Gleba has killed the game for me.

[fencingsquirrel]

I mean, this whole steam vs non-steam sidequest doesn't have much to do with the steam achievements post I made because it involves players invested with the game all the way to making it to another planet, and then the immediate following few short hours. So we're already filtering out players who don't have time to get very far, whether they are "filthy casul steam players" at that point doesn't matter much.

[pmc666]

And you continue to make my point: You only use a "game management system" if you're playing a whole lot of games.

That's incorrect - I have 268 games in my Steam library.

In the last three months I have played two games - one a puzzle game which is ~5 mins a day (but not played it for a couple of weeks) and Factorio.

Since start of 2024 I have played seven games - mostly puzzle games (minutes per day), Subnautica, and Factorio.

So currently, I'm a dedicated Factorio player by any measure* yet use Steam because a) Steam came first, and b) doubt I would have found it without Steam anyway.

* I could mention the number of hours Steam thinks I've played since I bought it, but it is a) wrong, and b) unbelievable if it was true (which it isn't))

[mmmPI]

I mean, this whole steam vs non-steam sidequest doesn't have much to do with the steam achievements post I made because it involves players invested with the game all the way to making it to another planet, and then the immediate following few short hours. So we're already filtering out players who don't have time to get very far, whether they are "filthy casul steam players" at that point doesn't matter much.

Your conclusion from those stats is wrong though, because you have no way to tell if a player is currently having fun playing on Gleba while not having finished a research requiring a science pack from it. Instead you pretend wrongfully that the descrepancy means player abandon the run or will never reach the achievement in the future ( because gleba). Therefore, it would represent a niche topic where at most 0.9% players are concerned. As it would also be wrong to pretend those players are sad or frustrated and not eager to try again when they have more time for it.

Not adressing the elephant in the room that only 5% player reach Vulcanus and drawing conclusion on the other figure seem problematic too as was pointed out in an other thread.

[mmmPI]

That's incorrect - I have 268 games in my Steam library.

In the last three months I have played two games - one a puzzle game which is ~5 mins a day (but not played it for a couple of weeks) and Factorio.

Since start of 2024 I have played seven games - mostly puzzle games (minutes per day), Subnautica, and Factorio.

So currently, I'm a dedicated Factorio player by any measure* yet use Steam because a) Steam came first, and b) doubt I would have found it without Steam anyway.

* I could mention the number of hours Steam thinks I've played since I bought it, but it is a) wrong, and b) unbelievable if it was true (which it isn't))

But are you part of the 0.9% player that reached Gleba and didn't progress to Aquilo ?

[pmc666]

That's incorrect - I have 268 games in my Steam library.

In the last three months I have played two games - one a puzzle game which is ~5 mins a day (but not played it for a couple of weeks) and Factorio.

Since start of 2024 I have played seven games - mostly puzzle games (minutes per day), Subnautica, and Factorio.

So currently, I'm a dedicated Factorio player by any measure* yet use Steam because a) Steam came first, and b) doubt I would have found it without Steam anyway.

* I could mention the number of hours Steam thinks I've played since I bought it, but it is a) wrong, and b) unbelievable if it was true (which it isn't))

But are you part of the 0.9% player that reached Gleba and didn't progress to Aquilo ?

Not sure what that has to do with using Steam as a game management platform - Can you elaborate?

[mmmPI]

Not sure what that has to do with using Steam as a game management platform - Can you elaborate?

The steam discussion is an off topic actually , that span off someone posting them related to the fact that some players said "gleba killed the game for them".

[pmc666]

Not sure what that has to do with using Steam as a game management platform - Can you elaborate?

The steam discussion is an off topic actually , that span off someone posting them related to the fact that some players said "gleba killed the game for them".

Why were you asking me a tangential question to an off-topic tangent? What relevance does my current progress in the game have to the topic?

[mmmPI]

Why were you asking me a tangential question to an off-topic tangent? What relevance does my current progress in the game have to the topic?

It was my attempt at making interventions relate back to the actual topic ! Individual cases may have little relevance, but that's what was used (by you) to disproove previous claim about steam/non-steam user. So i thought you could also use your individual case to tell us if the game was killed by Gleba or not. For illustration. It's not my personnal case.

[Khazul]

The steam achievements speak 1000 words about gleba.

I would argue that Steam players are less invested in Factorio than non-Steam players

I call BS on that. There is no one I know on PC who doesnt have Steam and use it as their preferred game management platform (over any of the publisher specific platforms where possible which we almost universally despise, but we do all like steam mostly).

You know people who use Steam because you use Steam.

And you continue to make my point: You only use a "game management system" if you're playing a whole lot of games. If you're playing a bunch of different games, it's a lot more unlikely that you'll complete Space Age. If you're a dedicated Factorio player, and that's all you play, you're not going to install some random piece of "game management" DRM software for no reason.

I'm sure there are some who only play factorio. Maybe that is all they have time for, maybe they just arnt interested in other games. Or maybe they really need a break and to do something else for a while - who knows? Even counting someone hours in the game doesnt mean that much - some people just pick this up and are able to understanding it in depth very quickly whiles other seems to struggle after even 1000s of hours. Not everyone is the same, with the same background, nor are their circumstances.

I also wonder how people would otherwise discover this short of a friend pointing them at it. I dont ever recall seeing adverts for it spammed all over the place. A friend pointed me at this on Steam a long time ago. As far as I know, it has always been on Steam. AFAIK is has always been available as a separate download as well.

Going back to the stats - every earlier stage in the progression will always have higher completion than a later stage. On its own it doesnt mean someone gave up, it may just mean they just havn't progressed further YET.

[mmmPI]

Not everyone is the same, with the same background, nor are their circumstances.

That's very true, for i know players that do not use steam and yet have a computer !

[ahainen]

I'm very much in agreement. I'm definitely not having fun

[mmmPI]

I'm very much in agreement. I'm definitely not having fun

have you tried playing 5 hours and quit like OP ? or did you also try like it was advised a little later to try again ?

It's unclear with what you agree

[XT-248]

Over a thousand hours in the base game. Dozens of factories and dozens of build concepts.
Over 40 hours in the expansions already. Loving the space platforms, Vulcanus, Fulgora...

Then I got to Gleba. 5 hours later, I'm done. I'm just done. I f%#&ing hate spoilage. Absolutely hate it. The only thing I want to do now is bring in an armada of space ships loaded with nukes and completely glass the entire planet into extinction.

It's been a great run There are very few games over the years I've put so many hours into. Factorio has been one of the best, but Gleba completely ruined it. Best of luck to Wube.

I understand your discouragement, and I want to add my two cents here and say that I sympathize with your perspective.


Hate is a very strong word. I agree that Gleba is not fun for several reasons. I don't necessarily 'hate' its mechanics, but I do get discouraged when I cannot troubleshoot what went wrong with Gleba in the past. It seems you ran into a possibly different issue than I did since I spent several weeks working on different Gleba designs.

So, I am more of an "I don't like Gleba's mechanics" person.


On the off chance that you are still reading the posts in this thread, would you mind sharing what happened on Gleba that drove you to stop playing Factorio?

To others, feel free to answer this question if you have something to say about how Gleba isn't fun for you.

[Shulmeister]

Have you tried asking for help ?

That can prevent being discouraged, most experienced players would be happy to try and help debug your setup.

I found the combat very fun in Gleba, it's clearly the most challenging planet but also my favourite

[wobbycarly]

I'm still on my first run of Space Age expansion (having played V1 from 0.14), and Gleba annoyed me because it doesn't support experimentation. It's too easy to have a bunch of products spoil and have to go out harvesting again. I didn't want to, but Gleba was the only planet that I had to enter editor mode to design some builds, as the spoilage kept getting in the way. I've got a basic science setup now, but I'm still bringing in rocket ingredients from elsewhere because I haven't got a full production line running there yet.

[MisterDoctor]

So what have stopped 48% of brave Gleba's conquerors? Problems on Vulcanus and Fulgora after Gleba? Difficulties of space platform design? Or maybe Gleba is so good that there is nothing more interesting after it?

yes, exactly the latter one for me. I went Gleba -> Vulcanus -> Fulgora which I didn't know beforehand was in order of decreasing interest and complexity. Fulgora is so dull and boring I just gave up on the whole game. I hope they will improve things but it doesn't sound like they will, so I'm left with a negative opinion of this whole DLC and game (for opposite reasons of this thread). if I had infinite time I might try to fix it myself with a mod but I don't have enough time or interest to work on that at the moment.

my view as stated before is that this is an expansion and expansions should be noticeably more challenging than the base game. Gleba and maybe space got that right, but Vulcanus and Fulgora surely did not. I actually wish that the expansion had just been Gleba and space and we were still waiting for Vulcanus, Fulgora, and the rest. I think the dev tried to do too much at once, and did not release something with consistent design quality.

(sorry guess I am a couple weeks behind in this thread, oh well)

[XT-248]

So what have stopped 48% of brave Gleba's conquerors? Problems on Vulcanus and Fulgora after Gleba? Difficulties of space platform design? Or maybe Gleba is so good that there is nothing more interesting after it?

yes, exactly the latter one for me. I went Gleba -> Vulcanus -> Fulgora which I didn't know beforehand was in order of decreasing interest and complexity. Fulgora is so dull and boring I just gave up on the whole game. I hope they will improve things but it doesn't sound like they will, so I'm left with a negative opinion of this whole DLC and game (for opposite reasons of this thread). if I had infinite time I might try to fix it myself with a mod but I don't have enough time or interest to work on that at the moment.

my view as stated before is that this is an expansion and expansions should be noticeably more challenging than the base game. Gleba and maybe space got that right, but Vulcanus and Fulgora surely did not. I actually wish that the expansion had just been Gleba and space and we were still waiting for Vulcanus, Fulgora, and the rest. I think the dev tried to do too much at once, and did not release something with consistent design quality.

(sorry guess I am a couple weeks behind in this thread, oh well)

I don't know if you are aware of this or not.

Source: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-431

The Gleba problems
In the last few months we have been thinking about how to improve Gleba. There has always been this fundamental problem with a biological-oriented planet - other things you produce in the game tend to not be organic so it doesn't quite fit as easily as a planet based on making more Iron or more electronic circuits.


It's difficult to integrate the biological production chains into the rest of the traditional factory, as it's mostly metals there.
Finding useful things to unlock is difficult, especially compared to the metal and electronics based producers like Foundry and Electromagnetic plant.
And during the LAN party we had about a month ago, these problems were only confirmed plus we've realized many more issues in other areas. And seeing people interact with Gleba put a lot more urgency on finding solutions.

There is one change in particular which is significant and outlines our approach fairly well:

WUBE did the change outline here weeks before the Space Age release date. The FFF 431 Blog was posted on October 4th, 2025, and Space Age was released on October 21st, 2025.

Non-Gleba worlds had much more time for polishing and development compared to Gleba, which had a much shorter timeframe.


That said, I am most looking forward to those worlds, in order of their most impactful perks or benefits: Vulcanis, Fulgora, Aquilo, and Gleba. Bear in mind that WUBE considers Vulcanis as one of the top best worlds in terms of rewards before the FFF #431 changes.


Vulcanis is appealing for its unlimited sources of iron, copper, stone, and sulfur gas. The only downside is that tungsten ore is guarded by hostile demolishers.

Fulgora offers unlimited heavy oil and experiences frequent lightning strikes, which could translate to potentially unlimited energy. The primary challenge here is logistics, as the petroleum industry begins with heavy oil instead of raw crude oil. Logistics influence the base design in unique ways.

Aquilo requires a constant active heat source to maintain base functions. In return, it unlocks fusion as a source of electric energy and products that integrate all worlds into a large interstellar factory.



Gleba is in an awkward position at the moment. "Hard to understand, Hard to troubleshoot, and hard to master." Additionally, the rewards for establishing a factory on Gleba are not as appealing as the unlockables from other worlds, mainly due to the difficulties in getting a Gleba base operational.

I believe WUBE should aim for a balance of being "easy to understand, modestly challenging to troubleshoot, and hard to master." While the overall challenge should remain, minor adjustments could make it easier to diagnose and fix issues within a malfunctioning Gleba factory. It seems reasonable to request that starting from scratch be less punishing than it currently is. By "punishing," I mean the necessity to quickly rush out and collect fresh products with a short shelf life, all within a tight timeframe. These items must be delivered to the Gleba factory to resume operations—assuming there’s an engineer available on-site to manage the situation.

Considering that WUBE already increased the value of Gleba's rewards (biolabs) just before the release of Space Age, I doubt they want to make Gleba's rewards even more powerful than they are now. Therefore, it seems logical to focus on making the Gleba experience less punishing.


Establishing a Gleba factory should feel like an accomplishment, but it currently doesn't.

[Shulmeister]

Establishing a Gleba factory should feel like an accomplishment, but it currently doesn't.

I disagree, feeling that the dificulty constitute a challenge to overcome that gives a feeling of accomplishment. When you look at the first post, it is written that the person try to play the expansion for 40 hours, including 5 hours on Gleba that were improductive. Which to me translate as one afternoon of attempting something. Imagine trying another time and making some more small improvement in the understanding, and again a few times, then you feel the understanding part is done, and the debugging feels easy suddenly, which feels rewarding to me.

[B.Y.]

Gleba has a few concepts to learn, and that learning curve is like a cliff. Once you learn them, it is easy.

It took me probably more than 40 hours of game time to figure out Gleba, and I was at medium stompers by the time I did. You might want to save your game to a file with a unique name when starting Gleba. If I had been a little slower, I don't think I would survived. As it was, I resorted to shipping in tons of material from Nauvis to beat back the nests and rebuild my gardens.

My first 2 factories on Gleba failed and I tore them down completely and started over. My third is working like a charm, and I'm back to designing space platforms.

Spoilage is good, you need spoilage to make sulfur and you need spoilage stored to have a guaranteed way to make nutrients. There is no penalty for spoiling things EXCEPT fruits and eggs.

If you let fruits (jellynut and yumako) spoil before you process them into jelly and mash, you get no chance at a seed. You need seeds to make Gleba work. You need to use biochambers to process your fruit so that you get the 50% production bonus and thus more seeds out than fruit in. DO NOT process fruit in assemblers. If you are seed positive, you have infinite resources on Gleba. Eventually you will resort to burning seeds in heating towers to clear your systems.

Feeding biochambers with nutrients is the problem to solve. USE efficiency modules in EVERY biochamber. Just do. If you don't you will never get ahead of the the need to make nutrients. Biochambers need nutrients to work and biochambers are the best way to make nutrients. There are lots of belt-loops and box-loops that work. Whatever loop you use it needs to be short because nutrients spoil fast, and spoilage is fine, but a lack of nutrients isn't fine.

(I am not a bot fan, but) using bots and logistic boxes makes things MUCH easier in Gleba. You have 2 output slots per machine on Gleba: the product and the spoilage. Also. Gleba-specific items will rot on belts, or in boxes, or in machines. You need to remove the spoilage and move it to be used or burned, or things will clog. Tick the 'trash unrequested' in your boxes, use filtered splitters, and filter your inserters. Use bots as housekeepers. I use active provider chests for spoilage and shove it into requestor boxes ready to feed assemblers (not biochambers) making nutrients. If those boxes get full, the extra spoilage goes to filtered storage chests to be burned in heating towers.

You need to make nutrients in biochambers. You need spoilage to have a way to START to make nutrients when you don't have any. This is where the blue assembler is a hero on Gleba. You feed it power and spoilage and it spits out nutrients. You don't want to do this for production. It is horrible and slow. But, it is the way to kickstart a biochamber making nutrients from bioflux. And don't forget, spoilage doesn't spoil, so an assembler with a box of spoilage feeding into a biochamber making nutrients is the starter motor. Always build them as a set and keep the box of spoilage full.

In your gardens, you want to prevent harvesting when you can't process the fruit. A living plant is storage for fruit. Use a circuit to turn off the tower when you have enough fruit in your network or on the belt to the fruit processors. Don't turn off the inserters, turn off the tower. You don't want harvested fruit spoiling in the tower. Again, you don't ever want to let fruit spoil because that is letting the chance at a seed rot. If the mash or jelly rots after you obtain the seed, that is fine. So, if you pick fruit, you must process fruit. Seeds are success on Gleba.

The other thing to never let spoil is eggs. They become wigglers when they 'spoil.' It doesn't matter where they spoil: in your inventory, in machines, on belts, in space. So build your egg cultivator with a heating tower and put any eggs in danger of spoiling to the flames. Once you have the nutrients problem solved and can keep a biochamber up 100% of the time, you loop the egg production and will have more eggs than you need. You can turn eggs into biochambers and then recycle them later as a way to store them.

For the stompers, you need hard-hitting physical projectiles. Uranium shells from the tank make quick work of them and their nests. Defend your gardens with LOTS of gun turrets and red ammo or better. Stomper damage is aoe so walls are almost pointless once you get big stompers. I see people say laser turrets are useless on Gleba, but they are effective against strafers and wrigglers. The enemies on Gleba will only attack your gardens as those are the only source of spores, and they can't build nests on dry land. So, other than a wriggler that spawns when an egg spoils, your factory is pretty safe.

[wouteree]

Gleba made me appreciate the game and the core features a lot more. I have many hours in Factorio but still struggle. Every planet introduces a new problem. In Fulgora it is excess solved by recyclers, in Gleba it is time. Gleba is the most difficult I must admit because it differentiates the most from traditional gameplay. Fulgora is just reverse thinking. Gleba requires different thinking as it introduces time. As I play really slow, it is also not enjoyable in the beginnning as you need to hurry up and run behind things. Then I changed my gameplay a bit. I ussually don't use too many bots before space age, but in space age, I feel, you cannot succeed without bots and requester chests. I now have a factory on Gleba that is fully functional on itself, running for more than 100+ hours. I don't really need to do anything except feeding it from time to time with some basic stuff. Here is how I fixed Gleba and made it easy mode.

1/ Build a nuclear plant (4 reactors), with production of empty radioactive bottles into fresh ones. Unlimited power!
2/ Let the bots run Gleba. It will be hard to move everything arround on belts because of spoilage. Requester chests are critical in space age.
3/ Move your science park to Gleba and send a spaceship with all bottles, in my case coming mostly from Nauvis.
4/ Build rocket turrets and yellow rockets to protect Gleba factory. They kill everything easily.
5/ Get a spidertron. Ennemies are unimportant against a spidertron with rockets.
6/ Create 1 line. Make nutrients, turn it into spoilage, turn it again in nutrients.

See, easy!