REFINED MATERIALS

[timhaddox]

Does anyone know how many refined materials a mine/refinery pair put out daily?

[RogueIce]

RebEd says they have a Production Rate of 5, whatever that means.

 

I did run a quick test, where I scrapped everything in the galaxy except for one mine and one refinery, on the same Core planet. And...there doesn't seem to be a pattern. Quite a few days will pass with no change, then I'll get a couple refined materials, or I'll get one, I'll rack up some unrefined materials, one or two are converted to refined, I get more unrefined, I gain refined materials with no change in unrefined, even more days pass with nothing...all seemingly random with no pattern that I could decipher. And this was over the course of about 150 days (running on Fast speed).

 

Now, the more pairs you have the better you are, because they do gain quicker. But as individual units they don't seem to have a set production rate, RebEd's values notwithstanding. There have been times where I was unbalanced, with more mines than refineries so I gathered up unrefined materials. Yet even when I put the balance the other way, with more refineries than mines, those unrefined materials would stubbornly stay in their box for quite some time before they were all processed out. I even managed to gain one or two more unrefined materials somehow!

 

Sorry I couldn't be more help, though I suspect the answer is: it's pretty random. Maybe some other people can test and see?

[timhaddox]

Well there are apparently other factors as well. According to the manual "The more maintenance units that a mine or refinery has to contribute, the slower it will be in processing raw/refined material points. (not real sure what that means) Also, the lower the popular support in the system for your side, the slower the mines and refineries in the system will be in processing raw/refined material points."

[DarthTex]

Does anyone know how many refined materials a mine/refinery pair put out daily?

Maximum of 0.2

 

 

 

OK, so now you're asking how in the world did he get that? As you have already seen, maintenance points and popular support play a small part. Assuming there is plenty of maintenance points and popular support is 100%: checking RedEd you'll see the "production rate" for mines/refineries is set to 5. Every 5 days 1 raw material/1 refined material is produced; so 1 point divided by 5 days equals 0.2 refined materials per day (maximum). Remember though, it takes 5 days to make the first raw material, then another 5 days to turn the raw material into a refined material, for a total of ten days on the first one produced, but then one every 5 days thereafter (with assumptions).

 

If you have "low" maintenance points, that basically means the mines/refineries are very busy just making resources for replacement parts for everything you have currently constructed, and there isn't much left for the production of extra materials for new construction. How the game figures out which pair is how busy, and when they start the 5 day cycle is beyond me; maybe it's some kind of average of what's available vs what's used, etc.

 

Also, popular support is basically a reflection of worker morale, the more the people/workers support the leadership, the better their work output. An uprising would be equivalent to an outright strike.

[timhaddox]

how the heck did you figure that out? lol so if I use rebed to drop production to 1 then it will produce 1 material a day?

[DarthTex]

how the heck did you figure that out? lol so if I use rebed to drop production to 1 then it will produce 1 material a day?

That is correct, provided you meet the previously discussed assumptions of MP's and popular support.

 

I always wanted to turn up production for the AI, so it would construct more forces to fight against and provide a more enjoyable game. Unfortunately, changing mine/refinery production affects both sides, not just yours or not just the AI's.

[rebel_scum]

I am kinda a nooob, I just started playing again after several years exploring the outer rim. The thing that has always confused me the most about this game is the raw materials/refined materials/maintenance points relationship. In theory it is easy to understand. But it doesn't behave in a way that I can get any sense of what the "rules" are that guide this facet of the game. Looking at the materials monitors at the top of the galatic map, I assume the first number is the raw materials, the amount of materials that have yet to be mined. Then the next number would be the amount of mined materials that have yet to be refined into usable maintenance points. The last number is easy to monitor, it is the usable maintenance points. If you build something the number goes down. Pretty obvious there. That all seems pretty logical unless I am missing something.

 

So... that brings me to my current game. First number, raw materials = 0 Second number, is up over 8000, and my maintenance points is low as 200, after rebounding from a negative number.

 

I get it that uprisings, blockades, and even shaky loyalty can all affect the efficency of taking raw materials through to maintence pts. But I have way more refineries than mines 192 vs 161, something like that. Which brings me to my question, finally...

 

How is it possible to have such a backlog of raw materials waiting to be refined, when I have plenty of refineries on systems of 100% loyalty, no blockades or uprisings???

 

Maybe I am reading the monitors wrong? Maybe I need more mines than refineries?

 

I was really careful to keep my building fairly conservative, keeping my maintenence pts around 1000 for most of the game. I'm so confused about this. Most facets of the game are easy to test and find the best way to do things, but this doesn't seem to respond to increased refineries v mine ratio. Very strange, I must be missing something, I must be.... any light that you Masters can shed upon this lowly padawan, is very much appreciated.

[Slocket]

That is not the way it works. RAW MINERALS are produced by mines and the refineries turn that raw minerals into refined material to produce objects. All object production takes a chunk of refined material to make. In your example you have 0 raw mineral mined. Your refineries have already processed over 100% into 8000 refined material. Your last number 200 maintenance is what is your capacity to maintain what you already have left further to support (the total maintenance for each pair of mine/refinery - total object maintenance). It is not used to manufacture objects, only maintain them. You get for each PAIR of Mine and Refinery combo 25+25=50 maintenance points. Each object in game has a cost to build in refined material, then an on going 'cost' for maintenance. If you maintenance exceeds your capacity (IE below zero) left to use, then your objects in game start to blow up to reach a balance.

[rebel_scum]

oh man was I way off. I kind of figured before the problem even got this bad, but I just stayed the course... oh look a huge iceburg as big as the ice planet Hoth, and my titanic Bulwark Cruisers are blowing up left and right. So, I'm being a bit over dramatic here...

 

As I understand it my blunder was producing a stockpile of refined materials (pts for building) but not producing much in the way of maintenance pts, so even though I can build a ton of stuff, I wouldn't be able to maintain it, so I can't build anything until I have both. Since building new objects take a chunck of refined and maintenance pts both. That's the rub I was missing. Thank you for clearing that up.

 

I am assuiming then, in order to remedy this problem that I need to scrap some refineries and even up my mine to refinery ratio. So I did that, I'm now at 484 mines and 483 refineries. I should see some change in my maintenance pts, right? I'm hoping an improvment.

 

What I'm wondering now is how often do maintenance pts get made? Is that a formulaic type thing that is dependable or what? Because if it is, it would seem that when starting the game you want to maintain balance between refineries and mines, so that they are relatively even from beginning to the end of the campaign. When you leave it up to C3-PO he seems to favor mines, which was how I got into this mess in the first place... I was trying to compensate for excess of raw materials... so I built more refineries... gah.

 

I was getting the upper hand and this snafu stalled out my whole plans. Hopefully I've done enough to make sure the Empire can't regroup. Oh well, lesson learned. Much appreciation for your help, and this site!!!

 

May the Force be with you...

[Markus_Ramikin]

Does anyone know how many refined materials a mine/refinery pair put out daily?

 

10 pairs produce 6 resource every 10 days.

 

That's all there is to it.

[RogueIce]

I am assuiming then, in order to remedy this problem that I need to scrap some refineries and even up my mine to refinery ratio. So I did that, I'm now at 484 mines and 483 refineries. I should see some change in my maintenance pts, right? I'm hoping an improvment.

NO!

 

Simply build more mines to match your refineries. Mines and refineries are maintainence free (so they don't detract from your maintainence pool, they can only add to it). As long as you have the refined materials and energy slots/raw resource slots open, you can build these to your heart's content.

 

Scrapping refineries to match your lower count of mines doesn't give you anything. Well maybe some refined materials points from the scrapping (which may not happen; I've never scrapped them so don't know) but that's about it. If you've got an imbalance, the best thing to do is build up to equality, not scrapping.

 

What I'm wondering now is how often do maintenance pts get made? Is that a formulaic type thing that is dependable or what? Because if it is, it would seem that when starting the game you want to maintain balance between refineries and mines, so that they are relatively even from beginning to the end of the campaign. When you leave it up to C3-PO he seems to favor mines, which was how I got into this mess in the first place... I was trying to compensate for excess of raw materials... so I built more refineries... gah.

Maintainence points are static: once you have a mine/refinery pair you get an extra 50 in your maintainence pool automatically. Scrapping an excess of one to match the other won't gain you anything.

 

Personally it bugs me to have any 'raw resources' in that first counter, so if anything I'll build an extra refinery or two. I still try to match though, so my build order is refineries, and then mines to avoid that excess. That's just me being mildly OCD though. An excess of raw resources doesn't hurt you, as eventually they'll be refined anyway. It just means you have more mines than refineries and should build more of the latter!

 

Oh, and having a big fat 0 in the first window (raw materials) isn't a bad thing. It just means everything that your mines produce are being more-or-less instantly refined into something usable. Your refined materials counter will still continue adding as it normally does.

[K4qQZ6]

Oh, and having a big fat 0 in the first window (raw materials) isn't a bad thing. It just means everything that your mines produce are being more-or-less instantly refined into something usable. Your refined materials counter will still continue adding as it normally does.

 

I apologize if this has been asked and resolved before, but do the numbers on the top of your screen, for any values of raw materials or refined materials (let's assume you have enough maintenance) impact how soon production starts on your queues? I have noticed that often I will see something like: "production time is 12 days" but the queue will not actually finish in 12 days, leading me to suspect that it either started late or paused and then resumed at some point during production. Is this related to having no refined materials available (second number across the top being 0)? Or is this something else like system support?

 

Semi-related: I noticed that you can right click on your production facility queues and set them to "reserved". Does anyone know what this does?

 

TYIA.

[Mitth_raw_nuruodo]

If you have no refined materials production pauses, with the ultimate result being that the original 12 days becomes something longer than that. If you encounter this problem a lot you should build more refineries.

 

When you reserve a facility (specifically construction yards and training facilities) the protocol droid assistant can't use them when managing production and/or troops.

[K4qQZ6]

Thanks!

[Mitth_raw_nuruodo]

That's what we're here for. It took me a long time to make the connection myself, so you shouldn't feel bad.

[DarthTex]

If you have no refined materials production pauses, with the ultimate result being that the original 12 days becomes something longer than that. If you encounter this problem a lot you should build more refineries.

Build more refineries IF you have a surplus of RAW MATERIALS; otherwise you need to build more mines AND refineries.

 

 

Refineries only work on RAW MATERIALS, so if you don't have any RAW MATERIAL surplus then extra refineries just waste your time and resources. Optimally you want to have an equal number of mines and refineries, for maintenance points and to minimize RAW MATERIAL surplus. Having a REFINED MATERIALS surplus is a HUGE bonus (anything you want to build, within limits, would take the minimum amount of time to build).

 

So: 1) try to have an equal number of mines and refineries, 2) if you have a RAW MATERIAL surplus build more refineries (when the surplus is gone goto rule 1), 3) if production drags build MORE mines and refineries.

 

Good Luck!