Gleba is not fun

[Habba]

I understand the challenge of everything in flight and everything infinite, but is it not fun. Managing stuff under pressure make me nervous.
Any link on good Gleba guide? Just to make it and forget about it.

[Galileus]

The only pressure on Gleba comes from the enemies. Whatever you "waste", you can make more of ad infinitum. Once you realize that and embrace spoilage, it becomes just another logistics problem.

[serega]

There is no need to hurry, everything will spoil sooner or later) Any belt or assembler may contain spoiled item, all you need is to get rid of them)
Vast majority of production steps require nutrients and produce spoilage. I`ve added a circular belt around my factory. At the beginning I add food, at the end non-rotten nutrients go for another lap, and spoilage goes for recycle. This belt goes near every biochamber, just add an inserter to take nutrients to the factory, and another one to unload rotten stuff. Also, add a inserter with filter at the end of every belt to unload spoilage to this global trash bus. A word of advice - keep some free space on this belt, so items keep running and every factory can receive nutrients and some free space for spoilage.
This is not a perfect solution, but a working one)
Also, make rocket fuel as soon as you can and use it for boilers and electricity. The fuel doesnt spoil, and very efficient

[Hurkyl]

Identify the source of pressure and work to neutralize it.

E.g. if you're concerned about things breaking down, running out of seeds, and having a nightmare getting things going again... you could focus on making a subfactory whose sole purpose is to provide a reliable seed supply, and then make everything else rely on the mash and jelly that this subfactory outputs.

For me specifically, I did three things to forestall any 'nervousness' I may have had:

• I make sure I have a large supply of rocket fuel available for restarting power should things go bad
  
• I make sure to have a large supply of spoilage for restarting nutrients if things go bad
  
• I focused a lot on designing a factory capable of keeping a single pentapod egg indefinitely. I ship extras to be burned in the heating towers, although that line could be diverted if some other part of the factory needs a pentapod egg to bootstrap with

I didn't really care about things breaking down, since I was still working on them and the debugging process is to be expected. What I did care about is things that take an involved effort to repair.

[knighttemplar1960]

Every thing IS infinite and the answer is a trick you might have used in other games..... Save scumming.

Land on Gleba and explore your surroundings. Save the game.

Set up first production cycle and save game. Test first production cycle. If it works blue print the set up and save game. If it doesn't reload previous save and redesign.

Keep saving and reloading until you get a working set up and blue print every thing that works especially at the plateaus (like where you unlock a new technology or expand into fresh territory.)

Tedious and not fun but once you have all the blue prints you can import all the non-planet specific resources/machines and lay every thing you need out with construction robots and start up the factory. Process ag products into things that don't spoil. Process fruits right away so you get seeds. Keep cycling pentapod eggs and use the surplus to make biochambers until you have a comfortable over supply. If something happens and all your eggs spoil you can recycle surplus biochambers until you get an egg you can use to restart the cycle.

Save scumming completely eliminates the pressure provided the constant reloading doesn't drive you insane first.

[god bless you]

Make all of them into coal.
Spoiled is good.
nutrient -> spoilage -> carbon + sulfur -> coal
As you can see, I had made 32M coal from that 8 chemical plants.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3417747366
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3417747228

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by god bless you:

Make all of them into coal.
Spoiled is good.
nutrient -> spoilage -> carbon + sulfur -> coal
As you can see, I had made 32M coal from that 8 biochambers.

Why bother with coal? You can burn carbon directly and it's more energy efficient: in terms of fuel value, 2 carbon = 1 coal in terms.

I guess the coal is better if you need to compress it and energy/stack is what yo need.

[god bless you]

Why do you think that I will burn it?
I don't burn it. Burning rocket fuel is much more powerful.
All coal are for military science pack to me.

It's just a way to reuse the spoilage and won't let guys feel nervous.
I think there is nothing to be questioned.

[Defektiv]

Build this: https://www.factorio.school/view/-OBSabLpqu-pMQbWkKcy

Start it up and tweak as necessary. Right before giving up on Gleba I spent a few hours shipping everything in to build that, and other than building the farms, beefing up wall turret security and adding my own stuff, I haven't had to think about it since. You need a good amount of resources imported to Aquilo before you get orbital resourcing set up, and Gleba is a good central position for virtually unlimited items and resources. It's worth the effort if you are feeling done with Gleba, and it will likely change your mind about the place once you get it running.

[New World Dan]

There's two major approaches that have worked for me - bots for everything. This requires some automation and planning to make it efficient and effective. The other approach is to run everything on belts and chuck everything you don't need into a heating tower to power your base. Process the fruits so you have seeds going back to your farms, and you'll still rely on some bots to deal with certain things. I started out doing the bot approach, but eventually switched to the heating tower approach.

[Strategic Sage]

Fun is relative. There's no point in debating whether something is fun or not because it will just depend on the person doing it. Many people don't think factory games are fun on the whole. They aren't 'wrong'.

[bioseb31]

Originally posted by New World Dan:

There's two major approaches that have worked for me - bots for everything. This requires some automation and planning to make it efficient and effective. The other approach is to run everything on belts and chuck everything you don't need into a heating tower to power your base. Process the fruits so you have seeds going back to your farms, and you'll still rely on some bots to deal with certain things. I started out doing the bot approach, but eventually switched to the heating tower approach.

The burner approach is the easiest one imo. Make a perimeter of artilley turrets to keep new nest clear from you spore cloud, and just have an inserter with a spoilage filter at the end of the belts to empty them if they spoil before they get used, and one for anything that requires ingredient that spoil, that way you can still play gleba with production running constantly like any other planet.
I don't understand how can people complain about gleba so much when you can run it the same way with slight addition to deal with spoilage.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by bioseb31:

I don't understand how can people complain about gleba so much when you can run it the same way with slight addition to deal with spoilage.

Because spoilage is an annoying mechanic that works counter-intuitively. You have to add bits, bobs, and redundancies just for the sake of adding those bits and there is no tech you can develop to mitigate spoilage even though you get tech that mitigates the challenges on the other planets once you complete that planet or get to the next planet.

Sure you can set things up so it works but that doesn't make it fun. Its not a logic problem like it is on every other planet. Its a time management problem instead.

[serega]

Nauvis taught us, that everything can be mitigated. You can blow up rocks, landfill water, extinguish bugs, turn all the world the way you like. Vulcanus adds space limitations, until you find a way to kill worms, and this limitation is mitigated. Same goes to Fulgora. But Gleba... There is nothing to stop the spoilage. And this is the intended way) Now, to make a working factory, you need to bend your mind, not the world around. Don`t try to avoid spoilage, this is a dead end. Instead, this planet forces us to invent new approaches, build new designs instead of reusing old ones from previous planet. One simple mistake can clog whole factory within several minutes, so you may find useful several speakers with global alert. Gleba scratches a new place in our brain, makes us think outside the box, and this is the Factorio we like). Same goes to Aquilo.
Also, you can just find some existing blueprints for Gleba or disable it with mods, if this sounds fun.