Off-world Refueling: A short explanation

[RenewableRocket]

(crop)...

I'm also new to surface bases, so I steered clear of having a permanent base plus a refuelling ship. Instead my entire base returns to orbit to dock with an orbital station or orbiting vessel, and then descends again to mine some more. Maybe that's a "mistake" on my part?

What are other people's opinions? (I'm sure there are no "right" answers, I'm just intrigued by the different considerations people are taking in to account and how they go about addressing those.)

Mat.

Whenever I consider an orbital refiner for fuel I always look to why I would go that way rather than having the refiner on the mine...

my considerations are:

How much mass loss does the conversion entail, if it's large then doing orbital seems a waste of fuel since you bring up mass that gets wasted into nothing at all.

Are the resources deplete-able, if yes, then an orbital refiner is probably better no matter the conversion loss.

Do you have engines that can use the "raw" mined resource, if yes, then orbital station might be better.

Power, how do you supply it? if it's solar then orbital is probably better since you get more continuous production, if it's other then a planetary base makes more sense.

Workforce, do you need to do dV expensive resupply runs for them or do you need them for your surface->orbit transfers.

Anyhow those are a few of my thoughts on orbital vs planetary refineries, sometimes you might go for one option just because you can build something nifty ofc Unlike the irl space program we in KSP don't need to just do the optimal thing, if we can do something awesome and then watch explosions happen.

[Dafni]

After reading this thread, I have not much to add, just: I LOVE KSP! What a game we have here.

@OP, great post, thank you very much, you gave me tons to think about.

[Northstar1989]

After reading this thread, I have not much to add, just: I LOVE KSP! What a game we have here.

@OP, great post, thank you very much, you gave me tons to think about.

Glad you enjoyed the guide so much! It really needs to be expanded to take into account the new stock ISRU system more, but it's something, at least, where I found a sparsity of guides...

Regards,

Northstar