9.14.1 Refineries
Refining is the process of taking commodities from their raw state and transforming them into refined commodities ready to be used in manufacturing (see HELP MANUFACTURING for more information).
Before you can refine anything, you need a refinery, a type of Space Structure built by players and NPCs (see HELP STRUCTURES). To use a refinery, you must have a) raw commodities from crushing and compressing (see HELP MINING) present at the Refinery or b) be in your ship next to a refinery structure with scooped gas or tethered asteroids.
Note that you do not need to transport goods to refinery structures yourself, you can use cargo contracts (see HELP CARGO CONTRACTS) to have other players or NPCs ship the goods for you. You can also fully automate the process of shipping, refining, manufacturing, and marketing using offices (see HELP OFFICES).
Submitting a refining job costs marks depending on the fee per Cycle set by the structure owner, and the current Production Tax or Piracy Extortion at the refinery (see HELP MANUFACTURING for more details). All refining jobs cost 50 cycles per run, meaning the minimum you will pay for producing 1 refined unit is 50 marks (less if you are the structure owner). Structure owners can reduce that for everyone using their structure by installing certain modules. Learn more about these modules in HELP STRUCTURES, otherwise see “Refining bonuses” below.
Refinery commands include:
REFINERY LIST [NEARBY|MINE] List refineries in space.
REFINERY SHOW <refinery> Show details on a refinery.
REFINERY JOB LIST List your refinery jobs.
REFINERY JOB QUEUE <amount|ALL> <comm> Queue up a refining job locally. *
REFINERY JOB QUEUE <amount|ALL> <comm> AT <refinery> Queue up a refining job remotely
REFINERY JOB QUEUE <TETHERS|SCOOPS> Queue up a refining job locally from your scoops or tethers.
REFINERY JOB SHOW <job id> View info on a refinery job in progress.
* The job queue command can be shortened using REFINERY Q <comm>
Refinery owners, see STRUCTURE syntax and HELP STRUCTURES for adding modules to your refinery.
Refining Bonuses
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REFINERY SHOW <refinery> will display any bonuses you receive when you choose to submit jobs at that refinery. Possible bonuses include: producing additional output (Production Bonus), requiring fewer inputs (Material Efficiency), and producing faster (Cycle Mod).
Normally, the ratio of raw input to refined output is 5:1, meaning 5 raw titanium will refine down into 1 refined titanium. Efficiency bonuses reduce this amount to as low as 3:1. The efficiency bonus also comes with a reduction in cycle costs for that particular material, up to 50%, so instead of 50 cycles, refining a unit of a certain material will only require 25 cycles. This will only reduce the time required for the job. Thus, even if a refinery only takes 25 cycles to refine a unit of iriil, you will still be charged a fee assuming the job requires 50 cycles. It will, however, be done in half the time.
Production bonuses will produce additional output every X number of commodities produced. Thus, if a refinery claims it produces 1 additional titanium for every 4 it refines, submitting a job for 10 titanium would output 2 additional titanium. The remaining 2 titanium that did not receive the bonus will be remembered by the structure on a per-client basis, so that if you chose to refine 2 more titanium, it would produce an additional titanium. Such records of unbonused remainders are deleted after 90 RL days of inactivity. Structure owners may decide to take some of that bonus production for themselves, which is shown in the “Bonus Take” line in REFINERY SHOW <id>. Note that this is only taken from bonus production, NOT from the general batches, so you will always receive the full amount of runs you queued up.
