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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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). 

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.

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.

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.