A idea to handle gleba problem

[meifray]

I think gleba is really good idea but just not work because you got gate keeped in everyway that limits how you can even produce basic ores, and before you know it stomper will come and kill you and your defense only make them attack whole base instead of just the tower.

At the root of it all, it all came down to one problem: ores, without it we can't build anything, and in gleba we have no other choice but getting it through bacteria, and to getting it from bacteria means you have to get bioflux, that mean you have to build a two farm at first, that is fucking bullshit, in nauvis build anything only really require iron and some of copper, in gleba we have to enjoy build things from low density structure just to get iron ore?

Indeed, bioflux center of gleba recipe, just like green circuit is center of all crafts, but that challenge just came too fast, in nauvis starting iron and copper patch is within mile, it should have a meaningful loop in both farm before you connect two into a first bioflux loop.

In current system both using bioflux to deterministically make fresh bacteria, and we have a spoil fruit recipe to have a 7% chance to get a bacteria,jus imagine burning mining drill only produce such amount of ore when you just put tons of coal you collected manually.

My suggestion is shift it a bit, instead we produce first bacteria using bioflux, nutrition and ore to make a bacteria 100% this time, but the duplication process no longer refresh bacteria, but it is now cheaper, just crushed fruit+bacteria=2bacteria

Please notice, THERE ARE NO FRESHNESS RESET,even the one you made from bioflux is depanded on freshness of bioflux and nutrition you put in, Player need to seek out ways to make bacteria duplicate more in a set time frame, fresh product means you have more time to make it more ores, in its worst, you can always start again by going back to another agricultural tower and make another bioflux and try again without manually seek out the bacteria rocks that will be removed over time by player.

Oh, and maybe a bioflux spoiling recipe, just bioflux+spoilage->bioflux(90%fresh)+spoilage will be cool, so we can wait less.

[Hurkyl]

At the root of it all, it all came down to one problem: ores, without it we can't build anything, and in gleba we have no other choice but getting it through bacteria, and to getting it from bacteria means you have to get bioflux, that mean you have to build a two farm at first, that is

My experience is that there is more than plenty of iron/copper ore/bacteria available from the rocks for the purposes of bootstrapping from local materials. And for people who want to jump right in with large builds... shouldn't that be a matter of bringing materials on the space platform?

Are you not finding those options adequate?

My suggestion is shift it a bit, instead we produce first bacteria using bioflux, nutrition and ore to make a bacteria 100% this time, but the duplication process no longer refresh bacteria, but it is now cheaper, just crushed fruit+bacteria=2bacteria

I rather prefer the model of bootstrapping a self-sustaining reaction. And it fits the general theme of the planet since you do that for pentapod eggs, and at a higher level, the whole Gleba factory is like that.

I would consider changing the production chain like this to be a massive downgrade.

[pioruns]

Current system is fine. Gleba is hard, and great fun at that. Thanks for your thoughts anyway.

[meifray]

At the root of it all, it all came down to one problem: ores, without it we can't build anything, and in gleba we have no other choice but getting it through bacteria, and to getting it from bacteria means you have to get bioflux, that mean you have to build a two farm at first, that is

My experience is that there is more than plenty of iron/copper ore/bacteria available from the rocks for the purposes of bootstrapping from local materials. And for people who want to jump right in with large builds... shouldn't that be a matter of bringing materials on the space platform?

Are you not finding those options adequate?

My suggestion is shift it a bit, instead we produce first bacteria using bioflux, nutrition and ore to make a bacteria 100% this time, but the duplication process no longer refresh bacteria, but it is now cheaper, just crushed fruit+bacteria=2bacteria

I rather prefer the model of bootstrapping a self-sustaining reaction. And it fits the general theme of the planet since you do that for pentapod eggs, and at a higher level, the whole Gleba factory is like that.

I would consider changing the production chain like this to be a massive downgrade.

Well, I play gleba start without heating tower and bioflux to rocket fuel recipe...
the self-sustaining is a good point I have to give it to you.

[crimsonarmy]

At the root of it all, it all came down to one problem: ores, without it we can't build anything, and in gleba we have no other choice but getting it through bacteria, and to getting it from bacteria means you have to get bioflux, that mean you have to build a two farm at first, that is

My experience is that there is more than plenty of iron/copper ore/bacteria available from the rocks for the purposes of bootstrapping from local materials. And for people who want to jump right in with large builds... shouldn't that be a matter of bringing materials on the space platform?

Are you not finding those options adequate?

My suggestion is shift it a bit, instead we produce first bacteria using bioflux, nutrition and ore to make a bacteria 100% this time, but the duplication process no longer refresh bacteria, but it is now cheaper, just crushed fruit+bacteria=2bacteria

I rather prefer the model of bootstrapping a self-sustaining reaction. And it fits the general theme of the planet since you do that for pentapod eggs, and at a higher level, the whole Gleba factory is like that.

I would consider changing the production chain like this to be a massive downgrade.

Well, I play gleba start without heating tower and bioflux to rocket fuel recipe...
the self-sustaining is a good point I have to give it to you.

The heating tower is unlocked very early on Gleba. If you are running into issues with fuel I would recommend

putting unused but not spoiled mash and jelly in the heating tower

.

[meifray]

Ok, now I make the mod so you can try:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/gleba_simple_bacteria

old1.jpg (136.06 KiB) Viewed 237 times

Compare to the pervious purposal, this version keeps original bioflux based farming intact, but you now have new recipe to both make bateria and breed them without bioflux.

Bacteria creation recipe no longer gamble and no longer produce spoilage directly, but now it will spoil part of their product.

Now introducing new bacteria recipe that seems useless, just turn a bacteria+fruit into spoiled bacteria, but if you place it in biochamber, their productivity will produce extra bacteria.

[mmmPI]

The mod looks great. And the pictures helps get the idea quickly. It does look like to me that it adresses the mentionned difficulties, early game it makes it easier to bootstrap the factory without using external supplies, just from bacteria. The yield difference between the 2 recipe should disqualify the "easy" one later, in favor of the one that uses bioflux, but it's still possible to scale up with the "easy" receipe to remove the need for logistic connexions between area that grow one or the other fruits, you could have isolated "fieds" where the only products exchanged between them is "not spoilable" => ore , instead of the bioflux recipe. The bioflux is still required for all the other use. That SOUND balanced on paper to me, but it's possible that in practice it yields to situation where players that rely a lot on those recipe face much more challenging ennemies than player using a recipe with better yield like currently. So there's a risk that it backfires and make the experience "more difficult" due to stompers arriving earlier. Good thing there is a mod to test

[Loren Pechtel]

You don't need bioflux. You can get it directly from the mash, just less efficiently.

[meifray]

After some trys with any planet start with strangers, I have gathered some reaction and thoughts, that is my old system is still too complex , having spoilage on the creation recipe is a massive burden that require player make some spoilage, which is not exactly what I wanted; And forced biochamber will also gatekeeping the production, for those reasons, I decided to just make it simply produced more and can be handle in assember2.

The spoilage percentaged is also changed, 50% means it always decay, 42% is barely a loop and 25% means you can actually keep the cycle if you always feed them fresh input, to incentize the players, I just make it easy.

old2.jpg (155.16 KiB) Viewed 236 times

[Hurkyl]

Regarding balancing... in vanilla space age, it averages 60 jelly / 30 mash to produce a bacteria from scratch, so you're definitely making it a lot cheaper.

I also feel like the proliferation recipes are strong enough that a lot of people would just completely ignore the cultivation recipes, especially for copper (since you can make nutrients from mash): the throughput is faster, you only need a quarter of the buffer space to allow bacteria to spoil. Only producing 42% as much bacteria is a penalty, but not an overwhelming one.

Also... it looks like these recipes give you an upcycling loop for mash and jelly. Is that intentional?

[meifray]

Regarding balancing... in vanilla space age, it averages 60 jelly / 30 mash to produce a bacteria from scratch, so you're definitely making it a lot cheaper.

In gleba , it is better to just use Fruit(F) as unit, in vanilla so it is 15F->Iron Ore, it is really terrible, Bioflux aka LDS of Gleba is just 2.5F ! so I thoughtit 2.5F will be a much fair price .

I also feel like the proliferation recipes are strong enough that a lot of people would just completely ignore the cultivation recipes, especially for copper (since you can make nutrients from mash): the throughput is faster, you only need a quarter of the buffer space to allow bacteria to spoil. Only producing 42% as much bacteria is a penalty, but not an overwhelming one.

Good point, I do forgot to tweak bioflux recipe to 4s like vanilla, and proliferation is gonna to use 2F instead of just 1F and take 2s to make instead of just 1s.

Also... it looks like these recipes give you an upcycling loop for mash and jelly. Is that intentional?

No, but after the calculation it seems pretty good, so I gonna keep that.

And the version 1.2.0 is out, it become this:

recipe_view.jpg (157.1 KiB) Viewed 248 times

and this is a early game test with ( https://mods.factorio.com/mod/cooking_nutrients ):

img1a56w45d165a8w4da.jpg (519.64 KiB) Viewed 228 times

[Hurkyl]

I also feel like the proliferation recipes are strong enough that a lot of people would just completely ignore the cultivation recipes, especially for copper (since you can make nutrients from mash): the throughput is faster, you only need a quarter of the buffer space to allow bacteria to spoil. Only producing 42% as much bacteria is a penalty, but not an overwhelming one.

Ack, I just noticed I left out one of the most significant points, so I'll say it now in case my intent was not clear.

The main point is that copper can be made in a way that is completely separate from jellynut logistics, and conversely iron from yumako logistics. This qualitative distinction is the main reason why I think people would accept something that only runs at 42% efficiency: the throughput and buffer space were just meant to be the extra cherries on top.

(although I can imagine some people would care more about the throughput)

At 21% efficiency in the latest update, I'm agnostic about whether it's too efficient or not.

(edit history: I forgot proliferation could be made in assembler 2, so you actually can make iron completely independent from yumako without needing nutrients to do so, although that's another efficiency loss due to productivity)

[angramania]

In gleba , it is better to just use Fruit(F) as unit, in vanilla so it is 15F->Iron Ore, it is really terrible, Bioflux aka LDS of Gleba is just 2.5F ! so I thoughtit 2.5F will be a much fair price .

What? In vanilla without modules it costs 0.26 fruit per iron ore and 1.21 fruit per bioflux. And there is nothing common between bioflux and LDS.

but after the calculation it seems pretty good, so I gonna keep that.

You definitely should add "cheat" tag for your mod.

[meifray]

What? In vanilla without modules it costs 0.26 fruit per iron ore and 1.21 fruit per bioflux. And there is nothing common between bioflux and LDS.

1F=6jelly(with biochamber)=15% iron ore(with biochamber), 1/0.15 ~=6.67 , that is 6.67F pre ore, How you get that 0.26F?
You mean 1.21/5= 0.26? that only unlock after the bioflux, and whole point is bioflux is too early to introduced, we should get stable source of iron and copper before bioflux.

Let't do more math, a tower can create 7.83F/s, in that 0.26 ratio we get 2.03ore/s, that is the mining power of 4 burner mining drill, and it take steel and more to make even a tower, not to mention we need bioflux to processing them, if we are not using biochamber it even become worse 7.83F/s using 15F pre ore is 0.522 it is just a single mining drill, and you have to make landfill,nutrients and more biochamber to make more seed to even reach the top speed of single tower.

my mod is just make it
2.5 bac=8j=1.33F*(8/6)/2.5=0.7F; 7.83*0.7=5.481F/s that is power of 11 burner mining drill,and you still require tons of assembler to pull that off

[Hurkyl]

and whole point is bioflux is too early to introduced, we should get stable source of iron and copper before bioflux.

As I mentioned earlier, IMO there are a lot of rocks to scavenge to get started.

But I thought more in comparison with the other planets, and I think it's worth noting that you can't get industry started on the other planets either without getting their special things going too: on Vulcanus you have to get a foundry going to process lava, and on Fulgora you have to get your recyclers running to break down gears (and maybe other things) to get materials.

[meifray]

But I thought more in comparison with the other planets, and I think it's worth noting that you can't get industry started on the other planets either without getting their special things going too: on Vulcanus you have to get a foundry going to process lava, and on Fulgora you have to get your recyclers running to break down gears (and maybe other things) to get materials.

Good point, but vulcanus can just get free easy infinite iron without restriction, and I make and played https://mods.factorio.com/mod/NoMoltenInPipes with Vulcanus start, I know how much rock it take and even with such restriction, it is still not harder than my "cheat" version of gleba, Fulgora do need some working on the logisticaly center but once it it done, it is only the matter of time solve the planet, Gleba is whole new deal:"If you havn't proven youself by built a giant factory make a burner mining drill worth of factory, your dont get iron", that is just pure hardcore, it is like play Base game with biter off but you only have 5 burner mining drill+5 electric mining drill and you can't craft those , it is just not fast enough for people to expand and try new designs.

[angramania]

1F=6jelly(with biochamber)=15% iron ore(with biochamber), 1/0.15 ~=6.67 , that is 6.67F pre ore, How you get that 0.26F?

This is recipe to kickstart iron bacteria production in case it was stopped by whatever reason. Once you have got your first bacteria, you stop this recipe and switch to main cycle. Which costs 0.26F per ore. So it is not correct to say that in vanilla iron ore costs 15F.

Let't do more math, a tower can create 7.83F/s, in that 0.26 ratio we get 2.03ore/s, that is the mining power of 4 burner mining drill

7.83F/s divide by 0.26F/ore is 30 ore/s. That is equivalent of two full yellow belts. That in turn requires 120 burner mining drills.

Gleba is whole new deal:"If you havn't proven youself by built a giant factory make a burner mining drill worth of factory, your dont get iron",

To produce green circuit with single AM you need:
13 mining drills for iron/copper/coal
9 stone furnaces
2 AM for wire

To produce bioflux with single biochamber you need:
2 agricultural towers
3 biochambers for mash/jelly/nutrients

Bioflux is simpler than green circuits. No giant factory is necessary.