So, I'll start off with: WOW did I absolutely LOVE Rubia! It was the fourth modded planet that I visited, after conquering Cerys and Moshine, and deciding that I wasn't in the mood for the hyper-Gleba that is Janus, I went to Rubia.

Being the achievement hunter that I am, I also made it 'engineer must die' mode. So, after making the trip, I saw a warning saying that I'd die if I did the drop. So, I went to Fulgora, got 5 epic T2 shields, and went back. Aaand then turned back to Fulgora. Attempt 3 had me kitted out with 18 epic T2 shields, to which I was told I was "almost ready". I decided I wanted to see the death anyway, and sure enough, I died on the drop! The fourth attempt and 20 epic shields did the trick.

So, that was a (somewhat annoying but intriguing) sidequest, (we'll skip over the fifth journey so I could bring along my roboports. I'll keep my left leg thank you very much :). Now, Rubia itself. Wow. Inserters only being able to go right was a massive change in thinking. Along with belts not being able to go left and splitters only to the right made putting things on the other side of a belt often cost me a tile of space (not always, but often).

But even before that, the sheer struggle to get a foothold in was awesome. Getting the thought of "but fluids can travel left!" was huge and was what let me actually get started. A tank to hold the sludge (cause my pumpjack was not in the zone of protection) and again, an (awesome) struggle later, my base was started up and running. (ended up ghosting the whole base and speed building it with bots, then priming the turrets. Couldn't think of any other way..)

Anyway, that story of how I started to conquer Rubia, the main gimmick of only be able to build right was super interesting. The constant bombardment of trashteroids leaves me now with gun turrets (in at least double lines!) everywhere across my base (probably wouldn't need as many on the other difficulties, but I enjoyed it).

The random lore tidbits you sometimes get when collecting junk piles was also cool. Though I didn't get a lot of the references, those I did I laughed at. And just as it was started to become a drag, I got the last one, so that was also cool and good.

Anyway, this was long winded cause I ended up sharing a whole story, but yeah, 10/10 planet, great job, super interesting mechanics (in that the gimmicks forced me to play in a style that is not my usual, but isn't brain breaking or frustrating). Would Rubia again.

Other tidbits I enjoyed: * Not being able to just drop in a truckload of supplies (I enjoyed Cerys for that reason as well) * Being given T2 speed mods so I couldn't craft T3 assemblers right away * Being given bots from the junk piles * Being told in the tips and tricks that I could feel free to explore a lot of Rubia's surface (like, seriously. Thanks for saying that)

Thank you for the feedback. I’m glad you enjoyed my planet. Congratulations on beating it on the highest difficulty level. It is good to know that someone else also cleared it.

Also: Yes. You do need >5x as many turrets on that difficulty, and trashsteroids usually don’t one shot buildings on Normal mode. As a result, many people don’t realize the building technique you used.

Wow >5x turrets is a lot. Fitting for a difficulty titled "engineer must die"!
Trasteroid one-shotting all my stuff certainly influenced my playstyle. It meant that I had to make my initial ammo processing as slim as possible to that my turrets could reach my miners. The worst was the chem plant making scrapophilia and the standard pipes getting broken since I had to hand craft both of those things. All in all, I lost 46 chem plants, 76 miners, 78 pipes, 331 red belts (and lots of other things, but those are the big numbers that were annoying). (and by annoying I of course mean great fun :)

Even before I knew my stuff would get one shot, I ghost-planned my whole initial setup before building anything. It's a lot harder to move stuff once things are actually placed and I wanted to plan things out. Guess that's more of a playstyle thing for me in situations where my stuff is under a known constant threat. Once I learnt that my things did get one shot, it took me three tries, some minor redesigns (mainly not stretching out all the way to the right to cover the pumpjack right away, just use a tank instead) (and a trip gather more ammo from junk piles) before my base actually lived long enough to start producing enough ammo to keep itself alive.

I really enjoyed that aspect though! And then you give us the craponite walls in end game Rubia to set up a fully safe (without the need to automate repair packs, or in my case a mall) to maintain safety.
I guess for that I could have used Scrapapalooza, but I had gathered enough supplies from all my junk trips that I just never needed it. By the time I unlocked that, I had a base set up and just rushed project iron man instead, so that recipe will never see any use. Same for the lube/battery/lds one.

Also enjoying all the post-Rubia stuff that you have to offer! The upgrades like Fulgoran boots for faster walking speed and the like. Also making Gleba bacteria not Gleba locked has some implications.. currently have that set up on my ship for the bioinfusion packs, and oh boy is that an interesting thing!