How does Gleba work?

[Zibbo]

No matter what I do, my factory stops working on Gleba after a few hours, or even minutes. I don't understand this planet. Is there an important mechanic I'm overlooking? My factory is either failing because I have no nutrients in circulation, or my science packs are rotting before I can get them on my rocket, let alone on Nauvis to advance my research.

I currently send science packets by hand when the oldest packets still have about 10 minutes left. This is getting me ahead, but it feels completely wrong as I think I can optimize a lot more. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea how.

In the later researches I can see that all research packs are needed, which is already worrying me about how to provide the Gleba research packs.

Please help me, I think I'm too dumb for the DLC :(

[MechBFP]

Ship all your science packs to Gleba instead, then you can use them immediately directly onsite there.
Also each item that gets made is only as good as the freshness of the items it used, so you never want spoilable items getting backed up and sitting there doing nothing. Basically you should always have equal or higher throughput per second for each stage of production than the last step, so that everything gets turned into the end product as fast as possible with nothing ever sitting in chests or machine or belts or science labs.


Anything that can’t get immediately used can get thrown into a heat tower and destroyed. It is the opposite of the type of efficiency that Factorio has taught you how to play up until that point lol.

[Fel]

The core idea behind gleba is that things spoil after a while (the amount of time depends on the item though), so you don't want to use the "overproduce everything, fill belts and let items sit there until they are needed" that worked well in Nauvis (and all other planets really).
Instead, you want to only produce in quantities you can handle quickly so that items have as little time spent idle as possible.
Once you managed to get the whole line working, you can start to scale it up.

If you manage to get the items processed all the way to the science pack with little time being wasted after the base fruits are collected, the timer on those will be fairly generous.

And if you are adept in the use of quality modules, quality increases the base timer for spoil, so it can also be a way to make things last longer.

[Zibbo]

Originally posted by MechBFP:

Ship all your science packs to Gleba instead, then you can use them immediately directly onsite there.
Also each item that gets made is only as good as the freshness of the items it used, so never want spoilable items getting backed up. Basically you should have equal or higher throughput per second than the last step, so that everything gets turned into the end product as fast as possible with nothing ever sitting in chests or machine or belts or science labs.

It never occurred to me to bring all the science packages to Gleba. Thank you very much for this suggestion! The idea of scaling the last production step to the largest also seems like a very good idea to me. In my current setup I have a lot of nutrients that I have to dispose of either by bots or by hand because they clog up the logistics bot crates.

[Zibbo]

Originally posted by Fel:

The core idea behind gleba is that things spoil after a while (the amount of time depends on the item though), so you don't want to use the "overproduce everything, fill belts and let items sit there until they are needed" that worked well in Nauvis (and all other planets really).
Instead, you want to only produce in quantities you can handle quickly so that items have as little time spent idle as possible.
Once you managed to get the whole line working, you can start to scale it up.

If you manage to get the items processed all the way to the science pack with little time being wasted after the base fruits are collected, the timer on those will be fairly generous.

And if you are adept in the use of quality modules, quality increases the base timer for spoil, so it can also be a way to make things last longer.

I didn't know the timer would increase for spoilage by the quality as well :D Thank you so much for your help

[Superguru]

To keep nutrient production up and running put an assembler next to your nutrient producing biolab separated by 1 space. Place an inserter to take from assembler to biolab.
The biolab makes the nutrients from either yumako or bioflux outputs the nutrients to a belt and takes part of it again for own supply.
Assembler gets nutrients from rot recipe.
When the nutrients in that biolab rot the production stalls and the biolab empties. Connect a signal wire from biolab to the inserter between biolab and assembler with condition nutrients = 0.

Now every time your nutrient production stalls it will be restarted by the assembler.
Fill the assembler with rot you remove from machines. Best to put a chest next to assmbler and stock it from rot belt.

[MechBFP]

Also you will want to automate artificial soil once you have an abundance of seeds so that you can place all your fruit production as close together as possible, to further reduce spoil times. You won’t be able to do that at the start but something to strive for later.

Also keep in mind you can use assemblers instead of biolabs to make spoilage nutrients. So you direct all your spoilage to be stored by those machines, and then if, and only if, you don’t have any bio flux nutrients those machines can be used to essentially boot up the system.

Also you should make sure you never waste any fruit. Always process every single piece so you can get seeds. If everything spoils after that point it doesn’t matter. But if fruit spoils then you don’t get seeds which will kill your factory.

[Glyph]

You can design your Gleba factory to never stall as long as your agri-towers produce fruit. Make your nutrient line a loop, and filter out spoilage from it. You'll then produce nutrients forever. If your loop doesn't produce enough nutrients, make more. If they aren't getting to machines before they spoil, use faster belts or bots. It works!

[argrond]

Actually, you can make things "as usual" (except stromalites, those cannot be stopped under any conditions), just make additional belt for spoilage and siphon it from belts/biochambers and then burn or recycle (if you are already Fulgora-friendly). Just be aware that spoilage is not a source of energy for towers, you will get nowhere if try to feed those only with spoilage. Use bio-rocket-fuel, good thing it's practically free and infinite.
Also make things as fast as possible, I've brought speed modules 3 from Vulcanus, but speed module 2 will also suffice.
Wherever possible, make direct load/unload to/from chambers, this way you remove 2 operations from your production line (belt+additional inserter).
Try everything with drones first, it's easier this way, when you'll understand what you need and where/how to produce it, steadily remove drones and substitute them with belts, this way you will be even faster to deliver.
My science usually gets back on Nauvis at 40-38 minutes left, with some changes in platform I've manage to up it to 45-43. That's full 1000 pack of agriscience loaded in rocket, no short corners. ) I could double or even triple its production easily by now, which would raise freshness even higher, but honestly I do not think I'll manage to consume all of them because I have other tech to research as well. )
I'd not be so dare to move your main base there, fauna there is pretty nasty, much more dangerous than on Nauvis, and there are many other inconveniences you will encounter, but the idea itself is pretty interesting, just not so early in the game. )

[Zibbo]

Thank you all for your answers. There is much I can improve that I didn't think about/know about in the first place. I love this community <3

[Quillithe]

Another useful solution to a few problems is to insert spoilage removing inserters that feed ACTIVE supply chests.

And set up a chest demanding spoilage near a heating tower.

Just make sure you don't ever put spoilage you need into logistic chests to get sucked out.

I find this works because things don't usually spoil so it's not a constant stream and doesn't really need a dedicated belt for me.

Can be also to have a chest demanding eggs just in case one gets loose in your system so the robots will go burn it for you.



I suggest making a line that processes ALL fruit, makes bioflux and then nutrients, and takes any extra mash and jelly to burn.

Then you can kinda staple anything you want on there. The only end product that uses spoilage is science, so just make that from the flux right away (though it takes two hours to spoil anyway) and move the flux along.



Also for the rocket fuel it can help to network towers to only use rocket fuel if heat is low, that way you can feed them on other things you need to trash while having constant power guaranteed.


Oh. And I don't suggest moving all the science, just accept a few percent less science per pack. Make Nauvis demand spoilage, make a heating tower logistic request on Nauvis to burn it, and cycle packs through labs so they don't sit still (my solution is just a bot request and supply chest on either end, but you could belt it out of your landing pad into a filtered circular belt)

Kinda a side note, but it's awkward how Gleba - where you unlock stack inserters - is the one planet where it's nearly impossible to use them. Be very very careful if you try. If something they're holding spoils you can be in a bad spot.

[MechBFP]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Another useful solution to a few problems is to insert spoilage removing inserters that feed ACTIVE supply chests.

And set up a chest demanding spoilage near a heating tower.

Just make sure you don't ever put spoilage you need into logistic chests to get sucked out.

I find this works because things don't usually spoil so it's not a constant stream and doesn't really need a dedicated belt for me.

Can be also to have a chest demanding eggs just in case one gets loose in your system so the robots will go burn it for you.



I suggest making a line that processes ALL fruit, makes bioflux and then nutrients, and takes any extra mash and jelly to burn.

Then you can kinda staple anything you want on there. The only end product that uses spoilage is science, so just make that from the flux right away (though it takes two hours to spoil anyway) and move the flux along.



Also for the rocket fuel it can help to network towers to only use rocket fuel if heat is low, that way you can feed them on other things you need to trash while having constant power guaranteed.


Oh. And I don't suggest moving all the science, just accept a few percent less science per pack. Make Nauvis demand spoilage, make a heating tower logistic request on Nauvis to burn it, and cycle packs through labs so they don't sit still (my solution is just a bot request and supply chest on either end, but you could belt it out of your landing pad into a filtered circular belt)

Kinda a side note, but it's awkward how Gleba - where you unlock stack inserters - is the one planet where it's nearly impossible to use them. Be very very careful if you try. If something they're holding spoils you can be in a bad spot.

One thing a lot of people tend to forget is that buildings don’t “cool down” in Factorio as long as nothing is using that heat. So once you have a heating tower up to 900+ C you can setup a pump on the output of the steam and turn it off anytime the tower isn’t being fueled. Then anytime the tower has a burnable item you can enable the pump to allow steam through. Throw a bunch of storage tanks on the end of your turbines and you have permanent steam storage that your turbines can use whenever they need. If the steam in the tank gets low enough then you can insert some alternative fuel into the tower since the spoilage or whatever isn’t providing enough fuel.

[BKo]

Most of your biochamber stuff needs nutrients and bioflux, so you can think of them like a different type of coal. Sharing a single belt with nutrients on one side and bioflux on the other and splitting those around my base worked like a charm, just make sure you always place them on the correct side of the belt and don't mix them up, and you're good. Powering any biochamber becomes massively simple. For spoilage you can just put filter inserters around to pick off spoilage here and there, especially at the end of belts, and get it out any way, with belts or bots.

Use green/efficiency modules if you run low on nutrients, because the nutrients are actually burned like coal/energy, so energy consumption reduction == less nutrients used in your biochambers. LIkewise speed modules and productivity modules are a big tradeoff because they vastly increase the amount of nutrients you use.