I have a large dislike for Gleba, and the list of grievances is long my friend! In order.

First, the enemies. I don’t mind biters, you can build walls and by the time you launch a rocket, no biter will ever enter your base. Gleba has stompers. These buggers take a beating, and each step they take breaks stuff. Walls are meaningless. And you need to farm material from quite a ways, so the spaces you need to defend are massive. You need lightning guns that have AE/stun attacks and they are constantly firing. Turning on no enemies mode is awesome!

Second is that nearly everything you can produce on this planet has a spoiler timer. There are only 2 practical items you can ship off planet as they have 15m+ timers. The rest you need to have built-in off-ramps to remove spoilage. It means you cannot truly have a main bus, and instead mini-factories that are rate controlled to reduce the chances of spoilage.

Third, the Biochamber is the only way to build anything here, and it takes nutrients as a power source, which you guessed right, spoil. Creating nutrients is a fun little challenge, as it starts off being from spoilage itself, then you realize Bioflux prints it for free.

Balancing items #2 and #3 are a fun little puzzle. Trains are useless here, and only robots can get stuff around quick enough without spaghetti belts to actually be optimal. It takes 200 or so running at all times to keep the basics going. Everything becomes modular, so you can’t really add 1 or 2 buildings, but a cluster of them to keep it working. The end result is a very organic factory, with dedicated cells. I really do think that this is an amazing design achievement.

Having #1 around meant that I was always under attack and non-stop messages about armies attacking my base. I had a ship just flying between Gleba and Fulgora for lightning ammo and to replace busted pieces. It was also an absolutely massive power draw. Without enemies, Gleba is actually fun!

Sure, shipping the spoiling science packs requires some extra math, but it works! Power issues are non-existent. Supply is easy (mind you collecting Pentapod eggs is it’s own journey), expansion is simple, and the planet went by in a relative jiffy. The items research unlocks are extremely useful – access to Aquilo obviously, but also stack inserters (amazing for Vulcanus), essentially free plastic/rocket fuel from Gleba, rocket turrets (needed to get to Aquilo), and Biolabs (which give a 50% bonus to research production).

Next step is not actually Aquilo but:

• building a farming space ship to put above Aquilo, since the planet has no natural resources
• building a space ship to go to/from Aquilo
• moving all research production from Nauvis to Vulcanus
• getting Biolabs
• Upgrading Nauvis to use Foundries + getting enough calcite to make it run
• Starting the build of a legendary farming station. It takes a long time to build and I’d rather have it ready for when I need it.

Let’s go!