slightly visually distinct on the mini-map but I still managed to walk past them for a bit because I figured "okay, more trees. Yay. I don't need more wood or rot right now."
c - "You can't build that there!" Just trying to get power started up was a pain. I brought equipment and burnables so I could set up steam power and I'd try and place an offshore pump and it would show it as green until I tried to build it and then get told "Oh, there's purple tentacles there! You can't build that." Cliffs are present, but almost impossible to see unless you're zoomed in.

While stone is critical to landfill and artificial/overgrowth soil, it's also highly helpful converted to pavement of any kind for your factory floor for this very reason as well as the movement speed. I definitely sympathize with this point.

2 - The in-game documentation is basically useless. It doesn't warn you that this is the hardest planet. The things you need to build don't seem to show you what you can build them with so you wind up placing an assembler and then trying to figure out why the recipe hasn't shown up. Do I need a chem plant? A refinery? One of the new buildings I don't have yet because I haven't made 500 piles of sludge I don't have a use for yet? Who knows! I certainly don't!
"Okay, I've made a farm. I'll place it. I've put seeds in it. Why isn't anything happening?" It's only after exiting the game and reading another guide that I learned that until you've researched some fancy dirt technology you need to place farms on specific terrain in order for them to work. Is this explained in-game? I couldn't find it.

I struggled more with the recycling paradigm on Fulgora which also felt less than fully explained. Wube was never going to give all the answers.

3 - Rotting rates discourage experimentation. The above wouldn't be so bad except the ridiculous decay rates mean that when you're trying to trial and error your way through things you're constantly finding "oh, I need that thing. I think I've got one of those - no, I have a pile of mush. How did I get that again?"

Rotting discourages unplanned experimentation holding things in inventory. You do need to exercise more planning and deliberate action. But the real lesson here is don't hold nutrients, mash, or jelly in inventory. Experiment with a chain, not just a single machine.

4 - There are multiple optimizations you need to do that are not explained. You can find it on this very forum. Someone will post that "Gleba is terrible" and some reply will be "Oh, you need to <do thing that is not intuitively obvious and is certainly not documented in any clear fashion> and then it's super easy!"

This is the part I'm going to say "figuring it out" is supposed to be part of the fun. Now maybe you just needed a hint/concept for a solution to "click", and that's perfectly fine. But it's really no different than figuring out how to make quality items fast or designing that 2nd or 3rd ship that lets you fly faster and with more cargo.

5 - There doesn't seem to be any ramp up. In original Factorio, you started loading iron ore into coal fired furnaces and making simple belts and simple factories. Then you started generating electricity. Then you built more complexity on top of that and before you even realized it there was a massive sprawling factory of interlocking dependencies humming away. There doesn't seem to be any simple starting task on Gleba. No introduction to any of the entirely new gameplay concepts you need to use. If you try and make a factory that doesn't have multiple enhancements and optimizations you don't get a slow factory, you get a factory that doesn't work at all, produces mush or even worse active enemies, and you get to start all over. I've tried looking at guides for Gleba, but even ones that claim to be "beginning guides" or "rags to research" look like one of those Army powerpoints that people make fun of for their complexity and once again there is no obvious part that you can build and get working by itself at first. Just "here's a complex mess, you need to have all of it up and running at once".

Nope, not necessary at all. You can do Gleba entirely with a grid square of biochambers and bots if you want. It's really just a requester and active provider per biochamber in that setup. Belts? Yes, a belt base is pretty complex. Trains? Yes, trains are quite complex.

6 - I guess the enemies are quite tough and fast evolving as well? I didn't really play that long before becoming discouraged and quitting, but I guess if you take too long trying to untangle this poorly documented mess your reward is being stomped into the mud by monsters that can step over walls and are 80% resistant to the weapon you're most likely going to be using? That certainly sounds like fun!

Maybe the solution comes from a different planet than Nauvis or Gleba.

7 - Finally, the eggs hatch and attack you. Really seems to be one final "LOL how dare you try and enjoy this game" moment. You're wandering around, you find some enemies, you shoot said enemies, they drop a thing. You pick it up, put it in your pocket to figure out later. Then it hatches and attacks you. Screw you for not already knowing this thing that is once again not documented anywhere. Oh, by the way, you need thousands of those to do the research you need to do.

You will have to do much more with biters back on Nauvis. There's a pretty good way to "hold" pentapod eggs without a spoil timer, but it too involves tech from somewhere besides Nauvis or Gleba...

[pioruns]

What defences I should use on Gleba? Barely can afford yellow ammunition now, but growing. Fat stick walkers are attacking my base more and more often.

[Khazul]

What defences I should use on Gleba? Barely can afford yellow ammunition now, but growing. Fat stick walkers are attacking my base more and more often.

You could make piercing or even uranium ammo back on nauvis and ship it over. Or even make piercing ammo in space to start with and drop it. If you have already done other planets (vulcanus/fulgora) and/or a decent setup on nauvis, you should have the means to trivially exterminate anything that even looks at you funny.

Could just go walkies with a bad attitude and a bunch of nukes.

[Jay_Raynor]

What defences I should use on Gleba? Barely can afford yellow ammunition now, but growing. Fat stick walkers are attacking my base more and more often.

If you can't really unlock rocket turrets because of stompers, try Tesla turrets from Fulgora.

[J-H]

You can't make piercing ammo in space until you've done some research with Gleba science.

Artillery from Vulcanus will help you push the pentapod bases back so they don't attack as often, similar to how it works on Nauvis. I believe there was a discussion somewhere about mass land mines working... so basically any of the defenses except the basic gun turrets and lasers you use on Nauvis will do the trick.

[GrumpyJoe]

What defences I should use on Gleba? Barely can afford yellow ammunition now, but growing. Fat stick walkers are attacking my base more and more often.

Gleba is the best example for offense is the best defense.
Clear expansion packs with spidertron.
If you are careful, you could get rid of them entirely. I managed at 2 corners without even trying. Now that I know it's possible, I will try to clear them all. As long as stinky cloud isn't growing beyond chunks spawned in, you could be save forever

[Khazul]

You can't make piercing ammo in space until you've done some research with Gleba science.

My bad - forgot that - been a while since I was at that game stage.

[NineNine]

Gleba is just more acutely symptomatic of the (IMO) larger problem with Space Age. Each planet (shattered planet included) presents its own unique “puzzle”, and unfortunately there’s a single very clearly intended solution to each of those those puzzles. You can try to solve them in other creative ways, and while it can be made to work with enough effort you’re really swimming upstream against what the game wants you to do.

I disagree with this being a problem. The game is laid out such that you can play any of the planets in any order, and the game will still progress. Each planet just adds new technologies to the base game. So, yes, I found Gleba to be a challenge as well. So, I just didn't play on it (at all) until I was ready to bring some serious hardware over to help me defend. I made the hardware on Flugora, which I didn't touch until I got Vuncanus running. And I didn't touch Vulcanus, until I got Nauvis running. Not playing on Gleba didn't have any impact on my game at all.

I think the design of the game with the planets being modular is really a great design. You can still enjoy the game, even if you're not playing on all of the planets at the same time. You may not be able to "complete" Space Age without Gleba, but you can still have a LOT of fun on Nauvis, Vulcanus and Fulgora in the meantime.

[spacedog]

You're right that Nauvis -> Vulcanis -> Fulgora -> Gleba is the clearly intended progression if you want the least amount of friction. But this kind of speaks to my point.

The original game didn't prescribe a super clear path through the tech tree, and in general it didn't actively punish you for trying to do things in an arbitrary order. You could go deep into trains, or bots, or military, or whatever, in nearly any order you liked without it hamstringing you in any real way as long as you could keep the biters under control. You could skip entire chunks of the tech tree (e.g. nuclear power) and it didn't really make much difference.

With Space Age, you can experience some very real pain by going off script from the intended progression, unless you have enough experience and know exactly what you're doing and how to prepare for it. That holds true for both the order you play the planets, and how you try to solve each planet's puzzle.

I guess I only see this as a "problem" in the sense that it's limiting. It's a departure from the more free-form nature of the original game where you could more easily mix-and-match the techs you wanted to match your playstyle. Now it's much more compartmentalized, which takes a lot of that freedom away and changes the character of the game quite a bit. It's not necessarily bad, but it's different and it definitely caught people off guard who played 1.0/1.1 a lot and weren't expecting it.

[NineNine]

You're right that Nauvis -> Vulcanis -> Fulgora -> Gleba is the clearly intended progression if you want the least amount of friction. But this kind of speaks to my point.

The original game didn't prescribe a super clear path through the tech tree, and in general it didn't actively punish you for trying to do things in an arbitrary order. You could go deep into trains, or bots, or military, or whatever, in nearly any order you liked without it hamstringing you in any real way as long as you could keep the biters under control. You could skip entire chunks of the tech tree (e.g. nuclear power) and it didn't really make much difference.

With Space Age, you can experience some very real pain by going off script from the intended progression, unless you have enough experience and know exactly what you're doing and how to prepare for it. That holds true for both the order you play the planets, and how you try to solve each planet's puzzle.

I guess I only see this as a "problem" in the sense that it's limiting. It's a departure from the more free-form nature of the original game where you could more easily mix-and-match the techs you wanted to match your playstyle. Now it's much more compartmentalized, which takes a lot of that freedom away and changes the character of the game quite a bit. It's not necessarily bad, but it's different and it definitely caught people off guard who played 1.0/1.1 a lot and weren't expecting it.

But, it's not limiting at all. When you go to Vulcanus, you get artillery and foundrys. Both are great, but you don't need either one of those to play on Nauvis, or even to expand to Fulgora or Gleeba. What's the "very real pain" a player would get by not going to Vulcanus first? I'm not understanding your point.

[factorio_player]

Gleba is quirky and quite challenging which is the point of factorio for me, so I am mostly ok.

Though weirdly I got to the gleba science and it's doing this weird thing about being consumed too quickly. Hopefully there is something I've yet to discover there, but if so it's weirdly hidden in a way that isn't really fun.

If not, blech. Terrible game play design - why not just make the science more expensive?

But really, what is fundamentally missing is the walking around. Why no early jetpack, wube? Why do you think walking around in the game is fun? It really isn't. It's tedious, boring, slow, and very very unfun.

I would argue early jetpacks are like what make the SpaceX mod probably 50% fun.