Gleba has killed the game for me.

[angramania]

General rule of Factorio - if you had to wait then you do something very very wrong. There are always tasks to do.

Nah, I had nothing else to do. I'd finished the other planets, 500+ SPM. I needed to automate seeds, but there's no way to get enough seeds.

Once again. If you have to wait in factorio then you do something very wrong. And that is sign for you to rethink what are you doing and not stubbornly continue to do it wrong way. For example read factoriopedia description of biochamber and notice double speed and built-in 50% productivity. After that ask yourself - why the hell you do not use it.

That wasn't my experience. I found that it's impossible to automate getting more seeds, so it's very slow and boring, and the game doesn't give any information.

If you have to wait then you could spend this time reading few new entries in factoriopedia or open tech tree and see clear path to success on Gleba. It would take 5-15 minutes and save you from hours of wall hitting.

I didn't know it was possible to waste the entire patch of starting iron. What did you waste it on? Or are you talking about a theoretical situation? But that would be strange, because I'm demonstrating something that is currently happening, so I'm not sure why a hypothetical situation would be relevant.

If you are playing with rich resources then starting patch will be enough to get you to rockets. But just try play with default deathworld settings and you will find that it is depleted before or at start of blue science and there are hundreds of biters rushing to your base.

Right, that's true, but only later on in the game. It's specifically a problem early in the game when there's no way to automate getting more seeds. I want to play the factory building game, not the boring chop-down-trees game.

Barehanded Gleba start actually require a lot of manual chopping, mostly to get fuel for stone furnaces. But Vulcanus requires much more rock mining and you do not compel about it. And you do not have to go barehanded to Gleba.

Me: I'm running out of seeds. Gleba is not fun.
Forumites: That's impossible. Just use a biochamber.
Me: But that's a mid-game tech, I'm at the beginning.
Forumites: Just do what we tell you.
Me: Fine, I'll use a biochamber.
HOURS LATER
Me: Whaddya know, I'm still running out of seeds.

Looks like you are among few stubborn experienced players who proactively ignore what game throw at you and try to do old ways. Gleba is fun for those who want to learn new ways.
As for mid-game tech. Opened my save with start on Gleba. First biochamber at 1:03. And most of this time cause I have to get to green science for landfill tech and produce enough turrets and ammo to kill pentapods. Comparing to start on Nauvis it takes same time for me to get pumpjack as first petroleum was at 1:17. Do you call pumpjack mid game tech? Going to Gleba in normal playthrough and first biochamber requires at most 10 minutes. You have spend hours rejecting it.

[coffee-factorio]

I think the idea is that players will magically come to an understanding that they can just have an orchard of three or less trees and then distribute the orchards onto rocket trains.

By three trees, do you mean three *agricultural towers*? Because I wouldn't have nearly enough fruit to maintain production at my various sites if I was only planting three trees per plantation.

Likewise they'll magically understand that segmented enemies react differently to AOE and chain effects, so your HE rockets are like ten times as effective against them as documented. You just need chainguns in case something closes.

Explosive rockets definitely would have been a good thing to bring, but standard rockets did quite well. They're also better at dealing with stompers than the explosive rockets are due to their higher single target damage.

There isn't pollution mitigation at all.

Sweeping the spore cloud works quite well of egg rafts. I was only attacked twice in my entire playthrough, and both were pretty minor.

I shouldn't be in a position to say that an early investment in the planet deprives you of what I've seen come off the back of a space platform a few hours later.

This is confusing me. Could you elaborate on what you mean? I'm especially confused about what it would be depriving you of.

I'll cover one at a time.

1) Three trees is hyperbole based on lack of experience, and running a small orchard at the starting area. So that's on me for being bad. But the basic idea is to run an "ideal" setup of n producing trees by placing a harvester strategically. Depending on where you wanted to go with it, you could also sync to a timer to produce the impression of an ideal flow rate by either mass harvesting on a synchronized schedule or by harvesting a tree per fixed interval. Just have a radar nearby and it'll let you do such things.

I gather that you maintain a low profile and explosive power projection there with turrets in case anything walks by. What isn't tremendously clear to me is how to defend the supply line between orchards or if that is necessary. I can actually see how a well sited line of overhead rail over lake could alleviate that but... it plays into 4.

2) I made a video to show. The short version is you get a mechanical advantage using explosives because the shrapnel hits the legs of the larger pentapods; and shock weapons demonstrate a similar utility because they will jump to segments. Factor is more like 2 - I am frustrated by the place so forgive me.
https://youtu.be/ijoNl6hphE0

3) I do think that's viable but it feeds into the other issues where, I have to intervene by doing a sweep and clear when I could be...

4) Grabbing forges from Vulcanus. Using a ~45 minute research to put calcite into those forges. And then using a red belt of steel to have a space platform make space platform. All parts of a space platform can be made with advanced asteriod processing + rocket turret research for artificial coal as well as any logistic part that doesn't require stone; by leveraging basic liquifaction for a small quantity of lubricant to overcome the steam embargo.

That strategy for lubricant is not practical but rather demonstrates how far you can push the recipe chains. But there's this place called Fulgora, and while it doesn't have infinite resources it does have enough rocket fuel to get resources off of Vulcanus. And while that doesn't have infinite calcite, space does. This gives someone room to figure out quality real well and at their own pace - I think at the slow rate I go Nauvis is going to get eaten but that's in the budget now.

And you can do it all without rockets, which puts a fixable minimum cost of investment on the platforms before they hit critical mass and start growing like crystals.

And Gleba can do fractions of all that at a slow rate if I do a flow chart solution. Or I can just shoot the research labs like I did and have fun elsewhere.

[Nemoricus]

I gather that you maintain a low profile and explosive power projection there with turrets in case anything walks by. What isn't tremendously clear to me is how to defend the supply line between orchards or if that is necessary.

I did not place a single turret on Gleba.

[coffee-factorio]

Intriguing.

I'm not really interested in someone saying that it takes them 60 seconds to put up a pump jack when they aren't playing on defaults. Edit: I'm actually kind of leery about saying anything either way, because then I'm forcing someone to drink my coffee as it where, there's bound to be a disagreement if I don't say it's your game.

But I kind of have a hunch that it's practical. I've figured out that landfilling swamp shuts down spawning, and while enemies can pathfind through non-spawning chunks they sure don't like to. It isn't practical, but rather an observation and I find this to be generally believable. Pentapods will breed like a nightmare once they get a hint of spores. So it might just be a matter of dropping the hammer very early and clearing out visible sectors fast?

Just because I don't like the place doesn't mean I can't see how it can supply a significant amount of rocket fuel if a person finds a way to work it well.

[Nemoricus]

I'm not really interested in someone saying that it takes them 60 seconds to put up a pump jack when they aren't playing on defaults.

Presumably it's an hour and three minutes.

[coffee-factorio]

That's fair.

It's also fair to ask how you pulled off no turrets again. If you explained how you did that before, I'm sorry for not being a part of that conversation.

[Nemoricus]

I swept the spore cloud of egg rafts. Much of it on foot, some of the rest via spidertron later on. I only experienced two attacks in total, with minimal damage before I moved the local spidertron to clean up the attack and the raft it came from.

[RMJ]

I feel you. I've spent two days there and have basically nothing and the prospect of building a factory there turns me off. There are way too many concepts dumped on you with little explanation, and then there's the time pressure of spoilage, and evolution.

So I got there and here's the things I've had to learn:

* biomes
* new power generation
* a lot of new recipes
* spoilage
* nutrients
* soil/harvesting
* new enemies
* how do I get resources to build anything

The problem is, there's no way to really understand how things work until you have something running, but in order to get something running you need to learn a lot of new concepts, and then after you've got something running it will inevitably fail, and when it fails the whole system fails at once and you have to clean it up, and because of spoilage everything has to happen quickly. It's not enough to learn one new system at a time, you have to learn everything all at once. It's very stressful.

Normally you can just build something and then work on ratios and routing later, but on Gleba, because everything needs nutrients and an output for spoilage, it's not trivial to make adjustments, and it feels punishing to stop and think, because I'm watching everything spoil. And I'm watching the pollution/spores spread and I don't even have a base producing resources yet.

There definitely needs to be a tutorial.

This so much. Not sure how on earth this went through development without noticing these issues. but that is what happens if you only have the pro players and forget about the normal players, having them play and Q/A.

I was never an expert at this game, but i feel like im probably 5/10 skill level, average. Gleba is so far above me that i don't even know where to start. I should not have to watch hours of youtube videos or read hours of text to get a basic grasp of something. I think ive spent 10 hours of Gleba and ive accomplish what amounts to nothing. It still breaks, i dont understand why, either it works or it doesn't, it's binary, its very unfun.

Loved Vulcanus and Fulgura. But Gleba its badly designed and it's not because its hard, it's because its the wrong kind of hard. Binary hard, do it right or we wil instantly punish you without any usable feedback other than FAIL.

[fredthedeadhead]

Gleba is still immensely painful. Here are some more poor experiences that it provides.

Note: I am not looking for solutions. Imagine I am giving feedback on a recipe book that has a convoluted, confusing, out-of-place recipe. While I'm sure the recipe might make sense to some, it certainly doesn't make sense to many. I do not want to be told what the recipe is _supposed_ to mean, or why it's actually my fault for the recipe being confusing. I want to help make the next recipe book better.

---

I'm trying to produce quality Biochambers. This should be simple. I've managed to produce all other quality production facilities. But for Gleba, it's an absolute ball ache. If anything is wrong then my base starts getting destroyed. I can put up turrets, but I still get nagged with annoying alerts every few minutes. The enemies aren't in any way a threat, but I still have to get told off by Factorio and dinged with an annoying alert.

What's the point of the enemies spawning from eggs? They aren't strong enough to do any damage, and even if they do the bots just repair it. They're just pointless busy work and an annoying noise every few minutes.

Worse still is that because some of the recycled Biochamber components evaporate my recycling plant just gets clogged up with the non-perishable items, which means even if I deal with the annoying spoilage my factory still gets clogged up, which means more tedious clicking on tiny buttons to manually clear the blockage.

I could try and figure out some complicated circuits to make backpressure work, but it's just absolutely horrible to use circuits. They are not in any way fun. If I wanted to do programming, I'd do programming, not play around with complicated, hard to use, primitive tools that are impossible to test or share. I shouldn't have to fight against all of the tools that Factorio provides just to make them work for Gleba.

---

I thought I would try creating quality bioflux, since it's supposed to have a longer lifetime, but because Gleba punishes any sort of experimentation or expansion the best I can do is produce quality bioflux which is already degraded to the point where it's worse than the regular bioflux and produced in such tiny amounts that it's completely pointless. Trying to expand my base just results in longer supply lines, which means more spoilage and degrades the products more. It's just a complete waste of time.

It's completely absurd. In contrast with the other planets it's an investment to build good supply lines. It takes effort, and the reward is a better factory.

What's the point in all these quality levels if spoilage just completely nerfs it? Quality is already an annoying timesink.

Suggestion: prevent spoilage when items are not exposed to air. When transported by belts or bots, then they can degrade, but trains and crates preserve them.

---

Transporting Gleba science via space craft is super frustrating. Initially I had too few spacecraft, which meant lots of the Gleba science was spoiling on Gleba. So I built more, but now they are all competing for the remaining science, so when there's not enough science packs for all of them, they all get a _little_ bit of science, which results in even more spoilage! This sucks!

Suggestion: Gleba science packs can degrade, but they don't degrade to spoilage. They just degrade to a minimum-quality science. Now Gleba doesn't leak its poor design into the rest of the game, while still providing an incentive to produce and transport fresh science.

---

The spoilage mechanic screws up my Nauvis base too. Spoiled science packs clogged up my research labs, but without any warning or indication, so now I have to completely redesign my science labs just to accommodate for removing spoilage. This isn't fun and highlights how crummy the mechanic is. This is pointless busywork.

Suggestion: add a warning signal for when science labs are blocked by spoilage.

Suggestion: Add a 'clear spoilage' checkbox for labs so bots will auto-remove spoilage.

---

Do we _really_ need 4 types of placeable soil for Gleba trees? Do I _really_ need to sort out an interplanetary supply line just to be able to grow trees on slightly different ground? It's such a tedious hassle.

Suggestion: remove the 'overgrowth' soil variants, and instead let the research improve the regular soil variants. The additional variants really do not add much, and trying to fight spoilage is just frustrating. It's already annoying to try to set up a tree farm on Gleba maybe for once the game could just make Gleba easier??

---


Overall Gleba is an annoying gimmick. I haven't found any fun or satisfaction so far.

I keep imagining what it would be like if in the base game if when items reached the end of the belt they were automatically destroyed. Would it be annoying? Would the developers have to add tools to help prevent items from reaching the end of the belt? What tools could they add? Can they be added to help with Gleba?

---

As a reminder: I am not looking for solutions. Imagine I am giving feedback on a recipe book that has a convoluted, confusing, out-of-place recipe. While I'm sure the recipe might make sense to some, it certainly doesn't make sense to many. I do not want to be told what the recipe is _supposed_ to mean, or why it's actually my fault for the recipe being confusing. I want to help make the next recipe book better.

[fredthedeadhead]

Once again. If you have to wait in factorio then you do something very wrong.

I don't think that's true. Quite often you have to wait. That's especially true in the expansion, where lots of things are locked behind waiting.

If you have to wait then you could spend this time reading few new entries in factoriopedia or open tech tree and see clear path to success on Gleba. It would take 5-15 minutes and save you from hours of wall hitting.

Maybe you could share this information? I couldn't see it.

If you are playing with rich resources then starting patch will be enough to get you to rockets. But just try play with default deathworld settings and you will find that it is depleted before or at start of blue science and there are hundreds of biters rushing to your base.

Yes, I think that playing on hard mode would be harder.

But Vulcanus requires much more rock mining and you do not compel about it.

No, it doesn't, because Vulcanus provides infinite rock from lava.

Looks like you are among few stubborn experienced players who proactively ignore what game throw at you and try to do old ways.

No, I'm not.

You have spend hours rejecting it.

No, I haven't.

[mmmPI]

Once again. If you have to wait in factorio then you do something very wrong.

I don't think that's true. Quite often you have to wait. That's especially true in the expansion, where lots of things are locked behind waiting.

Waiting is an inneficent use of time and should be avoided imo. With the remote view there's always something you can do anywhere now to fasten the arrival of the moment that you would have been waiting for otherwise.

No, I haven't.

The very lenghty text repeating all over again the same arguments does gives the impression that you are pro-actively rejecting altogether the tools available and the challenges though.

[SirSmuggler]

Note: I am not looking for solutions. Imagine I am giving feedback on a recipe book that has a convoluted, confusing, out-of-place recipe. While I'm sure the recipe might make sense to some, it certainly doesn't make sense to many. I do not want to be told what the recipe is _supposed_ to mean, or why it's actually my fault for the recipe being confusing. I want to help make the next recipe book better.

I want the author of this recepie book to write a new recepiebook takeing only my sudgestions in to consideration. I don't want to hear any one elses opinion on this recepie.

Ok, got it.

[aka13]

Eh, I think that in the end it all comes back to matters of taste and preference.
It's just that perhaps first time in years cardinally new mechanics came to factorio, so that there is a split on opinions, what is fun, and what is not.

If we want to resort to tiresome food analogies, however good this new recipe is, if you don't like it, it won't become your new favourite recipe no matter how hard you try to "get used" to it.
It is obvious, that since SA already is released, nothing is going to change anymore, because historically breaking recipe/gameplaychanges are not a thing.

As much as it pains me to say it, there are basically two options for me, fred or other people partaking from the side of "gleba is not fun" - either accept that factorios endgame content is 33%+ not fun for us, adapting to the ways it is unfun in, and play a game we enjoy less than before, or simply let go, and don't play it altogether. There won't be meaningful changes, and there won't be a new big rebalance, there won't even be a dlc/addon to look forward to in the future, like it was with Spoil Age.

I don't think there is much to discuss left, except to throw veiled insults and accusations of "you don't understand what is fun" at each other.

I do respect yall finding it interesting/fun though.

[Merry76]

I gather that you maintain a low profile and explosive power projection there with turrets in case anything walks by. What isn't tremendously clear to me is how to defend the supply line between orchards or if that is necessary.

I did not place a single turret on Gleba.

I placed a GIANT Perimeter of Gunturrets surrounded by Mines and supported by Rocket Towers several chunks wider than my spore cloud. I am quite sure it would have held against an attack, but none ever came.

Needless to say, I am a bit disapointed that they dont even want to expand into my direction. Or they do it so slow that I couldnt notice until now, and its been days since I built the perimeter.

Wrigglers/Strafers/Pentapods are the stoners of Factorio. Left alone in their swamp, they dont care about anything it seems.

[angramania]

If you have to wait then you could spend this time reading few new entries in factoriopedia or open tech tree and see clear path to success on Gleba. It would take 5-15 minutes and save you from hours of wall hitting.

Maybe you could share this information? I couldn't see it.

Open tech tree starting from Gleba discovery.
First two entries after it require gathering both kind of stromatolites. Right one open heating tower and leads directly to Aquilo discovery hinting that it is optional on Gleba. Left one give you recipe for nutrients from spoilage and item agricultural tower which require landfill and spoilage. So you know that you will need landfill and spoilage on Gleba and should get them in some quantity.
After agriculture you can see two more entries, one for each fruit. You can alt click on them to open factoriopedia to see what they look like. Also 'growth time' and 'harvest' hint you renewable nature of these resources. If you pay attention to numbers you can notice short spoil time of jelly/mash and lack of surplus for seeds. Time to think about short production cycles for jelly/yumako and productivity for seeds.
Next two entries are artifical soil and biochambers. First one just add ability to increase planting territory and 500 nutrients for discovery hints that you do not need it until your factory will grow. But biochamber require only 10 nutrients and give you main planet specific production building. It is in the same category as electromagnetic plant and foundry. And of course it is supposed that player will use this building. So you should read its description attentively. First thing to notice is 50% builtin productivity which answer seeds question. Next you should see what it requires for crafting. It is nice have necessary materials when you will need them. You can craft landfill, green circuits, iron plates beforehand but what about eggs and nutrients? At this time you should probably notice that nutrients from spoilage recipe is very ineffective and in the same science entry you get new recipe - nutrients from yumako mash, which can be done only in biochamber. Same for eggs. Alt click on them give you information about ability to get from enemies but it is not something that can be automated. For automation same science entry give you recipe for eggs in kovarex style and also in biochamber only. Now you should plan how to effectively craft 30-50 biochambers from a few eggs you will get from nearest enemy nest.
After you have got dozens biochambers it is time to return to science tree and discover what they can be used for. Bioflux entry should already be open as it has requirement of biochamber crafting. And after you start crafting bioflux it will sequentially open science entries with recipes for almost all raw materials you will need on Gleba. First one will give you iron and copper for base production, so you can have enough of them to craft belts, inserters and other logistic. Second will give oil materials for advanced products to make rocket parts. And third one give you new science pack to export via rockets. Now you have everything you need to create small factory producing and exporting around 100SPM.

But Vulcanus requires much more rock mining and you do not compel about it.

No, it doesn't, because Vulcanus provides infinite rock from lava.

Lol. You do not need stone from these rocks. You will have more of it than you need. Main reason for rock mining is iron, copper and tungsten ores. You will need a lot of them before you can craft you first foundries to start getting iron/copper from lava. And vulcanus' rocks are harder to mine and have much less ore than gleba's. Starting barehanded on Vulcanus is more long-winded than on Gleba. And if you can't kill demolisher from start then then you will need much more rock mining for tungsten ore.

[Tinyboss]

As a reminder: I am not looking for solutions. [...] I do not want to be told what the recipe is _supposed_ to mean, or why it's actually my fault for the recipe being confusing.

Yeah, but you're giving solutions. And as far as I can tell, you don't want to hear any discussion about why those solutions may be misguided or unnecessary. You're free to want what you want, but a public forum is pretty much the worst place to look for it. Maybe a blog would be better?

I will go ahead and respect your wishes by not detailing them while replying directly to you, but there are easy and/or simple solutions to most of the problems you have described.

[coffee-factorio]

I gather that you maintain a low profile and explosive power projection there with turrets in case anything walks by. What isn't tremendously clear to me is how to defend the supply line between orchards or if that is necessary.

I did not place a single turret on Gleba.

I placed a GIANT Perimeter of Gunturrets surrounded by Mines and supported by Rocket Towers several chunks wider than my spore cloud. I am quite sure it would have held against an attack, but none ever came.

Needless to say, I am a bit disapointed that they dont even want to expand into my direction. Or they do it so slow that I couldnt notice until now, and its been days since I built the perimeter.

Wrigglers/Strafers/Pentapods are the stoners of Factorio. Left alone in their swamp, they dont care about anything it seems.

Give yourself some credit. If they ever smell the spores I can confirm they're worse than biters. Because once they shut down an orchard you're nutrient output gets effected. And if you aren't feeding from two separate ones - I wasn't because I was going for a short term strategy anyways - then any eggs going to your bioscience line are going to become bombs. That's kinda why I put a DU round through 5 biochambers and - while I'm not a smart man that part of the factory is still standing.

By the time you scale production you get to be Nemoricus and you can probably just send some spidertrons in with industrial grade cleaner. Me I just have to look at all the egg rafts and go... "Hmm, yes, more biolabs. Wasn't a mistake. Nope not at all." But the burnout I feel is like - I remember setting so many filters and being invited to say for a long time. But then I have this alien combat mechanic thing. And writing the place off doesn't feel like a mistake until you sit down in the map editor and go "how does pollution clouds work exactly".

Because until I knew that I basically had no metric of what my line was doing other than, maybe what someone could find out by trying to hit ips targets with Yumako looking at spores.

With an assembly line that's essentially based on using the tank as a rock picker.

Which is like. Not your first instinct but I think that's actually rather viable too. You get like train cars of ores from stromolites.

[kdmorse]

I'm trying to produce quality Biochambers. This should be simple. I've managed to produce all other quality production facilities. But for Gleba, it's an absolute ball ache. If anything is wrong then my base starts getting destroyed. I can put up turrets, but I still get nagged with annoying alerts every few minutes. The enemies aren't in any way a threat, but I still have to get told off by Factorio and dinged with an annoying alert.

I'll stay away from the Gleba specific argument, as I don't understand it.

But if you're getting harranged by alerts that an entity is being attacked, and you don't want to be alerted when an entity is merely being attacked, you can turn off that category of alerts (entity_under_attack). I find this far more peaceful universe wide because I don't want to be harranged by alerts when biters on Nauvis manage to get on hit in on that one corner section of wall that they can reach before they instantly die, which happens alot. I save my alerts (and mental energy) for when an entity is actually destroyed.

What's the point of the enemies spawning from eggs? They aren't strong enough to do any damage, and even if they do the bots just repair it. They're just pointless busy work and an annoying noise every few minutes.

Now if you're letting entities actually be destroyed, you simply need more turrets surrounding your egg reprocessing.

[coffee-factorio]

It's not that simple. The logistics are rough. And you can get into tit for tat over that.

Besides I just kind of looked at and was like "Meh, I'll learn how to do this right some day" after my second try. And the strategy of just walking away for a bit might be better than arguing that you just need to put more into an argument.

[MisterDoctor]

Binary hard, do it right or we wil instantly punish you without any usable feedback other than FAIL.

it's not like that though, there's all kinds of ways to set things up. there's so much flexibility actually, I'm not even sure what the best options out of all the many options are. I'm no expert either and it was challenging but not impossible. challenge is good, challenge is what SA needs _more_ of, not less. this is supposed to be an expansion... it's post-rocket content. it's _supposed_ to be especially challenging...