Refinery Speed

In survival mode, what refinery speed is everyone using? I am the type of person I do not want to cheat at the game, and increasing the speed from realistic to x3 or x10 to me at first seemed a bit cheaty. However After playing for a week now, I am starting to believe refinery's should be a bit faster in realistic mode. I can produce way more materials than a refinery can handle with just the hand drill. I think I am going to turn it to x3, because I am now starting to see that doing this doesn't really make it cheaty. I simply do not want to mine for an hr, then wait 10 hrs for that material to refine. What is everyone else doing? realistic or x3 or even x10?

What does everyone think about an upgrade system for refineries maybe? Like in the beginning a refinery could be like a bottle neck to keep progression from being too, quick, but as you move up the tech tree or obtain the materials you can upgrade it.

 

I use 10x inventory and 3x refinery/assembler speed. Refineries are often still a bottleneck which is why I built 12 of them on my station. It's a dedicated server so I also put a ton of solar panels on my station so I can keep a refinery going without using uranium, even when I'm offline. Lots of stuff gets refined while I'm at work.

 

I play on 1x inventory, 3x rafinery, 3x assembler speed. I find it most fun - rafineries and assemblers are essentialy a waiting game so I dont mind speeding them up a little bit. but I dont want to get everything in an instant so I use 3x settings. Too bad it also cuts ore/component requirments by factor of 3, I would rather have a faster production but still a demanding (1x) cost. but, I think most important is 1x inventory - this setting forces you to build welder/grinder ships with a large inventory. also a fleet of freighters are necessary to transport materials from place to place. this gives you a goal to work towards and forces some infrastructure. I like it.


about upgrades. oh yes! I want them! this game have no progression at all. I really feel even basic set of unlockables would make game so much better. fortunately it seems modding support will be very good, so I hope for huge quantities of "Progression Mods" or "RPG Mods" in the future.

 

I did a 3-1-1 game and I found myself putting my game on in the background while doing something else (sometimes for hours) just to refine enough platinum to make a couple large thrusters.
I'm pretty sure on my next game I will put refinery speed on 3x, even though it'll make refining the "lesser" ores a little speedy.
Perhaps I should do 1-1-3 to still have a little challenge :crazy:

Perhaps a type of upgrade could be putting the refinery in a sort of overdrive, where it consumes X amount more energy but also runs a little faster.
For example use 3x more uranium, and run only 1.5 times faster or so. Or possibly have it damage itself by running at a faster speed. Theres a lot of possibilities.

 

if you like the cost but dont like the wait there are some people who have adjusted the values. Catn remember the link right now but give the search a go. look for posts relating to wielding times.

 

10-10-10. I've got shít to do. I'd rage quit after an hour of 1-1-1. And if the final release version of the game only gives 1-1-1 as an option, I'll mod the shít out of it...

 

It really depends on if you are playing solo or on a persistent server. I play on Emerald Immersion's Survival server that is set at 2-2-2 and you don't mind mining for a bit and chucking it in the refineries to have it all converted by the next day, because it runs even when you aren't there a slow refinery speed isn't a problem, so long as you keep an eye on your ore levels you shouldn't be in a rush for anything.

The problem is with solo play, using standard speeds on solo play where the refinery isn't running when you aren't in the game is a real issue. That's why I think having a variable setting is a sensible thing. In solo play times 10 on refining speeds isn't cheating it is just countering the fact the world isn't always on.

 

This - Along with 10x tool speeds and a slightly higher solar panel output so it is actually worth some of those materials it costs.

 

I don't have time to spend 6 hours making a large mobile refinery (an absolute must on a public server) so i go with 10-10-10

 

so much carebears. o.0 why dont just switch to creative? I mean, if "you got things to do" and cba to properly mine, transport, refine and assemble stuff, then why do it at all? isn`t it easier just to build in creative?

 

This ---^

I'm using standard settings for refining, assembling and storage. I can't get my building projects done in one session, which is fine. I am not in a hurry, I can save the game and continue whenever I please.

 

I used to play in 10x speed before the welding and grinding tools (large) came out. Now I play on 1x speed. Not much more challenging once you have your ships up and running.
Slow refineries? Build 12 of them. Split up your station with merge blocks and connectors to cut refineries storage apart from others, then you can sort it easily. OR build them all in one go so that they float to the top of the cargo list. OR edit your save file to say they start at the top of the list.
Once that is done, make sure you refine iron first (goes so fast) and then allow uranium its own personal refinery, and give the others one item each.
Item sorting is a little pain, but me and a friend play on 1 speed all the time. We only have 8 refineries and they never stop processing, however there is always at least one person mining so...

 

Ever since we has the introduction of ship welders and conveyors, 10x inventory isn't really needed anymore but it certainly still presents an engineering challenge. All part of the game.
I still run 10x for everything but maybe one day I'll settle down and dedicate an uber realistic server.

 

I don't find 1-1-1 much fun and if it's not fun then why would I do it? For me 3-3-3 is a minimum, 5-5-5 is perfect and 10-10-10 lets you concentrate more on the meta game and try out cool stuff.

 

10-1-10 for me, primarily because of the time it takes to refine platinum. I can deal with the refine time for uranium, but sitting around for hours just to refine enough plat for the thrusters on the first small ship is a big no-no.

Once the game gets going and you can build a big stack of additional refineries it isn't so bad.

 

Because it takes away all point of mining - Why mine anything if you don't have any need for it anyway? Why even hollow out that asteroid you've found if there's no point to it?

Processing resources and building fast still retains the base gameplay mechanics - Also you may want to brush up on your English. This has nothing to do with "carebearing"

 

why building a mining ship then? you can put entire asteroid in your pocket. all you need is a little whine on forums, to speed up handheld drill and you are set for life. is this how survival mode should be played?

how would you call it if not carebears? you know "carebear" is a generic gameterm for ppl who cant take a heat, right?

I apologise for any errors tho, eng is not my first language.

 

On topic, I feel it's extremely slow at the normal rates. I play x10 because life is too short. I would love for a tech tree addition to the game. As for those of you saying x10 is pointless and those who use it are carebears? You'll learn once you have a job, family, and health on the line..

 

I play on x3 currently and 5 refineries are more than enough for me for basically anything. It's more of assembly line slowing me down (6 assemblers).

 

Capacity 1x
Refinery 1x
Assembler 1x

There are definitely days where I feel tempted to increase the rates since I play alone and have to gather/refine/build all my own materials without help. However, I've got six refineries chewing out ingots at this point and I don't feel like they're bottle-necking production too much. Although I occasionally have to adjust the order that ores get refined. Actually the thing that slows me down the most is the assembler speed. Making construction components takes FOREVER.

[Side Note] I sometimes will leave my game running while the wife and I watch a movie at night, so experiences may vary on how harsh 1x refinery speed really is. [/side note]

 

Its not slow so much as it is poorly balanced. Iron refines at a fine rate in 1x, but platinum refines extremely slowly. And then if you want to build a large ship, you are paying for 600 thruster components instead of 1 for an engine that isnt even 600x as powerful.
Scaling for larger ship parts needs to be fixed (if i pay 10x more components, the part should be atleast 10x more powerful)

 

A captured Troop Transport makes a great mining platform. Door on the front you can convert to a swing down ramp for a small mining ship or truck and lots of space on the top for 2 refineries, 2 assemblers, and conveyors to all the storage containers. I cheat and convert the heavy blocks to light using the SEToolbox so it is more maneuverable. I dismantled a rescue ship, a civilian cargo, and about 1k of each resource from a 1 drill miner to convert mine in about 2 hours. I keep another civilian cargo sat connected to the top to power the refineries and assemblers with extra solar panels on it when It is parked near a roid.

 

I'm currently playing 3-1-1 with 2x welding and grinding in a solo save. I have cargo ships enabled, but I currently have limited myself to hijacking Private Sails and one Mining Carriage (I reasoned that I could board these without shooting by using correct angles of approach and no cheating). Platinum is really painful to refine because it takes ages and even the smallest large ship thruster uses an incredible amount of it. That actually influenced my decision to use capture large ships because had already built a pretty sizable operation of eight odd refineries, but it would take a ridiculous amount of micromanagement to be able to refine any amount in a reasonable time. Everything else feels fine, but platinum is in its own league when one considers how essential it is to ship building. How many refineries do you guys on 3-1-1 or 1-1-1 use for refining platinum, or do you just salvage stuff?

 

Salvage stuff definitely. I turned up my main save to 3-3-3 short after start and even then it was painful enough. I guess default ref/assembler speed and inv size is good when you start playing, making your first creations feel good when you had to carefully haul ore, first ingots and finally components to worksite. That also makes fuel important for about few first hours adding tension to survival feeling.

Then you start to understand the game better and plan big stuff. And find out that mining carriage is perfect for wall of grinders suicide and military minelayer/transport is a small, processed asteroid of iron.

 

I'm not usually worried about surviving, mostly it's about the wait time for reaching the next step. NPC ships aren't targeting us anymore so I felt the need to try to build things from scratch and I did a lot of it. I am currently limiting myself to private sails which are unarmed anyway. I am playing with meteors enabled though, so I am going to be careful about how I build my real base. I pretty much need to build into an asteroid, so I am altering some current designs so I can cleanly excavate the space. Once that's done, it should be easy to scale up my refining and assembly to get around bottle necks.

 

Refinery speed is just fine he way it is, if you need to refine faster build more refineries. My compex is currently circa 200 refineries, uses 112MW. I find that I can easily mine and process more materials than I can realistically use until we get programmable blocks and some sort of automated ship building.

 

1x speed is fine, except maybe for Platinum, because it's well-suited to multiplayer, persistent worlds. Unless you are really ready for some intense waiting, you should probably increase the multiplier in singleplayer (or build an enormous amount of refineries/leave you game on all night).

 

Eh... no - Not remotely.

 

(imho) There is no "right or Wrong" way of doing it, Only your preference, you like 1*1*1? then play it like this. Like 10*10*10 ? then do that as we are playing one char mining and building stuff in SPACE.

 

10x inventory, 3x Assembler, 1x Refinery. Some of the more rare metals are painfully slow but it's only been a concern when first staring out. When I get my 20th refinery going, things to start even out a bit more. I do think Platinum is painfully slow though. I definitely think Platinum refining speed needs to be balanced a little more.