Hi there!

I've included this rebalance mod in my most recent SpAge playthrough and I've had a positive experience so far. I've visited all three inner planets, and the core gameplay of each one is improved from vanilla imo.

However, the evolution tuning on Gleba seems a bit harsh to me. On arrival at Gleba I build a significant factory to produce rocket materials and the ingredients for the new agricultural science recipe. Before I left, I scaled up to ~500 SPM before spoilage - the biochamber productivity boost helps a lot for scaling here! However despite only destroying a handful of nests and having a relatively small pollution cloud (3/4 agricultural towers per fruit), my evolution factor was already in big stomper territory - this was with no automated defences and zero agricultural tech researched.

Without rocket and tesla turrets, I've had to leave Gleba defenceless and hope my initial pentapod clearing is enough to keep the nests out of my spore cloud until I can return with endgame weaponry. In the meantime my evolution factor has now hit 1.0 - higher even than Nauvis, which sits at about 0.96.

Was this intended by the evolution factor rebalancing or have I simply gone too big too quickly? I would've expected to be at the start of medium stompers by the time I left the planet, and be deep into medium territory now that I've been gone for a dozen hours or so.

Thanks!

PS: I've got Rubia lurking in my space map and I'm looking forward to checking it out once I get it unlocked :)

Interesting though it does feel like you went pretty hard on Gleba before Tesla/rocket turrets. It's good to design production areas to be easily scalable but to actually scale up so fast without prep seems like a lot as it's unnecessary. Maybe over-tuned though, not sure.

Thanks for reaching out. I am open to retuning it.

As the change list says, AJ ties Gleba evolution to the production of agricultural science, not pollution, nests, times, nor consumption of agricultural science. This is because some people will have medium-big stompers breathing down your neck while still figuring out Gleba. The AJ method (evo based on science) revolves around the expectation that you build up a base before mass-producing science, because once you made a lot of science, the pentapods are fair game.

The main way I balanced Gleba was that I set several benchmarks of "I want evolution factor = X after Y agri sci made." Then, it uses a logarithm to interpolate/extrapolate. I currently tuned it such that 20k ag sci leads to 0.95 evo factor (which is the point where big pentapods begin spawning), and 10k ag sci = 0.7 evo (which is just after medium pentapods begin spawning). I also have 0.4 evo is at 2k Ag sci, so it can be a bit smoother of an increase.

Part of the intention is to force evolution to stay completely at 0 if you haven't had the opportunity to make any Ag sci. The evolution growth you would normally see in vanilla is effectively pushed back to when your Glebase is operational.

For reference, if you get ALL gleba rewards (optional ones, except infinite productivity techs, not including Aquilo discovery), that is 21.4 k Ag sci. A bare minimum run needs 3.5k ag sci (before Aquilo), and 13k ag sci to beat the game. I expect about half of all Ag sci is either wasted or isn't fully used (since freshness does affect the science value). Therefore, the current benchmarks are designed so you definitely have the opportunity to get rocket turrets before medium pentapods appear, and big pentapods are guaranteed to show up before you beat the game.

I could set back the 0.95 benchmark to 40k Ag sci. That might mitigate some of it. But in your case, at 500 SPM, you'd only have an extra 40 min before you see big pentapods, just because you are cranking out science like crazy. I agree with npuldon that it seems like the evo ramped so quickly because of how big your science production is.

Given these numbers, would you make a proposal (with explanation) about how this should look instead? I am open to making edits as needed.

EDIT: I may be able to connect it to science consumption instead of production.

ooo, based on consumption seems like a positive step in the right direction IMO. I guess folks could hoard before researching to circumvent but that's pretty 'gamey'

Given ag sci has a 1 hr shelf life, I will not factor in the possibility of players strategically hoarding it into my analysis.

I would like to hear back from MinerMan to know if the proposed edit (evo based on sci consumption instead of production) would be agreeable. I want to avoid issuing multiple patches for the same issue.

Thanks for the detailed response, that does clear things up somewhat :)

I think your science-production-based logic is effective from a high level. Yes, once a player has begun automating science, they've conquered the planet and can be exposed to the harsh enemies present there, but until they've got a foothold they should be given some grace. If this were Vulcanus or Fulgora I think it would work perfectly.

However the issue I see with Gleba is spoilage. Due to the nature of the mechanic you're incentivised to keep production constant, and due to science pack freshness, at a higher SPM than your other outposts. Once science is set up, it keeps pumping endlessly (unless you circuit control it - I'm not sure what proportion of people do that).

Your 21.4k figure assumes you're using all the science you produce. In my case I know the vast majority of it spoils or is recycled away before it's used - mostly due to researching non Gleba tech. In my run I've produced 100k agricultural science already!

Also, while 500SPM sounds like massive overkill (and tbf it probably is...), in terms of infrastructure it's not that much. I think I have 5 biochamers producing science (with T2 modules, but not beacons). I think the main reason I got in such a bind was because I setup science production along with all the other bio processes immediately, then time passed while I was automating rocket ingredients.

So, potential solutions. I have two ideas, feel free to share your thoughts. Firstly, I agree with npuldon that the consumption based approach does sound appealing. You could exactly follow the current evo distribution but with consumption as the factor. This would additionally give the player grace to set up automated shipment of science, during which time surplus science spoiling won't affect evolution. As you mention, stockpiling spoilable science isn't really an option :)

Alternatively, what if we made use of the default Gleba evolution, but scaled it according to how much science is produced. (I'm not convinced the Factorio mod API actually supports this - if not feel free to disregard!) The formula I'm thinking of is something like:

mod_evo = vanilla_evo × science_produced/10k

On landing, evolution is zero and is clamped there even as time passes or spawners are destroyed. Once science is being produced, evolution begins to rise and, once the count hits 10k, matches what the Vanilla evolution would be at that stage. Imo the science produced factor should be clamped at 1 to avoid exceeding vanilla. Thus, the new player is still kept safe until they are set up, but the eventual evolution value will scale with the size of the Glebase.

I'd be willing to try either of those options to see how they compare to the current algorithm. And sorry for the long comment! Turns out I had a lot of thoughts to communicate :)

Ah, I see you commented while I was writing my reply :)
Yep, consumption based evolution sounds good to me, I'd be happy to try it out.

If you want to avoid excess patches I don't mind trying out dev builds either. I know my way around Github, so I can download a version off a branch if you want feedback before a potential release.

However the issue I see with Gleba is spoilage.

This is true for jellynut and yumako, which need to keep cycling to keep the plants going, and avoid farm contraction. This is not true of science, which you can stop crafting science at any time without consequence.

Alternatively, what if we made use of the default Gleba evolution, but scaled it according to how much science is produced.

I considered this option, however: 1) This is harder for me to calculate, and even harder to convey in a way that the player can understand. This formula actually has several other factors from vanilla built in (time, pollution, etc), plus the science scaling. 2) Someone in your situation would still have the exact same outcome, as this mechanic is built around the expectation that a player will take an indefinite amount of time to work on Gleba before they start making science.

Given the proposals here, I will go for the simplest option, of setting evolution to science consumption instead of production. It is the simplest option that we both find agreeable. This change will retroactively change Gleba’s evolution factor, but it will not despawn big pentapods already on the map.

The patch is like one line of code, but it’s going to take me a hot minute to test.

It is now live on v0.69.6. Please let me know how well this works for you.

An issue with my implementation is that it does not factor in productivity/science drain (which would be extremely difficult to calculate), so you can game the system slightly with productivity or science-drain reduction. This is countered by the fact that I'm counting each bottle (not each unit of science researched). Hopefully everything evens out.