I think Gleba is breaking me

[Falesz]

It's fall break at my University and so I pretty much spent the last week from the moment I wake till going to bed playing Factorio.
Vulcanus was fun and cool. Fulgora was cool too, but the limited space and the overflowing of junk materials tested my patience by the end since I couldn't have known in advance just how many overflow recyclers I will be needing, plus getting bottlenecked by the low Holmium ore drop rate. But I managed to get through it with a reasonable Electromagnetic science pack production rate.
I went to Gleba yesterday.. and I think this is the point I'm returning to real life. This is breaking me. First I was looking around like an idiot for like 15 minutes just trying to figure out where the resources are. I knew spoilage would be a thing, but I thought as long as my factory design is correct, it won't matter, so I didn't let myself be discouraged by all my initially found resources spoiling by the time I set some production up. But then I was trying to figure out Agricultural towers. It's not enough that the Yumako trees were a kilometer away from my starter Stone patch, but then as I placed an Agricultural tower and put some Yumako seeds in it, it said there is no spot seedable by the inputs. I was standing there like.. "What?? You just harvested the naturally occuring Yumako trees from right here!" And then the discouragement from spoilage caught up with me. I tried to put some Biochambers down and design some production, but I couldn't never test anything out because everything kept spoiling before I could finish thinking about my design. I considered building a Heating tower to route all spoilage there, but that required Concrete or Refined concrete? Which I had no easy way of making there, so I'd either have to run around collecting Iron ore and putting them into smelters manually or import it from Nauvis. So I couldn't figure out how to automate resource harvesting and any design I tried to play around with just kept getting blocked up by Spoilage. I don't want to be lazy and import a ton of Logistic bots, but at this point I might just do that. And I haven't even encountered any attacks on my factory, which I hear is exceptionally frustrating on Gleba!
I think my Factorio marathon ends here :( This isn't really fun after Fulgora already made me grind my teeth. I'll take a break for a couple of days and then come back fresh. Any spoiler-free advice you might feel like posting here in the meantime, I'd be grateful for.

[Mad Gnome]

I don't get it, are people trying to start from scratch on each planet? Load up a platform or two with all the basic buildings you need to get running/operational.

Bring and setup a small nuclear reactor on Gleba for power, tons of pools of water everywhere.

Only 2 trees you need to farm for all your resources.

When stuff decays, have a filtered inserter there to extract it to a chest to be processed into nutrients.

I basically made a 'small' bot setup with requester/provider chests and 90% bio labs to keep the processing chain running at all times.

[Falesz]

Postat inițial de Mad Gnome:

I don't get it, are people trying to start from scratch on each planet? Load up a platform or two with all the basic buildings you need to get running/operational.

Bring and setup a small nuclear reactor on Gleba for power, tons of pools of water everywhere.

Only 2 trees you need to farm for all your resources.

When stuff decays, have a filtered inserter there to extract it to a chest to be processed into nutrients.

I basically made a 'small' bot setup with requester/provider chests and 90% bio labs to keep the processing chain running at all times.

I already have a nuclear reactor. Building the buildings isn't the problem. The problem is the automation and factory design that accounts for all possible edge cases.

[POWER WITHIN USER]

: can the Agri tower be enabled/disabled with circuit conditions?

Yes.
You can also read it's contents as to balance the amount of seeds that each tower receives.

Unfortunately those are the only two circuit features so you can't say, get a circuit value on the number or the state of trees.

[BKo]

Postat inițial de Mad Gnome:

I don't get it, are people trying to start from scratch on each planet? Load up a platform or two with all the basic buildings you need to get running/operational.

Bring and setup a small nuclear reactor on Gleba for power, tons of pools of water everywhere.

Only 2 trees you need to farm for all your resources.

When stuff decays, have a filtered inserter there to extract it to a chest to be processed into nutrients.

I basically made a 'small' bot setup with requester/provider chests and 90% bio labs to keep the processing chain running at all times.

If I did that I would have 0 fun with this game. It was incredible to start on vulcanus and fulgora with nothing and both had interesting gimmicks, but gleba is just such a mess especially early game.

There's a confluence of too much time pressure and inability to really make a base incrementally. They want you to build a full base with routing spoilage, nutrients, creating bioflux, routing bioflux, but you don't have any biolabs, and you can't make any without hunting enemies, all the while the ingredients are spoiling in your inventory. When they're spoiled, have fun walking all over the place looking for more eggs. You need to build some kind of starter base, but you don't have any energy, which requires a functioning gleba base. You need to get a starter base going, but you can barely find enough iron and copper to scrap anything together without... already having a fully functioning gleba base. All while this is happening, enemies are evolving. Tick tock better do something fast.

Later, giant enemies who ignore walls just walk in and destroy everything because gleba despite unlocking rocket towers doesn't actually have any half decent way to make rockets.

I haven't even touched on other problems like horrible visibility, pointless and bad seed system which is meaningless later on but ultra punishing early.

[Mad Gnome]

Postat inițial de BKo:

Postat inițial de Mad Gnome:

I don't get it, are people trying to start from scratch on each planet? Load up a platform or two with all the basic buildings you need to get running/operational.

Bring and setup a small nuclear reactor on Gleba for power, tons of pools of water everywhere.

Only 2 trees you need to farm for all your resources.

When stuff decays, have a filtered inserter there to extract it to a chest to be processed into nutrients.

I basically made a 'small' bot setup with requester/provider chests and 90% bio labs to keep the processing chain running at all times.

If I did that I would have 0 fun with this game. It was incredible to start on vulcanus and fulgora with nothing and both had interesting gimmicks, but gleba is just such a mess especially early game.

There's a confluence of too much time pressure and inability to really make a base incrementally. They want you to build a full base with routing spoilage, nutrients, creating bioflux, routing bioflux, but you don't have any biolabs, and you can't make any without hunting enemies, all the while the ingredients are spoiling in your inventory. When they're spoiled, have fun walking all over the place looking for more eggs. You need to build some kind of starter base, but you don't have any energy, which requires a functioning gleba base. You need to get a starter base going, but you can barely find enough iron and copper to scrap anything together without... already having a fully functioning gleba base. All while this is happening, enemies are evolving. Tick tock better do something fast.

Later, giant enemies who ignore walls just walk in and destroy everything because gleba despite unlocking rocket towers doesn't actually have any half decent way to make rockets.

I haven't even touched on other problems like horrible visibility, pointless and bad seed system which is meaningless later on but ultra punishing early.

The Tesla Turret is fantastic for the giant enemies, it bounces between their legs and stuns them in place for the rockets to deal with them.

But yes, Gleba is a bit more challenging for sure since you can't really manage your pollution since the Spores are caused by harvesting trees which you need everything to run.

[Quillithe]

Actually gleba from nothing was kinda more fun than volcanus, you can start automating a fair amount earlier since it doesn't require multiple foundries.

And ore is ironically super plentiful on Gleba from hand mining vs Volcanus where you need to mine hundreds of rocks.

Of course fulgora was the easiest by far from nothing because it just throws finished products at you.

[perplestuff]

Postat inițial de Csöpper:

All the advice is great, but no one is reacting to my line about the Agri tower saying there is no seedable spot around it, when it literally just picked up some Yumako trees 5 seconds ago. Does anyone have any idea what could be going on with that?

You have to place it near the bright colored squares, you'll see the different contrast when you move it around the green or the purple.

you can make special landfill later to make it bigger.

Don't worry about it though, I'm experience and gleba made me go stupid, I forgot that I researched the heating tower and had constant power problems and seed problems from burning the fruits in inefficient steam boilers. also I tried to make too many farms without seeds so a lot were doing nothing. ended up triggering enemy attacks before I was ready for anything and made me almost give up.

just start with a few and farm seeds, you need the circular belt design that feeds input output, I have a design but Nialus made a way better version if you look him up on youtube.

[danchr4]

Gleba is a total ball ache. Had a lot easier time when on the other two Ful and Vul. I saved my game before i launched my first platform....damn i'm glad I did. I just find this expansion much more frustrating than the original game ever was...don't get me wrong I love factorio but the spoilage on science packs just pisses me off.

[Avloren]

I'm enjoying Gleba, but I relied heavily on imports from Nauvis to get started. I did Vulcanus and Fulgora the hard way, starting from scratch, and loved it - but I just don't see that being fun on Gleba. There's no way to build a small base and work your way up, you have to handle all these loops and alternate recipes and byproducts from the start or nothing works.

My Gleba base finally has reliable iron/copper production setup, with enough throughput that I can automate all the basic mall stuff instead of importing it, and the footprint is HUGE - I look at all the buildings and belts it took me to get here, and can't imagine crafting all that from scratch without imports. It's theoretically possible, but I can't ever see myself doing it.

And.. I actually like that. Some planets should be harder. Gleba feels like a half-step towards Aquilo, i.e. the planet where it's strictly impossible to build a base from scratch without imports. My only complaint is the game doesn't really do enough to warn you about Gleba - a noob could crashland there as your first new planet, without having Nauvis setup so that it can resupply and/or rescue you, and that would be a nightmare.

[Quillithe]

Postat inițial de Avloren:

I'm enjoying Gleba, but with heavy reliance on imports from Nauvis. I did Vulcanus and Fulgora the hard way, starting from scratch, and loved it - but I just don't see that being fun on Gleba. There's no way to build a small base and work your way up, you have to handle all these loops and alternate recipes and byproducts from the start or nothing works.

It's not as bad as it sounds - the key is that although it takes a bunch to get the iron and copper loops going, it's incredibly easy to hand mine absolute loads of the stuff and throw it in boxes to feed a furnace setup. A single chunk of stromatalite is 45 ore which is makes gathering a few hundred really fast.

I actually found Volcanus the most annoying to start from scratch. You can't start really going until at least one furnace, probably 2 (though you can alternate filling and using tanks of metal).

And each furnace takes 250 iron ore! That you need to mine out of rocks 15 or so at a time.

And it also takes lubricant that you need to set up a process for, and concrete that takes water that also takes a setup.

Also you could technically make a tiny single fruit setup to get each ore on gleba I think.

Yumako -> mash - > nutrients from mash - >bacteria only takes 4 biochambers and will very slowly make you copper while making some power, and a similar one would work for iron.


....until you realize that you're making the enemies angry while barely making any iron compared to just mining a stromatalite, so it's pretty pointless.

[[OTRT] Nicodemus]

-Filtered inserters into active provider chests for spoilage makes handling spoilage a LOT simpler. Store what is needed(some recipes require spoilage), burn the excess in heater towers for easy energy.

-Yumiko and Jellynut spoil far slower than their processed products, so its okay to let them sit on belts for a little while(Bioflux also takes a LONG time to spoil). In my current factory, i have four agriculture towers each on two farms(one for each fruit) that each ship one belt that are now backed up all the way to the farm.

-I started with assemblers but quickly changed to biochambers for processing the fruits once i realized that the productivity bonus applies to seeds.

-Logistics network and bots made Gleba much easier for me.

I didn't leave Nauvis without obtaining tanks with uranium depleted rounds and nuclear reactors/fuel, and I established a logistics network on each planet I colonized. I can understand the desire to experience each new planet "naked," but i despise the burner phase of the game and i prefer not to repeat it, myself.

Being able to steamroll Gleba's fauna in my mech suit and/or my tank with a full equipment grid on each made my experience a lot more fun.

[Hurkyl]

Postat inițial de OTRT Nicodemus:

I can understand the desire to experience each new planet "naked," but i despise the burner phase of the game and i prefer not to repeat it, myself.

You still get to keep all your tech research. And scavenging for materials is rather effective on the other planets; e.g. you can easily pick up hundreds of iron/copper ore just by mining the rocks while doing your initial scouting around for resources.

[Bagel Nash]

They just need to tweak the seeds as it's painful even with a fully automated setup. Every now and then everything just disappears. Should be 1 per stack of 50 at least.

[Hurkyl]

Postat inițial de Bagel Nash:

They just need to tweak the seeds as it's painful even with a fully automated setup. Every now and then everything just disappears. Should be 1 per stack of 50 at least.

That is, in fact, the average of the default recipe. Each tree gives 50 fruits/nuts, and the processing recipe averages a 2% return on seeds, so one seed per harvest if you process it all. And even if you do, at random you will experience droughts where you're below average and everything halts until you can find a new seed to insert into the system.

You have to use productivity -- e.g. by doing the processing in a Biochamber -- to get a net positive seed return.

[Freeman]

It was really annoying me until I gave up on the idea of using belts and succumbed to the fact they want me to use robots, once I gave into that it was actually pretty easy, and for research I ended up just bringing all the other types to Gleba to circumvent the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spoilage on them. Became trivial in the end tbh, especially once I realised I can just throw all the excess spoilage into a heater and burn the lot of it. Before that, trying to work out a belt system without being able to easily make belts on the planet all while feeling rushed was making me start to hate the game.