The Crust 1.0 Refinery Guide: Multi vs Single & Conveyors

Conveyor Speed Tiers

The community wiki documents 5 conveyor tiers with these throughputs and build costs:

Tier	Items per minute	Build cost
1	60	250
2	150	750
3	300	1750
4	450	3750
5	600	7750

A line is always limited by its slowest belt. When you connect a Tier 3 line to a Tier 1 line, the Tier 1 segment is the bottleneck. Underground Conveyors have no throughput of their own and run at the slower of the two belts connected to each side, so use them to bridge tiers rather than as throughput upgrades.

Refinery Architecture

Raw regolith is mined on the surface by Mobile Drilling Rigs or excavated underground. From the regolith stream, refineries produce four oxides plus a slag byproduct:

• Iron Oxide
• Silicon Oxide
• Aluminum Oxide
• Titanium Oxide
• Slag (byproduct)

The community wiki documents two refinery variants. A Single Regolith Refinery pulls one oxide type at a time. A Multi-Regolith Refinery separates every oxide at once but halts the moment any output slot backs up. Choose between them based on whether your downstream consumers are balanced or specialized.

The Crust Material Hierarchy & Processing Chain

Understanding The Crust material hierarchy is essential for preventing conveyor deadlocks between subsurface excavation and orbital cargo fulfillment. Lunar manufacturing flows through three distinct processing stages, where each tier increases item value while demanding dedicated conveyor trunk capacity and steady electrical grid support:

Material Hierarchy Stage	Raw / Intermediate Inputs	Refined Outputs & Byproducts	Recommended Belt & Machine Pairing
Stage 1: Raw Extraction	Surface Regolith, Subsurface Ore Veins	Unsorted Regolith stream, bulk mineral chunks	Mobile Drilling Rigs feeding Tier 3 (300 items/min) or Tier 4 (450 items/min) main trunks
Stage 2: Oxide Separation	Unsorted Regolith stream	Iron Oxide, Silicon Oxide, Aluminum Oxide, Titanium Oxide, plus Slag byproduct	Single Regolith Refinery (dedicated line) or Multi-Regolith Refinery with Slag overflow routing
Stage 3: Smelting & Manufacturing	Refined Oxides + Slag stream	Smelted metallic ingots, silicon wafers, structural plates, and lunar concrete	Smelting furnaces and assemblers fed by Tier 1 (60 items/min) or Tier 2 (150 items/min) branch belts

Preventing Multi-Regolith Refinery Backups in the Material Hierarchy

Because a Multi-Regolith Refinery extracts Iron Oxide, Silicon Oxide, Aluminum Oxide, Titanium Oxide, and Slag simultaneously, its internal output buffer halts the entire machine whenever even a single output lane fills up:

1. Dedicated Slag Sink: Slag accumulates on every refining cycle. Route your Slag output onto a dedicated Tier 2 (150 items/min) or Tier 3 (300 items/min) conveyor leading directly to concrete processors or bulk storage silos so oxide separation never stalls.
2. Priority Splitters Before Storage: Place overflow splitters on Titanium Oxide and Aluminum Oxide lines. During early base expansion, Iron Oxide and Silicon Oxide are consumed much faster than Titanium; without an overflow buffer, unspent Titanium Oxide will freeze Iron production.
3. Subsurface Elevator Matching: When linking subsurface mining floors to surface smelters via Underground Conveyors, remember that the elevator inherits the speed of the slower attached belt. Upgrading only the surface side to Tier 5 (600 items/min, build cost 7750) while leaving the underground feed at Tier 2 (150 items/min, build cost 750) caps the entire vertical shaft at 150 items per minute.

Machines Power Draw & Conveyor Cost Efficiency

Every refinery, smelter, and assembler added to your lunar floor increases continuous machines power draw across the daytime solar peak and the long lunar night. Balancing conveyor build costs against factory electrical load prevents catastrophic brownouts:

Conveyor / Logistics Tier	Throughput Ceiling	Build Cost	Best Use Case in High Power-Draw Factories
Tier 1 Conveyor	60 items/min	250	Single-machine ingredient feeds and low-volume manufacturing outputs
Tier 2 Conveyor	150 items/min	750	Secondary oxide branches and early Single Regolith Refinery trunks
Tier 3 Conveyor	300 items/min	1750	Mid-game Multi-Regolith Refinery trunks and Slag evacuation lines
Tier 4 Conveyor	450 items/min	3750	Multi-smelter manifolds and high-volume regolith intake arteries
Tier 5 Conveyor	600 items/min	7750	Central spine trunks feeding cargo docks and multi-refinery arrays

Practical Automation Tips

• Match throughput to draw: A refinery that wants to feed several consumers at high rates benefits from at least a Tier 4 (450 items/min) belt on the trunk. A single consumer can usually be fed by Tier 2 (150 items/min) or Tier 3 (300 items/min).
• Avoid mixed-tier trunk lines: When a fast belt meets a slow belt, the slow belt becomes the choke point and the fast belt will visually back up. The slow belt does not speed up.
• Stage machine activation during Lunar Night: When expanding Multi-Regolith Refineries and smelting banks, verify battery reserves in the Lunar Night Power Grid guide so peak machines power draw does not drain life-support habitats.
• Use the 1.0 Planning Mode: The 1.0 announcement lists Planning Mode with module and recipe copying and a required-resources tracker. Use it to lay out a complete regolith-to-ingot material hierarchy floor before spending raw build costs.

For belt sizing math and battery sizing for a continuous line, see the Belt and Power Calculator. For a side-by-side view of refinery recipes, see the Refining Matrix.