Increase Gleba seed production chance

[pipai]

What?

Increase Yumako/Jellynut seed production chance to 3-5%.

Why?

Bootstrapping Gleba is already quite difficult compared to any other planet, and it is compounded by the fact that you will not gain more seeds during fruit processing due to the probability being exactly 2%. Yes, you can use Biochambers' innate 50% productivity to gain more seeds than you lose by processing fruits, but I think for new players this is not something they will immediately notice, making Gleba even harder than it needs to be. If RNG causes you to not gain any seeds, then you need to do a very long walk back to the farm to manually get more, which sours the startup experience significantly. This helps alleviate the startup process if a new player uses regular assemblers, especially if they accidentally arrive on Gleba with absolutely nothing and no way to ship in materials.

Later on, seed production will be too high, but that's not a problem because players will need to burn excess seeds anyways.

EDIT: The other positive is that it simplifies cold-starting some processes. For newer players, they can use assemblers to start the process without feeling like they are losing out on seeds, and for experienced players, using the Biochamber is still optimal.

[barnaclebob]

This. Ive been on gleba for like 10 hours screwing around trying to get net positive on seeds for my 'starter' base and actively hating this place. I didnt realize until i read this post that seeds would be basically net negative (especially if you are trying to make soil to boot strap your farm) unless you used productivity.

[Stargateur]

I didn't have this problem but I have the fear, and I'm a expert player with 8000 hours . In the sake of user friendly I agree, 3% would be better.

[Barthoze]

Since your point is helping beginners to get seeds, it may be better to have explicit seed retrieval recipes, with a much higher chance to get seeds and much less Yumako juice or Jelly - maybe none?.

I think the current processing recipes are fine per se, but they could use a companion recipes to ease the process.

[mrvn]

A Tips&Tricks to use at least a productivity module 1 in the assembler should help new players.

[boskid]

I raised a question internally about this because i remember in early 2.0 balance the yumako (and the brains) peeling were 1% seed chance from one tree that gave 200 which was a net positive even when crafted on assemblers. Right now i see that peeling gives 2% seed chance from one tree that gives 50 which is a "break even" when used on assemblers and it may seem to be an unintended trap in the process when it was rebalanced to account for peeling to be performed in biochambers which have base productivity of +50% so this recipe comes net-positive when using those entities instead.

[WeirdConstructor]

I also tried running with normal blue assemblers, but my tree farms died out, because I did not get enough seeds back in the long run.
As soon as I went with Biochambers it worked smoothly, and I even got enough seeds to make new soil.

To be honest, this should be documented better and/or the chance should be raised a bit. What are the tips & tricks for again? I just had a horrible experience, because it did not work and I did not know what I was doing wrong. Usually you upgrade your machines (normal oven to steel oven) to make your factory work "nicer", but not to make it work in the first place. That was unexpected for me.

What is the purpose of allowing assemblers to get Yamako mash, if you can't use them to get a running factory? If Biochambers are required, or productivity modules, then please give me a hint before I play for 8 hours, seeing all my plant farms slowly dying.

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.

[Louie]

I didn't run into this issue since I assumed you needed the new biochamber to make these recipes. Maybe the recipes should require a biochamber and not work on assemblers?

[Barthoze]

I raised a question internally about this because i remember in early 2.0 balance the yumako (and the brains) peeling were 1% seed chance from one tree that gave 200 which was a net positive even when crafted on assemblers.

I have a question, how was seed handling with 1% on a fruits tree?
If it was OK at that level, then raising the seeding rate to 4% would generate the same number of seeds.

Right now i see that peeling gives 2% seed chance from one tree that gives 50 which is a "break even" when used on assemblers and it may seem an unintended trap

The trap effect is real. On a repeated game, if the expected value is a net zero, then the gambler's ruin is almost certain.
Gleba is harsh enough.
I see two solutions:

1. Put seeding recipes, that extracts seeds from fruits at a 10% base rate or more.

   Jellynut seeding : 1 jellynut → 1 rot + 10% jellynut seeds,
   Yumako seeding : 1 yumako → 1 rot + 10% jellynut seeds
   available for the player ,assembly machines or biolabs

2. Put the seeding rate of the fruit processing recipes at 3% at least, so that even players that do not understand biochambers are not completely screwed.

[mrvn]

I think it is nice to have the assembler produce exactly as many seeds as needed as it lets you run a tight loop where you process every fruit and they never spoil. With a higher chance there would be more and more seeds and they don't rot. With a higher chance it would be required to let fruit rot to use up the excess seeds. And an assembler with productivity module can be used to grow the seed stash and protect against bad luck using up all seeds. It just has to be clearer that it's required.

I also like the idea of a recipe that produces more seeds at the cost of ruining the fruit completely. That would be even clearer on how to grow extra seeds.

[mmmPI]

I don't think letting the fruits spoil is a good strategy to avoid seeds overflowing because you loose the fruits. May as well burn the seeds, or recycle them. So you don't waste the fruits.

[WeirdConstructor]

I think it is nice to have the assembler produce exactly as many seeds as needed as it lets you run a tight loop where you process every fruit and they never spoil. With a higher chance there would be more and more seeds and they don't rot.

The latter is already the case with Biochambers, the solution is stockpiling the seeds until you researched the heating tower.

The problem with the former is, that you will never get a stable 1:1 ratio, because it's up to the random number generator if you get a tree back or not.
If you have a small farm, with about 10 trees, and you lose the 50 rolls of a 50 sided dice, your farm will shrink and you will have even less chances to try again in future.
Only if you win, you get back the tree you harvested.
To grow the farm, you need to win 2 times. That means, you must roll the "50" of the 50 sided dice two times after 50 tries.

[Koub]

[Koub] Moved to Balancing

[mrvn]

I think it is nice to have the assembler produce exactly as many seeds as needed as it lets you run a tight loop where you process every fruit and they never spoil. With a higher chance there would be more and more seeds and they don't rot.

The latter is already the case with Biochambers, the solution is stockpiling the seeds until you researched the heating tower.

The problem with the former is, that you will never get a stable 1:1 ratio, because it's up to the random number generator if you get a tree back or not.
If you have a small farm, with about 10 trees, and you lose the 50 rolls of a 50 sided dice, your farm will shrink and you will have even less chances to try again in future.
Only if you win, you get back the tree you harvested.
To grow the farm, you need to win 2 times. That means, you must roll the "50" of the 50 sided dice two times after 50 tries.

Yes, you can get unlucky an infinite number of times. It's just very unlikely to happen often for long runs. You can also get lucky an infinite number of times and your seed buffer would run over. Less of a problem as all that causes is rotten fruit.

That is why the Tips&Tricks should say to insert productivity modules to increase the number of seeds. You start with that and build up a good seed backup, and by that I mean not just ten. Then you can run the 1:1 ratio if you have enough seeds and switch to an assembler with productivity modules or a biochamber when your seed storage goes below some value. You could still be unlucky and never get any seeds even then but that is even more unlikely.

PS: I build it like this. Have a biochamber/assembler with productivity modules output into a chest with a priority splitter going to it. When it blocks because the chest is full then the fruit goes to an assembler with the 1:1 ratio. If that blocks too then fruit rots.

[Stargateur]

The problem with the former is, that you will never get a stable 1:1 ratio, because it's up to the random number generator if you get a tree back or not.

AFAIK this is not random, factorio doesn't do random on this, it's just every X items you get Y items.

[Nemoricus]

It is random. Ask anyone who has done nuclear power.

[J-H]

I agree with this.
The +50% on biochambers is nice, but they have to be fed nutrients, which are produced 50% spoiled, in order to function. Forcing biochambers for viability just increases the need to rely on robots instead of traditional production/belts, given how far apart the biomes are - at least on my map.
Just moving things close to somewhere central with belts is resulting in product arriving over half spoiled already.

I waited for a ship to bring me 200 logistics robots and I think I'm net positive for small amounts of iron ore now. I think I'll probably end up just having my ship bring me electric motors and blue circuits for rockets instead of trying to get the tiny ore production amounts high enough to make blue circuits and a few of the other silo components.

[mrvn]

I agree with this.
The +50% on biochambers is nice, but they have to be fed nutrients, which are produced 50% spoiled, in order to function. Forcing biochambers for viability just increases the need to rely on robots instead of traditional production/belts, given how far apart the biomes are - at least on my map.
Just moving things close to somewhere central with belts is resulting in product arriving over half spoiled already.

I waited for a ship to bring me 200 logistics robots and I think I'm net positive for small amounts of iron ore now. I think I'll probably end up just having my ship bring me electric motors and blue circuits for rockets instead of trying to get the tiny ore production amounts high enough to make blue circuits and a few of the other silo components.

Iron you can get from a space platform. Probably cheaper to station one over Gleba than to ship simple iron based stuff around.

[BlueTemplar]

Yes, you can use Biochambers' innate 50% productivity to gain more seeds than you lose by processing fruits, but I think for new players this is not something they will immediately notice.
[...]
This helps alleviate the startup process if a new player uses regular assemblers, especially if they accidentally arrive on Gleba with absolutely nothing and no way to ship in materials.

I expect new players to not even think that you can use regular assemblers. You have one example in this very thread, another here.

I myself didn't have the time to realize that you could, before getting that spoiled in the thread above.

Tips and tricks says «[...] rich exotic vegetation that can be [...] processed in the Biochamber.»
And then the next one shows Biochambers being used for one of these recipes.

That is why the Tips&Tricks should say to insert productivity modules to increase the number of seeds.

No, tips and tricks should instead insist on Biochamber's built-in productivity, just in case they did think of starting using regular assemblers instead.
(And let the player figure it out by themselves about productivity modules.
P.S.: You can get to other planets without having ever researched any module. Crazy, I know !)

[angramania]

The +50% on biochambers is nice, but they have to be fed nutrients, which are produced 50% spoiled, in order to function. Forcing biochambers for viability just increases the need to rely on robots instead of traditional production/belts, given how far apart the biomes are - at least on my map.
Just moving things close to somewhere central with belts is resulting in product arriving over half spoiled already.

Nice example that there are a lot of thing to figure out on Gleba.

1. Nutrients are produced half-spoiled only from spoilage but not from bioflux
2. Yumako/jellynut have 1h spoil time. More than enough to transport it even by yellow belts.
3. Nutrients, jelly, mash have very short spoil time
4. So do not process yumako/jellynut near farm, transport them to factory and process only for immediate usage. Same for bioflux(transport it) and nutrients(process for immediate usage)

So if you want to add tip about such obvious thing like using biochambers to get net positive seed circle then you have to add tips above and a lot of other tips.