Space Engineers Basic Refinery: Stats, Ore Processing Times, and Practical Use

Space Engineers throws a long list of functional blocks at new players. The Basic Refinery is one of the few that deserves attention right away. It is the cheaper, smaller cousin of the standard Refinery, and usually the first ore processing block you set up on a fresh save.

What It Does

The Basic Refinery converts raw ore into ingots, the same job the full Refinery handles. The catch is range: this smaller version only accepts common metals and a few cheap inputs.

Supported materials:

• Cobalt Ore
• Iron Ore
• Magnesium Ore
• Nickel Ore
• Silicon Ore
• Scrap Metal
• Stone

Anything rarer (Uranium, Platinum, Gold, and so on) has to wait for the full Refinery.

Why Pick It Over the Refinery

The Basic Refinery occupies roughly one eighth of the standard Refinery's volume. That matters on small bases or mining ships that you do not want looking like a flying warehouse. It costs fewer components and pulls less power, which is kind to early setups running on a couple of wind turbines.

The catch: there are no upgrade ports, so speed and yield modules are not an option. The two internal inventory slots cap at 4,000 L each. Chaining it into a larger production line requires a mod, since vanilla offers no native way.

Block Stats

• Dimensions (W, H, L): 1, 2, 1
• Mass: 2,802 kg
• Integrity: 13,010
• Build time: 40 seconds
• Material efficiency: 70%
• Refine speed: 65%
• Power consumption: 330 kW
• Idle power consumption: 1 kW
• Inventory volume: 4,000 L
• Airtight: Partially
• Power consumer group: Factory
• PCU cost: 75

Placement Rules

The block is large grid only. No small ship version exists, so do not bother trying to fit one on a fighter. It can hook into a Conveyor Network, which lets it pull ore automatically from any linked inventory.

Control Panel Options

Open the terminal and you will find:

• Toggle Block: Powers the unit on or off.
• Name: Renames the block. Useful when several refineries run in parallel.
• Show on HUD: Marks the block on your HUD when an Antenna is attached.
• Use Conveyor System: Toggles the auto-draw function when the refinery is part of a network.

Refining Rates by Ore

Numbers reflect vanilla settings. Modded servers may differ. Each entry lists processing time, combined efficiency, consumption, production, production time, and output.

• Cobalt Ore: 4.615 s/kg, 21%, 0.217 kg/s in, 0.046 kg/s out, 21.978 s/kg. Yields Cobalt Ingot.
• Iron Ore: 0.077 s/kg, 49%, 13 kg/s in, 6.37 kg/s out, 0.157 s/kg. Yields Iron Ingot.
• Magnesium Ore: 0.769 s/kg, 0.49%, 1.3 kg/s in, 0.006 kg/s out, 156.986 s/kg. Yields Magnesium Powder.
• Nickel Ore: 1.015 s/kg, 28%, 0.985 kg/s in, 0.276 kg/s out, 3.626 s/kg. Yields Nickel Ingot.
• Scrap Metal: 0.062 s/kg, 56%, 16.25 kg/s in, 9.1 kg/s out, 0.11 s/kg. Yields Iron Ingot.
• Silicon Ore: 0.923 s/kg, 49%, 1.083 kg/s in, 0.531 kg/s out, 1.884 s/kg. Yields Silicon Wafer.
• Stone: 0.015 s/kg, 3.53%, 65 kg/s in, 2.293 kg/s out, 0.436 s/kg. Yields Gravel, Iron Ingot, Nickel Ingot, and Silicon Wafer.

A few practical takeaways:

• Scrap Metal beats raw Iron Ore. Faster processing and a higher efficiency rate, so hoard scrap pulled from wrecks.
• Magnesium Ore is painfully slow at roughly 157 seconds per kilogram of output. Stockpile early if you expect to keep ammo factories fed.
• Stone is filler material. Low efficiency, but the 65 kg/s throughput makes it a quiet source of gravel and trace metals when ore is abundant.

When to Upgrade

The Basic Refinery handles the opening hours well, but its limits show as soon as you mine your first batch of Platinum or Uranium. At that point, build the full Refinery and keep the Basic running alongside it for common ores. Two cheap blocks splitting the workload tend to beat one expensive block bottlenecking everything.