They need to rename Gleba to Bartleby

[NineNine]

I also don't understand why people refuse bots as a potential easy solution if they feel unable to solve the issue with belts. Literally all biochamber processes are ridiculously simple using the basic block of a biochamber, bulk inserter with requester, fast inserter with active provider, and maybe a fast inserter passing active to requester for something like advanced bacteria cultivation. The active provider takes care of spoilage just as easily as equipping every one with a dedicated spoilage belt or using filtered splitters.

I agree. I initially tried to collect all spoliage on belts and distrbute all nutrients on belts, and it was a nightmare. Maybe I'll try again once my Gleba base gets *massive*, but not until then. Just making space to put the inserters/belts at each biochamber makes designing an all belt Gleba base very complicated.

For now, I've got blue chests distributing my nutrients and purple chests getting rid of my spoilage.

[Mskvaer]

I also don't understand why people refuse bots as a potential easy solution if they feel unable to solve the issue with belts.

I agree. I initially tried to collect all spoliage on belts and distrbute all nutrients on belts, and it was a nightmare. Maybe I'll try again once my Gleba base gets *massive*, but not until then. Just making space to put the inserters/belts at each biochamber makes designing an all belt Gleba base very complicated.

For now, I've got blue chests distributing my nutrients and purple chests getting rid of my spoilage.

Yes, I'm struggling (and not whining ), too. The belt setup for a minimal Gleba base (just enough for rocket parts and not quite functional yet AgroScience line), is indeed complicated. Looks more like spaghetti than streamlined. Got my robots ready, but worried about the power drain. Fuel for the boilers is another (fragile) production line. Good thing that the stuff you need grows on trees

[XT-248]

This is getting slightly out of hand. I will split the content across several posts this time seperately by subjects, starting with the lack of visibility on the Factorio community's slightly negative sentiment on Gleba.

A "Signifcantly large majority of the community?" Really? Where do you get your numbers, please? There's no evidence of that on these message boards or on Reddit.

I doubt the amount of players so fed up that they resort to such measures constitute a majority, much less "universally". You're welcome to provide some kind of metric, but that many restarts/exits/uninstalls don't seem to coincide with all the very positive review rating or even the some of the major negative complaints (first one for me was about gating cliff explosives on Vulcanus).

I have a Steam forum link to someone else who quit or uninstalled or whatever in the very first post that I made in this thread.

Here are a few Reddit posts from other users who don't like Gleba, with hundreds of upvotes. The first one has 2.3k upvotes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... fter_1400/

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... ate_gleba/

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... thing_but/

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... e_why_the/

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... it_for_me/


I don't rely on Steam Review as my singular point of reference, as I often see "joking" around reviews. For example, "This game is okayish" when posting the okayish review with over 4.5k gameplay time.

Found it: https://steamcommunity.com/id/avanfield ... ed/489830/

Most Steam reviews of Factorio or Space Age are not necessarily about the gameplay per se (inflation, Woke publisher, and other non-sequitur stuff I don't believe in or want to understand).


I have found a few reviews of constructive feedback from Steam for the Space Age Expansion itself.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/765 ... ed/645390/

Fauna destroys something with high frequency on both Nauvis and Gleba in a way that is annoying for them. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/765 ... ed/645390/

They have indicated that they are stuck on Gleba and haven't reached Aquilo. They haven't explained how they are stuck. So we can only guess as to how they are going to overcome it.

https://steamcommunity.com/id/goatse148 ... ed/645390/

This review goes a bit more in-depth on why they dislike Fulgora and Gleba. Personally, I am looking forward to Fulgora, so I respect their opinion on it, even if I don't necessarily agree with it 100%.


Here is a Factorio General forum titled: "Gleba has killed the game for me."

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=118565

Then, there is also the achievement completion ratio comment posted by someone on the same topic linked to one line above.

viewtopic.php?p=660575#p660575

This illustrates a nose-dive in engagement with different parts of Factorio planets (visit and research with science packs) after Gleba is one of the first three worlds that the engineer can visit.

[XT-248]

I will selectively respond to comments that I feel are important to talk about.

Have you actually played Space Age all the way through yourself, or are you just making all of this up? I'm get the impression that you haven't actually played the game, yet.

So yeah, you haven't even played the game yet.

If you play the game, and have actual questions about it, you should post them here. I notice that you've made no posts to "Gameplay Help", so you clearly haven't tried the game and asked for advice. It sounds to me like you're just reading random stuff on the Internet and slagging off on the game based on whatever you've read.

If you made that protestation about me, I could try to make a misinformed allegation against you, but I won't, as it leads nowhere good.


As for making a post in "Gameplay Help," why should I? I have very specific niche gameplay goals:

• Avoid Gleba as much as humanely possible
• Ensuring that it flawlessly works when I set it up on the first try and lasts for the rest of the session without paying any attention to it.
• Especially while losing parts of the Gleba farm to fauna attacks while working toward finishing the achievements.
• A very tight timing window to work on Gleba. I can't spend more than a half dozen hours or more there while working on four non-Gleba worlds and several Space Platforms.

Do you honestly expect me to get actionable help when it is challenging for you to understand what I am trying to do with Gleba? Do you understand why comments like "you haven't even played the game yet" are unhelpful when I have spent thousands of hours in Factorio and have considerable experience trouble-shooting from doing so?

We literally contended with biters, expansion, evolution, nests, and pollution on Nauvis. Are you contending none of those lessons carry over? Did you expect the new enemies to behave the same way as biters?

When I initially tested some defense strategies on Gleba, I found that very little to nothing about defending against biters/worms was applicable to Gleba natives.

A defense perimeter of turrets and walls? Stomper walks over the wall and potentially becomes aggressive due to the presence of turrets.

Strafer spawns wriggler on top of the turrets and, as the namesake implies, strafe instead of moving in close.

I didn't ask for new enemies to act the same way as Nauvis fauna. I accepted and dealt with Vulcanis Demolishers of various sizes, for instance.

Yet, at the same time, Gleba's fauna is different enough that new players will have problems adjusting after Nauvis.

I really feel like we keep crossing "new player" and "speedrunner" wires here, but I'll indulge.

I am not mixing those two kind of players as if they are the same kind of players.

"Introducing" new Gleba mechanics is all dumped almost back-to-back, giving new players little time to adjust and learn the mechanics.

Speedrunner has to deal with the Gleba factory potentially failing and costing them the attempt, as time is a limited currency. See my next post.

When did I mix the two categories of players up? I am asking because I clarified several times that they aren't the same, and I want to improve my communication.

And thank you for taking that time to do so. I hope you understand that I'm not pointing out the discrepancy here to try and poke fun at you. Imagine the dev responsible for Gleba reads your remarks. How do you think they would interpret a complaint about time spent from someone staking claim to a few thousand hours? I admittedly can't say for sure with this set of professionals, but I've seen nasty community engagement discussions between professional tech staff and customers before. The people that do this for a living will absolutely skewer you for even the slightest perceived inconsistency. Remember, this is your hobby but their profession.

What inconsistency? You made it sound like I played Space Age for 2k hours when I didn't make that claim.

I responded to skepticism about how much of an 'expert' I am with Factorio by pointing out that I have thousands of hours of gameplay with Factorio.

I did not mention how much time I spent with Space Age, partially because there isn't a reliable way to track time spent playing with Space Age. Steam treats Factorio 1.1, Factorio 2.0 without Space Age, and Factorio 2.0 with Space Age as a singular number of total hours spent.

Since its release date, I have had at most a hundred hours of free time to play Space Age at my best guess, and even then, I didn't spend all of that time on Space Age.

Those statements are not mutually exclusive, and thus, there is consistency.

The funny thing is that I'm still curious enough to work with you despite the hostility. I'm not sure what blueprint you pulled or why it failed. I do know I left Gleba dozens of in-game hours ago and my factory still chugs along with no intervention.

It doesn't matter why or how the blueprint/factory failed. The point that I am still trying to get you to understand is that when it does, it fails. It is frustrating that I spent hours doing whatever it was at the time only to find something failed or not working and not knowing why. See my next post.

Then I started to follow the trail of how something failed (no agricultural science, no flux, the particularities don't matter here), and it turns out that something went wrong with the Gleba Factory. Production charts only show what was being produced but not the particularises in how it failed or ceased producing.

The damage was already done by then, and I tried to revert to an earlier save game. However, I still couldn't find the cause for the failure as the earlier Gleba save game continued well past the fail timeframe without incident.


That is not the first or last time I have had to diagnose what went wrong with Gleba without data or even the only situation I have encountered, but it illustrates that dealing with Gleba is a bottomless well of dissatisfaction.

You quite clearly implied I had no life, career, or other concerns in your flippancy.

I am still trying to have that conversation.

Let's review why I made that flippancy comment and what I was trying to do.

In my first few posts, I add a bit of commentary about various issues with Gleba, which all went by without incidents.

While quoting one of my posts, you indicated that you were busy defending the Gleba mechanics.

I've been busy defending Gleba as a concept so I wanted to address your specific listed points:

Then, you end your post with an unconstructive, confrontational take on my stance.

Limited time: This is MOST of us and unbelievable that this is a complaint. Space platforms take a lot of time to master, are you going to complain about them, too? Space Age requires multiple different production dynamics. If you don't want to spend the time learning a particular one, mod it out or go back to vanilla.

See underlined portions.

In what way or shape are those portions meant to be constructive commentary that would get me to listen to you ranting about how I should take the time to learn how to play Gleba? Especially after a complete lack of sympathy for me not having fun with Gleba's mechanics?

Even more directly to the point, you made the point that I should "complain" about Space Platforms because they are not easy to master?

What does the quoted statement have to do with me not having fun with or not enjoying Gleba's mechanics?

[XT-248]

I am going to explain the "why" of pausing and restarting Gleba Production in depth here. I thought I had provided enough details for others to understand, but apparently, not.

You just scale up production of rocket parts on Gleba... just like you do with every other part of the game.

Huh? That makes no sense. Just ship the Gleba science back to Nauvis.

You're making a non-problem (spoiled Gleba science) into a complicated problem. People do this all the time when playing Factorio: They'll intentionally create a problem for themselves in order to give themselves a challenge. I do it all of the time. Those intentional problems do not correlate with problems with the game, itself.

You seem to have a fundamental understanding of the mechanics that doesn't match mine, like the rocket launches being wasteful. I can't grasp how they count as waste. I really suspect something holding up your enjoyment here is a base-level understanding or assumption that doesn't match somewhere.

Gameplay time is finite.

Specifically, when I start a new speedrun in Factorio Space Age, I have a time limit of forty hours to reach the endgame of Space Age with functional production chains in different locations.

Hypothetically, if the Gleba factory fails, I can't afford to spend more than a certain amount of time on Gleba or support it with imports from other worlds or space platforms.


To ensure that Gleba works smoothly and has fewer points of failure, I move non-essential productions off-world and import the necessary raw materials (examples of import to Gleba but not limited to: iron plates, copper plates, processing circuits, and light density structures).

That means no iron or copper bacteria production is happening on Gleba. Fewer complications that way.


If I wanted to launch a rocket from Gleba's rocket silo, I had to ship the processing circuits and light density structures from somewhere else, such as Nauvis. Rocket fuel is easy to set up on Gleba, doesn't spoil, and provides excess energy to run the Gleba factory. I would have had to do this regardless for Aquilo, so it is good to get started earlier on non-rocket-fuel exports to support off-world rocket launches.

So, to launch a rocket full of Agricultural Science packs, I have to launch the necessary ingredients from Nauvis's rocket silo. So, a wasteful launch on Gleba also incurs a wasteful launch on Nauvis. However, Aquilo doesn't suffer from the "production lines must never stop running" issue that occurs on Gleba.


I would have to spend extra time overbuilding processing units and light density structural production lines on Nauvis before touching down on Gleba, taking into account wasteful rocket launches from Gleba.

I don't mind doing some overbuilding, but cutting down, say, a couple of launches on average on Gleba translates to a shorter timeframe spent overbuilding on Nauvis since I don't need to build out as much infrastructure to take into account wasteful rocket launches from Gleba.


By suggesting either upscaling or starting iron/copper production on Gleba, I risk creating more failure pathways when I don't need to since I should already have Nauvis iron and copper plates readily available on Gleba.

I could potentially use a Space Platform to supply Gleba with iron plates initially and eventually copper plates, but not processing units or light density structures in a short time frame. Processing units and light density structures require a steady source of petroleum gas from heavy oil cracking and requires a non-trivial amount of material up front to set up and also some of the limited speedrun time to make such a platform perform flawlessly in the time allocated that it needs to.




Post Script:

While writing those posts, I was running a new design for a factory on Gleba in the background while not watching it.

I was using the following recipes: Agriculutural Science Packs, bioflux, yumako processing, jellynut processing, pentapod eggs, and nutrients from bioflux; all through bioreactors.

Guess what?

All I found was spoilage backing up and no damage to any part of the factory (turrets to prevent freshly hatched pentapods for bioreactor/science-pack-production from attacking and destroying stuff).

From what I could tell, something interfered with the bioflux-to-nutrient production for long enough, which caused all the bioreactors to run out of nutrients to keep running. But what is the exact sequence of events that led to this interruption in nutrient production? I only have guesses and potentially terrible speculative fixes.

I also tried using an assembler with a worse spoil->nutrient recipe (no nutrient needed to start) as a backup source in an earlier Gleba factory design, but that failed in the past for different reasons.



And you thought I was joking? I'm sorry to disappoint you. No, I'm not even trying to make jokes about my frustrations with Gleba.

I was planning to add a rocket fuel (from bioflux and jellynut) sub-factory to this new design when I spotted the completely dead-still bioreactors on Gleba. Yet I couldn't do anything as there was no bioflux or jellynut to test/work with for rocket fuel production.

When I have had a bad day at work and want to come home to take my shoes off and relax, troubleshooting a Gleba factory is not my idea of a fun and relaxing afternoon.

[XT-248]

I've seen this issue described here multiple times, and my reaction is always the same.

You absolutely can build up Gleba step by step, I know because I did. The automation challenge of Gleba is to deal with spoilage in your factory, i.e. every chest, belt, machine that deals with spoilable resources needs to have a way to remove spoilage. If you need to manually "clean up the mess", then then you are missing spoilage removal mechanisms in your design.

This is just a new thing to learn, like dealing with multiple outputs (e.g. advanced oil processing).

Now arguably the game does a bad job at nudging players in the right direction, since this comes up so often.

A radical approach would be to randomize the spoilage timer - I think that would make it paradoxically more obvious to the player that you need to remove spoilage and can't rely on processing things fast enough all the time (which seems to be what a lot of people try & fail at)

Exactly!


The production chart can only show historical data but not the why/how. Troubleshooting without reliable data is difficult, and I am speaking from experience. First-hand experience on Gleba, to be more precise.


Although I may disagree with the randomized spoilage timer solution, it is certainly worth a try. A change to Gleba's mechanics is better than the current status quo.

[mergele]

Look, speedrunning is an exercise in complete mastery of a game. If you are worried that your gleba factory breaks you need to get better at gleba, not have the game made easier for you. Spoilage is entirely deterministic, theres no randomness fucking you over. If your approach to not do bacteria yields suboptimal results find a better one. Routing and practice is a major part of speedrunning. My Gleba base has been running for over 30 hours and aside from eggs even restarted smoothely from a blackout.

[mmmPI]

I will selectively respond to comments that I feel are important to talk about.

That's called cherry picking ! You are going to have an incredibly biaised view if you only go on the internet to get confirmation on what you already think.

I have a Steam forum link to someone else who quit or uninstalled or whatever in the very first post that I made in this thread.
Here are a few Reddit posts from other users who don't like Gleba, with hundreds of upvotes. The first one has 2.3k upvotes.

This is insignificant though, there are posts with tens of thousands of upvotes saying the opposite.

You arguments are still on the line of "i had hard time on Gleba", and from your arguments it appears that it is caused by difficulty to learn and adapt. The game difficulty can't be optimal for all players and if you are in the group of players who struggle to beat the game maybe you should use all the tools available in the game and not force onto yourself arbitrary challenge making the game harder and then blaming the game design.

[aka13]

I saw interesting numbers posted in the other thread:

The steam achievements speak 1000 words about gleba.

Visit Vulcanus: 5.0%
Research with metallargics: 4.4%

People who landed on vulcanus and didn't finish it this run or in the future = 1 - 4.4/5.0 = 12%

Visit Fulgora: 4.3%
Research with electromagnetics: 3.8%

People who landed on fulgora and didn't finish it this run or in the future = 1 - 3.8/4.3 = 12%

Visit Gleba: 3.8%
Research with agriculture: 2.9%

People who landed on gleba and didn't finish it this run or in the future = 1 -2.9/3.8 = 28%

Visit Aquilo: 1.8%
Research with Cryogenics: 1.5%

People who landed on aquilo and didn't finish it this run or in the future = 1 -1.5/1.8 = 17%

That gets even more pronounced when you consider fulgora/vulcanus have tangible benefits even without research whereas gleba basically doesn't.

I actually found the factory building of gleba fun and interesting (well, minus the first hour of "how the hell do I even plant crap" type stuff), but you have to admit, one planet solely responsible for stopping over a quarter of players from finishing the game says there's just objectively problems with it. All that effort put into making aquilo interesting kinda doesn't pay off if a lot of people don't even get to visit it.

[mmmPI]

Waow 95% players can't leave Nauvis, and people complain about Gleba x)

[Shulmeister]

Interesting statistics, but the interpretation is hazardous. Theres is no way for anyone to tell if the run will be finished in the future. As such it is very well possible to interpret those statistic as how much time it takes to complete a planet, considering all player will eventually finish their run, various group of them are currently in different phase, some having reached a planet a not researched science pack from it yet.

And it would be very ill advised to think just because something takes longer than it is harder. Because making a thousand steel furnaces on Nauvis is quite easy although very time consuming compared to setting up the beginning of a small sustainable production chain on Gleba. Which can be harder as it require learning and adapting, but can be done fast once it's understood.

[mmmPI]

Interesting statistics, but the interpretation is hazardous.

I think the statistics show that Aquilo is the hardest planet, obviously, because only players brave enough to complete the Gleba can access it. And those are a very tiny minority of geniuses according to aforementionned stats, less than 3% of players ! And yet amongst those geniuses almost 1 out of 5 can't solve Aquilo, and they were able to solve Gleba, but not Aquilo ! Clearly Aquilo is harder !

[Shulmeister]

Turns out many players like Gleba, judging by this steam discussion :

https://steamcommunity.com/app/427520/d ... 606965425/

And also some players found it easy and enjoyable :

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... _know_one/
Gleba is easy !

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... uther_its/
Enjoyable once you can learn the mechanics !

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... after_you/
Same !

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... t_me_as_a/
Making players go a little further in skill , making them better player ,teaching them stuff !

https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... ove_gleba/
Gleba is great !

[mmmPI]

Turns out many players like Gleba, judging by this steam discussion :

Ah that must be some constructive feedback i think. I just looked quickly through the previous cherry picked list and noticed some of the review were made by players having played the game a grand total of 5 hours which made me laugh and was nice but didn't made me consider the points seriously.

Do you think players enjoy the challenge the novelty , the learning process the need to adapt , the feeling of accomplishment when finally something works and it was not trivial ? or something else ?

[aka13]

"Statistics don't say anything, but cherrypicking random discussions says a lot", can't make this up

[mmmPI]

"Statistics don't say anything, but cherrypicking random discussions says a lot", can't make this up

Yeah but you can cherrypick statistics from a random discussion, and pretend !

[Shulmeister]

"Statistics don't say anything, but cherrypicking random discussions says a lot", can't make this up

I only posted bunch of links to illustrate what cherry picking is, as it was done earlier, it can give the impression of a consensus when it's not the case. If you read the links though you would realize that many players write about enjoying the difficulty in Gleba, or find it easy which is different. That means a lot more to me than statistics mentionning 3.8% players reaching Gleba. What do you find interesting in there ? How do you explain to yourself this very low amount ? ( players using mods ?)

Do you think players enjoy the challenge the novelty , the learning process the need to adapt , the feeling of accomplishment when finally something works and it was not trivial ? or something else ?

A bit of all that ! Sounds like you do actually read those, some players enjoy the combat too, Gleba seem the planet for it

[aka13]

the impression of a consensus when it's not the case.

Eh, I would not say that there is any sort of consensus of course, or "people drop the game because of gleba", that would be absurd/in bad faith, imo as well.
I just find it interesting to observe, that there is indeed an observable difference between the planets.

[angramania]

Eh, I would not say that there is any sort of consensus of course, or "people drop the game because of gleba", that would be absurd/in bad faith, imo as well.
I just find it interesting to observe, that there is indeed an observable difference between the planets.

No one say that Gleba is the same as Vulcanus or Fulgora. It is the most difficult(in first run) of the three but in the same time the most interesting and rewarding. I do not understand why people want every planet to be equal in difficulty. Looks like they do not understand that planets were balanced to be equal in choice, not difficulty. Also factorio is not kind of game you play once and forget. So all their "I unexpected something in my first SA playthrough" doesn't matter. On their second, tenth and so on playthrough they will knew what to expect from Gleba and how to handle it in some(probably inefficient) way but also there will be space for improvement, much more than on Vulcanus and Fulgora.

[Shulmeister]

I just find it interesting to observe, that there is indeed an observable difference between the planets.

But how do you explain that only 5% of players reach Vulcanus ? What are the statistic saying otherwise ? 3.8-2.9 = 0.9% of players reach Gleba and don't research a science pack from it ?