Reverse Planet Order

[ArcoLaren]

Is it just me, or the reverse planet order (Gleba - Fulgora - Vulcan) is also viable?
I mean, I went first to Gleba for labs, inserters and belts, then Fulgora for EM machines. Ok, so far so good.
Found out Fulgora is awesome if you know how to "we do not waste".
To do: Vulcan.
I feel like I cheated the system a bit. Is it intended?

[Mango]

There is no order in the first 3 planets.
You can visit them in any order.

[Nemoricus]

The first three are all pretty independent of each other, though they all have tools to make the other planets more manageable. Gleba's looking like the hardest planet to tackle but it also benefits less from the other planets, so starting there is fine.

[ArcoLaren]

The first three are all pretty independent of each other, though they all have tools to make the other planets more manageable. Gleba's looking like the hardest planet to tackle but it also benefits less from the other planets, so starting there is fine.

Right, so it is indeed intended.
The apparent achievement ratios say most people go lava first though. Not sure why.

[Daid]

Vulcanus, fulgora, gleba is my recommended order for first time. As gleba is a huge step in difficulty compared to the other two. And vulcanus is quite easy, it gives you all freedom to learn how to deal with orbital shipping and new production chains.

Gleba on the other hands throws everything it has at you at once. The new enemies are tough, the production chains are complicated by spoilage, factory death spirals are easy. Terrain is hard to navigate, proper tree grounds are hard to see.

[mmmPI]

all order are viable imo, i think speedrunners go to Fulgora first.

Vulcanus first may be easier for a first playthrough.

Gleba first is the hardest , for the learning curve, but it also have lots of infinite ressource potential and can be rewarding if you managed to get past it, i have no doubt it feel like the rest is easy past Gleba and may feel like you cheated the system, but fulgora first for the mech armor everywhere and tesla turret for starter defense in gleba and killing worms in vulcanus feels very strong too

[GrumpyJoe]

Gleba is not hard, it's different.
Resources are infinite, power is easy.
If you bring enough help with your first ship, it's only a matter of learning how to not get spoilage on your belts.
I didn't spoiler with guides/videos and didn't really have a problem.
It becomes easier with faster belts and cliff explosives might help you at times to not interrupt your flow of building in a certain way, but I found it not harder than Volcanos.

The latter is the "easiest" because it's closest to vanilla gameplay. Once you manage worms, space restriction is gone.

I started with Fulgora, maybe that taught me to not hesitate to destroy what's not needed to avoid belts not moving.

[HadesSupreme]

Gleba's biggest annoyance is that enemies scale to be pretty tough and will hound you constantly and be annoying until you get an artillery setup or spidertron response force. By comparison Fulgora and Vulcanus combat is non-existent and at player discretion respectively. And its kinda annoying to be landed on one of those two planets several hours away from producing a rocket to escape while you watch your Gleba base get overrun by stompers. That said I do play on deathworld, I expect this is a lot less of an issue for the average player on normal.

[ikarikeiji]

I chose Gleba first, because I wanted to get its rewards (rocket turret, advanced asteroid processing, epic quality) before going anywhere else.

About two weeks real time after landing (averaging several hours a day) I'm still there, have got a reliable ore-producing factory set up, currently still ferrying fruit and seeds but nearly have agricultural towers and trains for them, slowly expanding my rail network + laser turrets on the perimeter and getting rid of enemy bases. Science is still a little way off. And jeez I am living in constant fear playing this game.

It didn't occur to me til after I'd decided on this route, that I really ought to have gone to Vulcanus first if only to get artillery... for both Gleba and Nauvis. The irony is... I'm the kind of person that hates dealing with enemies, plays more often than not with them disabled (but wanted my first Space Age game to be all default settings, 'as intended'), and save scums at every opportunity when they're involved... you would have thought I'd have worked out that this would be a difficult route!

Well, from the look of the posts in this thread, if I survive this, Vulcanus and Fulgora should be a breeze at least.

I'm think I'm going to have to do a wacky roboport-creep via remote view on Nauvis now, since a couple of places on my perimeter are getting damaged too much and weren't anywhere near construction range...