Recycler vs refinery

[Loki McNeil]

When your recycler says that it produces with low efficiency, does this mean that for every x scrap it uses, it produces less resource than the refinery?

[Jessian Kaanneo]

the time it takes 1 person in a recycler to produce 1 or 2 items, the refinery maned with 10+ peeps can make a lot more items.

my advice, build 2 recyclers until you can build 1 reinfery, then dismantle them and move the staff over to the refinery. keep making electronics, metal plastic.

[Loki McNeil]

Originally posted by Jessian Kaanneo:

the time it takes 1 person in a recycler to produce 1 or 2 items, the refinery maned with 10+ peeps can make a lot more items.

my advice, build 2 recyclers until you can build 1 reinfery, then dismantle them and move the staff over to the refinery. keep making electronics, metal plastic.

Largely I disable the one recycler to move the worker, but I was wondering about using it as a source of cloth specific, as I never have cloth.

[Sylveon]

Originally posted by Jessian Kaanneo:

my advice, build 2 recyclers until you can build 1 reinfery, then dismantle them and move the staff over to the refinery. keep making electronics, metal plastic.

I used to do this, but how I've been setting up my new games is by doing this:

1) Jetty, Cistern, fishing hut (I've also found a farm is enough so this is optional)
2) Recycler, set it to metal
3) Refinery, dismantle recycler, set to making cloth & metal for a little bit to be able to make the tailor and workshop (just set the max storage of plastic and metal to 0)
4) Tailor & Workshop
Some houses are also sprinkled in there

To increase production of cloth, as I find that runs out the quickest, you can just play around with the storage limits of the other 3. I often have electronics and plastic set to a max of 50 (sometimes lower or higher depending on where I'm at in the game), since they're used less frequently, and once it hits that limit, cloth and metal have a bigger productivity boost as people work on those. I have found, however, that when I build things that require a lot of plastic and electronics, I end up with a cloth shortage, so you need to be wary of that

Your starting stash of clothes and tools last quite a while (tools longer than clothes). I've found it's best to rush the refinery as that speeds up production of the materials to actually use at the tailor and workshop, and I've not had any issues with running low with this strategy.

[Magistar]

For me the refinery hasn't been working.

I constructed a few recyclers and a single refinery next to each other.
Recycler: 10 - 16 per season with 1 worker
Refinery: 8,8,6,6=28 per season with 14 workers

I had to move the scrapyard(s) next to the refinery to improve it to 16,16,16,16=64. Still the recycler without moved scrapyards is outperforming that. There 14 workers will give me 140 units. Looks like the issue is with the travel time.

Basically I employed 16 workers on a 150 population and I was still running out of ALL resources. I reconstructed recyclers and I was quickly hitting 70 of each resource.

[jceek]

Originally posted by beebopper:

it beats having scrap yards scattered all over the map collecting the required resources (regarding distance) .

Not sure what you mean by that, you can change the looting circle of the scrapyard, concentrate on the materials that disturb your base building progression, then set it on scrap that is closest, sometimes you get those 2.2k scrap piles and 1 scrapyard will be busy for dozens of seasons.

Regarding the refinery some of the advantages come through other means like less macro, easier focusing on resources. One refinery takes up less space than 16 recyclers, provided with food/water stations and a warehouse with room for scrap + 4 mats - all of your workers have shorter paths thus work more often.
Don't forget having to repair only 1 building after sandstorms instead of up to 16 and providing electricity, the refinery takes way less than 16 buildings.

It might not produce faster if you look at the raw numbers, though it's hard to gauge those with workers flip-flopping their professions and resource management/distribution being funky sometimes, it's definitely the go to choice for me.
Expedition as well as Trader Station will give you a lot of materials in the early/mid game which you might lack.

[Magistar]

Originally posted by jceek:

Originally posted by beebopper:

it beats having scrap yards scattered all over the map collecting the required resources (regarding distance) .

Not sure what you mean by that, you can change the looting circle of the scrapyard, concentrate on the materials that disturb your base building progression, then set it on scrap that is closest, sometimes you get those 2.2k scrap piles and 1 scrapyard will be busy for dozens of seasons.

Regarding the refinery some of the advantages come through other means like less macro, easier focusing on resources. One refinery takes up less space than 16 recyclers, provided with food/water stations and a warehouse with room for scrap + 4 mats - all of your workers have shorter paths thus work more often.
Don't forget having to repair only 1 building after sandstorms instead of up to 16 and providing electricity, the refinery takes way less than 16 buildings.

It might not produce faster if you look at the raw numbers, though it's hard to gauge those with workers flip-flopping their professions and resource management/distribution being funky sometimes, it's definitely the go to choice for me.
Expedition as well as Trader Station will give you a lot of materials in the early/mid game which you might lack.

IMO it makes no sense comparing the refinery with 16 recyclers because the output just isn't there. In my experience 1 refinery equals 4 recyclers.

The game does show your general production in the charts so I recommend shutting down the refinery and switching to 16 recyclers and let us know your results :).

[Noobi]

Refinery may have a a little in the proportion of settler per piece of resource but I think you guys forgot 3 things
1. If compare the space of one Refinery (15x(13+1)) with Recycle (5x(5+1)) you wil see that Refinery use less than 9 Recycles and thats mean you may save space of 7 (or more) Recycles with 16 worker
2. Electricity used in the Refinery (500) is equivalent of 5 Recycles (100) so you will save 1100 power if you have 16 settler working
3. You have more flexibility to control the production, not only that the settler will move to next avaliable production if one is maxed

[Magistar]

Originally posted by beebopper:

If that works for you.. great :).. I'll refer to what I said in my response...

Originally posted by beebopper:

All of the above being said.. this is just what I do that fits my playstyle.. no right or wrong way to do it... just try different things according to how you play the game.

:)

The whole point of these games it to look for maximum efficiency. Clearly the refinery is meant to be more efficient since it should be twice as fast, takes less space, uses less power, etc. However for some reason in my game the output just isn't there. I think this might be a bug. This is why I asked for others to directly compare their refinery output with recyclers.

[Noobi]

Originally posted by Magistar:

Originally posted by beebopper:

If that works for you.. great :).. I'll refer to what I said in my response...



:)

The whole point of these games it to look for maximum efficiency. Clearly the refinery is meant to be more efficient since it should be twice as fast, takes less space, uses less power, etc. However for some reason in my game the output just isn't there. I think this might be a bug. This is why I asked for others to directly compare their refinery output with recyclers.

I think your problem is the distance between storage, food/water, maybe roads and bar help too, try use the market to collect the resources so they don't move that much

[Magistar]

Originally posted by Noobi:

Originally posted by Magistar:

The whole point of these games it to look for maximum efficiency. Clearly the refinery is meant to be more efficient since it should be twice as fast, takes less space, uses less power, etc. However for some reason in my game the output just isn't there. I think this might be a bug. This is why I asked for others to directly compare their refinery output with recyclers.

I think your problem is the distance between storage, food/water, maybe roads and bar help too, try use the market to collect the resources so they don't move that much

Travel time is a suspect. However I constructed the recyclers next to the refinery. So that should basically be the same:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2448670592

The metal plants on the left are doing 6/10/8 and 2/8/14