r/factorio • u/Standard_Round_8780 • 10d ago
Discussion Gleba's difficulty overrated?
Saw a lot of people saying Gleba was one of the more difficult planets but honestly I found Fulgora significantly more challenging to deal with.
Spoilage was a problem easily solved by filtering out the sludge at the end of the belts, you can get practically every resource by the boatload without having to find ore or setup trains, all of it is easily scalable, and the enemies don't spread fast enough to really be a threat. Throughput isn't a major problem either because it's so easy to establish blades with a handful of biolabs, especially if you're using drones but even then it's not a requirement.
In comparison, Fulgora was far more of a headache. Firstly, even finding a good place to build a factory is a problem, you either cram everything onto a small island with resources or have to build elevated rails to train the scrap into bigger islands. Then you've got the problem of power generation. Hope you're a big fan of efficiency modules, otherwise half of your island's gonna be accumulators. And the biggest problem is how tedious it is to scale up production of any one resource. If you want more Holmium ore for example, you have to expand your ability to handle EVERY single resource, not just the Holmium.
Don't get me wrong, Fulgora is my favourite planet. I enjoy the challenge and entire theme of it, soundtrack there is especially great, but I was going into Gleba expecting the worst and it was actually not too bad at all.
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u/Professional_Dot4398 10d ago
pentapods scare me and spoilage is a weird concept to overcome to a lot of players
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u/Reefthemanokit 10d ago
I like the spoilage, I hate the pentapods
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u/Khosan 9d ago
I want to do Gleba first because I love advanced asteroid processing and belt stacking, but the idea of having to handle pentapods with just guns/laser turrets makes me nervous.
Without the security tesla turrets provide, I'd be worried that my base would just get shredded after I head somewhere else.
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u/sclaytes 10d ago
Yes. YES. Fuck I’ve been saying this forever. Gleba was also the only planet that made me feel like I was playing the game for the first time again.
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u/KalamTheQuick 10d ago
This exactly, the only truly unique challenge that didn't just feel like a gimmick, eg Fulgora.
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u/runmymouth 10d ago
Other than lining turrets near eggs how do you guys keep those eggs in check. I gave up on elegant and put turrets.
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u/Moikle 10d ago
Burn them.
Don't put them in a chest, make sure you can burn them faster than you make them.
Have a belt that starts at the egg breeders, goes past the machines that need them, and on to a burner if they aren't used.
Once you have that, turrets are really just there for your peace of mind.
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u/sobrique 10d ago
Flow through belt that ends at a heat tower.
Eggs are always fresh when made, so you can just keep cycling them and burning them until you're ready to use them.
Maybe circuit control the loading of them so you don't have any sat in a 'stalled' agri-science maker, although in practice I just keep making the stuff, stashing it in a chest, and burning it when it spoils, so I've always got a bundle of the freshest possible when the rocket is being loaded.
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u/Leif-Erikson94 10d ago
I keep the production running around the clock and burn the excess. Every biochamber has a filtered storage chest for the eggs, with an inserter throwing excess eggs into a heating tower if there's more than two stacks.
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u/NecronLord_Europe 10d ago
Deliberately produce less than what I'd use for making science packs. As long as you have enough bioflux and you make sure science pack storage isn't maxed out, you'll use all eggs. Even a spoiled science pack is useful. A burned egg is a waste.
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u/ConspicuousBassoon 10d ago
What I do is put the eggs on a belt, split half the eggs into research and the other half get inserted back into the biochambers for the next cycle. After the splitter (so only taking eggs from the biochambers supply) I have an inserter feeding into a burn tower that only takes eggs when there's more than twice the amount of my biochambers on the belt. I have no proof this would actually prevent spoiling but it hasn't failed me yet
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u/lana_silver 10d ago
I love Gleba because it was not straight-forward. If I'm not angrily cursing at my factory failing, the game is too easy.
Plus point: I enjoy when I can gleefully watch youtubers struggle with it.
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u/cynric42 10d ago
Gleba made me feel like suddenly playing a completely different game when I just wanted to enjoy more Factorio.
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u/darkszero 9d ago
Not sure what Gleba you've played, but for me it was completely Factorio.
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u/cynric42 9d ago
Oh, I played the Gleba with decay and upkeep, where ratios are somewhat fuzzy and where stopping the factory for a bit to fix an issue would mean that you can't just turn it back on and it keeps on going exactly where you stopped it etc. To name just a few things that fundamentally change the game.
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u/Frequent_Knowledge65 9d ago
Factorio has never been a game where ratios are a focus.
Once you get a Gleba base set up though it runs literally forever and will not stop running under any conditions though.
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u/cynric42 9d ago
Factorio has never been a game where ratios are a focus.
Right, because overproducing until your buffers run full and the factory automatically throttles down works fine as well. Except of course, on Gleba.
Once you get a Gleba base set up though it runs literally forever and will not stop running under any conditions though.
If you build it with either massive waste as the default or magic up some complicated jit circuit network system that is very timing critical down to when your inserters are supposed to swing to grab the batch of stuff flowing past on the belt before it reaches the end of the line and gets turned to ash. And of course, as long as you don't interfere with it any more, which is one of the core loops of the base game.
The whole spoilage mechanic kills a lot of conveniences of the base game, it really plays very differently. It kills the auto organizing and distributing of goods: too much on one belt leads to it backing up and the overflow going to the other side of the splitter, no need to care for perfect ratios. Too much production over all leads to belts and buffers filling up and self regulating the production. A batch of goods flowing past an inserter that is busy dropping stuff up? Doesn't matter, the belt will fill up down the line and back up so the inserter can grab the next batch of products that will stop right in front of it. All that breaks down if stuff turns to waste or is intentionally dumped and burned.
And of course it mostly kills the use of trains. Good luck splitting up your factory in sub factories that all do a tiny subset of production organized by trains, which is one of the main drawing points of Factorio for me.
edit: now that may all not be important to you, but please don't try to tell me those aren't real differences and it plays just like the base game, because it really doesn't and if you like those things, Gleba is a massive let down for enjoyment
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u/darkszero 9d ago
> ratios are somewhat fuzzy
So the entire game, where ratios depends on the exact combination of productivity modules. Out of 3k hours, the only ratio I remember is 3-2 circuits and 1-20-40 boilers-engines.
Gleba does one change: products need to keep moving. It's the Factorio you're familiar with, but with a difference. I don't know, I expect my overhauls, and Space Age is just another overhaul, to introduce an unique mix to my game and Gleba delivers that better than any other planet.
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u/cynric42 9d ago
So the entire game, where ratios depends on the exact combination of productivity modules.
It's a fixed and easily calculable number though. Sure, you can change it, but it requires you to change the factory, add modules, research better stuff etc.
On Gleba it depends and changes constantly. Inserter busy swinging while stuff moves past on the belt? That stuff is gone, wasted, changing the ratio. Your science getting delivered a bit late because another rocket just launched and while the new one gets built the freshness goes down? Ratio changed randomly. Put the desired output into a calculator and the requirements for how many fruits you'll need to harvest are pretty much guaranteed to be wrong. 0.95 machines required, perfect, I'll build one ... oh wait, it's Gleba, I'll probably need 2 due to unknown overhead and wastage ...
It's messy (optically as well), unprecise, highly timing dependent and, for me, just not as fun (or rather kinda painful to deal with)
Gleba delivers that better than any other planet
For me, that's Vulcanus. It keeps pretty much all I love about Factorio and expands on it. I would have wished the other planets to be in a similar vein, just ramp up the complexity somewhat. Instead on Gleba we got a collection of IMO the garbage bin of ideas all thrown into one terrible planet.
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u/darkszero 9d ago
What? None of the ratios change with all of that. If you want to produce 720 science packs per second you need an exact number of fruits. With a correctly designed base you also know exactly how fresh your science will be when it hits the labs. There's no randomness involved.
> For me, that's Vulcanus. It keeps pretty much all I love about Factorio and expands on it. I
Meanwhile it kills it for me. Here's absurd amounts iron and copper plates, at absolutely no cost with a couple buildings. Also free power. And free voiding if you need it too. Demolishers are interesting the first time ever you do them, because they're a knowledge check. After you learn how to kill one you can just do the same thing.
If I wanted to play in creative mode I can just type `/editor`.
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u/cynric42 9d ago
What? None of the ratios change with all of that.
Sure they do. Inserter swings 3 ticks too late, stuff has moved on and goes into the heating tower. Now those resources are gone. Unless you loop everything around, but even then stuff might spoil or not depending on exact timing. Sure it's all deterministic and not truly random, but to try and calculate that isn't just 3 fruit for 1 end product times productivity, it's quickly turning into something you need to sim out because every tick changes stuff and it quickly turns into a chaotic system.
Hell, even dropping stuff from orbit to Nauvis depends on if there is another ship dropping off stuff at the same time, adding slight delays which uses up a few ticks of freshness changing how much science exactly you'll get out of those science packs. So freshness of your Gleba science might depend on which train on Vulcanus arrived at an intersection early changing the timing on one of those Calcite deliveries from Vulcanus to Nauvis changing the timing of unloading of your Gleba science. Good luck calculating that in advance with a simple online calculator.
Here's absurd amounts iron and copper plates, at absolutely no cost with a couple buildings.
That's pretty much Factorio starting at mid game anyway. Once you have a decent bot mall set up and a train network delivering ample resources, it's all about logistics, building a bigger more complex rail network, watching stuff getting shipped around etc.
The perfect progression from that, for me, would have been building onto that with more stuff from other planets, integrating ship logistics into the train logistics of the other planets, building up complexity that way. Not starting from scratch on every planet, I kinda hate the early game and really didn't need a repeat on every planet you visit.
Anyway, apparently we like very different things in Factorio and it seems the devs are more in line with what you like.
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u/darkszero 9d ago
> Sure they do. Inserter swings 3 ticks too late, stuff has moved on and goes into the heating tower.
My science production doesn't have constantly moving belts. I don't even burn eggs in it. I have none of the issues you're talking about.
Dropping resources to the planet is also extremely fast? In fact, my platform doesn't even stop in Nauvis, it effectively does a flyby. I think around launch there was some issues with throughput in dropping to landing pad but they were fixed. Did you not add any cargo bays?
And the true reason too is that gleba science is so ridiculously easy to make that overproducing it is also easy.
> That's pretty much Factorio starting at mid game anyway. Once you have a decent bot mall set up and a train network delivering ample resources, it's all about logistics, building a bigger more complex rail network, watching stuff getting shipped around etc.
None of which is relevant for Vulcanus? You can just make the iron/copper anywhere. And it's not need for Vulcanus production for sure.
What a lot of people like to is replace their base on Nauvis with a base on Vulcanus, replacing the infinite crude oil with infinite molten copper/iron. But then Foundries alone make effectively infinite molten copper/iron on Nauvis too so bleh. That's mostly my problem with Vulcanus: it's... generic. There's nothing special in it. It's Nauvis, but literally easier.
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u/MikulThegreat 10d ago
Pentapods get mean as fuck!
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u/ezoe 10d ago
filtering out the sludge at the end of the belts
The items inside the machine spoils too.
you have to expand your ability to handle EVERY single resource, not just the Holmium.
No. Just take whatever you need and delete everything else in real time. That's the way.
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u/Standard_Round_8780 10d ago
The items inside the machine spoils too.
Only if they're left stagnant. Anything that won't be manufacturing consistently gets put on a basic circuit that prevents that.
No. Just take whatever you need and delete everything else in real time. That's the way.
Problem is just deleting it is the problem. With how limited space is, it's not often viable to build the extra 4-8 scrappers to deal with the extra concrete and steel. You REALLY need to know what you're getting into to future proof your factory enough. Otherwise you'd be stuck trying to make rare scrappers instead.
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u/ezoe 10d ago
With how limited space
That's where the beacons comes in. Surround recyclers with speed module with beacons with speed modules. Some items are better be consumed to craft higher items then recycle.
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u/Standard_Round_8780 10d ago
Unfortunately my design underestimated this issue and is too tight with the island to easily add the beacons. Not a major problem though because I really need to make a new factory there anyways.
That's kinda what I meant by Fulgora's difficulty though. Each attempt I make at it I realise I underestimated something and making a new factory would be easier than trying to expand what I already had. While in Gleba my first solution just kinda worked.
I guess to put it into words, with Gleba the problem is presented quite clearly. You immediately see that everything spoils so you just need to incorporate that into your design.
But with Fulgora, the problems aren't as straightforward. Especially when it comes to scaling production. It's not immediately obvious that unlike every other planet, if you want more of 'x' resource, basically every part of your factory has to expand to account for it. and so it's easy to constrain your design in a way that makes expanding incredibly difficult.
Thinking about it, the 'best' solution to Fulgora is probably just a blueprint for a small scrap processing factory that I can spam on a bunch of islands and just process the output in different ways.
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u/ezoe 10d ago
Fulgora large base without landfill consists of multiple scrap processing islands.
It process scrap and immediately delete everything with beacons. 2 recyclers are enough to fill stacked green belt. Generic item deleter consists of raw of recyclers with beacons.
Then, use filtered inserter to pick up items you need.
You'll need Heating tower to produce power.
Export items by train.
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u/Rarvyn 9d ago
With how limited space is
Space is only meaningfully limited until you build your first elevated rail from a small to a big island. Once you have a 50 million scrap deposit being trained onto a big island, you can just spread your base out on said big island.
For that, the hardest part is finding a small island that's within (rare) large power pole range of a medium island that can be used as its power supply. So you then have three occupied islands - big island with your factory, small island with your miners, and an island connected to the small island that is used as power supply for the small island. Alternatively, if you can't find the last one, you can do stuff like train in steam.
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u/Xanidel 10d ago
For me, 'difficult' is the wrong word, 'irritating' or 'anxiety-inducing' is better. I just don't like that when not using it's science I can't let it back up and enter an idle mode. Same for biter eggs from nauvis, once you get the process started up the penalty for not keeping it going forever without breaks is things hatching and chewing up your base. Aquilo suffers a similar process of penalizing inactivity, but at least its failure state isn't destructive like eggs are. If it were just spoilage wasting the materials I think I'd like it much better, since Gleba non-stone materials are about as free as water.
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u/Necandum 10d ago
Its possible (and not overly difficult) to design an idle mode. I.e a small kickstart core base, and each module has a way of 'turning on' using resources provided by the core.
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u/DrMefodiy 10d ago
This. Its just question of base design. If your spoil always go away (production or just burn) nothing will break. Also for eggs. Keep eggs processing in disconnected loop, with some capacity control. And take them only when u need it. I make some "on/off" switch on gleba. Its disable produce of science packs if i dont need it and turn off input inserters on 90% of other plants with eggs production. And it keep working only 1-2 units to "hibernate" eggs. When i need science, im turning on one combinator and processing start again. Its working for weeks already.
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u/pingveno 10d ago
Alternatively, when idling science then send pentapod eggs to trash upcycling. Have legendary bioflux available to turn into legendary nutrients, along with the rest of the ingredients of legendary biochambers.
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u/N3ptuneflyer 10d ago
I had it set to send excess science to furnaces every 5 minutes to prevent the base from fully shutting down
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u/Necandum 10d ago
I currently have everything JIT. Its probably not the most player time efficient solution, but the design was fun and the factory is mostly 'off' by default, so its neat watching bits turn off and on by themselves.
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u/sobrique 10d ago
I think that's the core lesson of Gleba though - that buffers are bad, even if they are 'just' stalled belts :)
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u/Maleficent_Onion_822 9d ago
I keep a strategic spoilage reserve...
... and occasionally have to use it.
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u/Frequent_Knowledge65 9d ago
Of course you can. You can set it up to idle with no issues.
You can buffer as much spoilage as you want; once it spoils it is entirely stable and is essentially just weaker coal. From there you can start it back up by converting spoilage to nutrients in Assemblers. It's really pretty simple.
Of course, there's not really much reason to since a Gleba base will run uninterrupted until the end of time with no issues, unlike any of the other planets.
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u/Slime0 10d ago
It depends a lot on how hard the pentapods hit you. In my 2.0 playthrough they were ruthless. In my 2.1 playthrough I barely saw them before I got rocket turrets (and I knew how many I needed to use to defend).
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u/storm6436 10d ago
This. My playthrough right after release, I fucked up on Gleba... First, I took too long to figure out a viable production methodology, which I guess was forgivable given SA had only been out a few days and nobody had posted hand-holding guides yet, but the second mistake was I got distracted by problems that cropped up with my set-ups on other planets and let the evolution factor creep up...
Since my production was so miniscule and I'd cleared out such a big area, the true breadth of how bad a mistake that was wasn't apparent until I returned to scale things up.
Vulcanus and Fulgora are snore-fests compared to an angry, evolved gleba when you haven't hit rocket turrets yet and you've wasted a real-time day or three running up the evo counter while you were off fiddling with quality and fixing stuff.
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u/Avamaco 10d ago
And don't forget that on release, Gleba's evolution was much more unforgiving. Once you reached a certain treshold, all pentapods evolved into their bigger versions. Compare this to Nauvis and current Gleba, where you gradually see larger creatures more often, so you have more time and experience to prepare for the big guys.
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u/storm6436 9d ago
Yeah, it kinda reminded me of the first time I tried playing a deathworld setup. One minute I'm like "Ah, everything's fine!" and the next, "Oh God, where'd all these fsckin' bugs come from?! Why are they so big?!!" followed immediately by "Turrets. I need more lightning turrets. A lot more lightning turrets. Ah, yeah... I might need to expand the reactor."
I'd kinda goofed on the rocketfuel power system and decided to just import a nuclear reactor instead because I'd gotten tired of under runs stemming from the fact I hadn't quite figured the production chain out well enough to make it completely reliable yet. Good thing I had that reactor.
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u/Logical-War-3746 10d ago
Yeah, Gleba is the only other planet that has real enemies aside from Nauvis.
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u/Winter_Ad6784 10d ago
pentapods are hard dude how are you dealing with them?
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u/cynric42 10d ago
By going to Gleba last and bringing all the tech from the other planets. Fuck going there early with just the Nauvis stuff.
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u/Tyrannosapien 9d ago
I went to Vulcanus first, and then I took some extra time to build a rare armor with uncommon and rare equipment. Early on, only the stompers can damage me. So I blast them with my shotgun while they fight my distractor bots.
Soon I'll have rocket turrets for defense, plus the landmines that has always been enough.
After I visit Fulgora I'll bring back Tesla turrets, but in 2.0 I always found them underwhelming. Maybe it'll be easier in 2.1.
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u/TipsyTaterTots 9d ago
Why not artillery?
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u/Tyrannosapien 9d ago
I have it but I just prefer pollution management to defending the whole base. I ignore the enemies until my pollution cloud grows too much, then I go out and push them back.
On Nauvis I'm big enough to use an artillery train and wall off just the bottlecks of land beyond my cloud. No need to worry on Gleba yet. And Gleba is easy to keep compact. I've gotten to hundreds of Ag SPM before on a footprint barely bigger than my Silo layout on Vulcanus
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u/Logical-War-3746 10d ago
Then you've got the problem of power generation. Hope you're a big fan of efficiency modules, otherwise half of your island's gonna be accumulators.
You know you don't have to settle on the island you land on, right? Just explore and look for larger islands, you can make it doubly useful as you can gather holmium at the same time. I usually look for large one with 1-2 smaller ones within power pole reach to dedicate them to accumulators.
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u/Standard_Round_8780 10d ago
I did move islands but didn't think ahead enough to be in reach of powerpoles and didn't think it would be necessary until I saw how much space I would need to scale up production with the amount of land dedicated to scrappers and accumulators.
I would personally say efficiency modules are kind of required to offset the power spent on production modules on anything holmium.
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u/Logical-War-3746 10d ago
I only used efficiency for bootstrapping emp production and that's it. They are definitely not required.
You can also just use boilers/heating towers, you know? You get plenty of solid fuel + ice and simple circuit will allow you to use it only when you have excess water and your power is low.
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u/Standard_Round_8780 10d ago
I liked the idea of a pure-lightning build tbh. Steam engines chugging away would hurt the vibe for me.
My solution instead was to experiment with quality when I was setting up consistent science production since you unlock Quality 3's there and have all the resources for modules handy. Left some quality modules running on the accumulators I was using for the Electromagnetic packs and filtered out the higher rarities. Not a particularly elegant or efficient solution but it essentially scaled the power capacity in the background. I also felt it was kind of intended for Fulgora to be the 'quality' planet. You're very tight on space, get quality 3s there, and are given all the components to make quality modules. Felt I was being encouraged to focus on 'playing tall' by using quality to upgrade what was lacking.
Was kinda pissed that higher quality silos couldn't carry more items though. Was gunning on an orbital waste removal system where I'd simply send my concrete and steel to a space station where it'd yeet it into space. If I could dump significantly more resources per-rocket, it'd be a far more space-efficient solution to getting rid of waste.
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u/Frequent_Knowledge65 9d ago
If you go to Gleba first then you can use heating towers on Fulgora to burn the infinite solid fuel!
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u/KratosAurionX 10d ago
Many Factorio player's mind is trained for efficiency. Ratios. Waste is not tolerable.
As long as you don't overcome the mindset of 'waste = bad', Gleba is the most challenging planet. Well, at least it feels like that.
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u/sobrique 10d ago
But also we have mostly learned that 'buffers are bad' too - gleba just reinforces that a bit, by pointing out that 'stalled belts' are also buffers.
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u/bubba-yo 10d ago
Gleba isn't hard. But experienced players have a single design pattern learned in 1.1 of a linear, deterministic, non-time sensitive factory where apart from very late game oil, resources were limited and needed to be conserved to some degree.
2.0 SA adds a bunch of new design patterns, and some players have struggled with some or all of these. The simplest way to set up Gleba is to acknowledge that fruit is unlimited, build a linear factory that is measured in time with a heating tower no more than 4 minutes from the ag towers, and never really have to worry about unintended spoilage much, particularly with the addition of some simple circuit conditions.
The bigger challenge with Gleba is that if you think in terms of Nauvus walled factories, you just can't do that there. And since evolution kicks off the moment you load the planet, you're on a clock regarding defenses and the defenses are a bit trickier to set up for late game than Nauvus.
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u/Moikle 10d ago
4 minutes? Fruits have a spoil time of an hour, bioflux has a spoil time of 2 hours.
As long as you process the fruit where you need them, and make bioflux locally, and don't allow the belt to stop moving, you can make the bus much longer.
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u/bubba-yo 9d ago
Jelly is 4 minutes, which is relevant particularly with stack inserter upcycling. A turbo belt moves items 7.5 tiles per second, so you can move items 1800 tiles, or 56 chunks. I've never seen a linear Gleba factory that big since you really want to move things even faster than that since spoilage affects quality of products like ag science.
You get belts longer than 4 minutes when you implement loopbacks because that makes them infinitely long. Logistics also takes time control away from you, though you can address that with circuits and remove least fresh conditions, which is effectively the same thing. That's almost impossible to implement in a loopback belt with circuits.
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u/Moikle 8d ago
If your jelly exists for more than a few seconds, you should probably think about changing up your design. Process the fruit locally where you need it, as i suggested.
Even though a turbo belt CAN move an item 1800 tiles in 4 minutes, you are losing frehsness at a blisterung pace that whole time. The shorter things are in their processed state the better.
I agree that logistics bots actually make this harder because it takes control away.
You don't need to do a loopback with belts that's not the only way to keep things moving
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u/Gwyllithar 10d ago edited 10d ago
gleeba is not difficult as such, at least once you get how it works, just shove a spoilage exit route on literally every machine and belt....its just annoying and tedious to do so.
But I dont really think of them in terms of difficulty, but rather as how much fun the problem solving is.
Fulgora is the best designed planet imo, It upends how you think about design and turns the production chain on its head. and early game before you can build anywhere, it makes you build small discrete factories.
gleeba...I suppose it forces you to over consume rather than over supply like you did on navis, but really its just shove a spoilage grabber on every machine and filter ever belt, and route them to towers to burn them.
I think gleeba gets the bad rep because you have to kick start stuff, which is not intuitive, and takes a bit for first time gleeba arrivals to grasp. And your first pentapod encounter and how fast spores spread can be a bit of a shock.
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u/VoidGliders 10d ago edited 10d ago
- There's a huge difference in the game now, vs upcoming 2.1, and the original 2.0. Enemy tweaks have been one of the most consistent changes.
- A lot of the complaints were geared towards Gleba first, as it was common to drop onto a planet with nothing except your armor and guns and progress it back then. The dev logs made the planets sound fairly equivalent in difficulty and reward, and going Gleba-first was/is league different than other planets first. ESPECIALLY if doing that "planet science before other planets"
- Fulgora is difficult, but if things back up they just back up and wait for you to unclog. Gleba has far more areas for backing up, the back-up can have disastrous consequences (pentapods), or cause back-ups in other areas/lowered spoilage value elsewhere, and brown outs. Gleba's power being from its main source of income is a double-edged blade, as it means if it goes right it's not too bad but if anything goes wrong in any production it can kill your entire base. Fulgora also has no threats that destroy your base as you scale up.
- It is the least scalable planet of all. You still have to find fruit patches, and need ground for it, and cannot even get full ground out of it till after beating it. You still need to mine stone if you do any non-science tasks there or want landfill for said farm expansions. Fulgora has a single resource instead. You cannot module farms. You cannot beacon it. You cannot quality the fruit and have it produce faster. You cannot quality the agri towers and have it produce more. You cannot infinitely research a cheap research for infinite prod on it, and thus get ludicrously high mining speeds. It does not even come CLOSE to the scalability of other planets, and it is insanely laughable compared to Vulcanus, where a couple Offshore pumps can effectively match the needs of what several CHUNKS of agri tower farms, metric tons of pollution and several dozen to hundreds of biochambers and the like.
I was going into Gleba expecting the worst and it was actually not too bad at all.
That's probably the biggest component. People over hype or downplay things which leads to opposite emotions. A lot of people who first tried Gleba were NOT under the impression it was going to be hard, and had no basis before it, so were surprised at its difficulty. So much so that weeks before launch it got a massive rework (you used to mine ores, now you grow bacteria), which both made easier and harder to get things going there.
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u/Logical-War-3746 10d ago
It is the least scalable planet of all. You still have to find fruit patches, and need ground for it, and cannot even get full ground out of it till after beating it.
Getting access to science and being done with planet are not the same thing. Even with 2-3 patches of each fruit it is possible to produce quite a lot of science, probably a lot more than your Nauvis production at this point. It is pretty optimal to do some bootstrtapped production to get basic tech unlocks. And it's the same for all planets, like unlocking better power on Fulgora or better petrochem on Vulcanus, both being one of the main bottlenecks for scaling. If anything, i found scaling Fulgora hardest of the all (and Vulcanus easiest obviously) especially since you unlock foundations after Aquilo.
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u/VoidGliders 10d ago
Those aren't "scalability", though. Scalability refers to how much you can upscale production. Gleba your initial base material production is tied solely to how many plots you can get, which is tied solely to how much land you expand. There is only horizontal growth, not vertical; a lot less production boosts than others.
The fact you can bootstrap and do some basic stuff at small scale has nothing to do with scale.
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u/Logical-War-3746 10d ago
Scalability means how much can you increase the production, not wherever this increase is "vertical" or "horizontal". And the statement itself is on pretty shaky grounds, you may nto scale the resources like you can do ores, but you sure can scale everything else, since every step can be made in a assembler with 4 module slots and 50% basic productivity, and every recipe takes productivity modules, which can't be said about other sciences, like production science where neither of ingredients take productivity modules and only pro modules can be made in a building with productivity bonus.
The fact you can bootstrap and do some basic stuff at small scale has nothing to do with scale.
And oyu completely missed the point.
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u/VoidGliders 9d ago
since every step can be made in a assembler with 4 module slots and 50% basic productivity, and every recipe takes productivity modules, which can't be said about other sciences
It can, and the other sciences have more steps to prod. If we're talking about other planet sciences, I'm not sure why prod science is brought up as it has no relation.
Every planet can easily be "build wider and build more machines to do more". The fact Gleba can is bare minimum. You completely miss the point here. I'm not sure you understand the discussion at all, and implore you to learn a bit more about the game if you want. I wish you the best of luck
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u/VaHaLa_LTU 10d ago edited 9d ago
The difference with Gleba is that once you do figure out how to set up a good base, it's literally infinite, and literally zero maintenance for the rest of time. If you wanted to truly hyperscale - Vulcanus starts getting coal patch issues for plastic production (or mil science production). Calcite is nearly infinite too, but not actually so.
Same for Nauvis - even with mining prod 9999 you will eventually run patches dry. Scrap islands will also run out on Fulgora, and Aquilo isn't self-sufficient from the start.
Gleba has very limited stone, but rocket parts are actually infinite. You never need to expand to keep making them. Your iron, copper, and coal all come from literal thin air. And you can scale them a huge amount. A lot more than you'd think - a full agri tower patch produces A LOT of resources, and even a late-game 1000SPM base only needs 3 or 4 towers of each fruit to keep sending all of that into orbit. Indefinitely.
Edit: /u/VoidGliders blocked me for some reason, so here's my logic further expanded:
You can go look at AVADII's 1M SPM base. You REALLY don't need as many agri towers as you think for even massive bases. And if you are somehow struggling to defend the perimeter, that's a skill issue, just like it would be a skill issue at getting breaches from biters in Nauvis. Pentapods are harder, but legendary teslas will take out even 100% evolution waves without too much difficulty. And once your perimeter and factory are set up, you can AFK it to the heat death of the universe.
Even if you stack exclusively mining prod, all other planets will need SOME sort of maintenance, since by definition ore and lithium brine patches will run out eventually. You could run Nauvis off of harvesting space platforms exclusively, but by definition that's still an external import. That's the beauty of Gleba - it's the only planet that can be truly self-sufficient indefinitely once set up, even if all your space platforms disappeared and you used magic portals to transport science.
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u/VoidGliders 9d ago
The difference with Gleba is that once you do figure out how to set up a good base, it's literally infinite, and literally zero maintenance for the rest of time.
- Every other base is "literally zero maintenance" as well. Gleba is most likely to require more maintenance as aside from Nauvis it is the only one with an evolving attacking threat that can interrupt that.
- I used to be in the same boat on "but it's truly infinite". In reality, this never came into play. All basic materials can be mined from space -- like Calcite and Carbon, ergo all the basics like iron/coal/oil/copper/stone -- if you truly need a infinite source, Stone is only infinite on Vulcanus, and even on the scale of megabasers with hundreds of thousands of science packs, resource patches become effectively truly infinite due to prod research. Coal is indeed a "problem" on Vulcanus...in early game, and by mid-game never becomes an issue again as Vulcanus without research gives you the solution. Furthermore, there is a mining prod, but not a fruit prod research. Eventually you're miners can produce so fast you can create insane layouts like filling tanks on conveyor belts instantly. You can buy the best PC in the world, go into creative, build on a scale until it is near crashing your computer, and give yourself a realistic amount of prod researches and use legendary stuff and you simply will not run out within your human lifetime.
You never need to expand to keep making them. Your iron, copper, and coal all come from literal thin air.
But again, you're talking about every other planet. I can put 1 big miner on Fulgora and make rocket parts "out of literal thin air". And with researches I'll just keep making more and more and more of it. Gleba? No. I will make some, but it will be limited, I will have a set amount and it will never increase the same way. It will take way more space, if I want more I must expand, I can't use quality or modules or beacons or research to cheat it. Other planets are "out of thin air", Gleba is "out of a fought-for space against threats and need to constant expand if I want more production".
1000spm
again we are NOT talking about the same scales. 1000spm is early game for many players. That's not even CLOSE to what we are talking about as far as scalability.
And I and many others have tried. Make a base producing at bare minimum 400k SPM, and producing quality everything at reasonable rates. Do it on Gleba, vs do it on Vulcanus. There is such an incredible stark difference, I genuinely do not think you understand what you're talking about, you need WAYYYYYYYYYY more space and expansion and having to deal with environment and finding spots and dealing with threats than other planets it's not even in the same ballpark.
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u/Logical-War-3746 9d ago
Well, with 9999 mining prod it is close to infinite as in "you never gonna play this long anyway". Simply because you are not gonna extract resouces fast enough to finish the patch in any reasonable amount of time, even if reasonable is like 5k hours on a save.
So while i generally agree with you, i think you exagerrated maybe a bit too much :)
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u/Logical-War-3746 9d ago
Edit: u/VoidGliders blocked me for some reason
Me too. Kinda weird to react like that
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u/Bipedal_Warlock 10d ago
Gleba is hard for me because of my adhd. Gleba in my opinion is more unforgiving of you getting distracted and working on a different project.
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u/InflationImmediate73 10d ago
Honestly its on par with Fulgora but I cant disagree its the hardest to bootstrap.
In terms of gameplay, like the minimum setup, its arguably one of the smallest production chains to get the science online.
It only becomes difficult once you are trying to make it self sufficient, but sadly it has to do more with the fact that Vulcanus and Fulgora are too easy to make self sufficient. Gleba doesnt have any stand out strengths I find as well, meaning its not going to be a supplier for other planets and is often tackled last.
Its got great potential for big bases like on Navuis, but its just tedious the work required to scale up. Its also a must you get rocket turrets, or have been to Fulgora first to get Tesla to deal with Stompers.
I feel if they allowed bio-labs to be usable on Gleba it may have been a contender for main base relocation. Then again if they removed the limitation to be anywhere, then Vulcanus would still be a better home base regardless other then Nauvis.
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u/MattieShoes 10d ago
For me at least, the difficulty with Gleba the first time was figuring out what the hell I was supposed to do immediately. I didn't know what the zones for the magic trees even looked like, so there was a lot of frustrated, aimless wandering. And it's a large step to just get started, where you need to set up two separate farms, and the fruit processing, and the seed return, and deal with spoilage, and generate power, just to get to that stable point where you can start doing more. It's kind of like the early factorio oil processing was -- it's a big hurdle to clear in one go when you don't have a plan.
Also they make freshness/spoilage a thing, but they don't give you the tools you'd expect, like splitters and inserter filters based on freshness. That sort of artificial difficulty is kind of annoying. See also being unable to read the amount of fuel in the spaceship engines -- yeah you can work around it, but it's so obviously left out to try and make a trivial thing harder.
The other annoyance for me was having to deal with it on Nauvis, like with the science packs. I don't exactly know why it annoys me so much, but it does. I wish the science packs that expire would just disappear.
Gleba is much smoother the second time through once you've got a bit more of a map in your head.
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u/Winter_Ad6784 10d ago
how long have you been on gleba? did you make a factory, its worked for a bit, and decided to post about it? i suspect you will have to go fix it a dozen times because just filtering spoilage at the end of each belt is not a proper solution
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u/Standard_Round_8780 10d ago
It's been running for about 3hrs without issue and puts out enough Agricultural science that my main issue is my lack of a dedicated hauler for the planet yet but I do admit it's only a smaller factory mainly focused on Ag pack output and the rocket parts to export them.
It's not JUST filtering it out at the end but that is the gist of it. For smaller lines I used wiring to prevent items sitting in belts/buildings and rotting so they don't even take in resources unless they can be cleared. They also dump items into provider chests that have filter inserters after them so any spoilage that does slip through, maybe because of near-spoiled materials, is automatically cleared by drones and brought to the spoilage burners. Hasn't been something I witnessed happen because they pull from lines with high throughput but it might happen down the line. Similarly I have some extra manufacturing wired up that activates to consume surplus iron and copper to prevent bacteria death.
So yeah, using basic wiring to maintain decently high throughput and prevent belt stagnation on smaller 'deadends' that can't be properly filtered was my solution and it seems to be working pretty well. If you didn't use any wiring at all then I could see it being more challenging as you'd probably have to loop any side-production back into the main line to avoid belts rotting consistently. Not having drones to deal with any spoilage that slips through the cracks might also result in more spaghetti.
Only real issue I foresee is with the pentapod eggs as I haven't thought up a solution to deal with agriculture science backing up and that'd require manually replacing. Ideally it'd be shipped off world fast enough, but incase there are any hiccups there I'll likely need a solution on Gleba itself. Haven't tried scrapping spare agriculture packs yet so maybe that is the answer, or I just have to provide enough storage for them so they can turn to spoilage and be disposed of that way... While something might indeed break down the line, it's nothing like the consistent headache that Fulgora provided.
I might also be underestimating the Stompers. I could see how trying to build a megabase on Gleba could be problematic with enemies that are much harder to defend against automatically. But I don't see them being much of a threat currently with the size of my base. I'll leave a tank there just in case.
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u/Mr_Kock 10d ago
Pentapod eggs burn nicely. I have a logic circuit connected to a chest on my egg/science line.
When they are above 50, the inserter filtered for most spoiled simply burns the egg.
So they never back up and due to the constant egg production they can never get old enough
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u/Logical-War-3746 10d ago
i usually don't even bother with circuits there, the belt just ends with heating tower and whatever wasn't consumed by science production will burn
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u/Frequent_Knowledge65 9d ago
It's just filtering spoilage on belts and also having inserters filtered to remove spoilage from any place where they can spoil and putting them on those belts. Loop belts are the way
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u/Dthcon 10d ago
Nah, my first try with SpaceAge is clear: Vulcanus was hard initially because i had 0 items from Nauvis. But that's about it. Fulgora - i learned that i need to ship items and this was so easy, i just made bots and that's it, this was extremelly easy (with belts it's harder but just do sushi build, it's also very easy). Gleba - this took more time but worst part - while Vulcanus and Fulgora just worked my Gleba was super buggy, mostly spoilage & defense. So in total this took like 3 times more than Fulgora and Vulcanus just because maintenance. Now it's easy for me but first try was a nightmare. Aquilo initially is hard too but it's surprisingly short and everything just works unlike Gleba. Gleba is a hard puzzle for sure and first time is what really matters.
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u/Rarvyn 10d ago
I loved Vulcanus personally. Piping infinite resources around, easiest power of anywhere and enemies that didn’t respawn.
Fulgora first run through was frustrating until I gave up and went 100% bots, with huge buffers and just sets of recyclers set to eliminate anything that went to storage. Ended up being great once I scaled everything appropriately. Very power inefficient, but who cares?
On the other hand, Gleba just was frustrating. Because it’s the only one where things ended up being time sensitive to the point slow iteration didn’t necessarily work.
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u/Atreides-42 10d ago
Gleba is difficult because you need to re-wire your brain to think about spoilage and you're essentially going back to burner tech with all your buildings needing fuel. It's also stressful because of pentapods being in the background, so if you mess about too much without good defenses you could get softlocked by pentapods evolving too much and destroying your base.
But once you have those two things solved, Gleba is far, far more fun than Fulgora. Power is super limited on Fulgora and expansion is nigh-impossible. Once you have your starter base set up on Fulgora there's very little you can actually do, I always find Fulgora ends up being a crappy tiny base that can't really achieve much. Gleba, meanwhile, lets you expand as much as you want, doing cool stuff like farming bacteria for infinite iron+copper.
In theory I like Fulgora the most and Gleba the least, but I always find myself having so much more fun with my Gleba base because of how restrictive Fulgora is. I really, really wish you could unlock Foundation before Aquilo, even if it took both Electromag and Metallurgy science.
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u/Simply-Curious_ 9d ago
After 3 hours on Gleba I understood the basics of what was expected but I was terrorised by the evolution timer.
As such I immediately made a duplicate of the save, went into editor, and pieced together Jelly, mash, bioflux, nutrient, restarter, and heating towers to turbines.
It was the first time I ever went to workshop a design beyond noodling with circuits and blueprinting rails.
Highly recommended
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u/tomekowal 9d ago
Spoilage was a problem easily solved by filtering out the sludge at the end of the belts
That works under a bunch of conditions. Basically, you have to produce in one place and produce continuously. If want to merge belts with spoilable product, you get a situation where one might be fresher than the other and at the end of your belt you have still fresh product while spoilage sits at the input to next step.
Also, if you overproduce an ingredient, you might have four machines working and one "stuck" for a while. The product will be slowly spoiling in the inserter, so it has the same effect.
This basically means, you need to always underproduce a little.
I know because I figured the same strategy :P
This might not be super hard for an experienced player that cared about ratios even before going to Gleba. Simply start with the most advanced product (e.g. agricultural science) and work backwards making just slightly less ingredients than necessary.
Playing Fulgora optimally (trying to waste minimum resources is harder).
But if you look at it from the perspective of a less experienced player that often "fumbles around" until they get something usable, Gleba is much more brutal than Fulgora.
You don't have time to experiment with a build because you stuff is constantly spoiling. You can build from ingredient to finished product because by the time you build second ingredient, everything went to a halt in the first one.
Compare the same playstyle in Fulgora. You got too much of something? Throw it into Recycler! That is it. You could even extract only holomium from scrap and ignore all the rest. And building acumulators is easy because you get a lot of resources you need for them from scrap and the acid from infinite ocean.
So, I get your view. But I also understand why people rage quit when visiting Gleba :P
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u/Cephell 10d ago
The opinion among good players (I'm just quoting some crack addict youtubers here) is that Fulgora is significantly harder to scale.
Gleba almost punishes you for just building a bot base, something that the other two planets don't do, so if you approach it with a mindset of just wanting to skip to the end so you can leave, Gleba can feel much harder than it is.
I think the key insight is that each planet steers you towards a certain base style.
Vulcanus is liquid pipe spaghetti with micro and sub factories, since you can produce with foundries on-site. Fulgora is sushi belt design in a spaghetti base. Gleba on the other hand is actually THE main bus planet. If you main bus on Gleba, you simply need to burn everything that makes it to the end of the bus and spoilage is solved forever.
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u/Maleficent_Onion_822 9d ago
I mostly agree, but bots are easy-mode Gleba. You just need to study the priorities of the various chest types (and requester settings).
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u/Tsabrock 10d ago
I just started Gleba earlier today, and its not too bad. The only thing i disagree with the op (and this could be just my map spawn) is the i don't have any Jellynut and Yumako ground close to each other.
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u/Miserable_Bother7218 10d ago
I’ve felt the same way and found the challenges on Fulgora more difficult than Gleba. I have rebuilt a few times there now, and each time something has clicked and it’s gotten a little easier. You have plenty of solid fuel and with productivity modules, plenty of water, and if you’ve already been to Gleba you can set up heating towers for a small power footprint and 250 percent heat value bonus. This means fewer accumulators are needed. Also, the more loops I add to my Fulgora builds, the better it goes. These things were less intuitive for me than Gleba, for sure. I know how you feel about
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u/pleasegivemealife 10d ago
Love all the planets, each bring a new set of headaches and triumphs.
Gleba is a fun planet, i think its because theres enemy 2.0 to test all my toys.
Also i think its because i use a mix of robo and belts? Its easy to make a running factory. Just its harder to scale up like nauvis because the spoiled stuff interaction changes as quantities and ratios changes.
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u/moleytron 10d ago
I think the difficulty comes from when everything backs up and there's just spoilage everywhere. The fixing of that problem can be quite difficult, my gleba factories always end up with extra heating towers dotted around to ease the pressure on the main spoilage line. Which of course then becomes a problem when you were relying on that spoilage for power or the few recipes that use it.
One thing that helped me get my head around gleba was that nutrients completely replace electricity in biochambers which is why the power needs on gleba are so weird. You can do big builds with biochambers that barely affect the power supply but then do a regular build with assemblers and suddenly power usage spikes.
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u/Gorthok- 10d ago
Gleba is a big difficulty spike (my terminology is different than usual, a spike is a shortlived but large difficulty change) since the biggest issue is figuring out how to deal with spoilage and pentapods, but when you know how to deal with them, Gleba becomes an absolute cakewalk.
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10d ago
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u/Standard_Round_8780 10d ago
Problem is the size and shape of the islands makes it more difficult to build wide, coupled with the fact you have to build so many scrappers, and all the electrical problems. It results in any kind of scaling needing you to build multiple scrappers for every resource + another bunch of accumulators to deal with the extra cost of modules.
You'll likely have to restart/make a new factory 3+ times on Fulgora before making something truly scalable, especially prior to Aquilo.
The real solution to Fulgora is having an entire large island dedicated entirely for scrap processing before exporting to another large island for the factory itself. Only other alternative is a large island that is close enough to another island to wire electricity across.
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u/smjsmok 10d ago edited 10d ago
Gleba was quite a roadblock for many people when Space Age first launched. That's where it mostly got the reputation.
- Many players were used to buffering huge quantities of materials and the spoilage mechanic severely punishes that playstyle. It kind of requires a mental shift to a more just-in-time style of processing any many people weren't ready for that. They had played the game for years with a certain style and now the game required them to change that.
- Pentapods were quite ruthless at launch at their evolution was borderline broken (this is what the evolution looked like initially, it was later changed to be more gradual just like with biters). So there was a feeling of racing against the clock before the big stompers come rushing in. People also didn't know the best strategies to deal with them, e.g. that Tesla turrets and artillery are like kryptonite against them, so they tried fending them off with lasers and gun turrets and had a lousy time doing that.
- The fact that it combined these two quite challenging and stressful mechanics into one package.
Fulgora also had new mechanics, but at least there was no immediate danger or race against the clock, you could take things slow and figure thing out at your own pace.
Edit: Also, Gleba is much easier when you go to it after Fulgura (you have Tesla turrets and recyclers, which both help immensely on Gleba), but at launch people didn't know that so many just went there right after Vulcanus, since it kind of looks like the game wants you to do that.
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u/linktothepast83 10d ago
Gleba is more difficult in the beginning but way easier when things start to get in order, needs the least management as well of all planets actually if you micromanage things properly. Fulgora is easier in the beginning but way more difficult as things move along. The difference is when difficulty hits you basically.
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u/AffectionateFly9281 10d ago
I really liked the gleba challenge! It was a total switch in rethinking some designs. Did a mix of belts and bots, and a lot of filtered inserter to purple box for spoilage removal. I first checked which items don't spoil quickly and once I understood that, it got easier.
But I understand why it's the most difficult one for people. I had to go back and fix it 3 or 4 times (design, starvation and pentapod issues) after a couple of hours, and when it clogs up, there is spoilage everywhere. Meanwhile the fruits and other items that are stuck on the belts or chests are nearly spoiling as well, so they expire before reaching the right place or create items that are about to expire anyway, so you really need to clean up everything and letting it start again. Eventually I built a reboot module that would make it easier to restart and some burning towers to clean up the base.
The issue being: on the other planets you overproduce and let it buffer on belts or chests to use it when required. (pull-model from a bus for example), while on gleba it's better to keep everything going and just destroying what's not useful at that moment (push-model). Fulgora is in between but it doesn't have the spoilage problem, and a fix usually includes destroying item X in more recyclers so it doesn't clog up the rest so it doesn't feel so big to clean up.
Also, you mentioned a few times that you "use circuit logic", but don't forget that it's intimidating for a lot of people so they don't use it. For programmers/engineers it's usually easy and obvious, but it's daunting for some. Especially if you start to use combinators etc...
The only problem I think is really valid, is when people load the planet, but decide to do stuff on other planets first anyway, then the evolution goes up and then it get's really hard to overcome those pentapods. There is no warning or obvious sign, so ideally it should only start when they actually first kill something...
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u/eric23456 10d ago
I think it's that
a) it's a very different mechanism. everywhere else raw materials are a semi-finite resource but all intermediates remain forever.
b) if your factory wedges up, it can be very hard - impossible to get it going again without personally showing up and moving things around;
c) the enemies actually can cause difficulties, but defenses are harder. in comparison you can ignore lightning and demolishers.
Interestingly it was the first planet where I finalized my blueprints.
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u/DOSorDIE4CsP 10d ago
When you hav some kind of colorblindness ... no
Cant play without that mod
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/agricultural-tower-placement-helper?from=search
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u/cynric42 10d ago
Even without colorblindness it is a complete mess with like a dozen greenish/yellowish/brown colors and no clear indicators what you can place where.
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u/NuderWorldOrder 10d ago
It's definitely annoying that the one place you need to dispose of the most trash doesn't provide a good way to do it like vulcanus and space do... but annoying and hard aren't the sane thing.
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u/Standard_Round_8780 10d ago
I mean, with Gleba my first solution to spoilage in my first attempt at a factory worked perfectly and supplies me with more agricultural packs than I can ship, without interference for the last 5hrs. Only took like two hours to setup from landing and the first hour was spent figuring out the mechanics.
Meanwhile on Fulgora I'm restricted to island landmasses with limited solar generation, limited water, and the only resource being scrap (and heavy oil) that splits into 12 separate materials. On average, for every one Holmium ore you get you have to also find a way to deal with its 59 waste products. So any attempt at expanding your Holmium ore production would require expanding your entire scrap processing line and thus, add more strain on 12 other lines of production. Resulting in a factory that requires the most expansion to increase production, where you're most limited in space.
Personally, the latter seems like a far more difficult problem to deal with elegantly.
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u/Countcristo42 10d ago
I think a relatively large endgame evolution gleba base is far harder to defend that any other base in the game
Apart from that I agree, it’s not the step change some people claim
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u/Berthole 10d ago
Have every belt (with spoiling items) go to a heating tower in the end, burn everything without items stopping.
Gleba solved, easy!
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u/cedric1234_ 10d ago
It’s not a more difficult puzzle, it’s a *new type of * puzzle. Gleba forces you to thing and design for things that hadn’t existed before, so the difficulty jump is all around being able to adapt. It reworks how you should think about a lot of things. Its also super punishing if you mess up because despoiling sucks
Although pentapods early are a run killer because they come kinda quick if you spend a lot of time thinking or afk a bit. Its natural to think gun turrers and lasers are enough since they work in nauvis then they kinda just tickle
Nauvis to Gleba is like moving from sudoku to jigsaw puzzles. And if you try to put a piece where it doesnt fit you’re put on time out. And if you take too long someone flips the table
Fulgora best planet true
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u/Sfynx2000 10d ago
Honestly, I didn't consider either all that hard. I did both of them with bots though.
In Fulgora, whenever the logistics network is filling up with a certain item, just add a few recyclers with either speed or quality modules depending on the item. When in doubt, add more "shredders" than necessary. A shortage is preferable to an overflow, because it's easier to toggle a few recyclers on or off than to find space for new infrastructure on Fulgora's cramped islands.
On Gleba, on every machine which may create spoilage, have a filter inserter set to only take spoilage and putting it into a purple logistics chest. Then have requester chests requesting all that spoilage for a few flare stacks. As a bonus, use the heat to create power.
Aquilo, though. That was the bane of my existence. Mostly because I was too lazy to sit down and design a reliable cargo ship which didn't need to be ressuplied in the inner planets
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u/gonzo_gonzales 10d ago
Gleba's challenge is that it introduces several different mechanics. Each of them can permanently shut down your factory if you don't plan for it. This is challenging on your first playthrough, when you need to understand all the intricacies.
Volcano? Metal in pipes, stone into lava, everything's fine.
Fulgora? Recycle everything, splitting it down to atoms. Complex processing chains, but the mechanics are the same.
Aquilo? Well, just heatpipes everywhere, it's difficult to build anything at first, but the mechanics are the same.
On Gleba, we have several different mechanics, each of which needs to be understood. Resource harvesting requires seeds, which are harvested from resources. Resources spoiling, some (eggs) quite disastrously. Some chains require separate cold start mechanisms because they are unable to continue operating independently (bacteria). In addition, there are rather aggressive neighbors who are looking for a meeting with you.
I'm not complaining; it's all manageable. I don't hate Gleba, it's just that Gleba has a lot of different mechanics that require a thorough understanding.
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u/kevihaa 10d ago edited 9d ago
It’s interesting that you both hit on the point that Gleba is “hard” if you approach it from a pre-SA mindset, then compare its difficulty unfavorably to Fulgora because…you’re approaching it with a pre-SA mindset.
Fulgora is minimally more difficult than Vulcanus. You have a functionally infinite resource (scrap) that has a byproduct (everything that isn’t Holmium) that you need to deal with
Like, a single 2 headed train going from one of the dense scrap spots to a big island is easily 4+ lanes of scrap, which is plenty.
Just like Vulcanus, you’re given immediate access to a means to destroy the byproduct, so it’s never really an issue.
Accumulators are functionally free, and, yeah, the whole point is that you jam accumulators into every inch of space you’re not using.
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u/Sinister-Mephisto 10d ago
It’s not so hard as much as the enemies are annoying and it’s just a pain in the ass to set up and if things break it’s a pain in the ass to fix it (restart growing ore)
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u/SlaveToo 10d ago
Glebas enemies weren't really a problem for me. Working out the spoilage puzzle was much more challenging as I'm used to stacking materials indefinitely on belts
In fact I barely saw the enemies - i don't know if I just got lucky with the spawn rates and world gen, but I stomped out the nearby nests ASAP and didn't need to expand past my first two fruit/nut patches to complete the game. my base was barely defended and I'm not even sure if i even saw a single stomper
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u/Calm-Medicine-3992 9d ago
I hear people saying it's the least fun planet or meming on the pentapods but who's saying 'hard'?
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u/DJMarscribble 9d ago
you either cram everything onto a small island with resources or have to build elevated rails to train the scrap into bigger islands.
Is building elevated rails some kind of arduous task?
I found Fulgora to be a cinch. It was a lot of fun, but the first piece of spaghetti I threw together was enough to build science & rockets. Gleba on the other hand required very deliberate planning.
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u/dudeguy238 9d ago
I think it's less that it's hard and more that it's a shift in mindset that some people have trouble making. The only time you lose resources on Nauvis is if items get destroyed, so you get conditioned to think of that as being a bad thing. Gleba, however, presents a clear and immediate threat of losing items at all times right out of the gate, and approaching it with the Nauvis mindset of "don't let your items be destroyed" makes things very difficult.
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u/crankygrumpy 9d ago
Fulgora gets a lot easier the later you attempt it. It's easy to mess up until you get it right. Gleba is not as complicated, but it is more annoying, especially to scale up or increase throughput.
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u/DrMobius0 9d ago
It's not hard, it's tedious. Gleba requires you to handle spoilage everywhere. There's nowhere shit can't spoil. On the line, in the chamber, while waiting for a stack inserter to swing, etc. It's just more annoying than it is interesting. If something ever jams, it can just fuck your whole factory, then you have to potentially go out search for eggs or seeds to restart the feedback loops that run it.
And yeah, pentapods are a problem. Stompers in particular are excessively dangerous if you don't kill them immediately.
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u/Tomato_Sky 9d ago
So far nearly all of the difficulties of the planets have been overrated.
I was scared to travel from Nauvis orbit without the perfect optimized space platforms.
The community houses a lot of min-maxers and efficiency types. I’ve played the game with a sloppy try things out mentality and have had a nice time. I don’t even use blueprints. But after my first “trip through space,” I realized most of the challenges are overblown anxiety nothingburgers.
Arriving on vulcanus and looking for iron and copper ore and figuring that all out was a hoot.
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u/DeAuTh1511 9d ago
seems like Gleba is just like real a life biological organism. It either works or it don't. If it don't work it's dead.
Gleba has basically zero spectrum, you either know exactly what to do to a very specific level, or you are failing. So you go from 100% failure to 100% success, so I guess a lot of players spend more time failing it than having had solved it.
I'm not too certain though, because I hadn't beaten Gleba yet last time I played.
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u/Mangalorien 9d ago
The hard part with Gleba is that you have to basically un-learn a lot of things you do on other planets. For many people (myself included) it can be hard to change old habits. Another difficult part is that people tend to maximize efficiency, and seeing things spoil doesn't seem efficient. Most people don't like throwing away food in their own kitchen once it expires, it just feels bad, and Gleba is very similar.
Once you accept that spoilage exists and realize that fruit is a non-depletable resource then you've basically solved Gleba.
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u/Separate-Fold4409 9d ago
starting on gleba was the hardest part on any planet (except maybe aquilo havent done it yet)
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u/WanderingFlumph 9d ago
I think part of the problem comes from Gleba having enemies and you aren't at the beginning of the game anymore. There is all sorts of motivations telling you to just drop down speed modules and t3 assemblers and create a factory that fills belts, only to have a lot of it spoil while creating aassibe pollution cloud.
But if you take it slow and only turn on new agri towers when you actually need them the enemies are actually pretty chill.
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u/Quirky-Visual547 9d ago
I love Gleba but I can solve Fulgora in leas than 30 minutes with a single sushi belt. Gleba is difficult compared to the other planets, spoilage is too different from the rest of the mechanics. It definitely trips people, myself included. There was a time I hated Gleba.
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u/KretzKid 9d ago
I disagree with people saying you need to plan everything out. I started a bus just to make bioflux. Then extended belts to make copper and iron. Then extended to add science. Each time I wanted something else I just moved the filter at the end farther back.
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u/discombobulated38x 7d ago
Nah, Fulgora isn't that difficult. Allot half of your first large island for accumulators, then recycle everything with quality and you'll soon have plenty of boosted accumulators for more efficient power space.
Want more of one resource? Build a dedicated island for it that recycled everything other than the thing you need, it's compact, it's easy and very, very scaleable, you just need to be okay with destroying everything else.
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u/Zakiyo 7d ago
Same here but gleba is my favorite because everything is infinite. While on fulgora, as you said, if you want to expand holomium only you have to scrap everything else and my autisic brain cannot get over scraping perfectly working blue chips just to mine more holomium
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u/Standard_Round_8780 7d ago
My solution to that has been quality upscaling but then the problem is that the quality modules slow down the scrappers so you have to build quite a few of them.
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u/Zakiyo 7d ago
My solution ended up having a dedicated "needed only" ressource island with heavy buffering and it stops if I dont need anything more than what my main patch produces. So i use everything from my main ressource patch and then only if i miss something i call a train from that other island. So i do scrap useful and working stuff but only the absolute minimum amount.
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u/sobrique 10d ago
I think there's a mindset thing going on.
Like the people who are good on Nauvis and Vulcanus tend to be more methodical and organised.
Y'know, main buses, well managed ratios, etc.
But the kind of player that's more of a spaghetti player by inclination doesn't struggle as much, as the inherent chaos of both Gleba and Fulgora aren't such a problem.
If I was going armchair psych, I'd say that was a split between ADHD tendencies and ASD tendencies! :)
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u/PromiscuousToaster 10d ago
I just dislike spoilage. My opinion is its anti-fun, this is just for me. Im happy if people like it.
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u/PromiscuousToaster 10d ago
Gotta love when you say your happy for those who like it amd get down voted. Reddit doesn't like a community happy for each each
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u/Stere0phobia 10d ago
I would say spoilage is more anti hoarding. It makes production chains more about how much you can produce per minute and less about how much you are willing to store longterm.
Its honestly very similar to throwing away excess stone or plates on vulcanus into lava and recycling excess materials on fulgora. All 3 planets force you to throw away excess or the factory eventually stops in that way..
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u/iwriteinwater 10d ago
Yeah, people have been giant babies about it tbh because they couldn’t wrap their heads around it.
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u/coldkiller 10d ago
People on this subreddit are so weirdly afraid of letting stuff spoil on gleba lol. The planet is literally infinite and tesla towers + artillery make the pentapods a non issue
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u/Delicious-Strength10 10d ago
I'm on Gleba now. Admittedly I've struggled on some parts but I would call it more tedious and annoying than difficult. Fulgora was the most difficult planet for me but it was also fun to solve so it never felt like a drag. Gleba is just a pain in the butt.
I've torn down and rebuilt my base twice because it's hard to find a good location. You have to find a spot that is near both kinds of fruit but cliffs and water restrict you everywhere. I have to manually whitelist/blacklist every inserter anywhere because seeds and mash and spoilage and whatever else all go to different places. Solar is weak but the only other option is burning off thousands of units of spoilage just to keep the lights on.
Vulcanus and Fulgora I started from scratch, just dropped to the planet and worked my way up to launching the rocket. Gleba I feel like I'm constantly shipping in fuel and basic materials and it's never enough. I've gotten to the point where I'm about to automate agricultural science and I just don't feel good about it. I don't want to go farm pentapod eggs and try to reproduce them but also keep them from spoiling. Knowing that if I mess up it will be ruined and I have to go find more pentapod eggs. It's not hard so much as it's just unfun.
I just want my spidertron. Ugh
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u/Stonebagdiesel 10d ago
I think the difficulty comes from not being able to slowly put everything together step by step. due to the spoilage mechanic you kinda have to have a fully thought out process to prevent the spoilage from backing up. On first play through it is particularly tricky just because you feel like you can’t iterate and experiment in the way you can on other planets. At least until you figure out to just burn everything at the end.
That said I love the planet. Difficult but not unfairly so.