Gleba has killed the game for me.

[BHakluyt]

I've almost finished space age with no big factories on any planet. No bus or malls. Only a mall on Nauvis. You don't need a big factory that's laud out to get by. Just some spaghetti and one or two machines jdoes the job fine. The spoilage is'nt so bad, just have a belt that carries all spoils back to nutrient making

[Drakes]

Its definitely a struggle and somewhat rude change of pace. Just finally managed to build a base that seems like it can automate itself. The spoilage mechanic is definitely annoying and I can understand the frustration or the general anxiety from dealing with timed mechanics. Dealing with mold coal feels bad after hours of plopping down poles and having that extra belt space.

My experience was landing with pretty much no resources besides alot of lasers on my guy and whatever I was farming from asteroids. Alot of confusion for the first few hours understanding how resource gathering worked. But the biochambers are awfully efficent, 2x crafting speed, +50% prod bonus with 4 mod slots. Its just that brutal initial hurdle if you don't ship anything in.

[Tin reaper]

I agree that Gleba is a miserable experience for me as well. I tried the whole land there with nothing but some bots and my suit of armour. but after failing for several hours just trying to get somthing running, i just scummed and imported a roboport network.

I at least have what feels like a stable base. but it wasn't an interesting one. it just ended up being a bot base with the farms as outposts.

Spoilage and Pentapods are my problem.

Spoilage feels bad, especially with the 'fuel' needed for the buildings having such a short lifespan. and then it blocks everything up. or the eggs hatching into enemies. an item placed onto a stack in a chest looks like it inherits the stacks spoilage timer. the input spoilage timer percentage counting towards the output percentage.

Like i get they want the production lines there optimized for throughput rather then buffering. but at some point in the game, i am not researching an agri research. for example 'more explosive weapon power' to deal with the pentapods.

And the Pentapods. god are they horrible to deal with. my normal defensive lines failed, the pods just kept stomping the power poles. so ok think to myself, neat, problem to be solved. substations further back, plus a combination of belt fed gun turrets. works okish, but too much damage each time a medium attacks. add a few tesla turrets, don't feel like i can spam them with their power draw, but should be able to have a few in the right spots. The tesla turrets felt ok..... sometimes. the slow is the main benefit of them, but it feels like the Pents just charge full speed at my defense line and by the time the tesla reacts and fires, its already stomping on the defense line again.

So some exploration to kill their bases in the pollution cloud. which only works for a short while before they expand back

All this is obviously driving up evolution, and now i have the big pentapods. which feels like its back to the power pole problem again as they go straight for the substations. and 1-2 shot a defensive turret. at this point i have added the rocket turrets as well which once i had enough along the wall atleast killed them before they reached my sub stations most of the time.

i have something that works 95ish percent of the time now. but still while trying to spend time doing other things like building space ships. always gotta worry about Gleba. every now and then a Big penta ends up stomping though a weird way and recking the place.

If i do another playthrough after this one, not sure if i will turn off enemies, or see if there is a mod that removes Glebra and moves all its research back to other planets.

[apriori]

Gleba is so much horrible, challenging, punishing and capricious that I fell in love with it.

It was the first planet I visited. Thanks to steampunk gods, I left Nauvis fully autonomous and ready to provide me with almost anything distantly. First two days (not hours, bustlers ) I've been suffering trying to establish facilities planned in Helmod. There were several fatal mistakes and knowledge units I've learned:
1. Helmod lies regarding Gleba. I think it's because it somehow misses biochambers' nuances, not sure... The fact is that each production chain I built in accordance with Helmod's (straight or matrix) calculations — wasn't showing expected numbers.
2. Blitz is not about Gleba. At least until you GET its specifics. Read in-game information about Gleba-specific buildings, items and recipes carefully and thoughtfully. There are many tips you'll understand not at the moment you've read them.
3. Cloggability — you have to deal with it really hard. Either to avoid it or to take into account. Due to spoilage, of course.
4. Forget planning methods familiar by F1 and F2's other planets. The best way for me was: plan it with Waterfall approach, build it with Agile approach. Each increment for my facility was making it to be an MVP, and the keyword is "viable".
5. All the resources needed to endlessly defend your facility on Gleba, launch rockets and produce science — are INFINITE. And the most of intermediates — are burnable. It helps A LOT.
6. Gleba is alive. Most things and events on it are alive. Let the Circle of Life do its job, let your facility be that Circle in a local scale. An infinite loop of those things coming into this world, living their lives and disappearing to let new things take their place under the alien star. Dead things that you are used to keep in chests and transfer with bots don't work here.

Gleba is balanced perfectly. You just have to see this balance. If you did — it becomes cheaty-easy to deal with it because of its absolute self-sustainability.

Edit:
In my opinion, Gleba is a sort of a game in the game. Like planetary battles in Space Rangers 2. The difference is that those battles in SR2 were an optional part, but Gleba is mandatory. But since you have a choice (which planet to land on) and "first trip to"-save, I don't see a problem with the mandatoriness.

[WeirdConstructor]

I found solutions for Gleba, but the way there was not fun at all for me. My solution requires recyclers though, to get rid of the excess stuff. I hate the rather extreme time pressure to figure out stuff, before eggs and ingredients spoil. On top of that the bad visibility of the relevant trees. After "solving" it, I had to take a break from the game for a day, because it has been rather draining for me. I just lost motivation to go to Aquilo...

I like that Gleba is different though, and I like the spoiling mechanics for that reason. But something about the balancing of these mechanics really threw me off.

In hindsight, now that I left Gleba and calmed down a bit (the factorio free day worked), I think it's a good twist to the usual congested ways we design a factory. I just wish, I had been more prepared and didn't try to rush it, like I did with Fulgora and Vulcanus.

I redesign my ship for Aquilo now...

[jamiechi1]

Anyone try a Refrigerator mod? Fridge or FrozenFood

[aka13]

For me as well, although I persevered with my distaste to spoilage. I forced myself through gleba, since I really wanted to see aquilo, and most stuff could still be made on demand.

What killed it for me, is that all endgame revolves around spoilage.
I haven't been able to force myself to push past aquilo. I have zero interest in biter eggs and space science buildup, and building a platform just to "win" is eh.
I think it's a shame that spoilage is the central unavoidable mechanic out of everything new. I wish it was a new, different game, and not factorio
Starting a new game feels even less interesting, since I know that in the end I will have the "fun" of biter eggs and bioflux shipping.
I guess, after 10+ years its alright for me to diverge opinions with the creators

[J-H]

I'm starting to get bits of Gleba figured out now. I think robot spam is going to be the way to go, especially given how far apart the tree biomes are, and how much water is in the way of running belts anywhere.

If it takes circuit network programming to succeed, I'm screwed, as I've never been able to figure that out beyond simple on/offs.

[aka13]

It does not really need circuits to succeed, you could just burn/recycle excess away, don't worry

[apriori]

If it takes circuit network programming to succeed, I'm screwed, as I've never been able to figure that out beyond simple on/offs.

It doesn't. You can if you want, but it's enough to use splitters for filtering spoilage and sometimes inserters for filtering by freshness.

[schorsch_76]

Today I went to Gleba with my game started at space age. I overprepared. Two fat haulers with stuff from nauvis, fulgora and vulcanus. 1000 bots. Power from massive solar panels and battery fields. Build up the grid, the return rocket and let big drills mine into a landfill factory and daisy chained boxes. Then went back to another planet and let the drills fill up the daisy chain.
The last time I went there (any-planet-start test) the landfill was the short coming.

When I go back to gleba, it should be easier and not so much time required for waiting for stones....

[BoardroomHero]

My problem with Gleba is the combination of the new mechanics with an evolving, aggressive enemy.

The combination means that you are actively punished for trial and error testing. This makes every choice made on Gleba stressful in a way it isn't on any other planets. Even though enemies evolve elsewhere, at least if you're making pollution you're going to have something to show for it. If something went wrong on Gleba, you just have a ton of spoilage and substantially stronger enemies. The ability to literally go backwards is uniquely frustrating—it gives the same sense of "pressure" that you get in a roguelike.

I can't get anything set up because I have to get everything working before I even test it, and with so many new mechanics that's challenging.

[emk]

I build distributed computer systems for a living, and I deal with "backpressure," etc., regularly. Gleba is tough, far harder than any of the other planets or the base game. And I'm not sure it's tough in a good way.

1. You have a bunch of loops you need to stabilize: nutrients, bioflux, power, iron/copper, and eggs. Several of these depend on others, often cyclicly.
2. Gleba has expansionist enemies who eventually evolve into some of the toughest opponents in the game.
3. A lot of key materials spoil, and spoil quickly. So you want to limit your production rates, and you want to maintain a steady flow, sending any excess to an item sink.
4. But if you don't let your items sit around somewhere for a while, then recipes which require multiple spoilable ingredients will have one ingredient or the other, but not necessarily both.

Shipping in iron/copper/steel/solar/etc from offplanet can allow you ignore several of the loops in (1) for a long time, or even indefinitely in some cases.

I've got semi-stable bioflux, but I'm using a lot of circuits and professional knowledge of tuning complex systems. I think the right move is to focus 100% on science production and rocket fuel, and then use some combo of botspam and train car "chests" to make enough science for turrets.

I think the difficulty spike here may be too huge, and the systems too incompatible with Factorio's basic toolkit. Especially combined with unstable loops that fail easily, and the evolution of tough enemies.