Gleba is the worst thing that ever happened to the game

[EvilMimic]

It's makes SA literally unplayable for me.

[Manso]

skill issue

[deMangler]

Ok, I'm going to chime in because venting about Gleba thread.
My first planet after Nauvis was Fulgora. Started out being frustrated that my old ways didn't work but the new ways are fun to discover. Then moved on to Vulcanus. Same, especially when I figured out how to deal with the natives. Then I moved on to Gleba.
Probably I have spent five hours or so there so far, and while I am starting to get how it works, and beginning to plan self-correcting setups that can be unattended, it hasn't particularly been fun, for some reason. I am sticking with it because once it clicks it could be really satisfying. I hope so. Tedious so far.
BTW, I not looking online for solutions. I do get that this makes things take a lot longer and probably very sub-optimal, but that's now I do it so... just venting...

[Nonotorious]

As the previous guy said it's not fun it's just tedious. It's like an all burner inserter challenge but the coal also spoils, can't say i have much motivation to redesign things here since every single inserter needs to filtered etc.
Love the zone, hate the mechanics, i've spent more time working on space platforms or anything else rather than expand production.

[Belau]

I must say, at the beginning I absolutely hated everything about Gleba and was compelled to vent in this thread, but turns out I didn't know how to do it. The secret ingredient is learning new mechanics, coming prepared does help but you can user space station to resupply you from orbit (do people even do this? It's essentially a train, just set it to fill up on another world and drop the ever living fu- i mean factory at your current position), and I can't stress this enough: bioflux, bioflux, bioflux. I am absolutely DROWNING in resources, blue belts cannot supply fast enough, that's where the new belts and inserters have to come into play.
Yes, the start is slow if you have nothing but once you get an idea on how things work and how to implement feedback loops and trash recycling, the machine just runs and runs

[Summer_0_Breeze]

Gleba is missing some cool tech to research, which would make it worthwhile to go there.
A bioreactor/bioprinter which lets you print tetrapods and control them on the battlefield as your own units would be cool.

The only thing the planet has to offer at the moment is fighting the tetrapods, which is interesting at first but gets old fast because there are only 3 different enemy types on the planet.

[NobakeGaming]

Joining in on the complaints here. I am just having so many problems with Gleba I feel like I can't even get started. As soon as I think I've made a breakthrough I'm stymied again.

First off, the tileset. It's very pretty, but also visually unclear. I'm not colorblind, it's just a mess. I had to go look up how to get stone because I couldn't see the patches on the ground. Still can't actually, have to search "Stone" on the map to find the right general area then just put miners wherever it lets me. Another problem is that in a lot of places water is indistinguishable from land. At least now I can make landfill and fix that problem.

Second, the nutrients. There's a reason everybody rushes to get off burner tech ASAP on Nauvis. Why are we regressing to burners under the guise of Nutrients? It's not fun. Combine that with the spoilage so both the "fuel" and products all expire and it just gets that much worse. I'm sure it's fine once you've got everything figured out and tuned to balance production and consumption, but while you're trying to experiment and build it's a nightmare.

And finally the current reason I can't even get started - the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ seeds! First off you put down the Agriculture Tower or whatever, throw some seeds in it - "No spot seedable by inputs." WTF does that mean?! Go out searching again, and apparently you can only grow seeds on special tiles. Remember what I said earlier about the tileset being a mess and hard to read? Yeah, that problem rears its head again. But hey! I see there's this artificial soil that will surely let these towers work wherever I want, right? Right??? Nope. The artificial soil also can only be placed on special tiles. WTF is the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ point then?

I was already a bit frustrated with Fulgora. I didn't realize you apparently don't actually need to research the ability to build rails on oil in order to place rails on oil. Haven't gone back to experiment with this, but I had no idea there was any way to connect the islands before then. Then the insanely rare Holmium ore and throwing away almost all the resources to get it. (I hear that when you scale up batteries become the bottleneck, but I don't see how that works. Not like more buildings change the ratios at all).

I'm going on tangents now. Point is, I was already a bit disappointed in Space Age, but Gleba is so frustrating I'm on the verge of quitting. A for effort, C at best on execution.

[MangoMan]

for me Gleba is awesome, it's Fulgora that has disappointed me the most. there's so much going on on Gleba and so little going on on Fulgora.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by NobakeGaming:

And finally the current reason I can't even get started - the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ seeds! First off you put down the Agriculture Tower or whatever, throw some seeds in it - "No spot seedable by inputs." WTF does that mean?! Go out searching again, and apparently you can only grow seeds on special tiles. Remember what I said earlier about the tileset being a mess and hard to read? Yeah, that problem rears its head again. But hey! I see there's this artificial soil that will surely let these towers work wherever I want, right? Right??? Nope. The artificial soil also can only be placed on special tiles. WTF is the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ point then?

I was already a bit frustrated with Fulgora. I didn't realize you apparently don't actually need to research the ability to build rails on oil in order to place rails on oil. Haven't gone back to experiment with this, but I had no idea there was any way to connect the islands before then. Then the insanely rare Holmium ore and throwing away almost all the resources to get it. (I hear that when you scale up batteries become the bottleneck, but I don't see how that works. Not like more buildings change the ratios at all).

The ag tower will color code tiles when you're putting it down, so you don't need to eyeball the terrain too much.

Also you unlock the ability to build rails on deep oil ocean. There are two kinds.

And the holmium ore is rare, sure, but it does mean you can collect a bunch of other parts. It's pretty much trivial to build and launch a bunch of rockets for example, so you can just send all the blue circuits you need to other planets or something. It also helps a lot when you do Volcanus and start getting 50% more holmium plate per ore.

[MangoMan]

Originally posted by NobakeGaming:

The artificial soil also can only be placed on special tiles. WTF is the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ point then?

the special soil is to turn the wet swamp into ground so that it can be used for plants (like landfill but for planting). you should notice that most of the purple or yellow planting area starts swampy. the soil is like landfill and turns the almost-plantable-but-swampy soil to plantable dry ground. much much later there is even better soil that let you expand it further but not till much later.

[NobakeGaming]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

The ag tower will color code tiles when you're putting it down, so you don't need to eyeball the terrain too much.

Also you unlock the ability to build rails on deep oil ocean. There are two kinds.

And the holmium ore is rare, sure, but it does mean you can collect a bunch of other parts. It's pretty much trivial to build and launch a bunch of rockets for example, so you can just send all the blue circuits you need to other planets or something. It also helps a lot when you do Volcanus and start getting 50% more holmium plate per ore.

Good to know on the oil.

Holmium plate I don't need. I have a stockpile that I barely touch except for the odd electro plant. I'm sure I'll need loads of those buildings later, but not now. I do make the plate in Foundries tho, did Vulcanus first and really enjoyed it.
What I need is more Holmium solution so I can make more than a handful of science packs per minute.

For the towers I'm gathering that I'm just gonna have to wander around the map with a tower in hand waving it all over the screen. Which is slightly better than placing the tower and putting seeds into it until I find somewhere that works, but not much.

Originally posted by MangoMan:

Originally posted by NobakeGaming:

The artificial soil also can only be placed on special tiles. WTF is the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ point then?

the special soil is to turn the wet swamp into ground so that it can be used for plants (like landfill but for planting). you should notice that most of the purple or yellow planting area starts swampy. the soil is like landfill and turns the almost-plantable-but-swampy soil to plantable dry ground. much much later there is even better soil that let you expand it further but not till much later.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Not meant as a criticism in any way, this just sounds like step 2 or 3 or 5 when I'm still stuck trying to figure out step 0.

[JustSmile]

TL;DR the fertile soil research exists to expand farmland to larger areas, not to plant anywhere. The almost-good soil you can plant it on surrounds fertile ground that allows planting naturally.

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by NobakeGaming:

First off, the tileset. It's very pretty, but also visually unclear. I'm not colorblind, it's just a mess. I had to go look up how to get stone because I couldn't see the patches on the ground. Still can't actually, have to search "Stone" on the map to find the right general area then just put miners wherever it lets me. Another problem is that in a lot of places water is indistinguishable from land. At least now I can make landfill and fix that problem.

All color vision gives you is the ability to distinguish biomes on the minimap. I have color vision and I can't tell where you can build in the swampy areas (the yellow/purple biomes where Yumako and Jellynut can grow) either.

Second, the nutrients. There's a reason everybody rushes to get off burner tech ASAP on Nauvis.

They don't; boilers and Steel Furnaces are pretty popular even when alternatives are available. Boilers because solar takes a lot of space and resources to set up and nuclear requires a lot of investment to get going... but for the furnaces some people actively prefer the burner version to the electric.

Burner inserters are slow, unreliable, and hard to fuel. Burner miners are slow and have a smaller area of effect. That's why people get away from those burner techs: their immediate electric alternatives are much better at their jobs.

Why are we regressing to burners under the guise of Nutrients? It's not fun. Combine that with the spoilage so both the "fuel" and products all expire and it just gets that much worse. I'm sure it's fine once you've got everything figured out and tuned to balance production and consumption, but while you're trying to experiment and build it's a nightmare.

... or you paradigm shift to something other than fine-tuned, balanced production chains. Rather than using design patterns that are prone to failure and very carefully tuning things so it all keeps working, you puzzle out a different approach to logistics that does not fail easily.

[MangoMan]

Originally posted by NobakeGaming:

I have no idea what you're talking about. Not meant as a criticism in any way, this just sounds like step 2 or 3 or 5 when I'm still stuck trying to figure out step 0.

on gleba there are "red" (more purple) and yellow swamp biomes. there are also "highlands" in between these where the land is dry. cliffs divide the swamp areas from the highlands.

in the "red" and yellow swamps, on the map there are strongly colored purple and yellow areas. (they are drawn white when there is a plant growing on the tile.) these are the fertile ground where you can grow Jellynut (purple) and Yumako (yellow). Except that the land is very swampy and covered in water and you can't build on the swampy/watery parts. So at first you can only build a harvester and plants on the dry parts. the green and purple landfill items let you make the fertile swamp/water tiles into fertile dry ground tiles so that you can build plants on them. (you could use regular landfill but then it won't be fertile anymore).

(summary: to build plants you need dry + fertile. the special landfill turns wet fertile tiles into dry fertile tiles. when you see purple or yellow water, that is usually wet fertile, though sometimes it's not easy to tell the difference from some other watery tiles.)

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by NobakeGaming:

Originally posted by Quillithe:

The ag tower will color code tiles when you're putting it down, so you don't need to eyeball the terrain too much.

Also you unlock the ability to build rails on deep oil ocean. There are two kinds.

And the holmium ore is rare, sure, but it does mean you can collect a bunch of other parts. It's pretty much trivial to build and launch a bunch of rockets for example, so you can just send all the blue circuits you need to other planets or something. It also helps a lot when you do Volcanus and start getting 50% more holmium plate per ore.

Good to know on the oil.

Holmium plate I don't need. I have a stockpile that I barely touch except for the odd electro plant. I'm sure I'll need loads of those buildings later, but not now. I do make the plate in Foundries tho, did Vulcanus first and really enjoyed it.
What I need is more Holmium solution so I can make more than a handful of science packs per minute.

For the towers I'm gathering that I'm just gonna have to wander around the map with a tower in hand waving it all over the screen. Which is slightly better than placing the tower and putting seeds into it until I find somewhere that works, but not much.

Well wait, don't the science packs use a bunch of the plate? They actually use exactly the same amount in plate as in fluids. If you already have the plate then you get nearly 1 science pack for every 1 holmium, so every 100 scrap. That shouldn't be bad to get a bunch.

[NobakeGaming]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Originally posted by NobakeGaming:

Good to know on the oil.

Holmium plate I don't need. I have a stockpile that I barely touch except for the odd electro plant. I'm sure I'll need loads of those buildings later, but not now. I do make the plate in Foundries tho, did Vulcanus first and really enjoyed it.
What I need is more Holmium solution so I can make more than a handful of science packs per minute.

For the towers I'm gathering that I'm just gonna have to wander around the map with a tower in hand waving it all over the screen. Which is slightly better than placing the tower and putting seeds into it until I find somewhere that works, but not much.

Well wait, don't the science packs use a bunch of the plate? They actually use exactly the same amount in plate as in fluids. If you already have the plate then you get nearly 1 science pack for every 1 holmium, so every 100 scrap. That shouldn't be bad to get a bunch.

I'd have to launch the game to verify all the recipes, but I know for a fact I had a bunch of plate sitting in provider chests while my factory ran for 5-6 hours to produce 3 or 4000 science, mostly waiting on fluid.

Edit: A little bit of further clarification.
I'm *almost* certain it was 4000 packs, not 3000. but not 100% sure
The 5-6 hours was the game idling in the background after I "solved" jams in scrap processing by destroying everything else. I was producing some science before then.
This was off 1 red belt of scrap. Should have been much more, but as previously discussed I didn't realize I didn't need the research before using trains at all.

I'm not going to budge on Holmium being way too uncommon, but I'm also not trying to put all the problems I had on Fulgora on the game.