Calculated: Trade Ports vs. Refineries

Raging Amish

Join Date 03/2008

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Calculated: Trade Ports vs. Refineries

1 Tradeport (all fast)

income is 1.6 cred/s. That's the default if it's just one ( I know, I know, they pay off quicker when in a trade line, but this is just a base start). For my calculations I'm going to use 2 cred/sec. That's about a 3-4 planet chain on all fast.

I use 1 resource = 4.5 cred

750 cred + 100 metal + 125 crystal = 1762.5 cred

1762.5/2 = 881.25 sec or 14.7 minutes. That's the slowest it will take for a tradeport to pay itself on all fast if you've built up a 3-4 planet chain.

Now a refinery costs

1500 cred + 125 metal + 175 crystal = 2850 cred

Now, the best I can tell after looking at the entity file, a refinery will give you (and this is on all fast) .08 * 1.2 resource per second, or .096 resource per second PER MINE ( all fast gives you 20% more income on fast than the set default on slow).

So how many mines do we need for the refinery to pay itself off in 14.7 minutes? It needs to generate 3.23 cred/sec, or .564 resource per second.

Refineries are not affected by allegiance factors.

This comes out to a refinery needs 6 mines near it to be worth it. Finding that isn't too hard. What's ideal is to look for planets with a minimum of 3 (4 is preferable, I've seen up to 8 phase lanes before) phase lanes and put 3 refineries there. They will pay themselves off. They just cost more to get, so it's risk/reward building.

If you're Vasari you're selling ur extra resources for creds. I don't know how much of a difference this makes, because losing 50% of their worth in trade undoubtably has a big effect. How big though, I don't know.

strategy

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Volt_Cruelerz

Sigh.... the ratio provided was not refineries to tradeports; he was sharing his experience with how an extractor's quota fulfillment affected refinery income. If you don't understand the basics of refineries, I would not try to understand this particular argument.

Slow down, dude. I don't think you understood mine. If he was getting 1.167 per refinery (below quota), that is darn good compared to a trade port. I know the refinery has to be well-placed. The trade port is getting 1+x, as you said. You multiply the 1.167 by 2.2 on the selling end, which = 2.5. That means "x" has to be pretty high, to the tune of 1.5. And that's on the selling end.

So that pretty much establishes, refineries are worth building. That brings on the next question: with quotas, not enough extractors around, research costs, extra cost to build trade starbases, etc., at what point does it cross over and trade ports are the better way to go? Right now for me, it's really pretty simple: I just don't normally use logistics slots for trade ports. They just go on starbases. I juggle that priority with building well-placed refineries and media hubs. Maybe relocate my capital, too, but I haven't figured that out yet, either.

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Fair enough, by multiplying by 1.167 resources by 2.2 credits per resource (selling end) you demonstrate you understand. Your previous quote does not:

I didn't really follow that. But if a refinery is producing 1.167 vs. the trade port's income of 1, plus...whatever...that's darn good. That or the "whatever" had better be darn good.

Compares 1.167 resources per sec vs 1 credit per sec without converting resources to credits.

Moving on....

The 1.167 estimate is based off of Raging Amish's memory of what his refineries were producing. If you use the methodology I demonstrated, you can work out very close to what your tradeport is going to produce.

You still build tradeports...you just build refineries in good spots, as needed to supplement your economy. If you look earlier in this thread, I linked to an old thread where I show how to calculate your break even times. Besides, it is different for each race and situation. TEC have to pay for the technology anyhow on their way to cargo holds and pervasive econ. Most buildings pay for themselves within 15-20 minutes. If you think a game is going to be over within a half-hour, no need to be making more econ, just crush the enemy. If you are not sure it will be over in the next hour, building more econ will pay off.

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I'm a little surprised this debate went so long. The idea should be

1. If you're going Eco get a trade line going

2. If you are lucky enough to be TEC/Vasari and find a planet with 3+ phase lanes that is connected to 8+ mines, you should get some refineries there too.

You can argue and argue about the little details, but the end result shows that getting trade ports in a line or a refinery in an ideal spot has good payoff.

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I was runing some test last nigth and I ahve recomfirmed my findings that refineries will be at their msot efficient when the quota on the extractors is 3/3. I have also recomfirmed that a 4/3 quota prodces more then a 2/3 but less then a 3/3.

Also I found out that if you have 1 refinery + 1 extractor or any type at your homeworld the refinery will give you 0.4 per second metal and crystal extractoin. It does not matter if you only have a metal extractor you will still get the 0.4 crystal as well as the 0.4 metal. This bonus become active at the first refinery build and does not increase with more refineries.

Vasary players should experiment with this as a tactic since a normal start where your HW leads to 1 astroid and 1 Ice/Volcanic mean you have acces to a minimum of 7 extractors and a max of 10.

So 0.8 resorce income for the refinery at home world with 0.075 bonus per extrator at a 1/3 quota you get a prouction of income of 1.325 resorces for 7 extractors and 1.55 resorces for 10 extractor at your HW only.

So Vasari players should try and see if this tactic works out early game of building 1 refinery at your HW since your get a 0.8 Bonus in total resorce production.

That is interesting, I never noticed that before. I think it is because the HW get a 0.4 bonus to resource production. If you build extractors (without a refinery) you will notice that once the extractors are up, the HW gets an extra 0.4 to each resource. Apparently, it applies to the refinery too. Another interesting thing I noticed in my test was that neutrals were giving more resources to their refineries than normal extractors. I don't feel like doing a bigger simulation to get more data, but some quick algebra from the limited numbers I had last night showed that neutrals were giving approximately 0.1 resource/sec vs the 0.078 of the regular extractors.

You used 0.075 for the per extractor number? Is this the hard coded value? I worked out 0.078, but Sins is rounding up all the time, so it probably threw off my last significant digit.

And yes, the bonus 0.8 value is pretty nice....thanks for pointing this out.

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You can argue and argue about the little details, but the end result shows that getting trade ports in a line or a refinery in an ideal spot has good payoff.

No doubt....but people seem to want to understand the details a bit more, and then it is further complicated by the endless crowd of people who swear refineries are worthless.

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Yup, if you could test early vasari strats with 1 refinery at teh Hw Cykur it would be nice. Woudl give Vasari a new stratergy if the 0.8 has a large enougth impact early game.

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just use the dev.exe...

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just use the dev.exe...

for?

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