The Advanced Refinery Management screen can be accessed from any current Refinery screen when docked AT a refinery. You will find a new link on those screens, but you should note that the basic refinery function has not changed in any way. Therefore, those not interested in advanced refining can still stick to the mainstream mining / refining principles.
There is a new Faction released today that relates to the Advanced Refinery Management system. This is Penworthy Industries. The use of Advanced Merlin Refineries will gain XP faction for this group.
Advanced Refinery Management – Main Screen
The guys at Penworthy have struck a deal with the leading orbital refinery companies to add an enhanced service to their platforms. This screen displays your Primary statistics in relation to advanced refining.
Notably, there is a blue header bar with the following statistics :
Refinery Contracts: Once you reach a certain rank, you will find you are offered contracts on behalf of Penworthy. These will allow you to make some extra cash and more Penworthy Faction.
Available Local Energy: Each refinery has been given the go ahead to issue you with up to Five available refinery slots. Along with this, they will provide you with as much Energy as your Penworthy rank dictates. Initially for non ranked members this is 25K. This stat shown is related only to the local refinery.
Total Refined: This relates to a running statistic of how much Advanced Refined ores you have produced. This will increment as your Merlin AMR’s cycle each hour.
Total Drone Deposited: This is a count of how much your Advanced Drones have deposited. This is for ores specifically collected by the Advanced Automated Drone units.
Faction XP: Again, a running count of how much Penworthy Faction you have gathered through Advanced Refining.
Penworthy Rank: Saving you the trouble of running off to the standings screen, you can review your rank from here as well.
G.A.R.S System
Below this section, you will find a Yellow Bar indicating how many ‘Global Advanced Refinery Slots‘ you are using and have available to you. The deal with Penworthy is that you will gain an extra Global slot use with each rise in rank. They will also incidentally rise your local energy limits by 15K per refinery.
The G.A.R.S system means that you can place as many Advanced Merlin Refinery devices as you have available slots. You can use these slots at ANY refinery as long as you have sufficient power to deploy them. This will aid captains, enabling them to place AMR devices in different Galaxies up to the total allowance of their G.A.R.S
You may use ANY of the five slots displayed at an Advanced Refinery Management screen, baring in mind the restrictions above.
Each slot will take any Advanced Merlin Refinery device. These require Power, Captain Level and of course Refining Skill to Deploy. Read their Bios. Once deployed, you can review the Refinery requirements and output.
It should be noted that the Five slots displayed are your ‘Personal‘ slots at each location and are not shared with anyone else.
Advanced Merlin Refinery
Each AMR is designed to output a given resource. There are currently 10 of these devices. They can be player crafted and store purchased (should you wish to support CE). Regardless, you still require the captain level, energy and refining skill to deploy them.
Each AMR is keyed to require FOUR different Asteroid Field Ores. They require 25 units of EACH ore to refine 25 units of end product. Both input and output resources are stored in the Advanced Ore Store.
AMR’s will attempt to cycle once per hour. They will only succeed a full power cycle if the required resources exist in the Advance Ore Store at that time. If they fail, they will simply retry again at the next scheduled cycle.
Advanced Ore Store
This is a NEW store developed by Penworthy in partnership with the Local Refineries. It only takes non-standard ores. IE your normal every day mining drone will NOT deposit into this store. Only Advanced Automated Drones will deposit their varied ores into this store.
This store is global. So any ores placed in at one location, are available at any other advanced refinery Ore Store.
The A.O.S is a partially closed system. That means that ONLY advanced drones can deposit into it. But you can remove any ores stored in this system via Ship Cargo or via Commercial Transport services. (C.S.T.S). The refinery management insisted on this partially closed system to counter against subversive tactics and standard C.S bill defaulters. There is no current operational charge for this system.
Advanced Automated Drones
I will mention at this juncture that to add ores to the A.O.S you will require the use of Advanced Automated Drones. These come in both player crafted and store based support. You will require the correct Captain level, Drone Points and Drone Skill to deploy them.
They will mine any and all ores from the field they are deployed in, EXCEPT plain standard ore. They locate an ore at random and mine till the drone is full then deposit to the A.O.S. Then return and repeat.