Gleba has killed the game for me.

[fredthedeadhead]

Once you get several biochambers doing the processing, you end up drowning in seeds. It's like Kovarex Enrichment; just one doesn't generate excess fast enough to make much difference.

Also, have you tried putting productivity modules on your biochamber?

I see that the random mechanics are similar to uranium processing, but I don't think it's productive to discuss them here. Not having seeds stops me from playing the game, or forces me to boringly traipse around the map harvesting random similarly-looking plants. When I play Factorio on Nauvis I've never needed to play the lottery before I'm allowed to start a base.

I haven't used productivity modules, because I don't even have the basic resources to start my Gleba base.

[Nemoricus]

One of the biggest things in early game Gleba is that you want to ensure that every fruit is processed. Ideally in a biochamber for the productivity bonus. If you let fruit spoil, it's going to be much harder to keep things going. That means feeding the jelly and mash to heating towers if necessary to keep the processing going.

I also spent some time rounding up every jellynut and yumako tree I could find, too, because the random chance of getting seeds back is much more reliable if you can do it many, many times.

[fredthedeadhead]

One of the biggest things in early game Gleba is that you want to ensure that every fruit is processed. Ideally in a biochamber for the productivity bonus.

I'm really confused about how this is a useful strategy though. The Biochamber is useless without nutrients. My factory has no nutrients because there's no spoilage, because there's no fruit, because there's no seeds. Furthermore, the heating chamber is useless because there's no fuel, so my factory has rolling blackouts.

I understand that this is a solved problem later in the game, but I'm not playing later on, I'm playing now, and it's boring and sucks to have none of the required resource. I literally can't play the factory building game.

On Nauvis I could just build more power and miners, but I don't see how to do to that Gleba because I can't get resources. (Unless I ship resources in from other planets, but I thought the point of the expansion is that this wasn't necessary and each planet was its own challenge?)

[Muche]

Fruit processing into seeds+mash/yelly can be done also in assemblers.
So for early attempts/backup you put in some prod2 modules, which would hopefully yield some extra seeds to counteract unlucky RNG.

[fredthedeadhead]

Well, I'm giving up on Gleba for today. It's just seems broken. I'm not getting enough seeds to even get started, and the biochamber has been running for hours.

I'm impressed that something got me to stop me from playing Factorio, and I'm stunned that it was Factorio itself!

I have some suggestions:

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Let the Agri tower just keep harvesting fruits from trees. Why does the whole tree need to be cut down every time? Can't the tower just harvest the fruit and keep the trees?

I think it's strange that the agri tower isn't 'better' than the engineer. Usually resource-harvesting buildings do the same thing as the engineer, but better. For example, assemblers are faster, miners cover a wider area. But the agri tower just seems to be the same as the engineer. Which is fine, because it's automated, but it would be nice if it had something special.

Maybe the trees need to be replaced every so often, but currently the resources requirements to harvest fruit are just absurdly boring.

---

Add two assembler/biochamber recipes:

1. Convert fruit to spoilage. This way I don't have to sit around bored waiting for fruit to rot just to generate nutrients for the Biochamber.
2. Convert fruit to seeds. The random-chance just doesn't produce enough seeds. It's boring to wait for seeds, and I can't do anything else. At least give me a way to proactively climb out of a seed deficit.

---

Adjust the recipe so that nutrients are not required, but are instead an optional extra. If nutrients are not provided, then the Biochamber can internally create nutrients, although this will harm the effectiveness of the recipe, and require more time and resources.

This will improve the incrementality of Gleba, so it doesn't require everything is perfectly configured up-front. When the player and their factory is ready, the game can be made more complicated, and they can reap the rewards.

[J-H]

On Nauvis I could just build more power and miners, but I don't see how to do to that Gleba because I can't get resources. (Unless I ship resources in from other planets, but I thought the point of the expansion is that this wasn't necessary and each planet was its own challenge?)

You need to import resources for every planet unless you want a very slow and painful startup process. I recommend bringing a nuclear power plant and stack of fuel cells to each planet. You'll need a lot more delivered from orbit for Aquilo, as it's missing almost everything including stone, iron, and copper, and concrete and heat pipes are required.
On Vulcanus, you can get by with some solar panels until you get calcite steam production.

Even with a running Gleba setup, I've had several full-base shutdowns due to ?? issues (I'm off planet and not watching), which have all been salvaged by pulling my nuclear power plant out of a chest and hooking it up to the heat pipes. That's enough to bootstrap power and then turn all the spoilage into nutrients to get things restarted. At that point, all I have to do is snag a new set of pentapod eggs to restart full production.

[fredthedeadhead]

You need to import resources for every planet unless you want a very slow and painful startup process.

That's interesting, because I did not find this to be the case for Vulcanus or Fulgora. I brought some equipment to help with kickstarting, but it was easy to set up an initial base, and I didn't require extensive imports. There were no points where I couldn't play the game unless I kept importing items from other planets.

[Khazul]

You need to import resources for every planet unless you want a very slow and painful startup process.

That's interesting, because I did not find this to be the case for Vulcanus or Fulgora. I brought some equipment to help with kickstarting, but it was easy to set up an initial base, and I didn't require extensive imports. There were no points where I couldn't play the game unless I kept importing items from other planets.

I must admit I tend to overload a large barge with everything and the kitchen sink when making a new planetfall. I have a fairly standard starter base of hub with a dozen cargo bays, couple of rocket silos, logistics, 160MW nuclear power, common smelting, walls and defences and a bunch of other common stuff for making initial mining and production setups to start to unlock local tech. The starter base needs some variation of course of lightning, freeze, defences for gleba, tank and ammo for vulcanus.

Cant see any reason not to bring stuff with you to get up and running in relative luxury as quick as possible

[BlueTemplar]

Well, I'm giving up on Gleba for today. It's just seems broken. I'm not getting enough seeds to even get started, and the biochamber has been running for hours.
[...]

Maybe something is broken in your game ?? This would be extremely bad luck with biochamber's built-in +50% productivity... (so you should be able to add one extra tree every two fruit gatherings... at least on average)

Or maybe we understand different things by «to even get started» ??
(I did get help from dropping with (less than a stack of) inserters/belts/solar panels/accumulators/electric furnaces... but no productivity modules until much later.)

[Nemoricus]

I'm really confused about how this is a useful strategy though. The Biochamber is useless without nutrients. My factory has no nutrients because there's no spoilage, because there's no fruit, because there's no seeds.

Use the yumako mash to nutrients recipe, then the bioflux to nutrients recipe.

Furthermore, the heating chamber is useless because there's no fuel, so my factory has rolling blackouts.

There's lots of fuel if you use jellynut trees. Process the jellynuts to jelly in an assembler with productivity modules, then burn the jelly in a heating tower. Make sure to loop the the seeds back to the plantation for planting.

(Unless I ship resources in from other planets, but I thought the point of the expansion is that this wasn't necessary and each planet was its own challenge?)

Gleba is a lot easier if you ship in the infrastructure, to be sure.

[fredthedeadhead]

Use the yumako mash to nutrients recipe, then the bioflux to nutrients recipe.

I've tried this, but it's not sustainable. There's just not enough resources to provide a sustainable reaction.

There's lots of fuel if you use jellynut trees. Process the jellynuts to jelly in an assembler with productivity modules, then burn the jelly in a heating tower. Make sure to loop the the seeds back to the plantation for planting.

I've tried this, but I just keep running out of seeds.

I'm getting really demoralised trying to report problems with Gleba. I've tried a number of approaches, but they all reach the same deadend: not enough primary resources. I'd appreciate some moral support! Maybe someone official someone could acknowledge that the gameplay on Gleba is flawed and so it will be reviewed to be more inline with the behaviour on other planets.

[fredthedeadhead]

Maybe something is broken in your game ?? This would be extremely bad luck with biochamber's built-in +50% productivity... (so you should be able to add one extra tree every two fruit gatherings... at least on average)

This seems likely. I don't use mods, but I did adjust the terrain to be more like the railworld preset. I certainly didn't touch the gameplay settings like 'spoilage' though.

[Muche]

If you attach your save, we could try to reproduce the unsustainability.

[Nemoricus]

I've tried this, but it's not sustainable. There's just not enough resources to provide a sustainable reaction.

It is sustainable as long as you have productivity modules in the step that processes the fruits or the biochamber's productivity bonus. Perhaps you could share a picture of your set up so we can figure out what the problem might be?

There's lots of fuel if you use jellynut trees. Process the jellynuts to jelly in an assembler with productivity modules, then burn the jelly in a heating tower. Make sure to loop the the seeds back to the plantation for planting.

I've tried this, but I just keep running out of seeds.

Are you using productivity modules on the assemblers doing this? Are you making sure to process all the fruit that you harvest? If you're not doing both of those running out of seeds is a distinct possibility.

Here's a picture of my Gleba powerplant. It's been running for a very long time without issues:

12-01-2024, 16-50-19.png (4.65 MiB) Viewed 379 times

[Hiekie]

After putting hours and hours into Gleba i agree with the topic starter. it is a total turn off and made me actually quit playing space age.
i am a "slow and steady" player and i can't simply find out the mechanics what i have to do on Gleba.

Vulanus and Fulgora are really fun to find out the mechaniscs and get some good factories going there.

Then i " stranded" on Gleba, so happy i did bring everything to immediatly " go home" so i managed to escape this torture.

I have done Space Age in a multiplayer game and other players had done Gleba with blueprints they copied from internet. They also have something like "this is a real bummer after the fun on Vulcanus and Fulgora"

We completed the fourth planet to, Was a good challenge, but actually good to.

Not interested in retrying another run of space age, reinstalled Factorio V1.110 and continuing the play in mods like IR3 and bobs, so much more fun..

[1WheelDude]

Gleba is not that hard guys. Just use bots. My target SPM was around 30. I feel like people here are just not exploring the spoilage features and looking at settings on their chests and inserters.

Look how small a successful self sustaining gleba base can be

test

12-01-2024, 16-45-08.png (3.88 MiB) Viewed 338 times

[Visione]

Use the yumako mash to nutrients recipe, then the bioflux to nutrients recipe.

I've tried this, but it's not sustainable. There's just not enough resources to provide a sustainable reaction.

There's lots of fuel if you use jellynut trees. Process the jellynuts to jelly in an assembler with productivity modules, then burn the jelly in a heating tower. Make sure to loop the the seeds back to the plantation for planting.

I've tried this, but I just keep running out of seeds.

I'm getting really demoralised trying to report problems with Gleba. I've tried a number of approaches, but they all reach the same deadend: not enough primary resources. I'd appreciate some moral support! Maybe someone official someone could acknowledge that the gameplay on Gleba is flawed and so it will be reviewed to be more inline with the behaviour on other planets.

Men, that sucks. I feel you, gleba was also difficult and frustrating at the beginning for me.

I got hopefully some helpfull tips for you:
1. Don't burn spoilage in the heating tower, but use it all in the spoilage -> nutrient recipe (assemmbler only) This way your base does not rely on nutrients from bioflux, which can cause a base failure if there is not enough nutrients to keep the bioflux nutrient cycle going. And use productivity modules.
2. Build enough Agri towers in the beginning. I only had like 2-3 Agri towers going on for both march and jelly, which was not enough. As you can't make soil yet, you have the rely on the natural spawned soil, as that's limited too, due to terrain generation, it's easy to not farm enough jelly and mash.
3. Ship in external power. Getting nuclear and not having to worry to also make rocket fuel for the heating towers is some relief.
4. Get productivity modules from nauvis and stuff them in everywhere.
5. Don't burn jellynut fruits straight away to make power,this is tempting due to their high energy value. But this way you will miss out on making them into seeds. Just process then, so you get the seeds, solve power differently.
6. Only focus on harvesting and processing jellynut and mash at first. Don't make anything else out of it. Void with heating tower or recycler the jelly and mash if need be. Just focus on sustaining seeds.
7. Don't bother with making the iron and copper bacteria untill you have a stable seed economy. Just import materials from nauvis to craft stuff.

The problem with gleba is that it's to easy to do to many things at once. And as all these things influence each other's economy cycles it's will result to easy on a complete base failure without ever figuring out which piece of it fell first. It can be very frustrating. (No other experience in factory is like this. Its was always very easy in Factorio what went wrong where.) the solution is to go in baby steps on gleba untill you understand all the relationships of product economies.

I hope this helps. Indeed, Gleba is a lot. I hope you can get it figured out.

[VeryLargeBigToe]

I don't even know how to use this forum because I just made an account right now because after seeing the base screenshot I have never been so mad at a post in my life. WHY ARE THERE WALLS. this post is old news but I had 30 hours in this game prior to space age and even I got it

[fredthedeadhead]

Perhaps you could share a picture of your set up so we can figure out what the problem might be?

Sure, here's a pic. It shows that the biochamber has produced almost 4000 products, but the 2 tree farms are empty.

Not shown in the screenshot is a the regular power outage (I took the SS just between the 'power cut' icons blinking) because Gleba doesn't give enough seeds to actually start a base.

I think it looks similar to the setup you shared, but I'm not doubting that it is possible to get to that stage. But the problem is that it's taking hours and hours and HOURS to get ANY seeds. I literally can't play the factory building game.

[fredthedeadhead]

I hope this helps. Indeed, Gleba is a lot. I hope you can get it figured out.

Thanks for trying, but I've been following all these tips (except for basically avoiding the problem by importing everything from another planet) from everyone and it's really not working. I'm really not sure what else to explain. There's something really wrong with starting a base Gleba. I believe everyone can get to a stage where it's possible, but trying to actually get the initial resources to start a base just ain't working.