Refining right now is awkward and I think it's time to make some suggestions to make it better, easier, and make it make more sense with real world industrial equivalents. With the crafting system linking gear performance directly to material quality (0–1000), we've run straight into an issue every miner knows too well: the scanning slot machine where the end value of your ore is already determined prior to refining. Right now, if you're out mining and scan a rock below 500 quality, you fly away there's no reason or benefits of mining it. Nobody wants to haul low-grade ore when crafted weapons and components need high-tier materials to avoid bad recoil, overheating, or falling apart. That might be fine for a solo Prospector pilot cherry-picking high-value veins, but it completely breaks capital class heavy mining. Eventually having Ships like the Arrastra and Orion that just aren't designed to flutter from rock to rock looking for a lucky roll, they're built to chew through entire asteroid fields as they lumber around to the next closest rock ambivalent to the quality only seeking Quantity. Here’s an idea for how we can rework refining into a purity system that fixes this problem, gives big industrial ships a real purpose without needing to redevelop an entire capital class mining gameplay loop, and keeps solo prospecting just as rewarding. The Idea: Quality is Just "Elemental Purity" Instead of treating a rock with a low roll as "ruined" metal, treat that 0–1000 number as Elemental Purity: A Q300 rock isn't "bad iron"—it's just 30% pure iron trapped inside 70% worthless host rock. A Q900+ rock is a rare geological jackpot that's already 90% pure element. At the refinery (or onboard your ship's refinery reactor), you pick your target purity. If you haul in a bunch of low-grade rock, you can combine and purify it into high-tier metal. The catch? It costs you serious volume, time and catalyst like, Boron and Fluorite Fluxes, Precipitation Salts, Cryogenic & Inert Shielding Gases, or tier biological or manufactured solvents and chemicals. Some of which would be found and refined from astroids some might need to be restocked by supply ships or returns to the station. The Balance: Trading Volume & Time for Quality To make sure this doesn't devalue exploring or flood the game with cheap high-tier gear, refining to higher purities needs an exponential curve: upgrading a little bit is cheap, but trying to squeeze pure metal out of low-grade slag gets massively wasteful in material, takes forever, and burns through chemical catalysts. Here is how the scaling works out: Q900 (Pristine) to Q1000 (Artisan - Absolute Perfection) Raw ore needed: 1.14 SCU per 1 SCU refined output Processing time: 1.2x baseline Catalyst overhead: 1.3x baseline Q900 (Pristine) to Q950 (Mastercraft): Raw ore needed: 1.07 SCU per 1 SCU refined output Processing time: 1.1x baseline Catalyst overhead: 1.1x baseline Best loop: Solo Prospector / MOLE precision scouting Q700 (High Grade) to Q950 (Mastercraft): Raw ore needed: 1.55 SCU per 1 SCU refined output Processing time: 1.8x baseline Catalyst overhead: 2.3x baseline Best loop: Fleet mining supported by an Expanse tender Q500 (Commercial) to Q950 (Mastercraft): Raw ore needed: 2.64 SCU per 1 SCU refined output Processing time: 3.8x baseline Catalyst overhead: 5.9x baseline Best loop: Arrastra deep frontier expeditions Q300 (Low Grade) to Q700 (Mil-Spec): Raw ore needed: 3.06 SCU per 1 SCU refined output Processing time: 4.1x baseline Catalyst overhead: 6.2x baseline Q300 (Low Grade) to Q950 (Mastercraft): Raw ore needed: 5.51 SCU per 1 SCU refined output Processing time: 10.6x baseline Catalyst overhead: 16.8x baseline Best loop: Orion capital-scale smelting Q150 (Bulk Slag) to Q950 (Mastercraft): Raw ore needed: 13.56 SCU per 1 SCU refined output Processing time: 32.7x baseline Catalyst overhead: 61.2x baseline Best loop: Extreme Orion industrial upcycling Why this works for both playstyles: Prospector & MOLE stay king of profit-per-minute: If you find a natural Q900+ rock, you get top-tier refined metal at basically a 1:1 ratio with fast turnaround and almost zero catalyst cost. Scouting stays hugely profitable. Arrastra & Orion finally have a job: When your Arrastra or Orion drops into a belt full of common Q300 rocks, you don't have to leave. You can chew up the entire field, feed your onboard reactors, and trade raw bulk volume (5.51 SCU in for 1 SCU out) and processing time to produce high-grade ingots. No easy exploits: You can't just buy dirt-cheap Q150 slag and print mastercraft items without burning over 13 times the mass and 60 times the catalyst. It also means. You don't need to redevelop an entire capital class mining gameplay loop just make more or bigger rocks keeping the same loop as smaller ships like the mole/prospector. Bonus: Fixing the every level of quality is a different Cargo Box Nightmare (Standardized Ingots) Right now, having materials with random numbers like Q542, Q543, and Q548 means none of your cargo stacks properly in freight elevators or cargo grids. Under this system, unrefined ore in your bags keeps its exact number, but once it goes through the refinery, it casts into standardized grades: Commercial (Q500): Base building, standard components, ammo. Mil-Spec (Q750): Upgraded armor plates, military ship parts, high-end guns. Mastercraft (Q900+): Competition racing hulls, overclocks, peak-tier weapons. Artisan (Q1000): The absolute peak for perfectionist crafters. Because of physical entropy, refining to 100% purity is wildly wasteful on raw volume and burns extreme amounts of catalyst, making it a true flex resource reserved for master artisans. Or a purely rare find for scout to make serious bank off of. Every ingot in the same grade shares the exact same item ID, meaning everything stacks cleanly into 1, 2, 8, 16, and 32 SCU containers. No more inventory bloat. How the Fleet Fits Together Prospector: The agile scout. Hunts down rare Q800+ veins, bags the pure stuff, and gets out with fast, high-margin hauls. MOLE: The heavy hitter. Cracks tough, massive clusters that hide rich purity veins solo lasers can't break. Expanse: The field tender. Sits with mining wings in deep space, refining mid-grade ore up to Mil-Spec so haulers can box it up without flying back to a station. Arrastra: The frontier base. Mines entire deposits independently, running two onboard reactors to turn low- and mid-tier rocks into dense, high-value cargo holds. Orion: The factory. Eats entire asteroid belts, dumps mountains of useless slag, and uses industrial-scale smelters to turn millions of tons of low-purity rock into standardized crates. What do you guys think? Does trading volume + time + catalyst feel like a fair way to let big ships mine low-quality rock without ruining the hunt for pure veins? Should mobile refinery ships like the Expanse and Arrastra be capped at Mil-Spec (Q750), leaving Mastercraft and Artisan to capital smelters (Orion) and station decks? How should player base refineries factor in? Maybe surface gravity separation gives them better catalyst efficiency?