Lance: Don’t You Touch Her!

Forever indebted to @mostlysignssomeportents for this one. 

Factorio Space Age: Gleba

Since I recently reblogged a post about Gleba, I figured I should go into more depth about it. In a week or two when I graduate I’ll go into more detail about it, but I’ve probably spent the most time of the expansion on Gleba, exploring things like Quality, the circuit network changes, and sushi belts. I admit some of the tech I learned on Gleba ended up being essential for a later rebuild of Fulgora & stuff I learned on space platforms went to Aquilo, and then what I learned there got brought back to space.

Regardless I figured I could share some of the overall lessons I learned on Gleba & beyond during the DLC that helped me “master” Gleba.

-Identifying where spoilage & freshness matters

There’s a total of about 13 items that can spoil, and they spoil into one of six things: iron and copper ores, spoilage, and enemies. As you want iron/copper ores, we can ignore spoilage here, they become the thing you want typically so except in the production loop, this is a good thing. For spoilage, it’s an item, and you should generally assume anything that stores a spoilable item in it, is going to at some point have spoilage in it, and it will need to be removed. EVERYTHING, including things like biolabs. Lastly enemies, they don’t leave behind items so you don’t need to clean out the machines, but you probably don’t want them wandering around, so you likely want some defense to kill them if they show up. They can wreck havoc on things like space platforms or power plants if they get there, but generally they’re more a nuisance than a threat, so long as you don’t let a massive amount spoil at once… (Most I did was let 100 biter eggs spoil in a chest surrounded by lasers. Didn’t even notice it happened).

So clean up spoilage, and handle “Hazmats” (eggs & spawners) with military or disposal methods (pentapod eggs can be burned & biter eggs mulched into nutrients). Another tip for the Hazmats is to not store them in chests unless necessary (rocket silo loading), and to not put them in assemblers/biochambers unless they are the only missing item. I seriously recommend setting agricultural egg inserters to hand size 1 & to only insert if they have bioflux. (Wire the biochamber to the inserter, use read contents & enable/disable). It might slow down your science slightly but it does make it so you don’t need turrets by the science area.

Spoilage itself can be easily disposed of by either converting it inefficiently into nutrients, or burning it in a heating tower. Personally I use nutrient crafting as a spoilage upcycling system to produce high quality spoilage for efficiency modules, or high quality carbon for coal synthesis w/ asteroid mining for the matching sulfur. (I.e it’s a supplement for Legendary plastic for red circuits and LDS shuffling…)

As for where freshness matters, it actually only matters in a few places. Not all recipes do actually inherit their freshness from their parents (bacteria & pentapod eggs are top of my mind, but I think Fish also don’t), nor does freshness matter if the finished product isn’t spoilable. Ultimately freshness only really matters in the items directly connected to lime (agricultural) science as it’s the ONLY item in game that freshness impacts how useful it is. 5% fresh bioflux will feed a biter nest, as will 5% nutrients a biochamber & so on. Freshness only really matters if you need to move something or if it’s for lime science. So generally with that in mind you can send all your near rotten fruit and other spoilables for producing things like ore, rocket fuel, plastic, lubricant, sulfur or carbon fiber.

Another key idea is “shelf-stability”. You generally want to move raw fruit, bioflux & lime science around because they have long shelf lives. You don’t want to move jelly, mash, or nutrients around because of their short shelf life. It’s much easier to move jellynut, yumako, or bioflux instead and all of them are more space efficient to move as well.

-The Spores, Simplicity, & Quality triad

From what I found it is impossible to create a base that is simple, spore-efficient, & produces quality. At best you can do two, and I suspect it is genuinely impossible to do all three because of how they interact.

So I suppose I should define what I mean by these things. Spore efficiency is basically a measure of how much of the fruit products you make turn into spoilage. A more spore efficient base has less products rot. Why? Because the less products that rot, by definition, the more of your harvest WAS used for production rather than was wasted. While spoilage has its own uses, it isn’t ideal for most production in your base, unless you plan on mass producing only coal. Simplicity is how much of a headache setting everything up is. The more circuit conditions, belt priority shenanigans, and other complexities in the build, the less simple it is. And quality production, I mean large scale quality production, which usually relies on inter-step processing to roll up the products.

But wait you might be asking yourself, this implies it’s possible to build a quality base that’s easy without it being a major headache? Yes! Quality lime science is arguably one of the easiest sciences to produce in quality, only truly rivaled by the easy of quality space science in the late game! My first rocket silo of lime science was 1k rare science. This is because pentapod eggs are a catalytic recipe that can take quality modules, and so rolling up a high quality egg once is super easy, and then you just need to keep feeding it with high quality nutrients… which comes from bioflux, the other item you want to raise in quality! And you can even use a spoilage upcycler to supplement this to prevent the eggs from going off. I’ll show off a surprisingly easy to design base for producing rare quality science in the early Gleba game sometime later when I show off some Gleba designs.

However I do need to point out that the triad does inherently conflict. Trying to reduce spoilage amounts by simply reducing fruit in caused quality to stall. Trying to get quality up again caused it to become more complex, making a newer less-complex design required me to gut quality… you have to decide WHAT you value going in.

So for my MP base I decided I would cut quality, and focus on spore efficiency, as I wanted to produce the most science with the least spores, as I couldn’t rely on Tesla Turrets from Fulgora to protect me.

-Spore efficiency maximization

One of the best ways to actually improve spore efficiency is to start at the fruit production itself. Every second a raw fruit is waiting around, it is getting one step closer to rotting. Why harvest if you don’t need to? Keeping planting going without harvesting is simple if you keep in mind that agricultural towers prefer to plant first, then harvest. So if you wire the tower to anything, and set it to output inventory & only work when seeds > 0, it will only work when it has seeds in it, and will prefer planting first. Which means it will only harvest if there are no plantable spots and you put seeds in. Which means you can control harvesting by controlling when an inserter loads seeds in. So have the inserter only put seeds in when you need more fruit (you can use a circuit condition, like fruit less than 50 (one harvest) to determine when to start a harvest and load seeds in one at a time, if this is your only condition, you’ll probably produce 2-4 stacks at a time depending on your inserters).

Likewise… if you control when you process the raw fruit into jelly/mash then you can again further reduce spoilage. You can use a similar method to the harvest, but by turning off the biochambers for those lines. This reduces fruit usage, which will decrease tower usage & spore output… yet since you only produce the jelly/mash when needed, the assembly line shouldn’t actually slow down. What might happen though is that your power production dips because you’re not burning as much spoilage.

Well that’s a very easy fix. Gleba has the CHEAPEST rocket fuel recipe in the game, especially if you look at the fuel values of its ingredients. It is the ONLY power positive rocket fuel recipe in the game without productivity, and it has a default 50% bonus to it too! Literally no other rocket fuel recipe can get that bonus except the base recipe which requires exported biochambers to Nauvis! (Or Fulgora technically, but why would you do that? Oil is free there) Which is its own nightmare. So you can actually just burn rocket fuel for power in a heating tower! Which has a 250% fuel efficiency, meaning 100 Mj of chemical energy (one rocket fuel) becomes 250 MJ of electrical power! Excluding startup costs for the heating towers.

Well I’d recommend against burning all your rocket fuel because that’d just gobble it all up, but what you can do is measure the temperatures of your heating towers, and if they drop below a certain threshold (I recommend at least 600 degrees) to feed in rocket fuel.

Since I hooked up this failsafe to my power plant the only blackout I had was when I accidentally burned all my yumako seeds and stalled the entire factory, and it took almost an hour for it to begin to get close to a brownout, and it hadn’t when I found out the problem (I had an alarm if the power plant went critically cold (all towers below 600 degrees), so I could intervene before power goes out)

How you decide to reduce spoilage from here is up to you. I decided on my second run to just dead end belts and extract spoilage rather than run them all to the incinerator, so that lines could just pull half rotted mash/jelly for things like lube and ore. Only bioflux has a flowthrough section, and I overbuilt lime science & eggs so it never backs up there either (I’d much rather have rotting lime science than make half rotten lime science)

-Finally… solving the “How do I load my freshest items into a rocket?”

This is much easier than people think. It takes 2 chests, a logistics provider of some flavor (I use red) & a steel chest (wood/iron would work too). I then place the chests a tile apart, and have the inserter wired to the logistics chest. It’s set that if I have more than my desired storage amount (usually one rocket’s worth, sometimes two rockets) it grabs the MOST SPOILED item from the provider and puts it into the steel chest. This removes the item from the logistics network (and the rocket silo therefore) which will turn the inserter back off if the chest no longer has more than enough for the rocket launches requested & reduces the average spoil time of the chest. This is key. The individual items are still spoiling, I’m not managing to magically remove spoilage, but I am reducing the average spoil amount. When a rocket comes, it takes the items from the provider chest and it will gradually fill up again. Since only the freshest 1k items are typically available, this means I always load the freshest items I have. I could then feed in some items back from that “rotting chest” if I wanted to, but I find it’s more trouble than it’s worth, and I’d rather just produce a fresh 1k usually… I might play around with feeding it back in, but I only do this with science… extracted bioflux in this system gets fed into production elsewhere, instead of into a secondary chest. The whole point of the chest was just to act as a large storage vessel for composing science to spoilage.

Anyways, as someone who actually liked Gleba I talked about everything I can without getting into the specifics of like… how to build Gleba with bots, belts or trains… which I would love to cover at some point, because I do think there are too many content creators out there that don’t do Gleba justice… (Looking at Nilaus… I died inside when I saw he just plopped down a bot-base and a parameterized biochamber mall essentially. Dosh likewise also disappointed me on his OG Space Age run with his Gleba (import based) and Fulgora (bot based). I did love Doc Jade’s nightmare scrap train Fulgora though. He understood that the most fun can be had in the creativity of a solution, not necessarily the efficiency)

So I added a cipher to VFD

So the story called VFD actually needed an end cipher to it, and since I forgot it, here it is:

Omht xdt fv jsh ytrm hojxhn, fqjykzw gjtu juhix.

So happy solving. Or if you’re lazy here’s the key:

VFD

Not cool dude, but I understand, it was a hard key.

D I P P E R   P I N E S   x   5 0

Yes actually! That was part of 51.08 I think? It was a very recent change like 2-3 minor updates ago, I think it was 2 months now? It’s significantly more balanced, and I’ve got a 5 year fort and find it really isn’t that profitable to sell food anymore. Like the only meals that sell well are masterworks with huge serving numbers, and my cooks don’t make many of those. They make plenty of masterworks, and even use stuff like flour & cheese, which used to guarantee expensive meals, and my typical prepared food barrel is like 300-500 value. A far cry from the 3000-5000 days. I still make the meals and occasionally sell 1-2 of them, but you can no longer just buy out a caravan from meals alone. As much as it hurt my early game economy, it rewards diversifying your economy, and ironically I find it’s much easier to manage my forts when I can’t use food to explode the fort’s value for huge migrant waves. It took 5 years to grow to a duchy, and I still only have a population of 140 or so dwarves, and the goblin sieges are much smaller too. Granted I do get more titans and semi-mega beast attacks, but I feel a lot less strain on my military and fort. I still only really have one squad of half-competent axedwarves defending the fort, and they’re clad in a mishmash of junk. Too busy actually building the fort than having to focus on building a strong army to defend… fancy food.

It’s ironic how much I like that change despite having definitely abused the system historically. Nowadays I run like five different industries for my economy, chief among them a “distressed” clothing chain. I just really like setting up the whole tailoring and dyeing chains

Playing Dwarf Fortress, and so are a few of my friends now, so I figured I’d document some common pitfalls I know of, and how to avoid them.

Strange Moods:

-Best way to handle these?

First, build one of each of the following workshops: Craftsdwarfshop, Carpenter’s, Stoneworker’s, forge (either kind), jewelers, glass kiln (any kind), kiln (any kind), bowyers, mechanics, leatherworks, & clothiers. This is all the different types of workshops a dwarf may claim. Don’t worry about fueling a workshop, moods don’t need fuel.

Second, ideally try to keep a supply of at least one of the following items: A boulder, a log, a block, a bone, a cloth, metal bar, an uncut gem, a tanned hide, raw glass, and a cut gem. This is roughly all materials a dwarf may demand for their artifact. Tbh, you *can* cut gems (or polish stones) when a mood occurs, but it’s easier to keep a few on hand prior. Generally they need one item based off the workshop type they claim, then the rest seems to be somewhat random/based on their likes. Each time they collect an item for their artifact, it resets the timer for insanity. Generally in my experience dwarves really tend to grab boulders a LOT. But that’s based off my total experience, my recent experience has been a lot of bars, so it depends on what the dwarf’s workshop chosen is. I’ve been having a lot more metal required because most of my artifacts have come from my metalsmiths

If they’ve been standing at the workshop for a while, bring up their menu and see if they’re crafting the object, or shouting. If they’re shouting, it will cycle through hints or outright stating what the dwarf wants for their artifact. Generally artifacts are WORTH getting a hold of because it gives the dwarf a significant skill boost & a high value item. Worst case you put it in a display case somewhere to boost room value

Animals:

-My animal starved to death!

This only happens to grazers. You need to set up a pasture somewhere with some kind of growth on the soil. At the beginning you’re going to be limited to the green surface grass. If you want to keep them underground, you’re going to have to dig into one of the caverns, which will trigger some sort of fungal growth on underground natural tiles within your fort. Surprisingly as it may seem, this is perfectly safe for your farm animals to eat. Generally a rule of thumb is, if it is egg laying, or smaller than a dog, it is not a grazer, and does not need soil/some grass like substance to survive.

-My animal starved to death in a cage. Why won’t my dwarves move it!

So, going with the above, a pasture zone must be marked, and then animals must be assigned to those areas. After setting up a pasture, click the icon with a plus over a horse to assign animals to it. Any semi-domesticated animal can be assigned to a pasture.

-Why won’t my chickens lay eggs

They need a nest box to lay eggs in. Generally place a pasture somewhere (I like to do it underground as I have yet to find a grazing egg-layer) and build nest boxes there. Dwarves will automatically harvest eggs from the boxes, including fertile ones which may make farming for leather/meat harder. You can seal the room and forbid entry until the eggs hatch, and then forbid them, or have no stockpiles accepting eggs. Then eggs will only be taken by cooks, and only when they’re cooking.

Migrants:

If you are struggling attracting migrants, a major factor is your exports. Basically fortress wealth, and wealth exported are two of the factors that determine your migrant waves, the last factor is the health of your civilization, which is basically just the population. Weirdly enough, migrants are built different, as I’ve played in dying civs (one SURFACE fort with 20 dwarves, this was the only NPC settlement for my Civ) and had migrant waves of 30+ dwarves. Basically the more high value goods you make, and the more you trade them, particularly with the home caravan, the more migrants you’ll get.

Children:

Dwarves only produce children if they’re married, and the parents have time to… get intimate. Fortunately the getting intimate is more “having idle time in a bedroom together” at which point, if it’s a married male/female pair, the female will become pregnant. The game does not display information on pregnancy at all, and all pregnant creatures will just carry on their normal business until they give birth, at which point a dwarf will abandon her current task to “seek infant” at which point they will pop out a baby, you will get a notification of this, and they will pick the child up and go back to doing tasks. Dwarves are capable of having multiples, and I have seen twins, triplets, and even a very weird case of quadruplets… which is its own story.

Trading:

Of the four types of civilizations that exist, you can trade with 3 of them. Elves trade in the spring, humans in the summer, and dwarves in the autumn. Each offer different advantages… mostly… to trading with them.

-Elves:

Generally the most annoying and least useful trading partners. Trading them anything made from wood or an animal product upsets them, instantly ending the trades, and sending them home. If this happens enough, they will declare war and begin sieging your fort. Generally elves are great for selling low-quality stone, (green) glass, or metal objects to. Silk and cloth can be safely traded, but yarn cannot. Generally it’s best practice to only trade rock, green glass, and metal objects to avoid offending them. Due to elves not sending merchant nobles to negotiate, they have no export requests for better trading, and you cannot request imports from them. Despite this, they can make an excellent source of exotic animals, cheap barrels, or offer a way to trade rock crafts for food.

-Humans

Humans know a good deal, and actually care about trade. Humans tend to reach out among the first outsider civs to trade with you. They don’t always send a merchant nobles, but once you have a baron or higher, they tend to much more frequently. Humans are amazing trading partners as they offer unique trading resources from dwarves. They have no offendable rules either, but they actually do defend their goods. They can be reliable for exporting in rare crops, seeds, or other materials, and they will happily trade you pretty much anything they have access to. So while you can’t get steel from them, you can get surface crops, more varied animals, and bladeweed dye and other fabrics.

-Dwarves

Without player intervention, you will only usually receive a Dwarven caravan from your home Civ. You can by contacting other Dwarven civs get other civs to send merchants to your fort as well. Dwarven caravans are much like human caravans, but carry steel. They also only carry crops and items unique to their Civ, which is usually pretty much exactly the same as yours. Dwarves do also send merchants to negotiate import/export deals as well, notably the outpost liaison being your factions representative.

-Getting new trading partners

Send a squad out to an uncontacted Civ and set the mission to “demand one-time tribute” civs either pay the tribute, or reject it, and it seems to have little impact on the civ’s opinion of you/your fort. Once this is done, they can start, and often do, sending caravans your way when the correct season starts.

-Getting better trade goods/merchant nobles

Traders bring more goods the more profitable trading was with you historically. So the more you trade, the more they bring. So if a trader brings nothing of interest to you, you buy nothing, and they leave, next year, they are likely to bring even LESS. So to prevent this, it can be a good idea to buy things even if they aren’t that useful. I commonly try to buy all the food I can from the merchants, as I can usually use it, and it encourages the merchants to take more items, which can end up being items like codexes/scrolls that I really want. Likewise the more successful the trades are, the more likely they are to send a noble for trade agreements. They don’t always send them though, so it is possible to miss them for a few years, even when trading seems to be going fine.

Hospitals:

-You will need a hospital before you think you do. But you do not need a Good one really. A basic hospital is something like a few beds & tables in a room together. You should also have a water source, some buckets, a textile industry, and some splints/canes. The only specialty thing you really need is a single traction bench. Just make a table, rope and mechanism, and combine them for a traction bench at a mechanics. Soap isn’t strictly necessary early on, nor is having security in the hospital. Bleeding out on the hospital floor is a major improvement to bleeding out anywhere else.

-Soap

It reduces infections and will lower mortality rates, but generally a hospital itself will do a more significant job at that. Still if you need to make it, you need at least 5 buildings roughly. Soap needs lye, which needs ash and needs to be made in an Ashery and a wood furnace respectively. Soap also needs either an oil, or a tallow. Oil is made at a screw press from certain plants, tallow is made at a kitchen from roasting fat. Fat is gathered at a butcher from butchering (animal) corpses

This is it for part 1. If there’s other questions or tips, I can do a part 2

YOU JUST GOT HERE AND YOU'RE ALREADY HORNY ON MAIN?!

16

Post your follower count right now

525

I need this on my tumblr

👀🍋💛💛💛

Gabriel: If i put the word ‘Dark’ in front of that, will i still be able to transform?

Nooroo: …yes i suppose?

Gabriel: …Cool

^ from this post

Here you go @incorporatedmii!! Have I already told you that I love your AU???