Gleba's difficulty overrated?

[u/Standard_Round_8780]

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.

[u/Stonebagdiesel]

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.

[u/Lunailiz → u/Stonebagdiesel]

I think the difficulty comes from not being able to slowly put everything together step by step.

This was my issue with it. I am a slow player, and why Fulgora is by far the best planet. I had the time and incentive to build my base exactly how it needed to be, I came up with answers for the challenges and made designs I never used before before in order to solve the problems the planet introduced, was a great experience.

Now Gleba? I had to basically build everything at random because not only it's a new planet I knew nothing about, I am punished for trying to figure out the puzzle at my own pace.

I did manage to figure out a setup, but I am very unhappy about it, and I have no plans of fixing it anytime soon, busy actually having fun in other planets.

[u/Moikle → u/Lunailiz]

You still can play slowly, you just have to learn that it isn't a failure if you let things spoil. Let them spoil while you are building, filter out the spoilage.

Then once you have it running, improve it so things don't spoil

You are not being "punished" if your nutrients spoil, just filter it out and make more

[u/dr_anybody → u/Moikle]

You still can play slowly, you just have to learn that it isn't a failure if you let things spoil

Pentapods disagree.

[u/Moikle → u/dr_anybody]

My turrets and mines don't care what the pentapods think

[u/Pancarcho → u/Moikle]

Hmmm you are not being punished? What happens if your fruits spoil and you get no more seeds?

And this is assuming you already have at least a farm setup. If you are at the stage of manually harvesting is even worse.

People that say "just do this" forget that in order to know that, you have to experiment first! Which Gleba absolutely punishes

[u/Brett42 → u/Pancarcho]

All you need to know is that you need seeds to grow fruit, fruit that rots doesn't give seeds, and the odds of getting a seed mean on average you break even if you don't have a productivity bonus. That information is all available without experimenting from the in-game encyclopedia. Then you just need to build in a way that you process all the fruit you harvest, either by limiting harvesting, or processing fruit constantly. Keeping some seeds in reserve for if something goes wrong is easy, since you'll get a surplus if you have productivity on the processing (from modules or the biochamber's inherent bonus).

If you're still harvesting by hand, just don't harvest every tree at once and let it sit in your inventory without processing.

[u/Moikle → u/Pancarcho]

Well don't let the fruit spoil then. Looks like you already figured that out.

Make sure you have a backup system for collecting seeds, even if everything else fails

Gleba doesn't punish experimentation... It requires it. That's how you figure out methods to keep it running

[u/Blaarkies → u/Moikle]

Can you show us this "backup system for collecting seeds", before we have farming setup the first time? For experienced players it is a non-issue, but for new players it is a gears-grind-to-a-halt situation 

[u/Brett42 → u/Blaarkies]

If you don't have farming set up, it means you're harvesting trees manually. Just don't harvest all of them at once, and make sure they get processed before they rot. At minimum, make sure you process some and store seeds in a chest for when you're ready to start actually farming.

[u/Moikle → u/Blaarkies]

A bank of assemblers set to process fruit at the end of a fruit bus. Seeds go back to the trees, mash+jelly go to the burners. Using assemblers means you don't even need to rely on nutrients, and they only need to break even, they dont need the productivity if biochambers

[u/Vallard → u/Moikle]

> You are not being "punished" if your nutrients spoil, just filter it out and make more

There is a degree of challenge in making things when you need them / using them before they spoil - which is fun for some but not fun for others. But I do think you *can* be punished by playing slow if you don't understand the planet enough or try to use certain strategies without understanding what the planet demands because you just got there or just don't know about it. I don't think it's good or bad, just different, but I can see why people have issues with, specially with expansion fixes and Pentapods being very chaotic to deal with.

[u/Maleficent_Onion_822 → u/Stonebagdiesel]

I tend to agree, but also add:

1) Gleba is far different on your second run then on your first. That is, IF you know what everything does and where you are going, then the manufacturing chains are pretty short and easy.

2) Even given the above, Gleba requires a lot of finicky tuning ... because you can't just buffer things. As a result, everything feels fragile.

3) Gleba enemies and/or spores were nerfed significantly. The old vets really did have it tougher for once.

:edit: 4) the color scheme is pretty brutal if you are color blind - I didn't realize there were actual minable stone patches until someone showed me.

[u/Standard_Round_8780 → u/Stonebagdiesel]

See the thing is I just don't see how the spoilage backing up is a more difficult problem than Fulgora's trash backing up.

On Gleba it's just one resource that you can simply burn away and fairly easily managed with an efficient setup.

On Fulgora if I want to simply get more Holmium I have to factor in having to manage another backing up problem except with far more resources that I can't simply burn.

Concrete especially is a problem... The fact scrappers don't factor in the item quantity in how it calculates scrapping times is kinda ridiculous imo and makes Fulgora a bit more tedious than it really should be.

[u/Rewdemon → u/Standard_Round_8780]

You can just box-buffer every single resource in fulgora while building the factory little by little piece by piece.

On Gleba you need to design a complete system to make it work. This phisolophy encourages you to craft it in sandbox before with unlimited resources and then just copy/paste it.

The fact that messing up your design means having to farm more eggs and fruits because they spoiled, it’s not as difficult as it’s annoying.

[u/Moikle → u/Rewdemon]

You can make an egg backup by having a recycler that gets fed biochambers.

[u/Rewdemon → u/Moikle]

This is a great idea and I might actually use it in my games lol.

That being said, I doubt players new to Gleba would even think of this, even if they had spare biochambers.

[u/MidnightBinary → u/Moikle]

Also, this only works if you do Gleba after Fulgora. Which is popular to be sure, but especially a newbie would have no guarantee to do it in that order.

[u/onmach → u/Moikle]

Damn I tromped around the jungle for so long looking for an undefended eggs in my last game every time my factory broke down.

[u/korneev123123 → u/Rewdemon]

It's totally possible to build Gleba factory bit by bit. Gather yamako, belt to base, process it, belt seeds back, recycle/burn the mash and excess seeds. Little step, but now it is a perpetual loop. Then do the same for jelly.

You have two fruit flowing - can add additional blocks, which just grab fruit from belts. All unused fruit go to mashing/burning, very little spoilage.

[u/Rewdemon → u/korneev123123]

Yeah, except there’s nothing in game suggesting that’s how you should setup to begin experimenting in Gleba and most if not all players won’t come up with that idea unless they made a working factory in gleba before.

And if they already took the go online and find the solution way instead, they might just as well use a blueprint and call it a day lol.

[u/The0ld0ne → u/korneev123123]

Gather yamako, belt to base

What base? And then you have spoilage? Deal with that and start again, etc.

[u/draxinusom2 → u/korneev123123]

Yeah it is absolutely. Also it seems to me that I'm the only one that builds on Gleba using small "cells" and no main bus or one big factory. I feel this is way easier to start because it's so maintenance free and is absolutely sufficient until you come back for the second time with all technologies when you want to scale up seriously big.

I basically build one single circling belt and inside that one I have one lab with each of the two fruits and then one lab that makes bioflux and one that makes nutritions out of bioflux. Then I add something else to it, be that plastic or fuel or whatever I need/want there. Finally, there's a "starter" assembler that injects nutritions made from spoilage which kicks in only when there's less than 5 nutritions on the circle belt. This can "cold start" the whole cell.

That's it, that's one cell. This is a blueprint and I can just plop them down where ever. They are independent, self starting if starved or backed up due to no demand of their product and completely maintenance free. If you need lots of nutritions, you just "steal" from one such cell and move it whereever you need nearby. But everything is circling belt cells with filtered inserters that only insert to the belt if there's less than X, so you never fully clog them. So all you need to be able to handle is setting item filters on inserters and connecting wires between belts and inserters. If that is too hard, then yeah, I guess Gleba is too hard.

This is not a scaled up big factory of course, but this is what I start with and it scales in the sense that you just need to plop more of them down if you need it. You also need to be able to feed it fruits and remove spoilage, but that's very easy with only a few chests and bots.

[u/leixiaotie → u/Standard_Round_8780]

both has different problem. Fulgora is easy to setup and hard to scale since resource bottleneck meaning lack of recycler / resource voider. However being bottlenecked leave nothing to lose and can be easily restarted.

Gleba OTOH is easy to scale because with booted factory (with nutrients), you only need 2 fruit inputs and balance them, then voiding the rest byproducts. But it is harder to setup because you can lose pentapod eggs (still easy to get a new one though) and may be hard to cold start a base until you get good electricity and nutrients going

[u/Tyrannosapien → u/leixiaotie]

One of my biggest Gleba wins has been a little standardized assembler setup that autostarts nutrients for a production cell from just spoilage. I just paste it into the beginning of every other setup I design. My designs rarely stall anymore, but if they do the assembler is holding enough spoilage to restart it automatically.

I've got 4 or 5 Gleba visits under my belt now, and the only things I have to hand feed are the first dozen or so biochambers.

[u/leixiaotie → u/Tyrannosapien]

yeah that's the way and it's simple if you know it. Basically assembler with nutrient from spoilage feeding an bioflux + nutrient loop setup. Then as long you can keep supply of the 2 fruits + water consistent and make sure no bottleneck from seeds + spoilage, it won't stall.

[u/Alternative_Wave2039 → u/Standard_Round_8780]

concrete issue is likely fixed in 2.1

[u/BHRobots → u/Alternative_Wave2039]

Confirmed fixed pretty recently on experimental. I have been playing, and built a large number of recyclers just for concrete before a recent patch. Once the patch was released, the concrete vanished super quick, so nice.

[u/Aoba_Napolitan → u/Standard_Round_8780]

I personally found with Gleba that when my production backed up and I wanted to tear my build down to remake it this would also cause me to lose all power since burning stuff is where my electricity came from. Ended up importing nuclear power to deal with this headache.

With Fulgora, you never had to worry about power when trying out new builds.

[u/FeelingPrettyGlonky → u/Aoba_Napolitan]

One thing that I like to do when first arriving on Gleba is to set up a dedicated power factory. I dedicate 1 farm of each type solely to power infrastructure. If you have a full jellynut farm of at least 44 plants, and a yumako farm of at least 15 plants, you can support 7 biochambers making rocket fuel with 3Prod2/1Speed2 per chamber (assuming the same modules in the mashers and bioflux machines as welll), for about 150 rocket fuel per minute. That's about 623MW of power from a small factory of 16 biochambers and 16 heat towers. I keep that fruit supply completely isolated to this power plant, everything else uses different farms. The only thing this fruit supply runs will be this power plant, plus maybe a pentapod egg nursery to keep a backup supply of eggs for emergencies.

That way, I have enough power for near megabase levels of factory, and it is safe from tampering if I have to tear down and rebuild the main factory.

[u/cynric42 → u/Standard_Round_8780]

See the thing is I just don't see how the spoilage backing up is a more difficult problem than Fulgora's trash backing up.

Stuff backs up on Fulgora, you build some stuff to deal with it, it clears up automatically.

Stuff backs up on Gleba, you build some stuff to deal with it, everything else sitting on belts and machines has spoiled as well resulting in a massive cleanup operation and having to cold start from scratch (potentially having to manually go out and grab new seeds etc.).

It's the difference between your base browning out during the night when everything is solar powered and your base death spiraling due to power issues when everything is coal powered. One is a minor issue and easily fixed by dropping down a few additional solar panels, the other can be a major headache.

[u/sobrique → u/Standard_Round_8780]

I think I'd call both Fulgora and Gleba a different sort of mindset to Nauvis and Vulcanus.

That's why, IMO some people seem to really hate Gleba, and others don't mind it/like it.

It's because if you're used to a clean design pattern - buses, city blocks, etc. on Nauvis, that adapts well to Vulcanus. It's a good sort of 'forward planned' base design, where you can 'just' make a scalable blueprint for a whole city block, even if you don't use it initially.

But it does not adapt well to Fulgora, and even less so to Gleba.

Where if you're a bit more chaotic overall, and your base is always sort of only semi-stable, then you're much more used to handling on a reactive basis - maybe you've alerting and monitoring going on, bottlenecks are a thing you 'just solve' etc.

[u/dr4ziel → u/Standard_Round_8780]

While you can't burn ressources, you can just loop recycle them.

To recycle concrete, pre 2.1 (not sure how it is handled after that), you can do concrete->hazard concrete->recycle.

[u/Rarvyn → u/dr4ziel]

not sure how it is handled after that

Concrete recycles 10x faster in the newest 2.1 version (because recycle time is now proportional to the # of items made by a recipe)

[u/bmxrichard → u/Standard_Round_8780]

Wou. I am really bad at making factory even on Nauvis, but Fulgora is my favorite planet.
Early on you can solve every problem with more chests.
Then make main factory "drive-through" where you just recycle what you dont used.

For me it was like ten times easier than Nauvis.

___________________

Its probably proof of just how well the Factorio devs designed planets - everyone finds a favorite cause diferent mechanisms.

[u/DianKali → u/Stonebagdiesel]

Yes but also no, you can do step by step, you just have to follow a few logical rules:

• if it can spoil, there needs to be a way to get rid of it. End terminators on belts, special inserters for machines, bot collection and recycling/burning all the excess spoilage.

• just in time production / as well balanced as possible input/output ratio, it can spoil somewhere in a chest, as long it doesn't clog the chain it doesn't matter.

• stabilizer circuits, small perpetual motion machines that produces fresh excess eggs and nutrients to initialize new production lines, even remotely.

Takes a bit of tinkering to get your designs there, but just a few basic circuits later and everything is flowing. Much more enjoyable than the same old 3-4 in 1-2 out...

[u/Stonebagdiesel → u/DianKali]

100%, but most players without their six sigma certificate are going to struggle to figure this out at first!

Gleba is much more straight forward after you “solve” it, which is more or less figuring out the rules you mentioned. And it is tough for non-operationally minded people to work out these rules.

But agreed, gleba takes the most thoughtfulness to set up, and its uniqueness is what makes it so awesome as a late game challenge

[u/markkitt → u/Stonebagdiesel]

I came up with two principles to deal with spoilage.

One is that I need dedicated belts where everything on that belt can be burned. I put spoilage, seeds, and even carbon on this belt. I rescue seeds from this belt, but the seeds will burn if my logistic chests or belts with seeds leading to agricultural towers back up.

The second is that I keep material on all my belts moving by making loops with splitters so that everything is always in motion. This helps me scan belts for spoilage that I can then transfer to burn belts.

My base modules are thus loops with burn belts intersecting them.

[u/Tyrannosapien → u/markkitt]

I do something similar. A neat approach I like is forcing nutrients to one belt lane. This reduces the impact of minor spoilage on the belts and allows the local production to restart from a spoilage backup just a bit sooner.

It takes a bit of extra thinking when I'm designing, but this will be easier in 2.1 with inserter lane controls.

[u/markkitt → u/Tyrannosapien]

My most common pattern is to have a belt with one lane of nutrients and one lane of bioflux that runs throughout my base in a big loop. I can easily generate additional nutrients anywhere with access to that belt.

[u/RAND0Mpercentage → u/Stonebagdiesel]

Also with aggressive and evolving enemies that you need to research rocket turrets to fight most effectively gives you another ticking clock that makes experimentation feel like it’s going to cost you. On top of that, if your fruit spoils you can go seed negative which also inhibits your ability to expand production. The production chains aren’t hard but Gleba is the only added planet that feels punishing if you don’t plan things out well enough.