Tank Refabricator

The Tank Refabricator is a tier‑2 unit refabricator used to upgrade lower‑tier vehicle units into higher‑tier tanks. It functions similarly to other refabricators by remanufacturing an existing unit into its next stage rather than producing it from raw materials, which shortens the effective time to field upgraded tanks compared with building them outright on a Fabricator.

Compared with the Tank Fabricator, the Tank Refabricator completes an upgrade faster: the refabricator finishes an upgrade in 30 seconds, while the Fabricator requires 35 seconds to build a tank from scratch. Because this gap is fairly small, running a 1:1 ratio of tier‑1 factories (producers) to tier‑2 refabricators is not strongly suboptimal on its own; each refabricator will introduce only about a 5‑second delay per upgraded unit (per Locus) when paired equally with Fabricators. That delay can be eliminated by increasing Fabricators relative to Refabricators: a 7:6 ratio of Fabricators to Refabricators removes the queue delay entirely, though this layout is more resource‑intensive to sustain.

The Tank Refabricator shares storage and supply behavior with other unit‑producing fabricators and refabricators: it can hold twice the number of items required to produce one unit. For tanks this equates to 80 Silicon and 60 Tungsten stored capacity, allowing brief bursts of production or smoothing over intermittent supply interruptions.

Power and fluid considerations should be planned around the broader tier‑2 infrastructure. All tier‑2 reconstructors, including the Tank Refabricator, can be powered from the chemical outputs of a single Turbine Condenser feeding Electrolyzers, so a compact high‑tier power/chem tree can support multiple refabricators without an excessive number of dedicated generators.

Practical notes for deployment and strategy:

• Use refabricators to accelerate upgrades when you already have a steady stream of lower‑tier units; they are most effective when paired with reliable unit supply lines.
• A 1:1 Fabricator:Refabricator layout is acceptable due to the small time differential; choose a 7:6 Fabricator‑heavy layout only if you need to eliminate any upgrade queue delay and can afford the extra resource cost.
• Take advantage of the doubled input storage (80 Silicon, 60 Tungsten) to tolerate short production bursts or temporary shortages in material throughput.
• Centralize chemical/power production (Turbine Condensers → Electrolyzers) to feed several tier‑2 refabricators efficiently rather than duplicating infrastructure for each building.
• Because refabricators operate faster than fabricators for producing upgraded tanks, prioritize refabricator placement where frontline replacements and rapid upgrades matter most to maintain combat tempo.

The Tank Refabricator is therefore a compact, time‑efficient option for scaling up tank forces from existing units, and it integrates neatly with a centralized tier‑2 production and power network when properly supplied.