Gleba has killed the game for me.

[testnewbie]

I honestly don´t understand the spoilage problem. We have slavery with intermediate steps and likewise, we have production with intermediate, well, filters so to say.
We have two endless resources at our hands, so just pour them into the production bus and sort spoiled stuff out and re route it into the nutrients line or simply burn it so get rid of it. Later, you can use recylcers to get rid of the spoilage.
The only real "challenge" to me, so far on Gleba, was the power production. But with rocket fuel being limitless on Gleba, rocket fueled heater towers got rid of the power problem. There might waits a whole new problem on the horizon with evolution reaching 1.0 at some point but so far I am kinda fine with Gleba. Once a small factory is established (belt fed) Gleba seems to be not much of a challenge but we will see what the Biters will do, once they reached their peak.

[BlueTemplar]

Still better than the above poster, that spoiled that

spoiling will keep on spoiling even after Aquilo...

A quick search on the tech tree reveals the same thing. I could go on to further debate the necessity of spoiler marking content on a topic that explicitly talks about the grievances of such topic, but that's irrelevant.
[...]

But you would have to deliberately search for it first !
And even so, «Gleba has killed the game for me» is very much not specific, I don't see a reason to not use spoilers for potential solutions (or lack thereof) to the very different issues people might have ?
(Which I might have failed at myself by pointing out that

pentapods only (directly) attacked your treefarms

, ah well...(went and fixed it now))

Compare for instance with people complaining that the main menu is spoiling the new planets for them, or the Factoriopedia spoiling items that they are very far away from unlocking (it's kind of a usability issue too, and I think you can run into this for instance even in vanilla with items with a lot of alternatives).

[Raphaello]

Compare for instance with people complaining that the main menu is spoiling the new planets for them

By the way, Aquilo menu animation contains a process that does not work there so don't take hints from the menu animations

[Raphaello]

There's already a mod for all Gleba haters:
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/delete-gleba

[BlueTemplar]

Compare for instance with people complaining that the main menu is spoiling the new planets for them

By the way, Aquilo menu animation contains a process that does not work there so don't take hints from the menu animations

I guess if there's nobody to come rescue me I'll have to make

a snowman

and call him Wilson...

[j1357]

I agree.

Personally, I play Factorio as a laid back game. Biters are off / passive, and I often leave the game running and dip in and out of it over the course of the day.

Previously that has been completely possible with an unmodded game, by toggling options in menus. Sure, some people might think biters are essential, but it's nice that I can toggle them off.

With Gleba, though, no such luck. I have to monitor it, keep adapting ratios etc, and if the system collapses and spoilage takes over I have to spend ages rebooting the whole thing. And if the entire objective is to get science packs and bioflux to Nauvis, any error causes total chaos and hours wasted.

I tried for a few hours, and I'd got a set up that sort of worked, but I was having to constantly manage my research to ensure I was using up the science I was producing, and monitoring for excess spoilage. For me, that wasn't fun - at all.

So I've downloaded a mod that disables spoilage. And now I can enjoy the game again.

For those that love it, great! I'm happy for you. But it's weird to me that a game that previously could be played as a passive, laid back game (where the worst that would happen after a few hours is a resource being exhausted / starved) has been changed into one that can't be, with no menu option to toggle it.

[BlueTemplar]

It can, but it's quite a bit more challenging to design a factory like that, even with pentapod enemies off.
(Which is kind of the point, but maybe the difficulty for Gleba was overshot a bit for only a secondary planet ? But then placed elsewhere in the solar system it wouldn't have made much sense solar illumination-wise...)

And without any need to deal with ore depletion this time around !

[MisterDoctor]

With Gleba, though, no such luck. I have to monitor it, keep adapting ratios etc, and if the system collapses and spoilage takes over I have to spend ages rebooting the whole thing. And if the entire objective is to get science packs and bioflux to Nauvis, any error causes total chaos and hours wasted.

hmm, it shouldn't be that bad. it is possible to set things up so that they're more or less stable. maybe not *perfectly* stable, but pretty stable. I don't even have that great a base or anything and I just let mine spit out science that I'm not even using while I do Vulcanus and Fulgora.

I would also note that it is also possible for the system to "collapse" on Nauvis. having coal power crash and stall when you're using nothing but laser turrets and barely holding off the biters as it is... depending on settings it can basically be game over if it's bad enough.

[BlueTemplar]

Yes, you can do perfectly stable too — in the sense that it restarts itself even if everything spoils.
(still assuming no enemies of course, stable vs them is probably possible too, but even more complicated).

[Vulkandrache]

Why does every single Gleba screenshot look like someone poured vaseline over the image?

[BlueTemplar]

Because it's a swamp ?

[Tinyboss]

Because Gleba looks like someone poured vaseline over it?

[Tin reaper]

in the end, its the spoilage mechanic that kills my motivation. it feels like a solution looking for a problem.

the devs were not concerned about unlimited resources on vulcanus, but its an issue on gleba
i can drop ice cubes down to the surface of the lava planet and leave them there for ever, but i cant have the jelly cubes sit for 10 minutes.

i know the solution on gleba is belt loops and filter splitters so things are always moving. but that i think misses the design goal of throughput the devs were aiming for.

throughput to me sounds like you would be dealing with large quantities of materials that would benefit from things like faster belts and stack inserters. you could still have the organic waste as a byproduct that needs to be dealt with.

I ended up restarting on peaceful mode with spoilage at 10% and at least that is tolerable, but after this game, i probably don't want to go back again.

and before people go 'there are mods' for that. i like trying to get as many of the achievements as possible.

[BlueTemplar]

You can get achievements on modded games too, they are kept separate from unmodded games, there are even mods adding new achievements.

(For some reason though, Steam only counts the unmodded half, not sure about GoG Galaxy ?)

the solution on gleba is belt loops and filter splitters so things are always moving

That's one solution, not 'the' solution.

i think misses the design goal of throughput the devs were aiming for.

throughput to me sounds like you would be dealing with large quantities of materials that would benefit from things like faster belts and stack inserters. you could still have the organic waste as a byproduct that needs to be dealt with.

But they weren't, at least not like you define 'throughput'.
Also, faster belts do help (and so do faster inserters for at least some of the recipes).

[FunMaker]

I don't get why people dislike Gleba that much. I like the logistic challenge and the progression through the planet is smooth. There are many ways to handle spoilage and you have to priorize products and chains..

Well visiting it as the third planet is easy - enemiea might be a little harder if visiting gleba first.

[WD-40 Sniffer]

I found Gleba to be the most challenging planet by far, but it was a very nice surprise after the other planets. A lot of the complaints I see come from people who I can only assume have not thought of ways to manage its specific requirements and have equally not adapted their playstyle and approach to it. I also read that some people feel pressured to get things working as fast as possible to avoid waste.
Spoilage can be effectively dealt with by adding burner towers or provider chests. Pentapods breeding can be controlled by a burner tower+some basic logic to prevent overbreeding/eggs backing up in machine and everything can be self sustaining and even restart itself simply by adding a machine that uses spoilage to feed bioflux plants.
Meanwhile science packs are so cheap it doesn't matter if they end up turning into spoilage, you can simply burn them off at Gleba or Nauvis or wherever your science setup happens to be. A single agritower of each fruit is enough to make 300 or so SPM with bioflux to spare. Nothing is permanent to begin with so it's fine if most of it turns into spoilage by the end.

It personally took me about 5 or so hours of messing around before it just clicked for me and then it felt great. Now 100 hours in this base is completely self sustaining and self-restarting. I've had my fruit production cut off for hours on end as I was working on other things and the moment they came back only the whole thing just sprung back to life. The only thing that I actually had to do was to tell a construction bot to remove a big pentapod shell to get one egg to restart that process. It took some trial and error to find the right techniaues, but isn't that part of the fun of Factorio? You mess around until you find something that works.

The only real issue I've experienced is the strength of the enemies present on Gleba. Even with heaps of Tesla towers+rocket towers+ 500% damage I still can't kill them fast enough before they reach my walls and blow everything up. Each wave consists of 6-8 big stompers+about as many big strafers. It feels excessive at times, especially with how relentless they can be with their attacks. I assume I could keep them at bay with artillery to blow up the encroaching nests but I haven't gotten to it yet.

[BlueTemplar]

Pentapods are probably balanced that way because

they only care about the treefarms (adding extra challenge to lay out the rest of your base so that it's not in the way, and doesn't keep aggroing them with a chain of turrets).

You can fully automate restarting science

by recycling biochambers

— it feels cheesy in the early Gleba game, but IMHO not for this.

[Starfly]

Hm, i liked Gleba. Spoilage is fine if you accept that you cant buffer things, but the constant flow remains. My space train brings a constant flow of bioflux and science back to nauvis. If i dont need it, it spoils and gets trashed. Same with biter eggs. They got brought home and trashed (either quality-recycled to get quality eggs for production modules (only inserted if output chest isnt full and all other items are there) or turned into nutrients to biochambers on nauvis). I got a provider chest buffering them (output arm prioritizes non-freshness and only works above 1k eggs in chest) - this way i have the constant flow is refreshing the buffer without ever running risk to hatching.

If you make sure every location where spoilage can occur is taken care of it just runs endlessly. Spoilage throughput problems can be solved by disabling machines via wire if their provider chest is filled to x, to not overproduce things just to turn into spoilage.

My two negatives about gleba are 1. the lack of overview about production statistics - due to production fluctuation because of spoilage (on top of natural fluctuations) I have a hard time seeing if i produce enough to add another production.
2. How enemies work here. I've never seen a stomper attack. Whenever i click on the attacked alert I see a dead one and some damaged buildings. I have no idea what they actually do to damage my buildings. I just learned that my blue tesla towers arent enough to kill them without getting damaged. But i think rocket towers with stomper prio should take care of them while tesla's chain lightning takes care of trash.

About nuclear power on gleba? why? A heating tower eats 0,16 rocket fuel/s for 40MW of output. 2 Biochambers producing rocket fuel are cheap and produce enough to cover all needs.

All in all, I'm fine with gleba. Although given, i imported a lot to build it up and still import blue circuits and low density for the rocket production - which all goes automatically and is cheap (gleba-nauvis space train brings back 2-3 rockets of stuff, so it needs 1 rocket from nauvis every ~2nd stop there), so i see no need to change that.

[BlueTemplar]

How enemies work here. I've never seen a stomper attack. Whenever i click on the attacked alert I see a dead one and some damaged buildings. I have no idea what they actually do to damage my buildings.

Load autosave and watch.

[EustaceCS]

Dear diary,
today I had
skill issue.

I forgot that eggs from rafts are mandatory for starting Gleba progression. And eggs dropped from rafts are almost invisible on most Gleba terrain. AND are spoiling too damn fast.

Long story short, imagine running around Stomper, laughing like Woody Woodpecker and waiting for that bulky thing die from 1 (one) Personal Laser Defence for three (or five - didn't had time to blink, not mentioning counting time) minutes straight... because all rafts around starting position were dead and eggs spoiled by the time I remembered...

Other than that, I'm perfectly fine with Gleba shaking up my rusty braincells.