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Jay_Raynor wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2025 7:18 pm Here's perhaps the big rub of Gleba where objections flow from. What essential foundations do you feel Gleba lacks?

Thadrax wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 6:17 pm

Jay_Raynor wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2025 7:18 pm Here's perhaps the big rub of Gleba where objections flow from. What essential foundations do you feel Gleba lacks?

This completely breaks my usual way of solving issues....

NineNine wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2025 2:58 pm

Thadrax wrote: Sat Jan 18, 2025 5:39 am

NineNine wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2025 9:01 pm

Thadrax wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2025 8:31 pm .... I absolutely despise the time wasted on that hellhole and I'm scratching my head wondering how it was possible for the devs to not notice how bad this was and to pull the plug and start over.
Looking at the responses and how debated Gleba is, it seems to be enough people for a developer to go "huh, maybe we should look at this again". Maybe not your run of the mill AAA developer, but Wube that really seemed to strive for perfection?

I'm not a game developer. But if I were, I would think that I would want to make a game of a certain difficulty that some people thought was too difficult. A game that *everybody* can easily master is a game for a child, which to me, as a theoretical game developer, would not be very interesting. I think that the amount of discussions about Gleba, and the few people who threw a temper tantrum or rage quit on the forums indicates that the level of difficulty of Gleba is probably just about right.

It's not about the difficulty (although I strongly believe that the difficulty curve in this expansion is seriously messed up). At least for me that's not the main issue. My issue is that Gleba breaks a few of the fundamental rules that make the game enjoyable, the most important being that nothing ever goes bad. Which enables you to stop your factory at any moment, change stuff, reenable it and it keeps going exactly where you stopped it. Which in turn makes step by step development of every single production step viable. Also removes any throughput requirement. If your production can't keep up, it doesn't matter. The input box will eventually fill up and the assembler will go to work. Which also means, timing isn't important (besides optimization), building the correct ratio is an optimization issue, not a "this won't work unless you get it right" issue.

Gleba breaks the whole process of how I like to play the game. I know how I can make it work, but I don't enjoy working like that. It's not fun (for me). I've compared it to the dreaded stealth sections in otherwise fast paced action games before. It's not necessarily the difficulty that's the issue, it's changing the game in a fundamental way that isn't fun that I don't like.

Thadrax wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 6:25 pm My issue is that Gleba breaks a few of the fundamental rules that make the game enjoyable, the most important being that nothing ever goes bad. Which enables you to stop your factory at any moment, change stuff, reenable it and it keeps going exactly where you stopped it.

Thadrax wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 6:17 pm Factorio has had a few basic rules that I like very much. One of those rules is that you can pause at any time, nothing ever goes away by itself. Need to fix something in your factory, just remove or rotate a belt and everything stops, you fix what you need fixing, you undo your blocker and everything starts up again as it was. Pollution getting too close to some enemies, stop science production, your base grinds to a halt, everything pauses, you go blow up the enemies, then you start again. You need to build a new production line? Start with the first step, build, connect it, see it working, then build the next step and when that is done, connect the belt and your whole factory produces that next step as well. Gleba breaks this basic principle, you stop your factory at any point, and the whole system comes crashing down and just reconnecting the belt won't do a thing because you need to follow a complicated startup sequence going through 5 steps and 2-3 loops. I don't enjoy that, I like to build and test each step separately before moving on to the next step.

I like to play with trains. Lots of trains, splitting the factory into a lot of sub factories doing mostly one step of any production line. If I need to expand production, I often just build a 2nd separate subfactory instead of expanding the one I already have and let the trains figure it out. If one buffer is empty, it will automatically pull from the other one. My Vulcanus base isn't really big, I haven't even started building green belts or speed modules mk3, but I already have 84 train stations and 33 trains in 20 groups. Gleba doesn't work like that, because using trains that way requires having buffers. You can't have 3 different stations providing nutrients and trains automatically picking stuff up wherever there is enough to fill a train because they will just rot away in the trains, in the boxes waiting for trains to pick them up, on the belts, everywhere. You probably could build a complicated system that monitors the train station and only when a train is waiting starts to produce a train load (going through the whole cold start process) and then stops once the train is full, but that complicates everything a lot.

This completely breaks my usual way of solving issues, dividing the problem up into separate steps and scaling up via the self organizing of trains. With Gleba, I basically had to design a production line in factoriolab, 1:1 copy that into the game hoping I didn't make a single mistake with belts and throughput etc. and only after I'd done that, I could try to plug it in, see where it broke, stopped everything, cleaned up the mess, changed stuff around, plug it back in etc. I absolutely hat having to do that, but just dropping down a factory and see it working before adding the next is something that isn't possible here.

There is other stuff I really don't like about this place, like how visually busy and unclear everything is - On Nauvis, you have land and water, and each of those is very distinct and easily recognizable. Same on Vulcanus (mostly, although the map gets really busy with all those cliffs and sometimes rocks look like cliffs and vice versa) and also on Fulgora. Land, shallow and deep oil are easily recognizable. Gleba really isn't. Land, swamp, water, plant ready soil, places where you can plant after putting down soil1, places where you can plant after putting down some other soil. I'm not color blind as far as I'm aware, but that place really made me feel like I was.

Plus in my opinion they did a really poor job with introducing Gleba and informing players about how different the difficulty between the 3 early planets is. The difficulty progresssion between Vulcanus, Gleba and Fulgora is a complete mess IMO. And I think the early game on Gleba could use a few rounds of improvements to the unlocks, it definitely could use a decent starting area with 2 (small) patches of brain and fruit soil close together so you don't have to handcraft 1000 belts and hundreds of landfill before you can get your first tiny automated production started. Plus possibly give the players more time/room before enemy contact, although apparently they patched a bunch there, so maybe they already did that. Idk., lots of issues for new players that are not that bad when you know what you are doing and what is required (and can drop a whole starter factory from orbit).

Jay_Raynor wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 12:45 am But the enemy contact...what's the allergy to adjusting Gleba enemy settings until one learns? The settings exist separately of Nauvis and I absolutely encourage new players to adjust biter settings all the way to peaceful mode if they need to learn with less pressure.

InUniverse wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 1:06 am

Jay_Raynor wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 12:45 am But the enemy contact...what's the allergy to adjusting Gleba enemy settings until one learns? The settings exist separately of Nauvis and I absolutely encourage new players to adjust biter settings all the way to peaceful mode if they need to learn with less pressure.

It's probably because, by the time you land on Gleba for the first time and discover that its fauna are a significant step up in difficulty from Nauvis, you've likely put dozens of hours of work into this save file that you would lose by starting over with different settings. And you can't change the settings on an in-progress file without losing access to achievements.

Jay_Raynor wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 1:55 amI've been busy defending Gleba as a concept so I wanted to address your specific listed points:

Jay_Raynor wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 1:55 am

Terrains are challenging to discern where I can build/grow or can't.

Terrain: I wholeheartedly agree without reservation. I like neither the confusing color of the terrain or how much swamp exists given the low amount of stone for landfill. I pave my base to make it at least easy to discern.

Jay_Raynor wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 1:55 am

Having to take into account spoilage everywhere. Input, output, logistics, etc.

Spoilage: I actually enjoyed this part of Gleba once I realized the only end product really affected by spoilage is agri science. Clearing spoilage requires a new design philosophy for belts and trains but barely anything for bots. Also, yes, you can burn spoilage for power, but it's easier to make steady power with rocket fuel and recycle spoilage into oblivion that you're not turning into carbon.

Jay_Raynor wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 1:55 am

A lack of smooth transition for production lines going offline and restarting without over-engineering.

Transition: I had more problems with Fulgora backing up than figuring out Gleba and both essentially have the same thesis: process/eliminate most everything by default to only to save what you need. The hardest thing to learn on both planets is that you can't use everything. You will have waste. Not just imperfect production but actual waste. Accept that (a real part of real manufacturing) and it becomes easier. The bit about seeds is pretty important, though.

Jay_Raynor wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 1:55 am

A new style of fauna that requires a new "defense strategy" that isn't immediately obvious upfront. There is no way to test the novel defense strategy beforehand without going to Gleba and experimenting with new defense implementations first-hand.

Fauna: If you think you need to learn the new strategy, do what new players do and play peaceful mode. You can toggle it separately of Nauvis. Biter defense strategy may not have been readily apparent to new vanilla players, after all.

Jay_Raynor wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 1:55 am

I have limited time to enjoy video games. Gleba is a huge time-sinker with room for improvement. Less "I have to return to Gleba to find out why/what went wrong" factor.

Limited time: This is MOST of us and unbelievable that this is a complaint. Space platforms take a lot of time to master, are you going to complain about them, too? Space Age requires multiple different production dynamics. If you don't want to spend the time learning a particular one, mod it out or go back to vanilla.

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 5:42 am It took me a couple of experiments and a few hours to build an interplanetary Space Platform logistic that works flawlessly in the editor mode, and sent it on a dry run with reasonable results (shooting rock, ammo, etc.). I haven't been able to do the same for Gleba in the editor with unlimited resources without it falling across various simulations: to see how a Gleba factory would deal with edge cases, then back to the drawing board, tweaks to fix a new edge case, repeat and rinse.

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 5:42 amBack to this conversation, my opinion is such that if I am playing a video game and encounter poorly explained or obscurification mechanics in-game, where I have to seek out a third-party guide, people, otherwise to understand and deal with it better. There is a better way to deal with the mechanics introduction in-game, as there is room for improvement.

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 5:42 am Edited while writing this post: I decided to spend more of my time having fun and less on conversing. So don't expect a quick response from me anytime soon.

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 5:42 am You may find the aesthetic of paving the entire world pleasing. Other engineers, including me, may feel differently and not want to pave everything.

Even if that was an option for fixing the visual issue on Gleba, Gleba does not have a decent source of stone to pave the Gleba surface in the ecumenopolis style.

You are thinking narrowly about the item's actual spoilage amount.

IE: Hypothetically, I am temporarily shutting down Gleba because I am not using any agricultural science packs while researching something that doesn't require agricultural science packs. The partial shutdown will often unpredictably affect other parts of the Gleba factory. I have to take into account if there is a spoilage buildup as part of each production line. Too close to being spoiled or detecting spoilage? Purge the logistics.

Then, I go to different worlds, such as Nauvis, Vulcanis, Fulgora, or Aquilo, and I don't have to take into account spoilage (unless it is an import, such as Agricultural Science packs from Gleba). So, I can't transfer the lessons I learned at Gleba to other worlds or vice versa.

Back to this conversation, my opinion is such that if I am playing a video game and encounter poorly explained or obscurification mechanics in-game, where I have to seek out a third-party guide, people, otherwise to understand and deal with it better. There is a better way to deal with the mechanics introduction in-game, as there is room for improvement.

This partially ties to the previous point about the "introduction" of Gleba's mechanics as a whole to the players.

Going back to the basic oil processing giving three-fluid outputs example from earlier Factorio versions, one of the most significant barriers for players is that they didn't just have to learn a single new mechanics, they had to learn a whole group of them. Fluid handling, dealing with under-filling or over-filling fluids, petroleum-based production chains, etc. So, WUBE changed basic oil processing to a single fluid and moved some of the mechanics to later in the game to make the overall petroleum production experience better.

Once again, WUBE could have done a better job introducing different mechanics piecemeal rather than introducing them all simultaneously to players as soon as they land on Gleba. These mechanics include but are not limited to, the spoilage mechanics themselves, the logistics of detecting and purging unwanted spoilage, partial shutdown, and how to do it without wrecking future productions once they start up. Players also need to find farmable tiles and defend against enemies that require a new way of thinking about the defense perimeter.

That is a LOT upfront for players to deal with all at once in one large "introduction," regardless of how you think about Gleba mechanics being 'fine.'

I don't think you can enable/disable peaceful on Nauvis or Gleba without also affecting the other worlds. IE: Disabling enemy affects both Nauvis and Gleba simultaneously.

Even if that was available as an option in a new world, I want to do it without turning the enemy off for the speedrun achievement. I have all of the pre-2.0 ones already done. I just need the new ones from 2.0 and 2.0 + Space Age.

At least one achievement doesn't require Space Age and becomes ineligible if I modify either enemy setting: Keeping your hands clean (do not kill any nests until artillery is available, then kill the first nest with artillery).

Here are some examples of Factorio with Space Age achievements that no longer count if modified enemy to be off or peaceful: It stinks and they do like it (attract pentapod through spore, the Gleba's version of pollution), Get off my lawn (disturb a demolisher by building in their territory), Work around the clock (finish the game within 100 hours), and Express delivery (same as the previous one but at 40 hours).

These five achievements required the Gleba factory to deal with hostile natives.

Excuse me? What are you talking about?

I have limited free time as I have a life outside of playing Factorio (with or without Space Age): families, children, jobs, hobbies, groceries/cooking, chores, maintenance, weather, travel, holidays, etc. I usually have a couple of hours of free time on the weekend, say 8 hours across two weekend days. It has been twelve weeks since the Space Age release, nearly a hundred hours of free time.

I haven't had enough time to plan a speedrun without ditching my life; I would have to spend considerable time planning out a successful 25-hour session, loosely based on my previous successful No-Spoon speedrun, across multiple weeks and pull the speedrun record off flawlessly from beginning to end in a single or two sessions. I might be reasonably good with playing Factorio: Space Age, but I am not THAT good enough to pull off a no-life weekend to do a flawless speedrun in one go. Don't forget, I would also have to do practical speedruns, which add considerable time.

I haven't had enough free time to dedicate to the speedrun endeavor. Much less finding and fixing all edge cases while perfecting the Gleba Factory blueprint for the speedrun attempt. What I hear from you is that I should accept that it takes hundreds of hours to 'master' Space Platforms and a similar amount, if not more than on 'mastering' Gleba, all while doing a speedrun (without planning or perfecting it) in the weeks since the Space Age release.

I want to extend my congratulations to you for having a gamer bachelor lifestyle, but not for the reason you expected me to.

Edited while writing this post: I decided to spend more of my time having fun and less on conversing. So don't expect a quick response from me anytime soon.

Jay_Raynor wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 4:30 pmI didn't say I found the aesthetic of paving the entire world pleasing, I said I paved my factory area to make it easier to see. I shouldn't have to do this, nor should any player. I consider it a clunky workaround.

Jay_Raynor wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 4:30 pmAlright, since you're accusing me of myopic thinking, would you elaborate why you ever need to shutdown agriculture science production? No, really. What's the harm in letting agriculture science rot away and burning/recycling its spoilage into oblivion? Bioflux and pentapod eggs are infinite. Blue circuits, low density structures, and rocket fuel on Gleba are infinite. Inner-planet space platforms are self sustaining. The only maybe finite aspect of the logistics chain here is transportation from the Nauvis cargo pad to the labs (which is effectively infinite if nuclear fuel).

If the "default" logical progression of Space Age is Nauvis->Vulcanus->Fulgora->Gleba, Fulgora should have taught you that you absolutely do not need to keep everything. The only way Fulgora works is recycling otherwise usable components into the void...even valuable holmium ore if it's choking the system that you need something else like blue circuits or low density structures from. Why is voiding so easy to accept with Fulgora with one of the rarest resources in the game but not with Gleba and its absolutely common resources?

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 5:42 amIE: Hypothetically, I am temporarily shutting down Gleba because I am not using any agricultural science packs while researching something that doesn't require agricultural science packs. The partial shutdown will often unpredictably affect other parts of the Gleba factory.

• Burn the spoilage on Nauvis but keep the Agricultural Science pack production line running non-stop on Gleba. In theory, it might appear to be a viable solution until I look at how much resources were spent moving those Agricultural Science packs to Nauvis. To be more specific, keep launching rockets from Gleba's rocket silo non-stop.
• To solve the continuous upkeep of Gleba's rocket silo, I would have to move science labs to Gleba, which would result in the loss of some of the best science labs (productivity-wise). This is a significant drawback.
• Another solution is slightly better overall, but not by much. Considering the drawbacks of the other solutions, I think this one works, even if it means actually navigating between partial shutdown and full production.
  
  The trick is to treat the Nauvis' cargo landing pad as a "delayed" signal to Nauvis <-> Gleba Space Platform that it is full. Then, when the space platform arrives at Gleba with either full or partially spoiled agricultural science packs load. The number of agricultural science packs will start to overfill Gleba's chests, which are read by Gleba's logic circuit. That logic circuit on Gleba's surface sends a signal to the Agricultural Science pack production line to 'throttle' down production and only run long enough to keep a fresh supply for Nauvis / Nauvis<->Gleba-Space-Platform / Gleba's stockpile in chests to keep the signal alive.

Jay_Raynor wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 4:30 pmI grouped these two statements together since you established them as related.

*snipped*

The only truly new mechanic is spoilage.

The least-obtrusive change to Gleba's introduction that seems to solve a lot of these issues would be gating Gleba's discovery behind metallurgic and electromagnetic science so that there's no "if you went to Vulcanus/Fulgora first".

I'm sorry, are we talking about the issues for a new player discovering Gleba or your achievement hunting? Because devs should only be concerning themselves with one of those two things. Did you earn all the OG achievements on your first run or somewhere in the course of the thousands of hours you boasted about? Do you tell a new player to go watch speedrun videos before they click New Game or do you tell them to bring on the spaghetti until the plate's full and they start figuring out how to do individual segments and then organize their base? Why is any dev obligated to make achievements easy to accomplish on a first play?

I'll make the same suggestion as earlier: fork the save, use the modified fork to learn, then go back to the unmodded primary to achievement hunt.

Jay_Raynor wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 4:30 pmFor enemies, the player already knows about an expanding and evolving enemy from Nauvis. If they've been to Vulcanus, they know about enemies with high physical/laser damage resistance and already have access to artillery (and likely deployed it for clearing biter nests). If they've been to Fulgora, they have access to the mech armor for mobility and Tesla weaponry. And since they've been to space since they're dropping on Gleba, they have access to all three resources of those planets to make it work. Need power to bootstrap? Bring a nuclear reactor and associated equipment (it's no small hint that a heating tower is the same ratio as a single no-bonus reactor). Need to clear some map segments? Ship artillery and rounds. Stompers making short work of you on foot? The tank exists. Nothing is gated behind agriculture science that makes Gleba impossible, just less easy than once researched and produced (rocket turrets).

Jay_Raynor wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 4:30 pmI'm talking about you complaining about limited time in the same thread you boast about thousands of hours played to flex. If time's that precious and an aspect of the game is too difficult for you to enjoy, there's options around that.

Jay_Raynor wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 4:30 pmYou seem completely clueless on how tone-deaf you come across talking about limited time and learning a deeply-complex game based on interconnecting systems while also discussing your significant pre-expansion experience and now intricate speedrun planning.

Jay_Raynor wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 4:30 pmPerhaps Gleba will be easier now that you're more focused on playing Factorio rather than whining about the difficulty of your speedrun and lashing out at other players for it.

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 9:14 pm Gleba is poorly designed and feels so out of place compared to lessons learned at Nauvis and up to landing on Gleba.

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 9:14 pm You are overreaching because I found Gleba unenjoyable with non-constructive personal observations. You could have, at least, tried to have a conversation and, in doing so, helped me find a way to make Gleba's mechanics fun in my way.

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 9:14 pm Burn the spoilage on Nauvis but keep the Agricultural Science pack production line running non-stop on Gleba. In theory, it might appear to be a viable solution until I look at how much resources were spent moving those Agricultural Science packs to Nauvis. To be more specific, keep launching rockets from Gleba's rocket silo non-stop.

Gleba is poorly designed and feels so out of place compared to lessons learned at Nauvis and up to landing on Gleba.
I don't have this problem with Space Platform, Vulcanis, Fulgora, and Aquilo, but I do for Gleba.
Thousands of hours played in Factorio before Space Age even existed

I acknowledge that Gleba is complicated, but it was designed in a way that is universally regarded as a source of frustration by a significantly large majority of the community that chose to speak out regarding Gleba's mechanics and for many potentially not-so-fun "game-ending" moments where the player would prefer to restart/exit/uninstall the game rather than solve it.

NineNine wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 6:25 pm Luckily, if you don't like any of these new modes of playing, there's still good ol' 2.0 that you can play to your heart's content!

pulsereaction wrote: Wed Jan 15, 2025 6:53 pm I think the devs also struggled a lot with Gleba - there were design changes up to the last minute of the development cycle. I think that one thing that might've been overlooked is the fact that the whole game was in open early access, so while the systems and mechanics were being built, people were exploring them piece by piece, and producing content and guides for them. There are systems in the original game that benefitted from that, that are complex but with the open early access there was a lot of opportunity for experimentation of those systems in isolation by the player base, not to mention a bunch of content created to help people navigate the changes.

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 9:14 pm

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 5:42 amIE: Hypothetically, I am temporarily shutting down Gleba because I am not using any agricultural science packs while researching something that doesn't require agricultural science packs. The partial shutdown will often unpredictably affect other parts of the Gleba factory.

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 9:14 pm

• Burn the spoilage on Nauvis but keep the Agricultural Science pack production line running non-stop on Gleba. In theory, it might appear to be a viable solution until I look at how much resources were spent moving those Agricultural Science packs to Nauvis. To be more specific, keep launching rockets from Gleba's rocket silo non-stop.

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 9:14 pm [*]To solve the continuous upkeep of Gleba's rocket silo, I would have to move science labs to Gleba, which would result in the loss of some of the best science labs (productivity-wise). This is a significant drawback.[/*]

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 9:14 pm The trick is to treat the Nauvis' cargo landing pad as a "delayed" signal to Nauvis <-> Gleba Space Platform that it is full. Then, when the space platform arrives at Gleba with either full or partially spoiled agricultural science packs load. The number of agricultural science packs will start to overfill Gleba's chests, which are read by Gleba's logic circuit. That logic circuit on Gleba's surface sends a signal to the Agricultural Science pack production line to 'throttle' down production and only run long enough to keep a fresh supply for Nauvis / Nauvis<->Gleba-Space-Platform / Gleba's stockpile in chests to keep the signal alive.[/*][/list]

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 9:14 pm When I examine Gleba's production chains and try to devise a new solution that is not entirely intuitive, without regard to the reason for seeking a novel solution, I have to go into editor mode or look up other players' solutions that are closer to the particularities of the solution that I need. I don't have this problem with Space Platform, Vulcanis, Fulgora, and Aquilo, but I do for Gleba.

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 9:14 pm Thousands of hours played in Factorio before Space Age even existed, but I have only had what, at most, been two digits of free time since the release date. I have had to take some time aside; today is, by coincidence, a holiday, so I am off from work to deal with people who don't understand the way I think and help them understand me better.

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 9:14 pm I acknowledge that Gleba is complicated, but it was designed in a way that is universally regarded as a source of frustration by a significantly large majority of the community that chose to speak out regarding Gleba's mechanics and for many potentially not-so-fun "game-ending" moments where the player would prefer to restart/exit/uninstall the game rather than solve it.

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 9:14 pm The aesthetic of concrete was meant as a figurative of speech.

Paving everything isn't a viable long-term workaround, regardless.

I already gave you an example in the post that you quoted.

XT-248 wrote: Mon Jan 20, 2025 5:42 amIE: Hypothetically, I am temporarily shutting down Gleba because I am not using any agricultural science packs while researching something that doesn't require agricultural science packs. The partial shutdown will often unpredictably affect other parts of the Gleba factory.

I will describe several solutions, all as clunky as paving Gleba with stones or concrete.

Burn the spoilage on Nauvis but keep the Agricultural Science pack production line running non-stop on Gleba. In theory, it might appear to be a viable solution until I look at how much resources were spent moving those Agricultural Science packs to Nauvis. To be more specific, keep launching rockets from Gleba's rocket silo non-stop.

To solve the continuous upkeep of Gleba's rocket silo, I would have to move science labs to Gleba, which would result in the loss of some of the best science labs (productivity-wise). This is a significant drawback.

Another solution is slightly better overall, but not by much. Considering the drawbacks of the other solutions, I think this one works, even if it means actually navigating between partial shutdown and full production.

The trick is to treat the Nauvis' cargo landing pad as a "delayed" signal to Nauvis <-> Gleba Space Platform that it is full. Then, when the space platform arrives at Gleba with either full or partially spoiled agricultural science packs load. The number of agricultural science packs will start to overfill Gleba's chests, which are read by Gleba's logic circuit. That logic circuit on Gleba's surface sends a signal to the Agricultural Science pack production line to 'throttle' down production and only run long enough to keep a fresh supply for Nauvis / Nauvis<->Gleba-Space-Platform / Gleba's stockpile in chests to keep the signal alive.

It would be nice if there were a way to reliably send a signal from Nauvis directly to Gleba without using a space platform as a middleman, but we don't—at least not without heavily modifying Factorio: Space Age, which makes it ineligible for achievements.

Because of how everything comes together and the way it works, the third option, in my opinion, is the better solution to the fact that not all technologies require agricultural science packs, wasteful launching rockets with unused science packs just because of the way spoilage works off-world, and best deal with all of the drawbacks in a reasonable manner.

I will try again to help you understand my stance and I thought it was unambiguous.

A new player wholly unfamiliar with Factorio: Space Age has multiple barriers to deal with all at once. There is nothing earlier in the game to help guide them if they should decide to go to Gleba first and deal with it without any framework whatsoever from having gone to other worlds first. Gleba is poorly designed and feels so out of place compared to lessons learned at Nauvis and up to landing on Gleba.

A player who is planning to speedrun has to take into consideration almost everything that may lead to a deathspiral on Gleba (to just name a few situations but is not fully comprehensive: not enough seeds, not enough nutrients, burning without access to burner tower, running out of power to keep agricultural science production going at inopportunity times, etc.).

• Not enough seeds: Only an issue if you fail to process harvested fruit in a biochamber (letting fruit rot or predominantly ASM processing with no prod modules)
• Not enough nutrients: If you have the ability to make bioflux, you have more than enough nutrients.
• Burning without access to a tower: Heating towers fall under nuclear power research, something achievable in Nauvis research and required on Aquilo that I would expect a speedrunner planning to know about. But you can always go to Fulgora first to get recyclers. I really think you're missing out on that sweet biolab bonus by not going to Gleba first, though...
• Power: Single Nuclear Reactor = 40MW = Heating Tower. I'm not sure how much bigger of a hint the devs can give that they almost expect you to import nuclear power to start until you get the heating towers established, aside from the solar efficiency changes.

When I examine Gleba's production chains and try to devise a new solution that is not entirely intuitive, without regard to the reason for seeking a novel solution, I have to go into editor mode or look up other players' solutions that are closer to the particularities of the solution that I need. I don't have this problem with Space Platform, Vulcanis, Fulgora, and Aquilo, but I do for Gleba.

An engineer with extensive knowledge of Space Age weapons might go first for the rocket turret's explosive damage and long-range advantage. To deal with demolisher on Vulcanis (one of the third lowest resistances), dealing with Gleba's local fauna (out-range them all without quality), dealing with Nauvis worms (with a few quality levels available with Nauvis-technologies-only levels out-range everything but for behemoth worms), and to deal with asteroids while collecting resources to mass-produce rockets on space platforms which is better than relying on bullets alone.

Thousands of hours played in Factorio before Space Age even existed, but I have only had what, at most, been two digits of free time since the release date. I have had to take some time aside; today is, by coincidence, a holiday, so I am off from work to deal with people who don't understand the way I think and help them understand me better.

I acknowledge that Gleba is complicated, but it was designed in a way that is universally regarded as a source of frustration by a significantly large majority of the community that chose to speak out regarding Gleba's mechanics and for many potentially not-so-fun "game-ending" moments where the player would prefer to restart/exit/uninstall the game rather than solve it.

It doesn't matter if you think someone cannot understand Gleba's mechanics, which is an opinion, for someone else will find Gleba's mechanics ingenuously unenjoyable even if they genuinely understood Gleba's mechanics and that someone tried to find a reasonably good and long-running blueprint for a sub-factory on Gleba multiple times that adequately deal with potential failure pathways.

What do you mean by lashing out? I am describing how Gleba's mechanics are not fun. No way or shape would resemble 'lashing out' at anyone, much less you, in the way you use that phrase.

You are overreaching because I found Gleba unenjoyable with non-constructive personal observations. You could have, at least, tried to have a conversation and, in doing so, helped me find a way to make Gleba's mechanics fun in my way.

Thadrax wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 6:17 pm This completely breaks my usual way of solving issues, dividing the problem up into separate steps and scaling up via the self organizing of trains. With Gleba, I basically had to design a production line in factoriolab, 1:1 copy that into the game hoping I didn't make a single mistake with belts and throughput etc. and only after I'd done that, I could try to plug it in, see where it broke, stopped everything, cleaned up the mess, changed stuff around, plug it back in etc. I absolutely hat having to do that, but just dropping down a factory and see it working before adding the next is something that isn't possible here.

mako00 wrote: Thu Jan 23, 2025 12:59 am I've seen this issue described here multiple times, and my reaction is always the same.

You absolutely can build up Gleba step by step, I know because I did. The automation challenge of Gleba is to deal with spoilage in your factory, i.e. every chest, belt, machine that deals with spoilable resources needs to have a way to remove spoilage. If you need to manually "clean up the mess", then then you are missing spoilage removal mechanisms in your design.

This is just a new thing to learn, like dealing with multiple outputs (e.g. advanced oil processing).

Now arguably the game does a bad job at nudging players in the right direction, since this comes up so often.

A radical approach would be to randomize the spoilage timer - I think that would make it paradoxically more obvious to the player that you need to remove spoilage and can't rely on processing things fast enough all the time (which seems to be what a lot of people try & fail at)