User:Kardoon

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Reactions are processes through which moon ores and gases are turned into Medical boosters or intermediate products necessary for tech II and tech III item production. Reactions require Reaction Formulas, which work similarly to Blueprints but cannot be researched, copied, or invented. Furthermore, reactions can only be conducted in Refineries which have the relevant reactor modules installed.

Reactors can only be equipped in a Refinery in solar systems with a security rating of 0.4 or lower (i.e. not in high security space). Reactors come in three variants and support the following types of reactions:

• Standup Biochemical Reactor I - Allows reactions to create chemicals used in the production of Combat Boosters.
• Standup Composite Reactor I - Enables reactions with moon ores to create materials needed as part of the tech II production supply chain.
• Standup Hybrid Reactor I - Supports reactions involving Fullerite gases to create intermediate products for tech III item and ship production.

Hybrid Polymer Reactions

This is the process by which the fullerene gases mined in wormhole space are transformed into Hybrid Polymers, which will themselves be transformed into Hybrid Tech Components in the manufacture of T3 ships. In addition to fullerene gases, the reaction also requires the appropriate type of fuel block, and minerals from standard asteroid ores. The Polymer Reaction interface looks like this:

The pictured reaction creates Carbon-86 Epoxy Resin from Fullerene-C320, Fullerene-C32, Zydrine, and Nitrogen Fuel Blocks.

Skills

The required skills are the same as for T2 (Hybrid) reactions:

• Reactions (1x): 4% reduction of reaction time per skill level. Level 3 is needed for the Hybrid Polymer Reactions needed for T3 production.
• Mass Reactions (2x): One additional reaction slot per Level (from the one slot base allowance).
• Advanced Mass Reactions (8x): One additional reaction slot per level (for a maximum of 11 with both skills at 5).

Materials

• Polymer Reaction Formulae are seeded on the NPC market under Reactions > Polymer Reactions. As with other reaction formulae these cannot be researched.
• Fullerenes are obtained by harvesting gas sites in w-space. See Gas Cloud Mining#Fullerenes for more details. Fullerenes are very bulky and shipping large quantities of these gases may become challenging.
• Minerals are obtained from mining standard ores (either from Ores sites in w-space, or asteroid belts in k-space). Compared to Tech 2 manufacturing, very little minerals are actually required to manufacture Tech 3 ships and subsystems.
• Fuel blocks are also required. These can be manufactured from ice and PI commodities or purchased on the market.

Process

Polymer reactions are done in Refineries (Athanor and Tatara). The refinery needs a Standup Hybrid Reactor I service module online and can be rigged for material and time efficiency using T1 or T2 rigs. When looking for a suitable refinery, look in the Facility tab of the Industry window and mouse over facilities that show up in the Reactions column. You're looking for a facility that supports Hybrid Polymers:

Note that in this screen capture the facility is bonused, but not for Hybrid reactions. Note also the high system cost index: this will impact the job cost. The System cost index for reactions is calculated based on all reactions done in the refinery's system, not just on Hybrid reactions.

The process is as for other reactions:

• Choose Reaction formula
• Set number of runs
• Set input & output location
• Press Start
• After run time has passed, press deliver
• Repeat as necessary

After the reaction process the Hybrid polymer produced will typically have 40% or so of the feed materials volume, depending on the exact reaction and on the facility ME bonuses.