Tips for gleba

[Chuck]

I figured gleba is going to continue being a problem planet for a lot of people, i figured id have this discussion post here as a tips section for people struggling. Ill start with my own, feel free to add to it if you have anything.

Wherever you produce nutrients for your machines (hint, it should be close to where you use them, i like the bioflux to nutrients recipe because bioflux takes awhile to expire so it can be moved around), have an assembler off to the side. Assemblers can do the spoilage to nutrients recipe, and spoilage doesnt decay further. So, have a chest to collect spoilage before the assembler, and on the arm to feed spoilage into the assembler, set up a circuit condition to check the nutrient-producing biolab, and if theres 0 nutrients in the machine, have the arm feed spoilage to the assembler.

That section of the factory that uses the nutrients from that machine can now kick start itself should the nutrient producing machine run out of nutrients itself, as long as the chest has enough spoilage in it. Which it should, youre on gelba.

[Mega Mangos]

Publicado originalmente por BossmanSlim:

- Build what you need and not massively.

This is why Gleba is hard for me. It feels antithetical to Factorio's "the factory must grow." motto. Every fiber of my being is saying "Just two assemblers/biochambers? Get outta here! We need another column and full belts!"

I'm working through it, but it really feels like teaching an old dog new tricks.

[Defektiv]

In my experience so far, Gleba benefits greatly from factory scaling. Three agricultural towers on each of the two biomes drives a very large amount of copper and iron, plus generates enough plastic, coal, sulpher and sulfuric acid to print just about any item Nauvis can at far greater volumes without the need to expand for more ore. The only thing you need to keep in mind is that overproduction of the biological source goods need to be fed to a burner to keep it running.

[RiO]

Publicado originalmente por MAKAIROSI:

My main beef is that you will most likely need to transfer all your science to Gleba, and have a dedicated ship for that, since Agricultural Science spoils in 1h.

The new bio-labs which give you double productivity and twice the module space, only work on Nauvis.

Publicado originalmente por Nilfsen:

You can connect production building and inserter with wire to read content of that building (what resources are in). Usefull to insert eggs in only if all other ingrediens are present (to not store unused eggs in buildings).

Oh! That's a good one.

[Rasjel]

i managed gleba by limiting every output to a desired amount.
i only harvest the fruits that are needed. only transform them into gleele and puree to a designed amount. only produce bioflux in the desired amount. it was a pain to get the numbers right.

[Hurkyl]

Publicado originalmente por RiO:

Publicado originalmente por Nilfsen:

You can connect production building and inserter with wire to read content of that building (what resources are in). Usefull to insert eggs in only if all other ingrediens are present (to not store unused eggs in buildings).

Oh! That's a good one.

I actually do it the opposite way: if there are pentapods eggs, then keep the nutrients/science crafting running (starting it up from spoilage if it's not alive).

To kill science? Disable the inserters pulling eggs back into the breeding machines and let the system process the rest of the contents. And then everything goes back to sleep when there aren't any eggs left.

To wake the system up from hibernation, I request a single egg from the 'heartbeat' system that maintains a single living egg and reenable the bioflux feed. As the egg is detected and breeds through the system, the relevant nutrients makers wake up and start feeding.

[Sumelar]

Use the console to spawn the things you need to unlock the techs, then continue using the console to spawn agri science packs whenever you need them, and never waste another second on this horribly designed planet.

This is the only gleba tip I would give anyone. It's not worth the frustration.

[RiO]

Publicado originalmente por Sumelar:

Use the console to spawn the things you need to unlock the techs, then continue using the console to spawn agri science packs whenever you need them, and never waste another second on this horribly designed planet.

This is the only gleba tip I would give anyone. It's not worth the frustration.

Then you didn't beat the game. And it will let you know that, by disabling integration with Steam achievements. So if you want to be able to still get those, you won't cheat.

[Premu]

I set up my Gleba science production with two main differences compared to my usual approach:

1. It works using a pull, not a push principle. The amount of items placed on the belts is counted and limited. I set the limits based on the length of the belt and the amount of material I need to process in a minute based on my target production which is 150 science packs per minute.
2. If you have several biochambers producing the same thing, don't let the inputs just pass by on one shared belt and put the product out on a second shared belt on the other side as usual. This can lead to some biochamber being always priorised while others get stuck and their content rots. Instead, use a fitting splitter, e.g. a 1 to 6 splitter (fortunately the blueprints still work for that) to divide the incoming belt equally to all consumers, and inversely merge all of them back together, using a e.g. 6 to 1 "splitter" (or should I say merger?). Note: Make sure to use priority filters with products on those splitters to prevent any item running into the "dead" ends. ESPECIALLY for those eggs.

With that in mind nothing will rot as long as the production never stops. So I won't stop it, but send out science packs to Nauvis continuesly. There these can rot if I can't consume them fast enough, but handling this problem there instead of in the middle of a complex production chain is a lot easier.

Also, to make my life easier I didn't bother to set up my own rocket material production like I did on the other planets. I'll just import these from Nauvis where my shuttle drops off the finished science packs anyway.

[Sumelar]

Publicado originalmente por RiO:

Publicado originalmente por Sumelar:

Use the console to spawn the things you need to unlock the techs, then continue using the console to spawn agri science packs whenever you need them, and never waste another second on this horribly designed planet.

This is the only gleba tip I would give anyone. It's not worth the frustration.

Then you didn't beat the game. And it will let you know that, by disabling integration with Steam achievements. So if you want to be able to still get those, you won't cheat.

No one is playing factory games to "beat" them, because there's no such thing.

If you are, you have issues.

[i2um1]

Publicado originalmente por Sumelar:

If you are, you have issues.

Saa, even after several months (necroposting) you still didn't get how to create a tiny base that has up to ~10 biochambers that's enough to finish the game, huh?

[Chindraba]

Publicado originalmente por i2um1:

Publicado originalmente por Sumelar:

If you are, you have issues.

Saa, even after several months (necroposting) you still didn't get how to create a tiny base that has up to ~10 biochambers that's enough to finish the game, huh?

Just the difference between playing a puzzle game, where you solve puzzles, and a clicker game where you just keep clicking. You don't 'finish' an idle game, you can finish a puzzle game.
Lucky for all of us that Factorio can be both. Double the fun.

[RiO]

Publicado originalmente por MAKAIROSI:

My main beef is that you will most likely need to transfer all your science to Gleba, and have a dedicated ship for that, since Agricultural Science spoils in 1h.

It's stupid simple and fast to build agricultural science. It takes 8 bio-chambers making science and 8 bio-chambers multiplying pentapod eggs, both mildly moduled with tier 2 modules to make approx 4~4.5 agri science p/sec.

One rocket load is 1000 science, which you can churn out in 225~250 seconds, aka 3.5~4 minutes. Trivially.

Two rocket loads? ~8 minutes.
The actual shipping time from Gleba to Nauvis? ~5 minutes.
The time left before the science spoils? More than enough.

The secret to agri science is to make it on-demand, which ensures the entire bulk of it gets to Nauvis at least ~70% fresh.

Publicado originalmente por Sumelar:

Publicado originalmente por RiO:

Then you didn't beat the game. And it will let you know that, by disabling integration with Steam achievements. So if you want to be able to still get those, you won't cheat.

No one is playing factory games to "beat" them, because there's no such thing.

If you are, you have issues.

Factorio has an actual victory screen though, and several achievements related to reaching that victory screen without doing certain things. (Which includes, in any and all cases, without resorting to cheat.)

Yes- the actual real game doesn't start until after that. We all know that, and all the veterans here live and and breath that.

But consider this: if you can't puzzle your way out of Gleba without cheating, you aren't going to be successful at why players continue to play Factorio after that victory screen either. That is: the infinite scaling-up. Which has become quite a bit more involved with Space Age than it was with the vanilla game.

[Vanguard]

- I got over my Gleba block by
1) Do Gleba last, get the upgrades from other planets, especially the mech armor.
1.1) Consider getting quality equipment (rare) before going to Gleba, especially multiple exoskeletons.
1.2) Consider getting Electricity weapons as bullets and lasers don't cut it on Gleba.

2) Setup a huge perimeter to block out the attacks from spore harvesting which includes landfill to prevent Egg raft expansions.

3) Accept Waste and spoilage, embrace it. Filter it out at any opportunity and have heating towers to deal with the waste everywhere. Don't even bother to connect all heating towers to your energy grid.

4) Use heating towers to keep your base safe. In your production loop for pentapod eggs, always include a heating tower to discard Pentapod eggs immediately. Since you need to craft them permanently for science packs, discarding even 80% of the production of pentapod eggs (in case you don't need science packs currently) is an easy way to keep the base safe.

5) Circuit controls and looped belts. Not stuffing belts full to maximum for your fruit related products helps you control the production.

6) Bioflux is pretty stable and a good product to have for nutrients. Nutrients from spoilage is only good for bootstrapping.

7) Don't bother much with breeding bacteria. Just process all remaining fruit into seeds and bacteria and import the remaining materials from Orbit. Setting up the supply ship in a way that it sends down iron, steel and later copper as well is an easy way to pad production on Gleba if needed.

[i2um1]

Publicado originalmente por Vanguard:

In your production loop for pentapod eggs, always include a heating tower to discard Pentapod eggs immediately. Since you need to craft them permanently for science packs, discarding even 80% of the production of pentapod eggs (in case you don't need science packs currently) is an easy way to keep the base safe.

Lol, https://imgur.com/a/ZCg8lv5
Also, it's copy-pastable but for me 7.5 per sec is enough before legendary

[Drum]

Only for peacefull runs:
Step 1: Bring enough building materials, and throw down a decent array to get some basic power started. Use bots to make things easy.
Step 2a: Place productivity modules in the biochambers which process the fruits. Doing this makes sure you produce a lot more seeds then needed.
Step 2b: Start by harvesting the red fruits (Yumako), and convert them to nutriens. Don't worry about using too many fruits; your biochambers with productivity modules makes sure you will never run out of seeds. Also make sure you have a tower which replants the seeds.
Step 2c: place a burner tower with inserters wired into the bot network. Place a blue requestbox, and enable the inserter when the spoilage in your network is above 50.000. If you want the burner tower to be used for power (you should at some point!), then place conditions for the inserters based on temperature (530+celcius for rocketfuel, 550+ for spoilage).
Step 2d: you will produce a lot of seeds; make sure to burn then in a tower when your logistics network has above 1000 of them.
Step 3: scale up. You want to produce a lot of nutrients.

Once you have this running, then you have your basic system ready.

Step 4: Start harvesting the Jellynut (pink brains?) and process them.

Voila, you now have a basics running.

For growing eggs; place 1 biochamber which offloads eggs on a belt. Let the belt run around the same biochamber and place a inserter which takes the egg of the belt into the same biochamber again. The belt continues to a burner tower. you now have a infinite amount of eggs. Place any other biochamber between the second inserter (of biochamber 1) and the burning tower to pull of any eggs it needs (link this third insert to the offloading box of biochamber two to make sure you only pull an egg when you need it).