In normal speed, trade port income is 1 + 0.1 per link.  Fast mode increases everything by 30%, so

trade port income = 1.3 * (1 + 0.1 * longest_trade_route)

No, refineries are more expensive than that:  1500, 125, 175, which gives an effective credit cost of 2850.

Already did so; yes, they do receive from their own well as well as from adjacent wells.  They are not affected by loyalty or by extractor technologies.

Refinery (12 rock): 11 minutes
Refinery (9 rock): 15 minutes
Refinery (6 rock): 22 minutes
Refinery (3 rock): 44 minutes

By comparison:

Trade Port (12 link): 10 minutes
Trade Port (8 link): 14 minutes
Trade Port (4 link): 19 minutes
Trade Port (0 link): 24 minutes

So really, 7 or 8 is where refineries start to shine.

Sorry about that...  I was thinking it wasn't that high...

So do you guys think there is any chance the devs will re-adjust these tech to make them better? I fully agree that these four need serious improvement. Is it realistic that the devs will care?

Raging Amishs idea of increasing minimum extractors on Ice and Volcanic worlds to 3 (instead of 2) would also help make refineries more valuable.

That would increase the probability of a good spot to place refineries, but I think more to the point they need to have a lower investment to be more on par with trade ports.  I'm still all for removing 2-rock ice/volcanics.  Such a rip, particularly if they're close to home.

I'm actually going to crunch some numbers on Induced Reverence later and may add it to the list if I can't find a reasonable use for it.

In your 0.08 calc for refineries is that just for 1 refinery?I thought the closer you get to the quota the more effiecient they become?With that number it still doesnt justify very much.By the time you can get refineries its prolly much more cost effective to get the tec that makes blackmarket cheaper.That makes tp much more valuable.Refineries shouldnt equal tp they should be better.They cost more to get,more to research,and more to place.You should get better returns for your investment.Here is what Im thinking.A refinery on a 3 rock planet should equal a tp.Since you can have planets with 2 and 4 this is middle road.All adjacent rocks are a bonus kinda like the bonus you get from tp chains.Maybe that sounds like alot but so is the bonus from 16 chains and whatnot.

Another tec which I think is very subpar is those tecs that increase your tradeship hulls.I think the first one is at tier 6?and gives you 8%.This could be useful if your eco is like 300 but in most games you may see 100.So that is 8 more a sec and if you have fleet supply its less.

How do advent trade ports (converted to refineries) compare to dedicated TEC and Vasari refineries?  Once converted do they bring in the same amount of resources/second or are they inferior?

TEC and Vasari refineries affect multiple plans and their rocks, don't stack past 3, and are not affected by loyalty or extractor upgrades or planet bonuses.  As a result, the comparison varies a bit.

A basic extractor at 100% loyalty earns ~0.5 resources per second, and so an 8% boost would give you 0.04 resources / second.  This means that basic resource focus does indeed give less than a refinery.  You'd need to double its efficiency in order to make it match a refinery (just in the boundaries of that one gravity well). 

Supposing my 35% value, each extractor in a resource focus well would give you 0.18 resources, meaning a Vasari/TEC refinery would need to affect about twice as many extractors than the resource focus trade port in order to match it.  Seeing as the maximum number of rocks a resource focus port can affect is 4, I think it's pretty easy to hit 8 with refineries.  So yeah, even with my massive buff resource focus is still inferior to refineries.

Yup, I read up on refineries and then did a quick test in game.  It's 0.08 per rock (a little more for neutrals), and it's additive for every additional refinery up to the quota.

Actually, that's fair enough, let's use 4:1 rather than 4.5:1 with respect to refineries.  So presuming you have 8 rocks you get 0.64 resources per refinery, which at a 4:1 rate gives you 2.56 credits per second.  For trade to exceed that, you'd need a 10 link trade route.  That's actually quite doable, but not so low as to be easily accessible, but it does demonstrate that even in this situation refineries may not be that great.

The big problem is that at a certain point trade ports are exponential and uncapped while refineries are linear and capped.  No matter what, there eventually comes a point where trade ports are just plain better than refineries.  Where should that be?  Currently for an 8-rock position it's a 10-jump trade route.  Honestly, I think this is within the low range of what is reasonable.  I still agree with you that refineries are second rate, but I'd use 'em frequently if they'd just cost less.

The moral of the story:  If you are Advent, forget about Resource Focus and refineries.  If you are TEC or Vasari and you have a logistics slot with 10+ rocks near it then consider putting up a refinery if you concluded that it makes economc sense to even pay to research refineries in the first place.  (What if refineries were made to be a cheap Level 2 civics research and the Advent were given a refinery?)

Just crunched a "best realistic case" scenario for Induced Reverence.  Now, Induced Reverence is kinda nice since it has the same absolute effect on every planet regardless of its base loyalty.  I presumed we were talking about a terran with maxed out population and 3 extractors (no extractor research or resource focus).  The effective income boost for each level comes to 2.2, and it's the same at both levels.  If you factor in 40% extractor research bonus, it goes up to 2.6.

This is kinda borderline, but this is effectively a best-case scenario; it's highly unlikely that you'd have a starbase already built on an economically viable planet.  Especially for Advent, starbases are used on the front lines and this upgrade has little role there.  It has a payback time of 28 minutes, which is considerably worse than a trade port, plus it consumes valuable starbase capacity.   All these things taken together make me think it needs a buff.  Not nearly as badly as colony pods needs that buff, mind you, but it's still not that great.

It needs to effect neighboring planets.

My vote on refineries is to make them much better instead of reducing cost.I dont want an alternative at a higher level tec but a better structure for more cost.More envestment bigger returns sorta thing.Thats what makes it high level.Same thing with superweapons and abilities.

I agree it would be nice if refineries simply offered better returns.

Well, the thing that you have to realize here is that late game, refineries are going to be outclassed by trade ports unless they are in a great location with six ice/volcanics right beside them.  Refineries should shine earlier, but don't.  They are a lower tier and yet cost more.  It makes no sense.  They need a cost reduction so that you can afford them earlier.  I mean, late game, no one really cares that much about direct resource income thanks to massive trade routes and the black market.

Also, with induced reverance, you could make it semi-offensive.  You could make it so that it does affect neighboring allied planets, but also reduce the maximum allegiance of neighboring enemy planets.  That way a shot from a DE might help you culture kill their planet and then when you jump in you are almost invincible thanks to the shield pact, the researchable, and friendly culture.

Well like I suggested make them equal to 2.5-3 creds a sec on a 2-3 rock planet and rest is bonus.Totally make them worth it mid game.Or make upgrades work for them.

Very well written, researched and quite an informative post (and discussion). Kudos and Thanx to the OP.  

Another set of techs that need help are the trade/refinery ship techs... The problem is that so few non-combat ships are destroyed that these techs are not needed.

As the income from trade and refineries is linked to the existence of their ships, rather than to the number of voyages completed, it would make no financial difference at all to drastically reduce their speed.  It would, however, make the ships far more vulnerable to destruction if they only moved at 1/3 to a 1/4 of current speed.  As it was, a substantial pirate raid used to have difficulty in destroying a civilian ship before it left the gravwell, and they didn't chase them.  Even if you find a spot where ships are crossing a grav well, and station trade raiders there, the trade ships move too quickly for it to work on auto-attack- to get any results at all requires too much micro. 

Why should the civilian ships have military speeds anyway?  A civilian ship speed reduction would just require the editing of a variable, rather than any coding.  It might open up another element of the game, or it might do very little.  However it doesn't seem to have any outstanding drawbacks, and as the trade ship techs exist, there should be an attempt to make them more viable.  Also, the amount of credit value of a destroyed trade ship might be made proportionate to the length of trade route for the affected empire, though this might require more work.

Real problem is that if something actually attacks your non-combat ships (they aren't just taking incidental damage), they're going to need a lot more than a couple extra hit points to survive.  Think of construction frigates.  You could give them 3k hit points, people would still smack them with a cloud of fighters and they disappear.  Yes, frigates have a hard time catching individuals, but strike craft can swat them down with great ease.

While I agree that this tech isn't particularly useful, it's not towards the theme of this thread (which is purely economic technologies which don't give adequate returns). 

Well the Advent Retribution tech is purely financial, rather than more health- the protection is that you can get extra bounty if your ships are destroyed?  Also, my point is that trade and refinery ships are not like construction ships... construction ships don't exit the grav well, so their speed isn't any protection for them, as none of the civilian ships are faster than military ships.  Strike craft aren't any good if the ships phase jump out!

If there was more opportunity to interfere with trade, ports wouldn't be as profitable.  More secure sources of income- like colony pods and planets- would then be advantaged, so the questions are linked, when you break down the finances of the techs.  

We agree that there should not be any techs that are unusable or unnecessary-  however, it is necessary that the more usable these techs become because of the increased danger to trade and civilian ships, the less reward there is going to be from basic trade ports, the standard comparison for financial efficiency. 

Finally, are constructor ships built or rebuilt more slowly than trade or refinery ships in the current version, as this also affects the viability of attacks on trade? 

The civilian ship safety act I feel is more useful for the following situation:

You build trade ports.

You have a trade agreement with another empire.

Your ships must travel through militia occupied planets to reach the other empire.

To help protect the ships as they pass through those territories, you research civilian ship safety act.

This isn't an uncommon scenario, but the usefulness of the tech varies based on the map, and its effects are somewhat unnoticeable. I feel it isnt much a useful tech on single star maps, but could be very useful on multistars where trade ships have to travel very long distances to reach other empires.

Karmic Retribution is another one of those meh techs. It does allow you to get money back from other empires destroying your trade ships, but also allows other empires access to that money as well. Simply a reward system for attacking those who attack your shipping lanes.

While they aren't the best techs, I feel like the ones Darvin posted are far less effective and need more immediate attention.

I don't want to repeat what Darwin said, but those payoff numbers for refineries are quite reasonable IMO.

I have a question from a Vasari POV.

Vasari's get their refinery at civic 3 and their trade at civic 4.  You do require 3 levels of resource techs to unlock the refinery, but that's not bad per se (I crunched numbers and getting 4 levels of vasari resource techs will pay off in 15 minutes with 21 extractors, or roughly 7 planets and no neutrals - not a bad return).

Strategically, 4 civic labs for vasari is not a very high priority, aside from trade ports.  The diplo pacts and culture damage buff are nice, but certainly not *needed*.  If you get 4 labs, you may as well commit to 5 and grab phase tunnels.

How would things work if you just built refineries everywhere that had 8+ extractors, avoiding overlap? Those refineries would pay off faster than going civic 4 and getting TP's, especially considering that you could realisitcally pull this off with 4 planets.

An 8 extractor refinery works out to 2.88 credits per second - I don't know offhand what trade chain that corresponds to, but when you reach it you could just tear down extractors for TP's, taking advantage of the scuttling refund tech while you are at it.

I'll have to try this ...

Essentially, Vasari build 2 civics to access ice/volcanics, 3 to access culture, 4 to access trade, and 5 to access phase stabilizers.  While there are a few other useful techs at each of these levels, they aren't going to drive you to pick up the civic labs on their own.

Vasari players often don't need phase stablizers in their current situation and may stop at 4 labs, but you are correct that very often they do go for phase stabilizers immediately afterwards.

Easier said than done.  Unless you're pockmarked with neutrals (in which case refineries would be a better approach) trade port chains are easy to build and often have higher returns.  As I've already mentioned, I always build my trade ports in chains of at least 4, which is comparable to 8-rock refineries. 

The difference is that 8-rock refineries are very limited in where they can be placed.  They are more expensive than trade ports (two refineries costs nearly as much as four trade ports) which means the alternate plan of just expanding a long trade chain is a lot more feasible by comparison.  The biggest problem is that for a very large empire, trade ports just get so efficient it's hard to even consider anything else. 

That's equal to a 12-link trade port chain.  The problem, as mentioned, isn't that it becomes useless when you have 12 or more links (because that's really only typical of late-game 3v3 or larger) but rather that it's costly to build in the first place.  If I haven't yet reached a logistics cieling, I can build two trade ports to every one refinery.  Comparing that one 8-rock refinery against 2 trade ports only requires that the trade ports have a single jump trade chain.

The problem is, by the time you're seriously running into logistics issues (for any reasonably-sized empire) your trade port chain should be at least approaching those very large lengths.

I just don't consider that enough trade ships are being destroyed in games to make their techs valuable, even compared to the dubious wares proffered by the four techs from the original thread.  Also, having the trade ships so fast greatly hinders the effectiveness of the pirates at what should be their main purpose.. as it is the pirates are a threat to planets and starbases, but trade ships can often escape by leaving the grav well!

The solution, to slow trade and refinery ships to a quarter or at most a third of their current speed, impacts on nothing else.  It's simple, and will only add to the game. 

There's still a lot of tech that sucks/isn't priced fairly, but again that isn't the scope of the thread.  I made thread a while back on tech in general that needed help but it fell into oblivion.  I mean look at Visari Wave upgrades.  Why are these so high on the tech tree when TEC and Advent HC weapon upgrades come much lower on the tree AND benefit more ship types?  The problem is Ironclad priced all research based on tech level, not on usefulness.  And since the game came out, I don't think Ironclad has ever bothered too much with research tree balance.

Precisely, these are technologies, upgrades, or structures that have a certain financial cost and provide a certain financial benefit.  They are not strategic in any way, and are very strictly an economic investment.

I've agreed with DesConnor that the civilian safety upgrade is (in general) an underpowered upgrade, but it doesn't fit with the scope of this thread.  If I make a followup thread on worthless military technologies, I'll include it on the list, since the civilian ship safety act is more military and strategic in nature than economic.  Its strategic purpose may be economic, but it's still a strategic investment rather than an economic one.

Hah, the wave upgrades have nothing on the pulse beams or the bombardment range upgrades.  Those are wickedly expensive and highly limited and ineffective.