I hope this isn't too late of a reply.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mgellis
How do you turn the refined chemicals into components? That's the missing step.
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The way I read it, the refinery module does just that, at least up to the point that the factory can take over. Need beams of iron forged? A multi-purpose refinery can include foundry capability (the iron has to wind up in
some regular shape) - note that this means it can forge solid slug ammunition too (though bullets that contain explosives, or any active component such as biological or robotic payloads, probably need a bit of factory time). Need new electronic chips? The refinery gets you the metal, chemicals, and silicon wafers that are the components from which chips can be made; the factory infuses the chemicals to turn bits of the silicon into transistors, and adds the metal circuit leads.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mgellis
I just wish there was an official ruling on this (or, if I'm wrong, an official ruling the says, "No, you were right the first time. Buy two factories to handle the two steps." Which would be a more simple way to do it.) Or something.
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For what it's worth, I'm the "additional material" credit on the book. I am not an employee of Steve Jackson Games, so I don't know how official my word is, but...
Being independent of the supply chain was the intent of the Rock Snake design, without any extra steps. Material flows into the mining system for the listed conversion rate, from there to the refinery for the listed conversion rate, and from there to the fabricator for the listed conversion rate. Further, these things can happen in parallel if there is enough power and raw materials to keep all systems busy at the same time. (More precisely, a Rock Snake is intended to take raw asteroids and convert them into things that others would use, for profit. The easiest score is platinum and platinum group metals, as mentioned in the book, as those do not need much conversion and are quite expensive - until the platinum market gets flooded. That's when it shifts to manufacturing space infrastructure.)
It is possible that certain components can not be manufactured, or at least not manufactured efficiently, on a Rock Snake. The former is more likely if blueprints are licensed, or any other legal restrictions exist to prevent unlimited manufacturing. The latter depends on the game world as well, but can include things like replacement components (a factory much larger than a Rock Snake can build a Rock Snake - or major systems thereof - faster than another Rock Snake can) and supplies (production lines dedicated to creating, e.g., medicine can do so more efficiently, and thus more cheaply per unit output, than a Rock Snake's jack-of-all-trades systems; see "Manufacturing" in GURPS Ultra-Tech, starting on page 89). These would be among the things a Rock Snake's owner uses those profits for.
As always, change things around to suit your game world. Want a world where space manufacturing has obsoleted all planetside industry, and giant warships are cranked out daily? Ignore that bit about slower rates for manufacturing things above SM+2, and speed up the base manufacturing rates. Want a world where space manufacturing has yet to have much or any impact? Simply declare that factory systems for spaceships do not exist (no one has invented one yet). Want a spaceship that builds legions of clone soldiers? Wet nanotechnology and vatfacs are TL10; simply have a factory system cranking out SM +0 clones, using the prices from GURPS Bio-Tech (and if they are being assembled via nanotechnology, perhaps their brains are created with an already-trained template of memories and skills); another factory can churn out their equipment.
That is my take on the issue.