Crusher

The Crusher is a building used to process asteroid chunks on a space platform. It supports multiple crushing and reprocessing recipes that convert incoming asteroid chunks into base materials and additional chunks. Crushers can perform three basic asteroid crushing recipes (metallic, carbonic, oxide), three advanced crushing recipes that yield extra outputs, and three asteroid reprocessing recipes that break a chunk into one chunk of each type. Reprocessing recipes return items at a much higher quality yield than the recycler, making them the primary method for producing high-quality items from asteroid chunks.

A Crusher can be connected to a circuit network to select its recipe automatically. Accepted signals include explicit recipe signals and item signals corresponding to asteroid chunks or the outputs of supported recipes. Signals that reference unresearched recipes are ignored. Recipe selection follows a fixed priority order: signal type (explicit recipe signals over item signals), recipe category (crushing > reprocessing > advanced crushing), asteroid type priority (metallic > carbonic > oxide), default item order, and finally quality (lowest > highest). For example, wiring a Crusher to a belt with only oxide asteroid chunks will set it to oxide asteroid crushing; introducing a metallic asteroid chunk or iron ore will cause the Crusher to switch to metallic asteroid crushing because that recipe has higher priority. Reprocessing recipes cannot be selected via item signals when their outputs overlap with crushing outputs.

The available Crusher processes and their primary inputs and outputs are:

• Metallic asteroid crushing: input Metallic asteroid chunk; outputs iron ore and returns the Metallic asteroid chunk.
• Carbonic asteroid crushing: input Carbonic asteroid chunk; outputs carbon and returns the Carbonic asteroid chunk.
• Oxide asteroid crushing: input Oxide asteroid chunk; outputs ice and returns the Oxide asteroid chunk.
• Metallic asteroid reprocessing: input Metallic asteroid chunk; outputs one Metallic, one Carbonic, and one Oxide asteroid chunk.
• Carbonic asteroid reprocessing: input Carbonic asteroid chunk; outputs one Carbonic, one Metallic, and one Oxide asteroid chunk.
• Oxide asteroid reprocessing: input Oxide asteroid chunk; outputs one Oxide, one Metallic, and one Carbonic asteroid chunk.
• Advanced metallic/carbonic/oxide crushing: advanced recipes that add an extra resource (for metallic: iron ore + copper ore; carbonic: carbon + sulfur; oxide: ice + calcite) while returning the input chunk.

Asteroid reprocessing has an 80% return rate per cycle for producing items of higher quality, compared to the recycler’s 25% return. This makes repeated reprocessing an efficient way to elevate chunk quality up to legendary. When planning a crusher array for reprocessing, oxide reprocessing requires half the number of machines compared to metallic or carbonic at the same throughput because the oxide recipe runs twice as fast. Module choices significantly change optimal ratios: adding quality modules increases the number of Crushers required for higher-tier reprocessing. The relationship between numbers of Crushers at each quality tier and combined module quality Q can be expressed with a recurrence formula for C_q and a closed form for legendary item throughput; these formulas quantify how many Crushers are needed at each quality tier to sustain reprocessing chains and predict legendary output per cycle.

• Practical notes:
• Connect Crushers to the circuit network to automate recipe selection by sending explicit recipe signals or item signals; unresearched recipes will not be selected.
• Use reprocessing for quality farming because of the 80% return rate; cycle chunks repeatedly until they reach the desired quality.
• Balance Crusher counts by recipe speed: oxide reprocessing requires half as many machines as metallic or carbonic for the same throughput.
• Adding quality modules increases output quality but also shifts the optimal number of Crushers per quality tier; calculate ratios if planning large-scale legendary item production.