Slag, Refinery Overhaul

The basic point would be to keep the "better refineries produce more material" dynamic without violating conservation of mass as SE1 does.

Each successive refinery would extract more material from the slag - you would simply store incompletely processed ores to complete processing later. Alternatively, there could be a whole separate slag reprocessor block, but that seems overly complicated.

It would also be nice to add something like an incinerator/gasifier and vent system, to permanently destroy stuff you don't want to store forever. Being able to eject stuff from a connector and let it eventually despawn as in SE1 is functional, but feels like a workaround more than an intended function.

The whole problem of "conservation of mass" in SE1 lies in the lack of a sufficient range of final materials - and in the fact that the refinery does not produce "useful" gases, especially oxygen.

@Semtex I agree that's a problem, and should be addressed. I would like to see complex minerals instead of monometallic ores. We should be extracting lots of oxygen from minerals, as well as nitrogen and numerous other elements. There is a point at which realism ceases to be compelling and becomes onerous, but I think adding gas extraction to the function of refineries makes plenty of sense -and- makes for compelling gameplay. It would also then be possible to make hydrogen thrusters more realistic - it's very silly that they don't require oxygen to combust hydrogen. In SE1 it would have been problematic, as ice and oxygen farms are the only sources for oxygen, and the latter is extremely slow.

If we go further in realism... not only would hydrogen engines end, but so would firearms in their current gaming form.

After all, hydrogen is relatively rare on small bodies in the solar system - it's only found in cometary nuclei, asteroids are practically dry.

Another matter:

Magnesium as a cartridge filling is nonsense.

A powder charge has to produce gases at high pressure and temperature - it has no other mechanisms to transfer energy to the projectile in the barrel.

That would also be the reason for "high volume" farming - you need cellulose from plants to make bullets. Food is secondary.

And yes, I know of LOVA powders based on hexogen or other explosives. But they can't do without cellulose and other organics.

Nor without nitrogen - and that's also very rare on asteroids.

Some might say - there is black gunpowder after all. But for that you need nitrate, su nitrogen compounds - and sulphur.

What I mean to say - if the realism of the game world is increased, the possibility to fight in the "traditional way", usual in SE1, will quickly decrease.

I don't know if this is the way to go... I'd be quite comfortable with it, but what about other players...

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Of course, I can think of other ways to fire a projectile from a barrel - liquid ejection charges, for example. It just doesn't work with the popular gatling gun.

So what would be left? Electromagnetic and thermoelectric weapons?

Star Wars-style turbolasers where you see a beam of light fly? :-)

But I am already off topic...

@Semtex SE doesn't have conservation of mass, yield-modules (or server-settings) can push a refinery in to producing more weight in iron-ingots than they are fed in ore, and gasses made from ice have no weight at all.

As for slag-refining... I'd suspect we'd need to have the slag contain something valuable that the lower-tier refineries can't refine, and refining said slag would have to be faster than refining ore. If both of those don't apply then I'd suspect people would be more than likely to just eject the slag like they do now for stone/gravel they don't need.

Yes, that's known. Unfortunately.

@Semtex again I broadly agree. Using magnesium as a nominal propellant was always silly, felt like "well something has to burn, hey magnesium burns right? Eh close enough."

I would love to see nitrogen compounds as a rare part of the mix in asteroids, whereas on an Earth-like planet you could simply build a collector to pull it from the atmosphere. If they introduce farming, the most realistic version might not be super fun, but would require not just water and C02 but potassium, calcium, etc. I'm not sure that the complexities of organic chemistry required to manufacture nitrocellulose would actually be fun or engaging gameplay. Creating nitric and sulfuric acids to nitrate cellulose, then sourcing additives to create modern smokeless powder? Meh. It might be easier to have a single item called "organic compounds" that, while it is not very realistic, simplifies chemistry for the sake of gameplay. Recipes for fertilizers, gunpowder, and anything else that seems to fit could use these "organic compounds" as components in the assembler.

Aspects of this and more is also covered in the thread "SE2 Progression IDEAs"

@Shandlanos: From what I'm reading here I'm not seeing anything of value here. All I'm seeing is pure downsides and complication for the sake of complication with no potential positives. Tael summed up something that I planned to hit on depending on your responses so I see no need to repeat the whole thing, only briefly add. There would need to be a purpose for the slag and a reason for me to want to interact with it and keep it around instead of just firing it out the airlock, and I don't see that here. In fact I see no upsides at all so far to this as said prior. It would needlessly complicate refining and make it more irritating to deal with. If you're someone that enjoys hyper realism you do you, but without some more thought put into it and some potential benefits, this is a pass from me as I do not care about hyper realism to the degree others do. In my book it should be fun first, realism second since this is a game.

Gravel Sucks! Why? Because it is a dead end game loop and has no real purpose.

Gameplay should direct what new blocks would need to be made in progression, not just progression for progressions sake. In the game, give me a reason to need some new tech or feature. Then we can make a block for that. Just having more blocks isn't enough, nor is just making more steps, I agree it just gets too complicated, there needs to be purpose first.

• Example: "we want boats" so therefore "we need water" but now we are gonna need a propulsion system for water. (Progression would support Props, Jets, Sonar, Ballast and air tightness because they would fit the "we want boats".)

With refining it may be better to branch out the processes for specific purposes of material handling.

• Example: "Cobalt takes to long to refine" so therefore "we need better methods" but we are gonna need a focused process to do it. (Progression would support a faster hydrometallurgical refinery block that refines cobalt hydroxide into battery-grade cobalt sulfate by Chemical reagents which separates pure cobalt with pneumatic and mechanical agitation to produce air bubbles that float mineral particles to the surface, then use of a multi purpose electric furnace upgrade to make ingots.)
• 

These special blocks or modules could provide the need for Chemical reagents to me made adding the interest and another progression tree that has purpose like "we need better power" so " we need better batteries" and since we have better cobalt too lets use it for batteries, oh and now we have chemistry so lets use it to make heat resistant thermal plates for better thrusters or harder armor.