Are Refinery worlds ever worth creating?

[AlanC9]

The 5% production bonus for planetary specialization isn't all that important in general, but in the case of refineries I really don't see a use for it. Edicts excepted, special resources are consumed in integers, not fractions. I don't see a case where having the 5% bonus is going to let me run even one more advanced building someplace.

 

[Pragmatic]

Refineries, the ones that provide only one job and take up one building slot, are probably best moved to habitats.

 

[AlphaAsh]

Production is actually in fractions though. So if you have 10 jobs pooping out 20 of the same resource, that 5% means you're pooping out 21.

To clarify, I've got some buildings generating 0.1 Wealth. Ten of them are producing 1 Wealth.

 

[happyscrub]

special resources are consumed in integers, not fractions..

How something is consumed is 100% irrelevant to how something is produced.

 

[AlphaAsh]

I'd have to check, but I'm fairly certain upkeep bonuses can result in fractions as well. It's just the display being rounded.

 

[Askorti]

There are upkeep reduction tech/bonuses, which should also affect the strategic resources, which would give you fractions.

 

[AlanC9]

How something is consumed is 100% irrelevant to how something is produced.

Really? How can I use an extra .1 gas per month? I can't upgrade another Research Lab since it will only work 10% of the time.

 

[AlphaAsh]

Really? How can I use an extra .1 gas per month? I can't upgrade another Research Lab since it will only work 10% of the time.

By having ten .1s.

 

[Aed]

The 5% production bonus for planetary specialization isn't all that important in general, but in the case of refineries I really don't see a use for it. Edicts excepted, special resources are consumed in integers, not fractions. I don't see a case where having the 5% bonus is going to let me run even one more advanced building someplace.

You get 2 rare resources per refinery job normally, so the 5% gives you an extra rare resources for every 10 refineries. It's a bit of a crappy bonus to be honest and could do with being changed to 10% or 20% to actually make it useful. That said if you do have 10 refineries across your empire you might as well put them all in one place to get the extra capacity.

 

[Losttruppen]

Functional Architecture civic and the Administrative Operations tradition both decrease building upkeep by 10% which applies to strategic resource(SR) consumption on upgraded buildings. The rate you accumulate these SRs also results in more to sell or use for ship components.

 

[Chthon]

You could also use the excess resources from those fractions to fuel edicts during wars.

Also, there is something that makes your jobs more efficient, I've seen them using .9 rare resource instead of 1 for upkeep. This would mean that you only need 9 resource producer buildings to fuel an extra upgrade.

 

[AlanC9]

You get 2 rare resources per refinery job normally, so the 5% gives you an extra rare resources for every 10 refineries. It's a bit of a crappy bonus to be honest and could do with being changed to 10% or 20% to actually make it useful. That said if you do have 10 refineries across your empire you might as well put them all in one place to get the extra capacity.

True. Thing is, refineries are a kinda crappy building, since they produce so few jobs for the slot. I figure if I don't specialize the planet in one thing, I'll specialize it in another, so making a refinery world means trading off a world with a +5% research, alloys, etc that I can always use for a resource bonus I'll only find useful 5% of the time. (Again, edicts excepted, but I've always been able to run those with the incidental stuff picked up along the way.)

 

[icon41gimp]

I don't think they are worth it considering you have to forego a different world type.

I've moved to the market for 100% of my rare resource needs though, except for orbital deposits and in some cases using rare planetary features. The mineral cost alone for production often makes it worthwhile to just buy them.

 

[Bouchart]

The problem with refineries is that you need 5 pops to unlock the building slot and the refinery adds one job. It's not worth it.

 

[Chthon]

The problem with refineries is that you need 5 pops to unlock the building slot and the refinery adds one job. It's not worth it.

I feel that refineries are what my mining/agricultural worlds end up becoming. Low population planets without city districts that only have resource regions built, and extra population end up in a refinery or a commerce center for amenities to keep the planet happy.

 

[danfarnsy]

I was under the impression that these benefit from jobs bonuses, too. Commercial buildings provide a lot of jobs per slot, with clerks, offsetting the single job from a refinery. The high amenities then combines with the +5% from being a refinery world, and the cumulative bonuses might be enough to justify the specialization. Non-integer production values mean you can run a deficit for longer from a stockpile, if you need.

It might be a good late game approach to make a refinery world to squeeze out every bit you can from other specialized worlds. I don't have MegaCorp, so I can't create Ecumenoplis, so alloys and consumer goods are even more resource heavy.

 

[Senstrae]

It's difficult to reconcile the fact that refineries produce 1 job per building slot. This means you need to create 4 other jobs in order to get to the next refinery building. You can't use T3 buildings with their 8 job per tile since they consume 2 motes, gases, or crystals. Besides, if I'm using T3 buildings on the planet, I'd rather specialize for Alloys, Consumer Goods, or Research, and devote as many building slots as I can to T3 buildings.

An alternative is to build these on a world that's district rich. Since rural worlds only give a negligible 2% bonus to basic resource production, it's not a bad trade off. If it's a dedicated agri, mining, or generator world, building a few refineries shouldn't swap the planet specialization - but then it's not a refinery world.

The last thing I've tried is to pad out jobs with upgraded Commerce buildings, since they provide 11 jobs per building slot and only consume 1 crystal. But the going consensus seems to be that clerks are mediocre.

 

[Urza1234]

Even if never under any conditions can you actually use that fractional output yourself, you can at least sell the excess.

 

[Bouchart]

I've found a good use for refineries is on an orbital habitat that's mostly full with livestock slaves. The low housing requirements for livestock unlock a lot of building slots, and you can have a small handful of your main species on the habitat so you won't have unemployment problems.

 

[SeekingEtermity]

An alternative is to build these on a world that's district rich. Since rural worlds only give a negligible 2% bonus to basic resource production, it's not a bad trade off. If it's a dedicated agri, mining, or generator world, building a few refineries shouldn't swap the planet specialization - but then it's not a refinery world.

It's actually 2.5% (the UI truncates decimals, even when it *really* shouldn't), which means a "Rural World" with 5 of each non-city district actually gains more production (in count) than if that same world was instead specialized in one of the basic resource types (2.5 x 3 > 5.0 * 1). It's still not a big bonus, but then, none of them are.

I found myself colonizing a lot of <REDACTED> little planets of size <10 (most of which I got from the Worm In Waiting) just to turn into refinery worlds. If I'd bothered to pick up Voidborn (which lets me manufacture *even <REDACTED>er* pseudo-planets using the same resource I build battle fleets out of, whee!) I'd probably do the same with habitats. Fill the building slots with various kinds of refinery, optionally throw in a few of the better 1-per-planet buildings if desired (I'm fueling my entire economy, including 2/3 of my CG production, off of trade, so I get the trade centers when I can) and get ~35 strategic resources from a planet that I otherwise wouldn't bother to colonize.