Tertius wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 6:12 pm
XT-248 wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 4:30 pm
See my previous post about a sudden burst of spoil out of nowhere.
There's some detail you might miss about nutrients, spoilage and biochambers. Spoiled nutrients can accumulate invisibly during normal operation in a separate spoilage slot in addition to the regular temporary trash output slots. They can accumulate till there is one full stack (200) of them. Only then, if the 201th spoilage is created by a spoiled nutrient, the machine blocks until the spoilage is output.
If a biochamber gets not so fresh nutrients or stalls intermediately for a short amount of time, so nutrients spoil, they accumulate in a separate trash slot. It can happen this slot isn't being emptied immediately but instead the machine continues working as soon as new nutrients get inserted. For example, in one production line I set the output inserters to use spoilage priority and grab "freshest first". This left spoilage resulting from nutrients in place as long as there was regular output, and since the machine was continuously producing output fresher than spoilage, spoilage was never extracted until the slot was full.
Might perhaps be the cause of your failure.
I wanted to grab "freshest first" to get seeds from yumako and jellynut mashing. Without that, I only got the mash and never the seeds until a full stack of seeds accumulated. Since the seeds don't spoil, "freshest first" got me seeds first, then mash, then spoilage. But since there was always new mash in the output slots, any spoilage was never removed.
You are almost there but not quite 100% on the same page.
Take a look at my most recent Gleba factory ( the one that ran for 10 hours flawless with horizontal belt layout ) and pay close attention to the rocket fuel production, especially the five bioreactors with rocket fuel recipes and productivity tier II modules, and the number of rocket fuel being produced/consumed in the production chart ( consumed 3 per minute and keep this number in the back of your mind as we go along that went toward electric energy production).
I have calculated in-game and using factorio lab (third-party calculator) how much rocket fuel five bioreactors with productivity tier II modules can produce is about ~62 per minute.
Link:
https://factoriolab.github.io/spa/list? ... Wfhjt&v=11
The right four bioreactors are all full of spoils in the input slots because 5% ( 3 divided by 62 is 5% ) is less than one bioreactor partially running.
We all know how bioreactors' input slots can hold items that completely spoil but are blocked from being removed by bioreactors with rocket fuel in the outlet slot. As soon as the spoil item appears in the outlet slot, a dedicated long-handed inserter filters to only spoil items; the dedicated inserter takes it out and places it north of the row of rocket fuel bioreactors.
It's almost as if I already took into account that bioreactors will always have trouble with items that expire without anybody helping me out. I am fine with item spoiling in the input slots for rocket fuel production lines because I plan to support Gleba with rocket fuel as the primary electric/energy source via boilers or heat towers. I am also planning to potentially have at least three rocket silos that will need ~36 rocket fuel per minute. So, I expected the rocket fuel production to oscillate between full 100% running and low-activity modes.
The previous design, which ultimately failed, also considered removing spoil as an integrated feature in the overall design. You seem to overlook the extensive planning that went into those Gleba designs.
Tertius wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 6:12 pm
XT-248 wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 4:30 pm
Why is it quite difficult for people to understand that I am anything but a person new to Factorio? And I really don't need help, but thank you anyway.
We are all new to Gleba's spoilage mechanics and its intricate details. We all need to explore new methods to deal with that. All your (and my) thousands of hours played are irrelevant. Get off your high horse.
*Facepalm*
Telling me to dismount my horse will not change what actually occurred on Gleba and how it led to me not having fun while troubleshooting.
Tertius wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 6:12 pm
XT-248 wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 4:30 pm
See my example of the Agricultural Science Pack for 10 hours in my previous post.
With a few more strategically placed speed beacons, you could achieve vastly more output with vastly less footprint. You're transporting too much spoiling items over too large distances. You even store nutrients - what a waste. It spoils. Instead, create nutrients on the spot, feed the nutrient biochambers with their own nutrients, and kickstart them with a spoilage-to-nutrient assembling machine which turns off as soon as there are nutrients > 0 in the nutrient biochambers.
I'm not yet ready with my complete Gleba factory, but the science-related modules are this.
The first one produces bioflux, a certain amount of nutrients for various independent modules not shown, and other yumako/jellynut byproducts. It kickstarts from whole fruits (the farms run with electricity only) and spoilage-to-nutrients. It's a 2-level kickstart. First it kickstarts yumako mashing, then yumako mash to nutrients, and this finally enables jellynut mashing and the first bioflux chamber, so the real bioflux-to-nutrient production starts.
And this is the science production.
It's supposed to be directly plugged behind the bioflux production. It has its own nutrient production, since it uses direct insertion due to the high nutrient throughput not feasible for belts. It just needs a few nutrients from the first step to start its own nutrient production.
A small gimmick is present in the bottom left, it's a keep-alive for a single pentapod egg in case something goes wrong with bioflux supply or stuff stalling. As soon as the nutrient machines get empty, a single egg is put into a chest and refreshed every 10 minutes with nutrients from spoilage and put back once the regular nutrient machines start again. During keepalive, any pentapod eggs are expunged into the spoilage exit belt to keep pentapods appearing from egg spoiling. Only the eggs within the chambers will stay and spoil, but I limit their number. I thought about recipe changing to expel them as well, but didn't find the time yet. And pentapod egg production doesn't really need production modules, the effect is minor.
If it comes to performance, this is what it created during my development. The spikes are from tests when I removed supply, electricity or deliberately let the factory stall.
I guess 639/min with about 95% fresh science packs is more than the huge production line you showed. 2nd image has ~50 modules and 170 belts, 1st image has 100 modules and ~220 belts. Both together exactly 20 beacons, which is one rocket stack.
I don't want a smaller footprint factory on Gleba based solely on its being physically smaller. Especially since physical space is not a restrictive factor on Gleba due to how Gleba fauna focus on attacking the agricultural towers (source of spores) and not the factory itself. The only exception is being triggered by a hostile structure (turrets defending agricultural production line).
By downsizing, I meant going from ~349 agricultural science packs per minute down to ~200 per minute or less (to match other science packs are at ~200 per minute). Or making changes to the overall design, potentially reducing idling bioreactors in a way that lets me remove a few bioreactors from the design (see example below).
Bioflux bioreactors in my agricultural science production are overkill and sit idle a bit too much. I might cut the entire length by half of the agricultural science packs production and move half of the pentapod-eggs/agricultural-science bioreactors above the flux bioreactors, effectively cutting the number of bioflux bioreactors by half.
The reasons for wanting to downsize the Gleba factory include but are not limited to the following reasons: to not over-produce agricultural science packs unnecessarily, experiment with different yields and the time it takes to build them up, to keep the number of imports (both quantity and variety) low, and to keep the entire layout simple as possible so that I don't have to go "Wait what was supposed to be here?" in middle of doing an actual Gleba boostrap session.
Tertius wrote: Sun Feb 02, 2025 6:12 pmps. as far as I see, the Gleba general bootstrap is this:
- import an assortment of intermediates
- create 2 biochambers
- create a yumako farm with 1 agricultural tower
- import heating towers
- create seeds and artificial soil to make a proper farm, as well as a huge amount of spoilage (2-3 chests full)
- create a jellynut farm with 1 agricultural tower
- create seeds and artificial soil to make a proper farm
- create a preliminary pentapod egg factory
- create a bunch of biochambers with imported ingredients
- start a bioflux production line
- start 2 bacteria production line to get iron and copper ore
- create iron/copper processing with a few foundries (with that ship from Vulcanus, also import a bunch of green belts)
- create a mall to be independent of imports
- create the rest of the factory from stuff produced locally
- start science production
I will modify your list slightly to align with how I envision doing Gleba.
- import intermediate materials and finished products including but not limited to: the necessary raw material to build a rocket silo right away, enough material to start building a rocket or two, construction-bot/logistic-bot/roboports, bootstrap energy infrastructure, weapons (tank/armor-suit/turret/otherwise) to clear out a large area around the agricultural towers and keeping them safe, etc.
- Starting working on unlocking Gleba's unique recipes and bioreactors can be done while searching for a centralized location that is not too far from both fruit farmable areas for roboports network coverage.
Start the early Gleba bootstrap factory (cargo landing pad, rocket silo, roboports, energy infrastructure, etc.) at the centralized location. This should take care of the crafted 500 nutrient and all crafted bioflux unlockables.
- Clear out the area around the two agricultural tower locations before the spore gets too large.
- Use the gathered pentapod eggs from clearing to bootstrap the pentapod egg production.
- Finishing up the last of the incomplete Gleba Factory with constantly incoming imports from Nauvis or a permanent orbiting space platform. Only parts that are in constant need locally have a shopping mall setup (bullets, rocket ammo (coal/sulfur from space platform), rocket turrets, bioreactors, repair kits, future expansions to production lines, etc).
- Export Agricultural Science Packs and Bioflux to Nauvis and leave Gleba (possibly for another world).
- Future plans that happen remotely while the player is away: Artillery-turrets + artillery shells + radars to keep agricultural towers safe, as an example.
Also, the step that depends on Foundries and/or green belts requires visiting Vulcanis first, and I may or may not even do the worlds in that particular order.
Smelting iron/copper locally, using foundries, on Gleba requires an external steady source of calcites.
One option requires me to complete the Gleba factory bootstrap and spend 2k agricultural science packs to unlock calcite as a source from the orbiting Gleba space platform. At this point, I no longer need the iron/copper to be produced locally.
The other requires visiting Vulcanis first and unplanned export/import route between Vulcanis and Gleba.
Importing iron/copper plates solves far more issues than having non-continuous local bacteria production lines. I might temporarily have some iron or copper production locally (from jelly or yumako mash) with stone furnaces (made locally and using local sources of burnable fuels). The advantage of doing it this way, with the temporary bacteria setup, is that it deliberately creates more spoil that can supplement the nutrients from spoil to bootstrap the Gleba factory without having a steady production of bioflux.
Also, I plan to export agricultural science packs before the Gleba factory is completed (see rocket silo + enough materials to bootstrap a few launches in the first step). Your way of doing things requires more potentially unnecessary initial setup on Gleba.
When I look at the necessary Gleba factory setup to produce blue circuits and light density structures locally to Gleba, it requires sulfurs (biosulfur recipe), plastic bars (bioplastic), and either locally bacteria-produced or imported iron/copper plates. Furthermore, to craft all of the necessary ingredients: blue circuits, and light density structure would require no less than 48 assembler tier-II, which is almost a full rocket launch by itself. Never mind, those secondary items, such as the following items but not limited to: inserters/belts/power-poles/power-infrastructure/otherwise, and the rocket launches to import the raw ingredients or completed secondary items to Gleba.
I plan to have ALL of those infrastructures already built (upscaled to support all worlds as needed) and local to Nauvis before going to Gleba. So why should I move/relocate them to Gleba? Increase the risk of provoking spore-induced attack waves (from increased fruits consumption)? More time to clear out the area around Agricultural towers? Introducing more potential failure points from being non-continuous production for various end-products?
