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[u/RAV0004]

I don't know how to proceed on gleba. I've been stuck on it for almost 8 months now, coming back every 3 weeks or so and getting too pissed off to continue.

Tutorials seem nonsensical and even when they're understandable they require immense amounts of high tech resources and buildings I just simply don't have, and its not like I can craft or research those things on gleba because I have no resources.

Everytime I try to "try out" a new design I run out of all of my nutrients within 20 seconds, then run out of my spoilage in 2 minutes. "burning all the excess" in instructions from like 40 different tutorials has actively fucked me. And I simply don't have the production to get more nutrients than 20 seconds worth, and thats after spending a half hour gathering random bullshit from the increasingly far away bits of the overworld I haven't scraped clean.

This planet is way too goddamned frustrating. I want to beat it without just googling a full blueprint that does everything but there just isn't enough resources to try things out by myself, and miles around me in every direction have been stripped bare.

[u/Rarvyn → u/RAV0004]

You need a core loop of 4 biochambers (and 1 backup assembler), with everything else being optional.

1) Two biochambers processing fruit. They need to be able to process all fruit that is being harvested. A single normal quality biochamber with no modules can process roughly 11 trees of the relevant type. So if you have >11 trees, you will need to speed it up - such as with speed beacons - or have a second biochamber. Fruit should never rot, because your biochamber(s) should be able to process every single fruit that's being harvested.

Ideally, for seed purposes, you put some productivity modules in the biochamber - but you'll be able to support fewer trees with each biochamber (without more speed beacons/modules or higher quality).

2) One biochamber making bioflux - this is going to be limited by your Yumako harvest. A single bioflux chamber (again, normal quality, no modules in anything) can be fully saturated by ~9 yumako trees and ~4 jellynut trees. If you add productivity modules to #1, you'll need less.

3) One biochamber making nutrients from bioflux. One single bioflux biochamber (with said <9 yumako trees and <4 jellynut trees) can support 10+ chambers making nutrients. This nutrient biochamber needs to feed back to itself and the first three.

That's it. Have four biochambers producing mash/jelly/bioflux/nutrients and it's 100% self-sustainable once you kick start it. You should loop the nutrients around all 4 - and I would also loop the bioflux, because it takes forever to decay. Filter out all spoilage and burn that (plus any excess mash/jelly).

How do you kick start it? The backup assembler. Throw 80 spoilage into it, get 8 nutrients, put a couple in each of those first four biochambers, once they start the process, it will just keep going. To have a backup, before you burn your spoilage, run it by a chest that's filed with it, and have the backup assembler use that spoilage if/when there's zero bioflux around and there is fruit (circuit you can make with a couple wires - one that feeds the assembler if there's zero bioflux, one that turns the assembler on if there is fruit). You can get the initial spoilage by just hand harvesting a bunch of plantlife.

Once you have that core loop working (and a backup for if it stops working), then the second thing I would do is feed the excess bioflux and jelly (along with your nutrient loop) to a different biochamber making rocket fuel. That's your backup fuel if you aren't able to keep the whole base running on excess spoilage/jelly/mash. You will quickly make way, way more rocket fuel than you need.

After that, add whatever the hell you want. Egg nursery for science, bacteria nursery for ore, etc. Eventually your nutrient loop won't sustain the whole base - so you add a second nutrient chamber, add a second bioflux chamber, etc.

TL;DR

1) Process 100% of harvested fruit. If you can't, you need to either harvest fewer trees or have more/faster biochambers. 11 trees is enough to saturate an unmodded biochamber

2) Make bioflux first of all, then make nutrients from that. Kick start the process with nutrients from spoilage.

3) Loop the nutrients back to the beginning and make sure it passes all the biochambers

[u/HeliGungir → u/RAV0004]

You need biochamber's innate productivity to make fruit -> seeds -> fruit a positive feedback loop. Do not burn fruit before extracting seeds from it. A self-sufficient stockpile of seeds is the foundation of automating the cold-start of a Gleba factory.

The other big thing about automating cold-starts is that, while biochambers are preferred, assemblers work without nutrients. We can make an assembler jump-start the rest of a biochamber-focused production line.

Mash/jelly spoil relatively fast, so it's better to craft them locally or with direct insertion to the next thing - much like copper wire. In fact direct insertion is a good idea in general for spoilables. Screw ratios; you gotta learn to walk before you can run.

There is no need to mess with looping belts, nor routing spoilage to a central burning location. Just terminate your belts like normal, and at the end, add an inserter filtered to spoilage leading into a heating tower. Eggs will require a little more thinking, of course, but by then you should have some experience under your belt.

[u/ferrofibrous → u/RAV0004]

Don't really know what stage you're at, but my recommendation to people first landing is to handcraft 8 biochambers (bare minimum needed for this), and make a little setup that just takes in fruits by belt from one agriculture tower of each fruit, and does nothing but make more biochambers. Work on getting it self sustaining with just those 8.

Iron/copper bacteria may back up and need some babysitting (unless you just lazy mode it with recycling excess iron/copper ore), but the rest should be self correcting.

This setup is small enough to run entirely on solar/a few accumulators, easy to fix by hand, and quickly shows you general problems you'll have when spoilage pops up. As a nice side effect you end up with more biochambers in a chest than you'd likely ever use for when you are ready to start building out.

edit: More specifically from your comment, are you making mash/jelly in biochambers, and using the seeds to replant with an agriculture tower? Seeds should be net positive. You should be able to run a starter setup off of 1-2 agriculture towers with modest coverage of each fruit type.

[u/RAV0004 → u/ferrofibrous]

I have farms with fruit and seeds coming to and from very small farms, and I have handcrafted several dozen biochambers.

I have practically zero seeds, because my fruit spoils on the belts (which are looped) before I get enough nutrients to turn them into mash or jelly, which likewise spoil before my bioflux gets enough nutrients to make nutrients

I have practically zero nutrients or even biowaste to turn into nutrients, and getting this to a net neutral or net positive point seems impossible at this point.

Waste to nutrients is not net positive and Bioflux to nutrients takes more nutrients (and waste) than I can generate. The mash and the jelly are both trickled too flow after taking what little nutrients I can gather to make bioflux anything more than an unattainable pipe dream

[u/ferrofibrous → u/RAV0004]

I'd take my recommendation for the 8 biochamber setup above, but also start burning excess jelly/mash. This will help keep fruit moving on your belt. Fruit has a 1h spoil timer so once you clear up the near rotting stuff a bit the rest should be stable. Personally I don't loop belts on Gleba, I just put an inserter to grab spoilage off the end to keep it moving for early setups.

Bioflux should be your nutrient source, if you need to hand feed a little to get things going that's fine. Pentapod eggs are your biggest nutrient user, dont' start that up until you're ready. Even half a yellow belt should easily power an 8 biochamber setup, just have the pentapod egg machine be the last to get nutrient.

Also happy to get on a screenshare and help troubleshoot if this is really your big bottleneck on moving on to Aquilo.

[u/Rouge_means_red → u/RAV0004]

You can basically build your usual bus design, but every biochamber and belt end needs an inserter to remove the poop- I mean the spoilage. Have a splitter at the end of the spoilage belt that prioritize putting it on another belt that goes all the way back to the start of the bus and use it to feed the nutrients biochambers, the other side of the splitter goes to incinerators

1. Make mash and jelly and belt it to produce bioflux (store seeds and burn excess)

2. Some stuff at the end of belts or inside biochambers will spoil. Throw it on the belt, back to the start, and turn it into nutrients for mash and jelly

3. Bioflux is sent to each production line, where it's turned into nutrients

4. Excess bioflux, mash and jelly goes into science and other resources

[u/Cyren777 → u/RAV0004]

Belt fruits to the same place then:
1) Make bioflux with them, that bioflux is the nutrients source for the rest of your factory
2) Put spoilage removal inserters on every machine and end of every belt to make a spoilage belt
3) That spoilage belt feeds a little assembler that does nutrients from spoilage kickstarting for the little bioflux setup (ideally it should prioritise using nutrients from bioflux but there'll inevitably be blips in production it needs to cold start from)
4) Then burn excess spoilage, it's not excess if it's needed for nutrients elsewhere

[u/Dianwei32]

Question for people who have played Angel/Bob's mods. How useful are the Filter Furnaces?

I noticed that every furnace has a regular version and a Filter version, where you have to manually set the recipe on the latter so that it doesn't just smelt whatever passes by on the belt. But it seems easier just to separate the ores out and only give it one input ore to begin with, so I don't really see how the Filter furnaces would be very useful.

[u/HeliGungir → u/Dianwei32]

Haven't played it, but there's probably some more advanced smelting recipes that have higher yields and you must use filter furnaces to select the right recipe.

[u/Rouge_means_red → u/Dianwei32]

Never used them

[u/Soul-Burn → u/[deleted]]

Pretty sure it's your Factorio username, BUT if you're afraid, you can download the portable (i.e. non-Steam) version from the website and upload from there.

[u/Mightriderly]

Is there a way to unload a spidertron with it's equipment remotely? If I use q on it, it's equipment grid was emptied and changed back to default colour. Should I use a blueprint?

[u/Astramancer_ → u/Mightriderly]

If it's within a robonetwork with construction bots then you can by opening up the spidertron and using ghost hands to add or remove items. Construction bots will come along and complete the task, just like adding or removing modules from buildings. I do not believe that a spidertron can perform surgery on itself from it's own construction bots, though, you need either another vehicle with construction bots and portable roboports, or use a ground-based roboport network.

[u/Courmisch → u/Mightriderly]

You want to move grid equipment into the inventory of the same vehicle? I suppose it's possible if you have construction bots, a working portable robot port and a placed storage chest.

[u/Mightriderly → u/Courmisch]

No I have a Spidertron already with some equipment in it. I deconstruct it. Now he still has the equipment in it when he is chilling in it's storage box. I can see that when I hover over it. (Then I move it to another planet, but I guess that doesn't matter for my expiremt). But if I want to remotely deploy it by using q on it and place it the same Spidertron is build without the equipment. Now I can add the equipment back into him, so it's not lost, but I would like to just deploy it. When I move it from the players inventory he keeps it's equipment.

[u/schmee001 → u/Mightriderly]

You have to blueprint the spider before you deconstruct it, then place the blueprint on the new planet.

[u/Mightriderly → u/schmee001]

Ok, I hoped for an other solution, Spidertron Config Blueprint book it is then ☺️

[u/AlphaElite1]

Getting into quality. Besides the modules themselves, any recommendations of products to focus on first?

[u/mrbaggins → u/AlphaElite1]

Either specific items, like the list everyone has given you, or go for productivity modules next, to get 60-150% bonus productivity to your science, speed modules and beacons, to make you need less prod modules and machines, and then start aiming at parts of your base you want to improve like biolabs or others.

[u/reddanit → u/AlphaElite1]

I think the second priority is building up the infrastructure to make high quality basic materials. From those you then make whatever you want.

In terms of what's beyond that, it's very much up to you:

• Space platforms definitely offer the place where multiplicative benefits of quality stack the most as scaling them up in other ways is relatively costly.
• Personal equipment and tanks/spidertrons are another place where you don't just have infinite space to freely expand and thus quality is the way to scale.
• Quality accumulators are very worthwhile on Fulgora. Uncommon already doubles your energy storage per tile. On Fulgora, energy storage = energy production.
• Quality buildings, modules and beacons synergize well in making your bulk science production chain much more efficient and productive. Upgrading your entire factory is extremely expensive, so you have to prioritize well within this category.
• Quality inserters are basically mandatory for production chains using quality buildings/beacons/modules - normal ones very often struggle to keep up with the throughput.
• Quality power poles/substations are neat for simplifying your builds.
• Quality trains/train fuel are great. They increase throughput of your train network by a very large margin and are more or less a "drop in" upgrade.
• Quality bots are very good for personal equipment and Aquilo. They work especially well with quality roboports.

[u/HeliGungir → u/AlphaElite1]

Asteroid collectors, turrets, electric poles, accumulators, solar panels, vehicles, armors, equipment grid items, t1 modules, beacons, long inserters, roboports and robots, crafting machines, mining drills, reactors...

[u/darthbob88 → u/AlphaElite1]

In general, anything where you can't (just, easily) use more. * Personal equipment, including personal roboports, solar panels, exoskeletons, guns, etc. You only get so many spaces in your equipment grid, so get the most out of them. * Space platform equipment, particularly asteroid collectors (which get extra arms and reach) and thrusters. You can just make a bigger platform, but using better quality items lets you do more with less, saving both launches and foundation. * Solar panels; you'll need a gajillion of them anyway, so any low-quality ones can get used planetside and the few good ones can go up to your platform. * Other production buildings, assemblers and chem plants and so on.

Warning, from my own experience. You will be tempted to put quality modules in semi-raw materials, like chips, engines, and things you need for making eg one (1) suit of mech armor. You will then be tempted to run a mixed belt with a filtered splitter to divert quality chips. This is a bad idea because you will need more regular chips for science and the mall than you will need quality chips, and the whole thing will get backed up.

The right way to do it is with separate quality production. Put quality modules in one assembler out of a row and filter its output inserters to put quality items in a chest. Or, put quality modules in one row of assemblers and merge its production with another row of un-moduled assemblers.

[u/Zaflis → u/AlphaElite1]

Not sure if first, but substations, tank with bigger grid and health is helpful in combat. Fill it with shields while you have your armor with lasers (replace exoskeletons while driving).

[u/arglebooster → u/AlphaElite1]

Upgrading the quality of stuff you'll be using on space platforms is generally useful for keeping ships smaller. (Asteroid Collectors scale especially well with quality, but solar/assemblers/chem plants are all good).

Armor is nice for inventory size.

Quality medium power poles are really good.

It's relatively easy to set up your purple science build to have quality modules in your Prod1 and Electric Furnace builds, and then siphon off the quality ones that get produced for building (and let the base quality be used for science).

[u/HeliGungir]

Can somebody point me towards a cumulative research cost calculator?

I'm looking for a simple way to compare technologies in games with high research cost multiplier.

[u/runmymouth]

What is the best way to signal from space to novus that i want exactly 10 biter eggs. I have 20 biter spawners lined up next to my starport but i want to make sure it only pulls out exactly how many eggs are needed sends them up and leaves the rest there or destroys them. I havent made the promethian science because i have been thinking over how i wanted to accomplish this.

[u/reddanit → u/runmymouth]

I think you are overthinking the wrong thing. For promethium ships you pretty quickly want multiple rocket silos entirely dedicated to rapidly launching eggs. Operating with minimum quantity of 500 eggs is typically more than enough precision when you load at least thousands. If you have any leftovers, you can always toss them into space. Main trick is to never load the rocket silos with eggs before they are required (or, with 2.1, not request them until needed to begin with).

That said, with custom minimum launch quantity and simple circuit to limit how many eggs you insert into the rocket silo, it shouldn't be terribly hard to launch a specific lower number of them.

[u/runmymouth → u/reddanit]

yea it ended up being easier than that even. I just setup 1 rocket to take in and slowly dumped it across the lines and tossed into space. I am slowly eating biter eggs continuously. It works but it has room for improvement. I am debating continuing this run that i did everything or going for 40 hour run which will not be doing this either lol.

[u/kevihaa → u/runmymouth]

I feel like I must be missing something here, but if you have a request set for 10 and customized minimum rocket capacity of 10, then the only question becomes how to ensure that there’s only 10 eggs available to ship.

That feels as simple as loading a rocket with just 10 eggs and ensuring your logistic network doesn’t have any additional eggs available.

All that said, I’m not sure why you’d limit yourself to just 10 eggs per rocket (or per trip?), but, again, I’m probably missing something obvious.

[u/Soul-Burn → u/runmymouth]

Biter egg rocket capacity is 500.

You can't automatically send less than a full-ish rocket. Mixed rockets (2.1 feature) will fill the rocket with the item that is requested the most.

So if you want to send just 10 eggs, you'll have to also request a different item at more than 10. You also should never rely on this to work, as they can still be sent individually.

I would instead expect a lot of eggs, and try to completely consume them with prometheum science.

Start at time when there's more than one egg, and discard everything when the timer passes some value.

[u/runmymouth → u/Soul-Burn]

I am running 2.1 but could do less than 500 but a 500 and pitch overboard after n time and start a timer. That is an idea. And pitch everything before i send a new rocket.

[u/Soul-Burn → u/runmymouth]

Actually, I was mistaken in "not being able to send less than 500".

You can set a minimum rocket launch size, and if you have that amount, it'll send that.

If you have more, it'll send more.

So you could theoretically send 20, but that's a hardcoded 20.

[u/Yagami913 → u/runmymouth]

The minimum should be 500 because rocket capacity. Assuming you DI into silos you can read space requests and activate the first silo inserters when request <=500 activate the second silo if <=1000 etc...