Gleba is different, but I think that is good in a game that is as long as Factorio. There's a bit of a bumpy difficulty curve here if you approach Gleba in certain ways. But it is very different mechanically than the base game or the other planets in a way that is interesting, at least to me.
It took me two or three iterations when I first landed on Gleba. But afterwards my factories there were more robust than on the other planets and almost never stalled or broke down. And solving that was quite satisfying.
It all works but feels wrong and dumb.
I'd love to see splitter filtering by freshness (e.g. nutrients at >=80% freshness) but I don't think that's in the cards.
> keep everything flowing and accept spoilage Yeah, I still have to do this too though.
Yes, you have figured out Gleba! Once you build with this mindset, you will achieve enlightenment.
That makes production more interesting: On other planets (or Factorio 1.x), a belt can generally get backed up and that's no big deal. In fact, it's a useful game mechanic: Decreased demand is followed up (eventually) by decreased production. With this feedback, things tend to balance themselves well-enough that the game doesn't stall.
On Gleba, though? A backed up belt means more spoilage, which I liken to trash. That trash needs to be dealt with somehow -- whether burned or converted to nutrients or whatever, it's a problem that accumulates unless it is dealt with.
So it ultimately becomes necessary to find new (for the player) ways to limit production so that there's less trash and fresher ingredients for the stuff made on Gleba. That's is a new mechanic that I'm sure that some people find fun, but some folks just don't seem to like very much at all.
I don't mind playing on Gleba, per se, but those parts are annoying to me.
So I'm pretty lazy about it: My waste management system is centered around purple chests and a continuous flurry of bots. My production limits sometimes don't exist. I make up for this lazy play style with artillery, which Vulcanus is profoundly excellent at producing.
(Vulcanus, in turn, is often oil-starved so exporting with rockets might sound expensive. But I have tankers that bring in oil from the bottomless seas of Fulgora, which themselves become efficient with a small amount of productivity research. Dealing with the thousands of empty barrels that this requires has its own challenges, but that's just Factorio things and I enjoy working on this part more than I do finding tidy ways to sort garbage on Gleba.)
I do that. It's annoying to me. I don't like being feeling annoyed by computer games; being annoyed is not one of my kinks.
> And to never, ever have the factory stop at any point in time.
So burn more stuff -> bigger spore clouds -> even more enemies -> more violence?
eg, always produce fruit as fast as the swamp can muster, and just always burn all excess as soon as it is possible to do so?
I limit fruit production based on the number of fruit on the belt, to avoid creating a huge buffer. But after that the factory just runs continuously at the same speed. And if I have too much of a final product, it gets destroyed or burned for heat and electricity.
One benefit, especially in the beginning, is that by processing more fruit you get more seeds. And you need the seeds to expand your fruit production later.
The enemies are probably one of the not ideally designed parts of Gleba. It's trivial to handle them if you know how, and can be very frustrating if you try to approach it the "wrong" way. If you have been to Vulcanus and Fulgora you can trivialize their threat.
Somehow I've already internalized and expanded it as building on Gleba in a long, straight line -- with branches for input and output. Like a main bus, sorta... but probably much wider to leave space for stuff, and an emphasis on being straight.
Belts of fruits get fed in where they're harvestable. Processing nodes branch off, and the processing only happens where it must (for whatever reason it must). Inventory glut is handled by the logistics network's stats, perhaps finally finding something useful to do with buffer chests. Nothing spoilable loops, ever. All excess spoilables are burned at the end of the line. The excess is a thing of unbridled glory.
That, plus a cut-and-paste do-all bot automall for assembling building materials, and... hmm.
Why do I hear birds singing?
The main thing I took away from it, was to not be afraid to burn anything that can be burned if things got overproduced, otherwise they would get stuck on the belts and become spoiled. My end setup had lots of looping belts and sorters to dispose of excess production of spoilable products
I hated Gleba at first. I have come to love it, and it might be my favorite part of space age. Embrace its organic nature, stop trying to centralize an focus on "flow"...
Nauvis is a monolith, then gleba is micro services...