Factorio Forums

TLDR
Gleba has a circular dependency. You need to beat Gleba to have a fun and good time building your starting base on Gleba.

What would make me enjoy early game Gleba:
- Have some limited (and maybe very inefficient) ways of producing rockets directly on gleba from the beginning so that you don't feel defenseless.
- Have possibility to create nutrients from yumako mash in assemblers (even in a very inefficient way) so that production kickstarting problem can be solved more easily.
- Have possibility to read fuel level of a machine in automation network (so that I can enable kickstarting assembler for nutrients based on that condition)
- Have some very expensive and inefficient way of producing pentapod eggs that do not spoil and can be used only for bio science (maybe: pentapod embrio?) This will make your early science easier but won't harm late game.
- Have a possibility to create a nutrients (maybe artificial nutrients?) that are very low on energy value but do not spoil once inserted into machine. This will make initial factory designs a little bit more easy.

Full essay:

I just wanted to share my thoughts about Gleba from a perspective of a person who have played Factorio since early access days (rather casually for a total of like 400 hours over the years)

In short: Lategame Gleba factory with technology unlocked after completing your first dose of bio science unlocks looks very promising and super interesting. Early game Gleba without those technologies is demotivating and makes you feel hopeless.

Here what was my gameplay looking like:

Soon after I have arrived at Gleba I realized that in order to craft biolabs I needed to hunt down pentapods. So I went for a hunting. After defeating a pentapod I realized two things:
- They are very bulky. You need a ton of ammo to kill them
- Walls mean nothing to them

This makes you respect them and fear them a bit. You know you don't want to mess with them without proper defenses.

So I analyzed my options and came to a conclusion that I have no means of defending against them during my starter base stage of Gleba gameplay loop.
I would need a ton of rockets and rocket turrets. But to get them... I need to have Gleba factory running.

I quickly realized that my only option is to make a guerilla farming. I produced my first 4k of bio science pack by running like a headless chicken harvesting and plating Yumako and Jelly trees (thank god for x4 exoskeletons). The game made me feel I have no way of defending so I can't reliably automate.

Then you have a spoilage mechanic. I think this mechanic is awesome and refreshing. Creating just in time production chains is very refreshing and new. I like the idea very much. BUT early game is just too much things to solve at once.

- You need to create a whole production chain in one go. You can't create your factory incrementally
- Each biolab have one hidden input and output (nutrients for fuel, spoilage in output and seeds in yumako/ jelly processing on top of that)
- Kick starting process is required to start all the production (as a proper engineer you feel you should automate that step)
- You need production up and running to generate power from heating towers but you need power to run your factory

In early game you NEED to account for production stops. Your factory will stop and things will go bad.

Then you have pentapod egg production. Processing "hazardous" materials is a very fun and interesting concept and I like it. BUT it makes your early game even more complicated. The game makes you feel that you need to create a perfectly working pentapod egg factory on the first try. (or otherwise your factory will be turned into ruins).
This means you are facing a challenge of building "safety critical" factory right from the beginning (I like this idea but not in early game). You need to design:
- Emergency shutdown procedure that will remove all the eggs from circulation and burn them (and that itself means you need to set recipes using automation network to force pushing out pentapod eggs from no longer running biolabs)
- Emergency shutdown must be triggered when yumuako/ jelly processing stops or your heating tower temperature is dangerously low (so that you still have some leftover energy for inserters to place eggs in heating tower)

Gleba was the only planet where I just shipped everything from other planets. The game made me feel that it was just too daunting and penalizing to start from scratch whole production chain. I feel sad about that as this makes me feel like I "optimized fun away" from that stage of my play-through

RedEngineer wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2024 10:33 am

- Have some very expensive and inefficient way of producing pentapod eggs that do not spoil and can be used only for bio science (maybe: pentapod embrio?) This will make your early science easier but won't harm late game.

I think this is supposed to be : "recycling biochamber". Whenever you have pentapod eggs, make sure to make extra biochamber, like 15 or 20, to put in a chest, and if you need to start/restart your science, you recycle a few until you get a pentapod egg.

biochamber are in a way a non-spoilage pentapod egg reserve.

RedEngineer wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2024 10:33 am

- Have a possibility to create a nutrients (maybe artificial nutrients?) that are very low on energy value but do not spoil once inserted into machine. This will make initial factory designs a little bit more easy.

Efficency modules are very strong at reducing nutrient consumptions, they really are a game changer.

RedEngineer wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2024 10:33 am

- Have possibility to create nutrients from yumako mash in assemblers (even in a very inefficient way) so that production kickstarting problem can be solved more easily.

It exists albeit a bit weird, you can let the yumako mash spoil in chest and then use that spoilage to make nutrient.

Such spoilage => nutrient recipe is very inneficient to make nutrient compared to using bioflux but since spoilage do no spoil further, it can somewhat act as an artificial nutrient to restart/kick start things.

RedEngineer wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2024 10:33 am

Soon after I have arrived at Gleba I realized that in order to craft biolabs I needed to hunt down pentapods. So I went for a hunting. After defeating a pentapod I realized two things:
- They are very bulky. You need a ton of ammo to kill them

for me upon arrival all the nearby bases were only having little pentapods, not big ones, and i was using the tesla gun it was quite fun, it felt like i was overprepared maybe, i only go the bigger one later when my base was already well protected. I would 100% recommend the tesla gun, even in late game !

Hopefully you will not have such a rough time in Gleba next time !

Not being able to read fuel on biochamber, i agree is somewhat of a limitation, but i'd rather read the ingredients, and not have those messed up in signal wiring, with the current fuel, which i assume is always going to be nutrient. It gets problematic to me when you want to use quality nutrient as ingredient for the biochamber, and it risk being inserted as fuel, and you can't tell if there i already fuel to know if you are allowed to insert quality nutrient as ingredient.

Yeah Gleba is rough - i was excited for the new gameplay offered by gleba and also wanted to see cool new alien creatures and biomes, so i went there first. BIG mistake. I spent hours trying to set up a working base with minimal supplies - kinda got it to work, but iron and copper production couldn't keep up at all, and with solar panels not being very efficient and not seeing a clear route to self-sustaining power on gleba, i just gave up at some point and left the planet, giving the wildlife there PLENTY of time to scale. now i'm not quite sure thow the evolution factor works in space age, but when i tried to restart the base at a later point, the massive enemies destroyed large parts of it frequently.


What i did was just ship in a nuclear reactor and massive amounts of robots, and go full robot base on it. made the design SO much easier, expandable, fully automatic including a jump start with some circuit logic.
In general i am very much not a fan of robot bases, factorio is all about belts + trains for me, but i just needed some way to make the planet self-sustaining without getting overrun by enemies so i could then spend time designing an actually nice base there.


Although, the eggs have never bothered me much - i was sceptical at first, but just a few gun turrets with red ammo can easily take out any spoiling eggs, at least in my factory. i did use some circuit network stuff to make sure not to fill a massive chest with them though, i limit the chests to like 20 eggs at a time, and it seems so far they haven't caused issues.

It was a smooth sail and interesting planets (Nauvis -> Fulgora -> Vulcanus) until playtime 55 hours. The space ship design was amazing and very fun. But then I went to Gleba... I was very open to experience something new. But today was the most horrible Factorio day for me and I am super frustrated. I guess I will have to scrap my 62 hour save game and "work" (yes it feels like that) of the last 7 hours and restart. I feel almost as if the game is gaslighting me.

• You barely get a surplus of seeds, so the planters can plant less and less. Even if you just spoil one fruit of 1000, it's enough to tip the balance towards a dying plantage.
• It's impossible to discover Jellystems by looking at the game without the map view. Even though I am not color blind.
• There is absolutely no help, except a few basics from the Tips & Tricks. Initially I felt overwhelmed, which got better with more and more time I spent on it of course. Yea, I found out how all the items fit into each other, but I was not able to build a stable factory.
• Getting science packs to Nauvis is horrible if you don't totally spam produce them to "fill one rocket" - so the ship can automatically grab them and bring them to Nauvis.

Letting the robots do all the work kind of kills the fun for me. There is no puzzling in setting up requester/provider chest assemblers and spamming roboports with robots.

Sorry, I am frustrated. In my opinion the balance of Gleba is a bit off and it became a worse and worse experience for me today. And I thought people were kidding, when complaining about Gleba. I don't know yet if I really feel like picking up the game tomorrow again, even though I took a few days off to play it.

WeirdConstructor wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2024 8:51 pm

[*] You barely get a surplus of seeds, so the planters can plant less and less. Even if you just spoil one fruit of 1000, it's enough to tip the balance towards a dying plantage.

This can be changed if you use biochamber to process the fruits, as they have a 50% productivity bonus built-in, or you can use productivity module in the assembly machine, then it's another problem as mentionned earlier in that thread, where you have too many seeds and you need to recycle/void them

mmmPI wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2024 8:55 pm

WeirdConstructor wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2024 8:51 pm

[*] You barely get a surplus of seeds, so the planters can plant less and less. Even if you just spoil one fruit of 1000, it's enough to tip the balance towards a dying plantage.

This can be changed if you use biochamber to process the fruits, as they have a 50% productivity bonus built-in, or you can use productivity module in the assembly machine, then it's another problem as mentionned earlier in that thread, where you have too many seeds and you need to recycle/void them

Thanks for the hint! ♥

I kind of expected that hint in the Factoriopedia though. "Base productivity: 50%" sounds to me like it's less productive than it could be.

It would be nice if efficiency modules or the Biochamber description would've dropped a hint in Factoriopedia about "energy" also meaning "nutrients" and not just electricity. I like to know the rules of the game before. And not by trial and error and feeling stupid at the end of the day.

Most of the stuff has been somewhat talked about already in this thread and others related to the topic.

But in general, yea. Gleba is the most difficult one of the planets you can go to. ^^

I think what they should add somewhere in the description is something like a "difficulty rating" for each planet from easy to hard. Something similar like they have for Oxygen Not Included where different asteroids also have different difficulty ratings to make it clear to people.


Because Gleba is definitely not the planet you should first go to when you can launch a rocket to planet. I mean, you can if you are masochistic, but it should rather be done after Vulcanus (easy) & Fulgora (medium).

You need to be really well prepared when going there. Drop-pod lots of stuff to get you started because otherwise you will have a hard time to survive in the swamp and get anything done and up and running. It will literally throw you face down into the swampy mud if you underestimate it.

I mean, I even prepared for landing there (albeit in aftermath I think I could have prepared even better) and I still had major issues getting the production chains going when I was still not knowing how everything fits together.

RedEngineer wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2024 10:33 am

Then you have pentapod egg production. Processing "hazardous" materials is a very fun and interesting concept and I like it. BUT it makes your early game even more complicated. The game makes you feel that you need to create a perfectly working pentapod egg factory on the first try. (or otherwise your factory will be turned into ruins).
This means you are facing a challenge of building "safety critical" factory right from the beginning (I like this idea but not in early game). You need to design:
- Emergency shutdown procedure that will remove all the eggs from circulation and burn them (and that itself means you need to set recipes using automation network to force pushing out pentapod eggs from no longer running biolabs)
- Emergency shutdown must be triggered when yumuako/ jelly processing stops or your heating tower temperature is dangerously low (so that you still have some leftover energy for inserters to place eggs in heating tower)

What I found works best is to deal with the pentapod eggs is... to actually consume the eggs faster than you produce them

It is "preventive" measurement. Sure you should still have a secure area set up to kill them should it be necessary, but if all works well the turrets should never fire a single shot. ^^

So ramp science pack production up and consume the eggs. Doesn't matter whether science pack production is a little starved for eggs, it will prevent any from hatching because they are all either back-feeded into crafitng more eggs or into science packs before they can hatch. ^^

mmmPI wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2024 11:33 am

I think this is supposed to be : "recycling biochamber". Whenever you have pentapod eggs, make sure to make extra biochamber, like 15 or 20, to put in a chest, and if you need to start/restart your science, you recycle a few until you get a pentapod egg.

biochamber are in a way a non-spoilage pentapod egg reserve.

Yea, but that is something I would recommend only early game when you don't have all the chains set up properly yet. Once you are at the point of a stable base you'd rather not want to craft the excess eggs constantly into biochambers. Because kinda makes the production chain inefficient since you have to feed it tons of nutrient just to turn it into a biochamber which you'd recycle down to 25% chance. ^^


No, my suggestion is... when the production chain is up and running and you are cranking out science packs, then NEVER ever stop the production again. Just let it running forever. Don't ever limit the science pack output with circuit network. Even if you don't want to do agri science at some point, let it continue making agri science and if the science packs rot, then they rot. But at least you will not have to deal with any hatching pentapod eggs if you do it like i wrote above with egg-starving the science pack production on purpose. ^^

And also you will not have to deal with tons of spoilage blocking your production chain if you just let it keep on doing its thing.

Because after 2 days with Gleba I came to the conclusion that if something rots... well not too bad. That is a novum for me because usually I hate inefficient things, but in this case I think spoiling science packs is less bad than having to kickstart the entire production to start up again. After all the fruit are an infinite resource and nothing is lost even if a whole 2000 stack of packs rot away... screw it; kickstarting the factory is way more annoying.

Just don't ever stop the factory once it runs. That is something we should stress about Gleba. ^^

But I guess I only write that because after all the wasteful voiding of items on Fulgora I changed my mind about a lot of things already. xD

WeirdConstructor wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2024 8:51 pm

• Getting science packs to Nauvis is horrible if you don't totally spam produce them to "fill one rocket" - so the ship can automatically grab them and bring them to Nauvis.

Well, currently I have 2 biochambers crating Science Packs and that gets me 2000 science packs per trip. Fits perfectly because my platforms refill fuel just in-time without waiting too long. I still have 20-35 minutes left for them to spoil when they arrive on Nauvis. So one can definitly do it. ^^

The only annoying part actually starts then when you have to swap researches all the time because you don't want your Nauvis factory to sit around idling waiting for agri science packs. So often you will swap the active researches. It is annoying and I hope they will add some QoL feature to deal with the issue eventually because I am sure it will drive people insane eventually.

WeirdConstructor wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2024 9:07 pm

I kind of expected that hint in the Factoriopedia though. "Base productivity: 50%" sounds to me like it's less productive than it could be.

It is more than enough if you set things up properly. Believe me. ^^


Because at first I obviously also stockpiled the seeds because I was afraid of running out. But after building lots of stuff and doing my jazz, I eventually took a look into my logistic network contents (by hitting L) and damn. I had 900 or something of Yamako seeds sitting around in the provider chests.

So eventually I set up another requester chest enabled by circuit network that starts requesting seeds to dump into the heating tower if it exceeds >200 (you definitely want some buffer for the less lucky rolls from processing the fruits). ^^

WeirdConstructor wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2024 9:07 pm

It would be nice if efficiency modules or the Biochamber description would've dropped a hint in Factoriopedia about "energy" also meaning "nutrients" and not just electricity. I like to know the rules of the game before. And not by trial and error and feeling stupid at the end of the day.

You are not alone with that. I have like at least 3k or 4k hours in Factorio in total and I totally missed first that one can put efficiency modoules in there and that it will reduce the nutrient drainage. Only after mmmPI helped me in my thread where I also asked for help on Gleba, I actually knew. xD

MeduSalem wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2024 10:02 pm

Yea, but that is something I would recommend only early game when you don't have all the chains set up properly yet. Once you are at the point of a stable base you'd rather not want to craft the excess eggs constantly into biochambers. Because kinda makes the production chain inefficient since you have to feed it tons of nutrient just to turn it into a biochamber which you'd recycle down to 25% chance. ^^

There are several ways of getting eggs remotely, one is recycling biochamber, hence why i advise to always keep a stock ready for that purpose making it with first few eggs you get and refilling it when using it ( not crafting bazilions of them although ... ). To make quality biochamber, also onel need to "constantly craft" biochambers, and recycle them down to 25%, and amongst those 25% only 25% would be of higher quality x)

Another way for remote egg is turret creep or removing stomper shells but that is mid-late game already.

Those are useful things to have even when you are late game / stable base, because it can always happen that your base gets attacked or something gets damaged or one does a mistake and accidentaly cause a cascading error . ( particularly in Gleba ).

MeduSalem wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2024 10:02 pm

No, my suggestion is... when the production chain is up and running and you are cranking out science packs, then NEVER ever stop the production again. Just let it running forever.

, but in this case I think spoiling science packs is less bad than having to kickstart the entire production to start up again. After all the fruit are an infinite resource and nothing is lost even if a whole 2000 stack of packs rot away... screw it; kickstarting the factory is way more annoying.

And i thought you said you didn't like the concept of a river x). This is exactly it, let everything flow. Having the science pack delivered is the most important, but if they rot, it's not too bad, considering you have different tech, and some do not require packs from gleba, science spoiling is bound to happen anyway if you use such model, but having spoilage in Nauvis is useful to make some nutrient to have some biochamber function , let say the biochamber than transform eggs into more nutrients ...

if you ever need to kickstart things again because of reason, then you could have it automated with the recycling biochamber for egg and nutrient from spoilage. But if you have it automated when it's necessary to kickstart things, you can use such mechanism of kickstarting more frequently, and turn your river more into an "on demand" system. Maybe more interesting for things like plastic or sulfur, which may be required for producing rockets or low density structures

mmmPI wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2024 10:57 pm

To make quality biochamber, also onel need to "constantly craft" biochambers, and recycle them down to 25%, and amongst those 25% only 25% would be of higher quality x)

I already dread the thought alone. I don't know whether I actually want legendary biochambers.

I mean I would likely do it if I have nothing else left to do, but I might actually replace every power pole in the wilderness of Nauvis with a legendary one before I want to craft better biochambers. At least that is how high up in my priority it is. I mean, is there even anything compelling to them being better quality? Haven't looked at their quality stats. ^^

Also I don't have legendary quality unlocked yet. Not even started designing a ship capable of going to Aquilo even though I already have all techs required to do so. There is like a ton of stuff on Nauvis, Fulgora & Vulcanus I need to catch up with after unlocking lots of tech from the other 3 planets that work better if you have been on all 3. ^^

So I mostly only produce quality items for ship-building and modules currently. Because those I am actually using.

mmmPI wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 31, 2024 10:57 pm

And i thought you said you didn't like the concept of a river x). This is exactly it, let everything flow.

Well, things & priorities change. ^^

Sure it is not really factorio-esque if one is wasteful and it might be more interesting design challenge to make on-demand work without having any repercussions. ^^

But since the fruit are an infinite resource and everything down the crafting chain coming from the fruit and nothing else... well... I stopped caring about how wasteful it might be because I think trying to switch over to a on-demand scheme for science packs would require some additional hours put into the Gleba for trial & error and making sure it really works; and I rather want to do some other things already. xD

Yesterday evening i added the mod "any planet start" to my list and started a new game on gleba with nothing. Holy Moly! I watched some of the livestream from trupen before the launch of space age where he started on gleba. Never thought how difficult and different (to "normal" planets) it is to get the first bacteria (copper or iron) "farm" running ....