Gleba!

[theolderbeholder]

That factory is way beyond anything I am able to come up with. Best I can do is something which exports around 100 science per minute (and some Stack insertes), but efectiviely lives of imports from Vulcanus. Which is good enough for me, go away Gleeba and never bother me again.
Could you please post some more detailed screenshots of your design?

[Tertius]

I guess I better show a smaller example from my latest map without the large part on the left that just creates legendary modules, beacons and biolabs. I started quality manufacturing but abandoned this because it wasn't fun for me.
This relies on tech from Nauvis and Vulcanus, but not from Fulgora and not from Aquilo. if you visited Fulgora, you had the electromagnetic plant which makes module production more productive and smaller, but essentially it's the same.

Overview:

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Bioflux:

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Bacteria/Ore:

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Molten iron/copper:

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Circuits:

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Science production (1171 SPM):

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Miscellaneous:

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Soil production:

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The big automall is a whole science by itself. I don't show it in detail, as well as the module factory, since it's not Gleba specific. You can build any mall you like, Gleba has all resources available in infinite quantities except stone, so it's a nice place for a mall providing products to your platforms. All except stuff requiring stone, for which you can use Vulcanus. I use the local stone supplies for landfill for overgrowth soil only.

[galan]

Gleba is the best planet. Just like on Vulcanus and Fulgora, I arrived completely empty-handed—to experience the unique challenge of starting from scratch on a completely unknown planet with incomprehensible technological challenges. And yes, it was far more challenging than the other planets.

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But now Gleba is definitely my favorite planet. I just finished the city blocks with trains on it.

[Haisom]

Gleba was simultaneously the best and worst time I've had in a while. It was super frustrating at first, and I had several bases that, for all intents and purposes, failed. After I went through and troubleshot my entire system several times. I have a belt system, believe it or not, that works great. It was one of the most satisfying things I've accomplished in a video game in a while. I've done another playthrough, and I think Gleba is possibly my favorite planet now. It is just so satisfying to watch it all work. I feel like a genius, even if I am not one... lol

[kim533]

Bioflux has more to do with it. You receive 40 nutrients for every 5 bioflux or 8 nutrients for every 1 bioflux when using the standard bioflux to nutrient recipe. Each biter egg yields 20 nutrients according to the biter egg to nutrients recipe. If you employ biter eggs as an intermediary rather than bioflux directly, you obtain 20 * 30 = 600 nutrients per bioflux, since each bioflux yields 30 eggs. Seventy-five times more. Even though using a biochamber with four T3 producivity modules gives you 1140 nutrients, the ratio remains the same when compared to bioflux because the bioflux recipe allows you to get the same results. Recipes are simple step-by-step guides that help you turn fresh ingredients into delicious, homemade lunch recipe with ease.

[Kyralessa]

Another good option is to ship fish. Even though one fish only yields 20 nutrients, a fish also has a spoil time of just over two hours, vs. 30 minutes for a biter egg. Then you can save the biter eggs for overgrowth soil instead.

[Hurkyl]

Another good option is to ship fish. Even though one fish only yields 20 nutrients, a fish also has a spoil time of just over two hours, vs. 30 minutes for a biter egg. Then you can save the biter eggs for overgrowth soil instead.

Fish are nutrient negative. On average, 100 nutrients gives you 1.5 fish, and one fish gives at most 50 nutrients (with four legendary productivity module 3). So, at a minimum, you are losing 25% of your nutrition by repackaging it into fish, and that isn't counting the cost to feed the biochambers.

So AFAICT, the only time it would ever make sense (outside of memes/challenges) to use fish in your nutrient logistics is if you are already using biter eggs to make nutrients, and the reduction in yield is worth the cost for a longer spoil timer and safer spoil result.

Or, I suppose, if you've engineered your Nauvis factory in a way where you would waste bioflux/nutrients but have enough control over the process to turn the waste into fish rather than spoilage.

[Kyralessa]

Another good option is to ship fish. Even though one fish only yields 20 nutrients, a fish also has a spoil time of just over two hours, vs. 30 minutes for a biter egg. Then you can save the biter eggs for overgrowth soil instead.

Fish are nutrient negative. On average, 100 nutrients gives you 1.5 fish, and one fish gives at most 50 nutrients (with four legendary productivity module 3). So, at a minimum, you are losing 25% of your nutrition by repackaging it into fish, and that isn't counting the cost to feed the biochambers.

So AFAICT, the only time it would ever make sense (outside of memes/challenges) to use fish in your nutrient logistics is if you are already using biter eggs to make nutrients, and the reduction in yield is worth the cost for a longer spoil timer and safer spoil result.

Or, I suppose, if you've engineered your Nauvis factory in a way where you would waste bioflux/nutrients but have enough control over the process to turn the waste into fish rather than spoilage.

• 10 spoilage -> 1 nutrient: 0.1 nutrient/spoilage
• 4 yumako mash -> 6 nutrient: 1.5 nutrient/mash
• 5 bioflux -> 40 nutrient: 8 nutrient/bioflux
• 1 fish -> 20 nutrient: 20 nutrient/fish
• 1 biter egg -> 20 nutrient: 20 nutrient/egg

Per unit, fish are one of the two best nutrient sources in the game, and they last longer than biter eggs, and they spoil to spoilage rather than to something that will attack you.

A captive biter spawner produces 1 egg every 2 seconds on average, or 30 eggs per minute. As 1 bioflux feeds a captive biter spawner for 1 minute, this means you're turning 8 nutrients from a bioflux into 600 nutrients from biter eggs, a 1:75 ratio.

With the productivity bonus, fish breeding costs 66 2/3 nutrients to produce 1 fish (plus 1.5 nutrients to power a biochamber for 6 seconds, but we'll ignore that). So yes, technically it's nutrient-negative, but you're trading 3 1/3 biter eggs' worth of nutrients for a nutrient source that lasts four times as long before it spoils, and that doesn't spoil into an attacker. You're still getting a 1:22.5 ratio over bioflux.

Now if you're turning bioflux nutrients into fish directly then sure, it's not such a good deal. So, don't do that.

[Hurkyl]

but you're trading 3 1/3 biter eggs' worth of nutrients for a nutrient source that lasts four times as long before it spoils, and that doesn't spoil into an attacker.

Now if you're turning bioflux nutrients into fish directly then sure, it's not such a good deal. So, don't do that.

Yes, this was the point I was trying to make. Fish aren't an alternative to the biter egg production chain. They only make sense as part of the biter egg production chain for nutrients, e.g. if you find the new packaging worth the reduction in nutrient yield.

[boxicus]

Gemma I too started out feeling frustrated and confused. For the first time in 8K hours I downloaded a BP to get something going. I spent the next couple of weeks... I was learning how Gleba worked.... On my third run now, and not a single case of needing to cold start, everything is just humming along. I am loving Gleba more and more.

Your positive take on Gleba is actually a very harsh and negative take upon further inspection.

The take home message here from your post is that people who can put the equivalent of 4 full years of full time work in factorio tend to eventually come around to enjoying Gleba, whereas regular people are optimistic but end up quitting the game at Gleba and coming here to post about it (hence the massive unending discussions about it).

I liked Gleba at first, but I also stopped playing after 10 hours on Gleba. Very cool concept but there is something about it that is just not working for me and I couldn't enjoy it. I found in space age for the first time I had to resort to watching youtube videos to figure things out - that alone is a natural rather strong scathing critique of the expansion.

Instead of a game where you learn just by playing the game I had to constantly search online for help. I want to play factorio again, but since the expansion it feels more like a software developer job than a game.

If you have 8000 hours in the game and struggled to figure it out then it's probably not that good. For other people, especially those with 10k posts in this forum and also thousands of hours ingame, you cant claim that things you took hundreds of hours to figure out are simple or trivial and condemn those who don't want to put that kind of time into it. I wish I could grab those hyper-players by the shoulders and tell them to stop telling casual gamers to "just put in another two or three works years of work into it and it'll be easier!" because that's crazy town.

"Just mod it the way you want it" sounds good, but realistically only those with thousands of hours in the game who can dedicate minimum dozens of hours into writing mods are going to be the ones doing that.

I want to like space age, I'm chasing it down but it's like the game is trying to make me hate it.

[Tertius]

I liked Gleba at first, but I also stopped playing after 10 hours on Gleba. Very cool concept but there is something about it that is just not working for me and I couldn't enjoy it. I found in space age for the first time I had to resort to watching youtube videos to figure things out - that alone is a natural rather strong scathing critique of the expansion.

Every player gets stuck in every game, once in a while. Having to ask for help is not a bad sign, in my opinion. For me, having a quick glance upon some help is usually enough to point me in the right direction.

Gleba is different to previous game challenges, because it has dependencies between crafting machines and recipes not known before. You didn't tell what this something is you had to look up, so it's not clear what exactly it is you were not able to work out. My approach to work things out in Factorio is to go into map editor mode and explore game mechanics without time and material constraints.

When I first landed on Gleba, I had 0 hours with Gleba. I didn't know anything about it. I ran around, collected and harvested things to see what can be found here, and I got an idea with what material you will start here. Since stuff were spoiling before I had a chance to use it for its purpose, I decided to switch to map editor mode to be able to stop time and still be able to explore everything. I explored how to create nutrients, how to create biochambers, what to import from Nauvis for a head start, and created a draft of an initial base on Gleba to get something up and running including a small power plant.
I found out I had to produce seeds to sustain the farms. I realized the more productivity I use, the more seeds I get and the more I was able to grow my farms. I started to fertilize my farms with artificial soil to get higher plant density, because I didn't know how much fruit I will need later.
Only with better farms I continued to the bioflux part of the Gleba game. And so on. Whenever I had an issue, I switched to map editor mode, reproduced my current factory there and tinkered with it to solve whatever issue came up. For example how to deal with items spoiling on a belt or spoiling in a machine.

For me, this wasn't magic. Instead of consulting other people's guides, I was able to work it out my own with the tools the game provides. This wasn't thousands of hours - I started from zero as everybody. It may be you constrained yourself too much with things not necessary: it's possible you didn't came up with the idea to import stuff from Nauvis, not using map editor for exploring, not using the logistic network, not using circuits, not inspecting the research screen which tech comes next to unlock, inspect what recipes this will unlock. The research screen tells about what you can do next, it's a guide as well. Everything on it has a purpose. It's a checklist, a todo list.

[Hurkyl]

And for variety, rather than going out-of-game* my solution to "things are spoiling too quickly" was to adjust my in-game behaviors.

I stopped clear-cutting when scavenging in the wild.

I stopped habitually crafting. No more 'keeping my crafting queue filled' or running buildings if I didn't have a use for the product.

I checked out the spoil timers and adopted a strategy to focus on making things with long (or no) spoil timers. So don't make things into mash and jelly without immediately using them to make things like bioflux, rocket fuel, or plastic.

And thus, spoiling as an obstacle to getting started was mostly solved. There was still the occasional hiccup as things like buffered fruits spoiled en masse, but that only happens once every hour or so and isn't much trouble to deal with while I'm improving my processes.

*: Here, I mean "the save I'm playing in" rather than "the factorio executable".

[boxicus]

I liked Gleba at first, but I also stopped playing after 10 hours on Gleba. Very cool concept but there is something about it that is just not working for me and I couldn't enjoy it. I found in space age for the first time I had to resort to watching youtube videos to figure things out - that alone is a natural rather strong scathing critique of the expansion.

Every player gets stuck in every game, once in a while. Having to ask for help is not a bad sign, in my opinion. For me, having a quick glance upon some help is usually enough to point me in the right direction.

Gleba is different to previous game challenges, because it has dependencies between crafting machines and recipes not known before. You didn't tell what this something is you had to look up, so it's not clear what exactly it is you were not able to work out. My approach to work things out in Factorio is to go into map editor mode and explore game mechanics without time and material constraints.

When I first landed on Gleba, I had 0 hours with Gleba. I didn't know anything about it. I ran around, collected and harvested things to see what can be found here, and I got an idea with what material you will start here. Since stuff were spoiling before I had a chance to use it for its purpose, I decided to switch to map editor mode to be able to stop time and still be able to explore everything. I explored how to create nutrients, how to create biochambers, what to import from Nauvis for a head start, and created a draft of an initial base on Gleba to get something up and running including a small power plant.
I found out I had to produce seeds to sustain the farms. I realized the more productivity I use, the more seeds I get and the more I was able to grow my farms. I started to fertilize my farms with artificial soil to get higher plant density, because I didn't know how much fruit I will need later.
Only with better farms I continued to the bioflux part of the Gleba game. And so on. Whenever I had an issue, I switched to map editor mode, reproduced my current factory there and tinkered with it to solve whatever issue came up. For example how to deal with items spoiling on a belt or spoiling in a machine.

For me, this wasn't magic. Instead of consulting other people's guides, I was able to work it out my own with the tools the game provides. This wasn't thousands of hours - I started from zero as everybody. It may be you constrained yourself too much with things not necessary: it's possible you didn't came up with the idea to import stuff from Nauvis, not using map editor for exploring, not using the logistic network, not using circuits, not inspecting the research screen which tech comes next to unlock, inspect what recipes this will unlock. The research screen tells about what you can do next, it's a guide as well. Everything on it has a purpose. It's a checklist, a todo list.

I disagree with your assertion that having to quit the game to seek out help from some external source is not a bad sign.

It is the worst sort of sign that the game is not quite ready for consumption.

Yes, if you have thousands of posts on the factorio forums you probably have thousands of hours in the game it's probably nothing for you to spend 100 hours ingame and another 100 hours looking up solutions online all in the same week but for regular people that is extremely cost prohibitive.

To the people who have thousands of hours ingame and thousands of posts on this forum, why are yall trying to act like things are super easy, "barely an inconvenience" after it took some of you the equivalent of half of year working fulltime in factorio to figure it out?

I don't mind that you love factorio and love these forums, I wanted to love the game the way you do I just cant put that kind of time into it and it's not good feedback for the devs to think yall are representative of an average customer.

1.3% of players killed a big demolisher.
Do you not see that there are huge problems with this?
What's the point of a huge expansion if almost nobody plays it?

5% of players even got to Gleba in the first place.
That's 1 in 20 factorio players actually went to Gleba.
Of those 5%, almost all of them are on these forums complaining about it.
The 1% of those 5% players have 4000 to 10 000 hours in factorio and they personally claim Gleba is easy.
This is insane.

[NineNine]

I figured out Gleba in a few hours. I didn't think it was that big of a deal. Some people just don't have the brain for it, and that's OK. I never really got organic chemistry. That didn't mean there was anything wrong with organic chemistry... I just wasn't able to get it. I knew plenty of people who had no problem with organic chemistry, too.

[NineNine]

1.3% of players killed a big demolisher.
Do you not see that there are huge problems with this?
What's the point of a huge expansion if almost nobody plays it?

5% of players even got to Gleba in the first place.
That's 1 in 20 factorio players actually went to Gleba.
Of those 5%, almost all of them are on these forums complaining about it.
The 1% of those 5% players have 4000 to 10 000 hours in factorio and they personally claim Gleba is easy.
This is insane.

Oh, and if these numbers are from Steam, then they're absolutely not representative. I would guess that most people who play Factorio for any amount of time aren't going to play with Steam, strictly for the performance boost of not having an extra layer of software wedged in there, sucking up UPS/FPS for no good reason. Steam players are definitely going to skew toward the casual player.

[Hurkyl]

---

I think a lot of the conclusions you're trying to draw in there are stretching things way, way too far.

Like, big demolisher? I don't think I even saw one in my first playthrough of Space Age. That only 1.3% of people who bought the game on Steam never killed one while Steam achievements were active doesn't imply people aren't playing the game. 1.9% of the people in that category finished the game, after all.

Factorio has always always catered to the hardcore players. So much optimizations, balancing, and content are for people playing long past launching a rocket or even making megafactories. That only 1.3% of people are on record for killing a big demolisher or 1.0% have done a promethium research or 2.5% have used fusion power does not imply there is something wrong with the game.

Anyways, people complain about Gleba because it was a meme to complain about Gleba long before the expansion even launched. There a lot of inertia in this making people more likely to expect the planet to be bad, more likely to blame the planet, and more likely to voice complaints about the planet. Also, the fact forum chatter seems to push people to do Gleba last probably exacerbates things.

But if we're having fun making spurious conclusions from achievement data, the other planets are killing off people too. 10% of people on record making it to Vulcanus are not on record making metallurgic science. The same deal for Fulgora and Aquilo.

Oh, and if these numbers are from Steam, then they're absolutely not representative. I would guess that most people who play Factorio for any amount of time aren't going to play with Steam, strictly for the performance boost of not having an extra layer of software wedged in there, sucking up UPS/FPS for no good reason. Steam players are definitely going to skew toward the casual player.

Also, you don't get a Steam achievement if you are using mods.

[Tertius]

I disagree with your assertion that having to quit the game to seek out help from some external source is not a bad sign.

It is the worst sort of sign that the game is not quite ready for consumption.

Yes, if you have thousands of posts on the factorio forums you probably have thousands of hours in the game it's probably nothing for you to spend 100 hours ingame and another 100 hours looking up solutions online all in the same week but for regular people that is extremely cost prohibitive.

To the people who have thousands of hours ingame and thousands of posts on this forum, why are yall trying to act like things are super easy, "barely an inconvenience" after it took some of you the equivalent of half of year working fulltime in factorio to figure it out?

This isn't directed at me, is it? I didn't brag that Gleba is super easy. Instead, I posted multiple suggestions over time how I personally approached Gleba and was successful with that. I encouraged people to try it this way, if they were not successful. I pointed out quite some details that are different to the Nauvis part of the game. I posted 1595 times on the forum in 5 years, that's slightly less than 1 post per day. Not that much in my opinion.

It's also not true that people with thousands of hours playtime will look up all their game solutions on the internet. It's the other way round: they are so focused on the game they work out everything themselves. That's where their playtime comes from. People who are not that dedicated and just want to progress fast look up how they're supposed to play the game. Many of them also install mods who cheat some challenges away: faster machines, cheaper production, bigger storage buildings. Change map settings to increase resource patch frequency and richness. I wonder if Factorio is the right game for them, if they don't have the patience to work out the game mechanics on their own. Perhaps a more simple factory builder is suited better. On the other hand, every player should be able to play the game as they like to just have fun, since the game is made to have fun. Factorio supports every cheat - it's just up to the player.

There's a huge variety in what players are able to do and expect from Factorio. Take advanced oil processing as example. This is the only slightly advanced challenge in the base game. It's about balancing production and getting rid of byproducts through cracking. Since the early access phase there are so many questions about this. Some people are not able to build a reliable oil processing+cracking combination, because they don't understand why refineries stall if just one of the outputs are full. Many of them need not only be pointed in the right direction, they need to copy some refinery/chemplant setup to continue.

Should this game mechanic be removed? All the planets in Space Age have similar in spirit or even more sophisticated challenges. It's all like small minigames within the game to entertain the player. It's a game for people who are interested in exactly this kind of challenge.

If you ask for smoothing out all these challenges and to streamline it for the lowest common denominator across all players, the game loses its main advantage and becomes uninteresting. Just another game for the mainstream.

[meganothing]

I disagree with your assertion that having to quit the game to seek out help from some external source is not a bad sign.

If that is a bad sign World of Warcraft seems to be too difficult for players and has to be simplified.

If that is a bad sign Baldurs Gate 3 and practically all other RPGs are complexity failure

There is almost no game in existence where a part of the players don't take shortcuts because they want shortcuts to success. Sometimes they spoil their game, sometimes not.

Most games nowadays have wikis online the moment they are released. Would someone make wikis if they aren't read? And if they are read are those bad signs for their games?

It is the worst sort of sign that the game is not quite ready for consumption.

Yes, if you have thousands of posts on the factorio forums you probably have thousands of hours in the game it's probably nothing for you to spend 100 hours ingame and another 100 hours looking up solutions online all in the same week but for regular people that is extremely cost prohibitive.

To the people who have thousands of hours ingame and thousands of posts on this forum, why are yall trying to act like things are super easy, "barely an inconvenience" after it took some of you the equivalent of half of year working fulltime in factorio to figure it out?

Generally people don't need hundreds of hours to figure out Gleba, neither is Gleba easy. Almost every game has parts with varying degree of difficulty.

I don't mind that you love factorio and love these forums, I wanted to love the game the way you do I just cant put that kind of time into it and it's not good feedback for the devs to think yall are representative of an average customer.

1.3% of players killed a big demolisher.
Do you not see that there are huge problems with this?
What's the point of a huge expansion if almost nobody plays it?

5% of players even got to Gleba in the first place.

Do you mean to say that 95% of players find Gleba too difficult before they even get there? Do you not see the huge problem with your argument here?

In fact many players buy hundreds of steam games, never get to play them and call it their pile of shame. Myself included, I never even have installed a huge majority of the steam games I own. But we still get counted as players.

That's 1 in 20 factorio players actually went to Gleba.
Of those 5%, almost all of them are on these forums complaining about it.
The 1% of those 5% players have 4000 to 10 000 hours in factorio and they personally claim Gleba is easy.
This is insane.