Refinery

[bundyaxl]

I suggest a building that refines raw materials.

Let's say all you can find is mines in the 50s-60s quality. You could build a refinery to process the lower quality resource into a higher quality one.

Advantage of course that you can get consistently high quality raw materials.

Disadvantages of the extra cost and you would lose a percentage of the original input. 60 quality would lose you 40% of the original weight.


The limit of quality you can receive at the end could be done in a few ways.

1 - r&d - the better r&d you have for refining the better quality you get at the end.
2 - different "manufacturing units" for varying refinement levels. One unit that does only 10 extra quality, 20 extra, max, etc. The higher the unit the slower it is, less throughput requiring more refineries.
3 - each manufacturing unit does the same thing, say, 10 point increase or by percent, to get 95-99 quality resource from 50 you would have to run it through 5 refining units, each unit refining it more and more.
4 - could be done using training.

I would say the final output should be between 95-99 quality depending on the material and training of the firm. 100 should be achievable only when the original input is already over 90 quality.

[counting]

I wonder if this could be done with mods. If a manufacturing raw can also be finishing product, then it's quite easy to mod a refinery factory.

[therealevan]

This could be an interesting component to the upstream, and I think it could be useful! Sometimes buying the rights to access the higher grade ores/minerals is exceptionally higher than the <60 graded quality ores.

[counting]

This is also an double edge sword. Where players can gain access to higher quality, so can AIs with their own refinery. And I wonder how it would impact the raw material producers. Since a lot of materials would be wasted in the process, the lifetime output quantity is essentially cut down. Hence less product produced, unless more investment into raw material sectors. Really could change the the game balance dramatically.

Also it would be interesting to combine refinery mechanics with recycling and pollution mechanics, which will make the city simulation more realistic and more fun.