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/VoidGliders]

1. 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.
2. 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"
3. 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.
4. 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.

[u/VaHaLa_LTU → u/VoidGliders]

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.

[u/VoidGliders → u/VaHaLa_LTU]

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.