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I like the idea of maintaining your POB by mining scrap. Very cool. I like mining.
However I ran some numbers based on this spreadsheet and it seems this isn't as cool as I originally thought of. gosh I hope my math isn't off otherwise this whole thread is for nothing aaaaaaah

Main issue I ran into is that the smelter refined soooo slow. I mined 100.000 scrap a few days ago and only about 30.000 of that has been refined into Basic Alloy. A rate of 11.700 scap refined/24h isn't great. Think of all the used space gong to waste. Moreover, even a Core 2 base consumed about 8,400 Basic Alloy a day. The refinery makes 5.500/day! Essentially this means relying on scrap is only good if you have a Core 1 base,

EDIT: Oops! I'm dumb! Bases Core 1 to 4 all eat up only 4,320 per day. I edited/removed parts of this post which relied on this wrong math.

Oh but wait, I can go into overdrive by supplying some Industrial Materials and the smelter will go faster! How nice! Wrong!
A supercharged smelter will go trough 21.000 scrap/day producing 15.700 Basic alloy. A nice increase, but still nothing great, compared to ore refinery speeds. Also this consumes 2.100 Industrial Materials. So what, no big deal right? Well again, problem.

My whole idea behind succumbing to my inner Junker and smelting scrap was to maintain by base that way (excluding FOW), instead of buying Basic Alloy. I even had the idea to undercut NPC bases and sell Basic Alloy to players. But this would not work because I will need to either:

- have the smelter at the normal speed and spend the rest of my time waiting for the smelting
- overclock the smelter, but spend extra money on Industrial Materials, which costs money and requires one extra trip/day

I have to mine 11.000 scrap/day (which I don't mind). But this means that when I decide to fill the base, it will stay filled with scrap for a long time, only converting about half the scrap into basic alloy. Again, scrap taking us space and freeing it fast enough. Oh! And don't forget! It's not enough to just mine 11.000 scrap. I gotta buy the fuel and industrial hardware (disclosure: I don't mind the fuel requirement. Would be strange to refine it with zero energy).

At the end of the day, I would have been easier to just not bother with the smelter and just buy my Basic Alloy. Factor in the time you spend mining, the time refinery spends smelting and the 98265 units of scrap taking up cargo.


So please. Consider increasing the speed in which scrap is turned into Basic Alloy. End my suffering.

figure if theyre gonna go hard on players having POBs, might as well make them useful, right?

(10-30-2023, 10:38 PM)DragonRider Wrote: [ -> ]Moreover, even a Core 2 base consumed about 8,400 Basic Alloy a day

That sounds incredibely weird. As far as I ran the numbers, the regular wear and tear should consume about 4300 (+ - a few) alloy per day, regardelss of the core level, because yes, higher tier of POBs get more wear and tear, but also should repair more from a single unit of alloy. It was even confirmed by staff. I'd seriously suggest checking the base.

On the top of the things, there is absolutely NO wear and tear (or need to repair) the base RN, because the bases are in holiday mode and thus don't get damaged and don't consume a thing, unless you're doing something else in there.

It's possible that any of my math is wrong. I checked again. You're right. Core 1 to 4 will consume 4,320 Basic Alloy per day. My brain hurts from thing to make sense of all this.

Even so, my point still stands. Refinery works slow and has the potential to take up loads of cargo space.

So doing this based on you using H-Fuel.

Junker IFF Base gets you a 15% bonus.

So each Basic Cycle, you will use:
H-Fuel - 43
Scrap Metal - 850

and make:
Basic Alloy - 500
Toxic Waste - 150

Each cycle will take - 99.2 minutes - 14.51 cycles a day

So each day you will make:
Basic Alloy - 500 - 7,255 a day (so you can sell 2,935 a day)
Toxic Waste - 150 - 2,176 a day (you can recoup 8,704 credits selling the TW)

Using
H-Fuel - 624 a day
Scrap Metal - 12,334 a day



On an Advanced Cycle, you will use:
H-Fuel - 43
Scrap Metal - 850
Industrial Materials - 85

and make:
Basic Alloy - 750
Toxic Waste - 150

Each cycle will take - 54.3 minutes - 26.5 cycles a day

So each day you will make:
Basic Alloy - 19,875 a day (so you can sell 15,555 a day)
Toxic Waste - 3,975 a day (you can recoup 15,900 credits selling the TW)

Using
H-Fuel - 1,140 a day
Scrap Metal - 22,525 a day
Industrial Materials - 2,253 a day

A Base will consume 4,320 BA a day for W&T.


I suppose you have taken in to consideration the difference in price of 1,440 H-Fuel vs 2,253 MOX as your Fuel?

SCRAP refinery tier 2 can produce up to 18,900 alloys per day at the cost of 21,600scrap, 4,320 MOX and 2,160 industrial materials, 18,900 alloys can ran your base for 4-3 days. And that is WITHOUT any smelting bonuses. With smelting bonuses it will produce more per day, at better rates.

But, to be honest, I'd say it's better to either focus on advanced production or on mainteance production. And let other PoBs handle the rest. Or, don't have PoB in one player.

St.Denis, for the amount of times I've read your posts on POB guides, it's great to have you on this thread.

When it came to fuel, I assumed Promethene. Also I just now noticed that I can copy the google spreadsheet to change the fuel from the drop-down. I'm too tired to do extra math that these options now show. But Promethene is preferred to me, because of the POB location (Languedoc).

So okay, that's good. That's progress. I am less upset now. However it would be still nice is the scrap is smelted faster.

(10-30-2023, 11:40 PM)Demonic Wrote: [ -> ]SCRAP refinery tier 2 can produce up to 18,900 alloys per day at the cost of 21,600scrap, 4,320 MOX and 2,160 industrial materials, 18,900 alloys can ran your base for 4-3 days...

That's the thing! Space!

Say my POB is bone dry and I have time to fill it up (happened once). Assumed 100.000 free storage for Basic Alloy and friends (FOW not taken into consideration here, assumed they have their own lil dedicated space).

How many days can the POB live, after my supplying spree?

Option 1:
Fill it with 100.000 basic alloy.
100.000 / 4,320 consumed per day = 23.14 days

Option 2:
Filling the base with all the needed scrap, fuel and industrial materials
75.600 scrap + 15.120 MOX + 7.650 industrial materials = 98.280 space taken
That amounts to 66,150 Basic alloy / 4,320 consumed per day = 15.31 days

Now is buying all the BA the same efforts as mining 100.000 scrap? I don't know. But check out how much space the scrap takes and how much less time the base can survive on it!

Ok, for Promethene:

On an Advanced Cycle, you will use:
Promethe - 85
Scrap Metal - 850
Industrial Materials - 85

and make:
Basic Alloy - 750
Toxic Waste - 150

Each cycle will take - 56.7 minutes - 25.4 cycles a day

So each day you will make:
Basic Alloy - 19,050 a day (so you can sell 14,730 a day)
Toxic Waste - 3,810 a day (you can recoup 15,240 credits selling the TW)

Using
Promethene - 2,159 a day
Scrap Metal - 21,590 a day
Industrial Materials - 2,159 a day

Promethene - cheapest sell point is Aubigny (11 credits a unit)
Industrial Materials - cheapest sell point is Amiens (7 credits a unit)

I suppose it depends on time vs money.

Quote:Option 1:
Fill it with 100.000 basic alloy.
100.000 / 4,320 consumed per day = 23.14 days

This would take 20 x 5k trips to Marne (sells the cheapest BA (7 credits)).
Cost 700,000 credits.

Quote:Option 2:
Filling the base with all the needed scrap, fuel and industrial materials
75.600 scrap + 15.120 MOX + 7.650 industrial materials = 98.280 space taken
That amounts to 66,150 Basic alloy / 4,320 consumed per day = 15.31 days

Using these figures:

Quote:Promethene - 2,159 a day
Scrap Metal - 21,590 a day
Industrial Materials - 2,159 a day

You would get 4 days out of this for your 100k of space (it actually takes up 103,632)

For that you would need:
Promethene - 8,636
Scrap Metal - 86,360
Industrial Materials - 8,636

But it would only last you 17.64 days

It would cost you 155,448 credits, 4 x 5k trips and time to mine + deliver scrap.