[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by acrosome

Since the TL7 Fuel Cell runs for 3 hours on 1.25 tons of rocket fuel, it consumes 0.4167 tons of rocket fuel per hour. If it powers the refinery this makes 0.5 tons of rocket fuel per hour. Thus, this combination can produce a net 0.0833 tons of rocket fuel per hour forever.

It's even worse at higher TLs and larger systems. At TL10+ for SM+5 it's a net 0.495 tons/hour. I'm thinking that Chemical refinery production should be divided by 10- that would be just enough to keep from breaking even.

Errata? Or just a rounding error/below granularity?

Also, since the chemical refinery makes rocket fuel, is there a rule to divide production by 9 if you're only keeping the hydrogen? This seems reasonable- an oxygen molecule is mass 32, and two hydrogen molecules are mass 4, so the mass fraction is 4/36 = 1/9.

You mean other than the fact that it requires ice to process?

The industrial systems are probably too efficient. SS7 addresses this:

Slower Industrial Systems
The production capacity for industrial systems can be too
high for economic realism or game balance (especially if they
are owned by player characters). This design switch reduces
the production or refining rate of mining, refinery, fabricator,
robofac, nanofac, and replicator systems from “per hour” to
“per day.” Systems at TL5 drop to “per month” and at TL6, to
“per week.”