I am loving this mod and am maybe 5 hours into it. I've got red science automated, both kinds farm going, and a stone patch going. I got iron bacteria cultivated and am going to do copper, next, heading toward green science. For reference, I've beaten Space Age twice and vanilla twice, and played about 400 hours total.

Here's a post on what I am running into. For others trying the mod, I am sprinkling early-game tips throughout if you would like them.

I am finding the enemies pretty overpowering at first and even found it hard to log in due to not being sure what to even try. With red science only, your equipment will be heavy armor, yellow bullets, and a shotgun. I find I cannot kill a single strafer with 4 gun turrets and my own SMG, now a stomper. I also tried the shotgun on the strafer and didn't do any better.

Biters, by the way, are not trouble at all. They seem tuned just right: they are just hard enough that you have to be careful, but they are easy if you are paying attention to them and use turrets smartly.

Just to throw out some ideas about the difficult enemies:

• Maybe the "small" versions of these can be made easier than in the unmodded game, e.g. no damage reduction for physical.
• Maybe the strafers and stompers can be missing until pollution gets going further. You still need a few egg rafts for biochambers somehow.
• Maybe the space ship crash from the base game can be added to the mod, and the wreckage you get a care package to get started. For example, maybe you get 50 rockets and a rocket launcher. Or, for laughs, you get some late game weapon like one single tesla coil and have to really make it last until you can rebuild on your own.
• Maybe you land in a little garden of eden area, similar to the landing on Vulcanus, where there are no enemies.

I found several things hard to discover that are really important for getting going.

First, I had trouble with pentapod eggs at first. In the unmodded game, I go kill a nest and get eggs by hand until I get to the point of making science and automating production. Since I cannot kill even the smallest strider or stomper, yet, what does one do? I eventually learned that there are unguarded nests floating around. This is fine once you figure it out, especially if pentapod egg breeding is already unlocked (I think so and I am going to try that next). This would be something that perhaps a starting area care package could help with, e.g. a pentapod shells around with some starter eggs.

Second, I did not realize there are stone patches at all. I thought I had to harvest them by hand until I unlock lubricant and get it from scrap. It really opened up the game to realize there are stone patches after all, but they are hard to see due to the graphics in the game being generally hard to distinguish.

Also, I had a hard time getting enough iron since I am harvesting it by hand and need to make a lot of belts due to the smallest possible factory needing to connect to two kinds of farm. This is probably less of a big deal if pentapod eggs get easier, making biochambers easier. Copper, on the other hand, I am overflowing with. I have to make myself not pick it up any more due to having several boxes of copper ore and not much use for it yet.

I love the mod overall. Here's why:

1. I love the early game experience and am excited to do it on Gleba. I want to try "gleba start" some time for a similar reason.
2. It is neat to see the planet without night vision goggles. Some of the trees glow prettily at night.
3. I love having some slightly new recipes and tech-tree sequences to experiment with.
4. Gleba is special in general, and I look forward to a larger build out that one normally does in the base game.
5. It's weird and funny, somehow, to have all these things on Gleba that are normally on other planets. The biters surprised me but are so silly to see on Gleba that I just love it.

Finally, here are some getting started tips, for any who want them.

1. Ignore scrap at first. You are going to need lubricant, which you don't have yet.
2. Plan to get power by burning mash and/or jellynut fruit. You can feed your burners from trees and spoilage while you are getting this set up.
3. I think (not verified yet) you have pentapod egg breeding right from the start. Once you get two pentapod eggs, make a biochamber and then start breeding eggs in it. Use those to make more biochambers.
4. You can't beat the strafers or stompers with just red science technology. Don't waste time trying until you have green science upgrades.

I ended up giving up on this run. I made it a long way just staying away from the pentapods, but eventually a stomper just casually walked through a farm and just left a trail of destruction behind it. It wasn't even a fight. I had unlocked red ammo but still found the stompers to just not care.

What do people do about enemies in the early game on this mod? If I try again, I suppose the thing is just to go faster? The biters are easy, just like on Nauvis. The pentapods will somewhat leave you alone until your pollution cloud grows, so maybe just by going faster, you can get to rockets and have a weapon that can realistically beat them?

I can disable the enemies but somewhat dislike just turning off a feature of the mod.

Hi there,

Thanks for the feedback. It is a pretty ruthless opening, and is often on the backfoot. I had to move my base away from the original spot I picked, just because of the proximity to early pentapod nests. To get by I also limited my scale until I had the means to defend myself better. By the time I had stompers spawning, I had access to the tank and roboports for repairs in the worst case scenario, otherwise I was proactively wiping pentapod nests within my cloud.

That said - if it's so tough to give up a run, I'm inclined to think it's tuned too tough. I like the idea of tweaking small pentapod resistances across the board - it would make life a lot easier without changing pace completely, or dropping in additional tools. (I don't really like the idea of a "care package" at spawn, since it will be impossible to gauge correctly. Some players can get by without it, and it may trivialise the early and mid game, while others will lean on it like a crutch and just delay losing until later)

Regarding some other points though:

First, I had trouble with pentapod eggs at first. In the unmodded game, I go kill a nest and get eggs by hand until I get to the point of making science and automating production. Since I cannot kill even the smallest strider or stomper, yet, what does one do?

In the absence of any other mods, Only Gleba (in the same way as vanilla space age) spawns "small" pentapod egg rafts which only spawn wrigglers. These spawn in the immediate vicinity of your land site, and are by far the easiest way to get access to pentapod eggs without having to engage stompers or striders.

Second, I did not realize there are stone patches at all.... but they are hard to see due to the graphics in the game being generally hard to distinguish.

The spawning of stone is exactly the same as vanilla space age. And visibility is also the same in base space age. It doesn't invalidate your complaint - but it's something outside of the scope of this mod I'm planning to change. That said, Only Gleba in general suffers from this a bit less, as the misty/foggy effects in the swamplands I didn't add to the mod (because I don't actually like it, due to visibility reasons)

Thanks
Jack

Hi again,

I've just pushed out a change to remove small pentapod resistances. I can't say exactly how much of a difference it would make, but I'm interested to know how you get on if you do come back to this.
Thanks
Jack