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Yeah, but that's fine, it's not like that they have to restart their game from zero — back naked to Nauvis without a factory — after a death (even without save-scumming).

Also, guess what eating Jellynut gives you ? (Granted, they might not notice that...)

Getting almost exactly the same amount of seeds back from growing them is fine and reasonably balanced in my opinion. It doesn't make assemblers useless, it just means they wont grow your seed collection, which seems fine to me. There is a lack of tips or explanation about this fact though. I had no idea I needed the biochamber so badly at first glance and didn't bother doing the math when glancing at the numbers, because I just assumed they weren't that important, which is the case for majority of the numbers in the game.

BlueTemplar wrote: Thu Nov 28, 2024 4:43 pm Yeah, but that's fine, it's not like that they have to restart their game from zero — back naked to Nauvis without a factory — after a death (even without save-scumming).

Also, guess what eating Jellynut gives you ? (Granted, they might not notice that...)

It never even ocured to me that you could eat them... But then again, I want to Fulgora first so when I landed on Gleba I had a so I didn't notice any slowdown in the swamps.

Yeah, it's a bit obscure, but it's still less obscure than fish healing you, because, unlike for fish, they do have a description phrase mentioning it, and the fish only has separate tables about how it can be consumed and how it heals.

I'm very confused by the recommendations for the Biochamber. The Biochamber requires a resource that I don't have. If I don't have enough seeds, then I don't have enough fruit. If I don't have enough fruit, then I don't have spoilage. If I don't have spoilage, not only can my factory not produce nutrients, but also I can't produce enough power.

Compare Gleba to the other planets: On Nauvis, if I don't have enough of a resource, I can mine more manually, and automate it later. On Vulcanus and Fulgora I can mine it manually, with the additional mechanic of needing to delete some excess. This additional mechanic is not front-loaded, and can be solved later. If I do not deal with the excess (maybe I'm distracted, or I'm confused), I'm not forced to start from scratch.

On Gleba, I am missing the primary resource. But to get that resource, I need to use that resource for _3_ separate things (power, products, and nutrients). Trying to 'mine' the resource (growing trees) is slow, so I need to sit around and twiddle my thumbs for an hour while I wait to be able to play the game. When I come back I find out that somehow I still ran out of seeds, and I didn't get anything at all, I'm back to nothing, with no clue as to what's going wrong.

As an example of a fix: remove the requirement for nutrients for recipes. Instead, nutrients can be used as an optional booster for recipes. Removing the nutrient requirement helps with making Gleba more incremental, as well as stopping players from being overwhelmed and frustrated with the many unexplained and discontinuous mechanics.

That was a similar first impression I've had.

But here is what I figure:

1) You should not be making nutrients from spoilage. It's there to start off your factory if you made a mistake (or to start at all).

Use the spoilage to nutrient recipe to start a Biochamber that makes nutrients from Mash or Bioflux.

2) You can use assemblers to process fruit back to seed and mash at the right ratio to keep going. Except it's randomised so you might have a streak of bad luck and run out. Productivity modules help and I recommend starting with that. The biochamber has 50% productivity naturally but needs nutrients. At first try you probably mess up and your biochamber stalls. Assembler with productivity modules doesn't have that problem.

Never let fruit spoil as you loose the seed then. The fruit -> mash recipe must run no matter what. You can use an assembler to make mash, let the mash spoil, make nutrients and run a biochamber to make more seeds/mash when nutrients are available to increase your seed reserves. That really is the minimum viable setup.

You're not supposed to run the bare minimum setup. I think of 2 biochambers that do fruit -> mash -> nutrient as the minimum. Let the nutrients spoil, keep a chest full as backup to restart the biochambers and burn the rest.

Then go and to the Jellynut farm and switch to nutrients from Bioflux. Again, keep it always running and spoilage just as backup to restart a blocked factory.



The reason why everyone recommends the biochamber is that 50% natural productivity. But really just some productivity modules in the assembler will do the same to safeguard your seed reserves are growing instead of running out due to a streak of bad luck. But did you bring any productivity modules with you to Gleba? Do you have enough resources on hand to build some locally?

PS: On Gleba you can go around and fell more trees for more resources. It's like building more mines except each tree runs out on the first harvest. It's like mining wood on Nauvis before you can plant trees. (not recommended)

I did notice that i was slowly starving my agricultural towers of seeds so I've made an effort to ensure that all yumako and jelly is processed and none of them reach the burners in their raw forms - extracting the maximum seeds possible.

Ever since that all agricultural towers are always 100 % statisfied.

WeirdConstructor wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2024 12:11 pm
I repeat myself, but the first day I spent on Gleba was not a "fun challenge" like Fulgora or Vulcanus. I scrapped 8 hours of progress and reloaded a save from 10 hours ago and restarted my approach to Gleba. It worked better, and I am glad I kind of solved it for me now.

You are lucky you only wasted 10 hours progress.

I have stopped playing the game entirely.

Over 6000 hours in Factorio and now this rubbish. I have gone back to previous saves more than once loosing days and days of "play", I should say work, effort. I have really really tried to enjoy Space Age and failed....the undocumented complexity.... it is not at all intuitive. Its just frustrating. It feels like work - it sure ain't an enjoyable anymore. It is vastly different from 1.0 and obviously not for the likes of me. I am not a programmer, I didn't get to go to LAN parties to learn the game nor do I have access to the developers. Seeking advice on one of the internet sites is not a pleasant experience since these forums seem filled with folk who have been playing and learning the game for many many months and treat others (obviously the stupid) poorly.

I wish I had not upgraded the game or purchased the FSA DLC.

fredthedeadhead wrote: Sun Dec 01, 2024 12:40 pm I'm very confused by the recommendations for the Biochamber. The Biochamber requires a resource that I don't have. If I don't have enough seeds, then I don't have enough fruit. If I don't have enough fruit, then I don't have spoilage. If I don't have spoilage, not only can my factory not produce nutrients, but also I can't produce enough power.

On Gleba, I am missing the primary resource. But to get that resource, I need to use that resource for _3_ separate things (power, products, and nutrients). Trying to 'mine' the resource (growing trees) is slow, so I need to sit around and twiddle my thumbs for an hour while I wait to be able to play the game. When I come back I find out that somehow I still ran out of seeds, and I didn't get anything at all, I'm back to nothing, with no clue as to what's going wrong.

Yes its just so much fun isn't it? ........... its rubbish. The developers created a recipe that is sure to fail leaving the player with no recourse - no plants and no seeds... just go back to an old save and start again.... must have been a laugh for them

fredthedeadhead wrote: Sun Dec 01, 2024 12:40 pm I'm very confused by the recommendations for the Biochamber. The Biochamber requires a resource that I don't have. If I don't have enough seeds, then I don't have enough fruit. If I don't have enough fruit, then I don't have spoilage. If I don't have spoilage, not only can my factory not produce nutrients, but also I can't produce enough power.

Compare Gleba to the other planets: On Nauvis, if I don't have enough of a resource, I can mine more manually, and automate it later. On Vulcanus and Fulgora I can mine it manually, with the additional mechanic of needing to delete some excess. This additional mechanic is not front-loaded, and can be solved later. If I do not deal with the excess (maybe I'm distracted, or I'm confused), I'm not forced to start from scratch.

On Gleba, I am missing the primary resource. But to get that resource, I need to use that resource for _3_ separate things (power, products, and nutrients). Trying to 'mine' the resource (growing trees) is slow, so I need to sit around and twiddle my thumbs for an hour while I wait to be able to play the game. When I come back I find out that somehow I still ran out of seeds, and I didn't get anything at all, I'm back to nothing, with no clue as to what's going wrong.

As an example of a fix: remove the requirement for nutrients for recipes. Instead, nutrients can be used as an optional booster for recipes. Removing the nutrient requirement helps with making Gleba more incremental, as well as stopping players from being overwhelmed and frustrated with the many unexplained and discontinuous mechanics.

But you don't need Spoilage to make more Nutrients. You make nutrients from Yumako mash, which is by itself gives you more seeds (when produced in Biochamber) than you need to sustain itself. Spoilage to Nutrients recipy is just a backup for when factory goes completly dead and you have to restart the chain from the begining. Also, that's why making Spoilage->Nutrients in Biochamber is just wrong. Assembler only needs power, which you can get just from solar pannels and from your Jelly->Rocket fuel backup.

SkerrittT wrote: Sun Jan 12, 2025 10:49 am Seeking advice on one of the internet sites is not a pleasant experience since these forums seem filled with folk who have been playing and learning the game for many many months and treat others (obviously the stupid) poorly.

It's the internet, undoubtley there is allways some one that is less then plesant. But from my experiance there are many very helpfull people here that are happy to help.
I think the problem is that some times the person asking for help is not happy with the answeres as the answeres point them in a direction they don't want to go (i.e. the game is working in a way they wish it didn't). Some times that leads to... frustration in both the people trying to help as well as the person asking for help. And frustration leads to defensive behaviour and on the internet that unfortionalt often leads to personal attacks.

R060 wrote: Sun Jan 12, 2025 3:58 pm But you don't need Spoilage to make more Nutrients. You make nutrients from Yumako mash, which is by itself gives you more seeds (when produced in Biochamber) than you need to sustain itself. Spoilage to Nutrients recipy is just a backup for when factory goes completly dead and you have to restart the chain from the begining. Also, that's why making Spoilage->Nutrients in Biochamber is just wrong. Assembler only needs power, which you can get just from solar pannels and from your Jelly->Rocket fuel backup.

I think part of why people hate Gleba is that they miss this...which is understandable, as it's far from obvious at first.

The Gleba recipes include backup systems. People should be using them!

For iron bacteria (and copper), there are two recipes. One takes bacteria and makes more. The other makes bacteria from jellynut jelly, with only a 10% chance.

Why both recipes? Your main iron bacteria production loop should be biochambers turning bacteria into more bacteria. The jellynut bacteria recipe is your backup. If your bacteria production loop dies completely, then you can use the jellynut recipe to seed it a bit until it becomes self-sustaining again.

For nutrients, there are three viable recipes:

10 spoilage -> 1 nutrient
4 yumako mash -> 6 nutrients
5 bioflux -> 40 nutrients

Obviously the bioflux should be your first choice, but the others are there as backup. If you run out of jellynut, you can still make nutrients from yumako mash. If you run out of nutrients, then your biochambers will die, but you can still make nutrients in an assembly machine out of spoilage, and you'll never run out of spoilage (since you can always go gather more from plants). These nutrients can kickstart your bioflux production again.

If your systems on Gleba are properly designed, you'll have the main, fully productive system, but you'll also have a backup failsafe system that starts everything up again, so you don't have to keep going back to Gleba to hand-feed nutrients or bacteria to your biochambers.

I thought the fact that the main research-line for early Gleba was completely focused on "get a bioreactor" made it pretty clear that those were what you were supposed to be using here.

I just thought of an interesting way around this problem: make the engineer always "drop" a seed after eating a whole fruit.

Since increased seed chance makes most sense when recovering / bootstrapping a factory, a manual high-productivity mechanism makes sense. It's also thematically accurate since the seeds aren't edible but the engineer isn't expelling them enough.

Droideka30 wrote: Fri Jan 17, 2025 10:44 pm I thought the fact that the main research-line for early Gleba was completely focused on "get a bioreactor" made it pretty clear that those were what you were supposed to be using here.

Ditto. I saw the break-even on seeds, saw the 50% productivity on biochambers, and immediately said "ah it's balanced so you can use assemblers until you get enough biochambers".

Sry, but isnt that a basic calculation, every factorio player should be able to make ?

We noticed that in our first 5 min on gleba since an "ongoing planter" is basicly the first thing you have to figuere out.