Enemies on Gleba won't attack the factory if there are no placed agricultural towers, even if they are absorbing spores. I want to clarify if this is a bug / oversight or if this works as intended. It seems to me they should at least attack roboports if there are no towers at least at a higher spore count.
If there was an achievement for reaching the edge without building agricultural towers I got it.
Enemies on Gleba won't attack if there are no agricultural towers
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Alfonse215
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Re: Enemies on Gleba won't attack if there are no agricultural towers
My understanding is that this isn't a "bug" per-se; it's the result of how the Pentapod AI works. Or more specifically, how the biter AI works, as pentapods use the biter AI.
When pollution reaches a nest, the nest will spawn an attack wave. This attack wave will target one of the entities that produced said pollution. Which makes sense when there's an actual entity that produces pollution.
The thing about spores is that they are meant to only be produced by farming activity. Pentapods don't target your base; they target your farms. But Yumako and Jellystem trees don't produce spores. It is the act of cutting them down that makes spores. Pentapods can't target tree that produced those spores because... it's not there anymore.
This is why Ag towers themselves emit spores while moving. The tower's spores give the Pentapods a source of "pollution" to lock on to and attack. And presumably, the tedium of manually harvesting fruits and replanting them to feed your factory was considered enough of a justification for not trying to make a more comprehensive solution.
When pollution reaches a nest, the nest will spawn an attack wave. This attack wave will target one of the entities that produced said pollution. Which makes sense when there's an actual entity that produces pollution.
The thing about spores is that they are meant to only be produced by farming activity. Pentapods don't target your base; they target your farms. But Yumako and Jellystem trees don't produce spores. It is the act of cutting them down that makes spores. Pentapods can't target tree that produced those spores because... it's not there anymore.
This is why Ag towers themselves emit spores while moving. The tower's spores give the Pentapods a source of "pollution" to lock on to and attack. And presumably, the tedium of manually harvesting fruits and replanting them to feed your factory was considered enough of a justification for not trying to make a more comprehensive solution.
Re: Enemies on Gleba won't attack if there are no agricultural towers
I keep reading this and everytime it gets crazier.pkoynov wrote: Sat Aug 01, 2026 4:36 am If there was an achievement for reaching the edge without building agricultural towers I got it.
In a game about automation.
On a planet that is based around agriculture, you never built the first-in-line production building. That means you harvested and planted every single tree needed to finish the game manually.
I think you need on the order of 10k agricultural science to finish the game, maybe more when accounting for spoilage.
This is so unhinged.
Re: Enemies on Gleba won't attack if there are no agricultural towers
As mentioned this is working correctly and you simply are playing the game in a way that was not intended. Maybe some day someone will change it but for now this is how it works.
If you want to get ahold of me I'm almost always on Discord.
Re: Enemies on Gleba won't attack if there are no agricultural towers
In my mind this is no crazier then lazy bastard. Plant by engineer harvest by bots is definitively meta when first building up Gleba, since the engineer can squeeze a lot more trees in a small patch of farm-able land. I wanted to see how far I can take this. At the end I was planting about 80k worth of fruit in one go and harvesting with the deconstruction planner 4K at a time to minimize spoilage.