Crusher

The Crusher is a late-game building used to process asteroid chunks into usable resources and to reprocess chunks into higher-quality asteroid chunks. It appears on space platforms and is integral to asteroid processing chains introduced by Space Platform and later asteroid reprocessing technologies. The Crusher accepts Metallic, Carbonic, and Oxide asteroid chunks and supports multiple recipes: basic crushing (producing primary resources and returning the input chunk), reprocessing (splitting a chunk into the three chunk types), and advanced crushing (producing multiple primary resources). Some recipes require the Space Platform research, while reprocessing and advanced recipes require Asteroid Reprocessing and Advanced Asteroid Processing research respectively.

A Crusher can be controlled by the circuit network to automatically select recipes. Accepted signals include explicit recipe signals and item signals representing asteroid chunks or the outputs of supported recipes. When multiple signals are present the Crusher chooses a recipe using the following priority rules (evaluated in order): signal type (explicit recipe signals take precedence over item signals), recipe type (crushing > reprocessing > advanced crushing), asteroid type (Metallic > Carbonic > Oxide), default item order, and quality (lowest > highest). For example, wiring a Crusher to a belt containing only Oxide chunks will set it to oxide asteroid crushing; adding a Metallic chunk or iron ore will switch it to metallic asteroid crushing because that recipe has higher priority. Reprocessing recipes cannot be selected by item signals when their outputs overlap with crushing outputs.

Reprocessing recipes are the most efficient way to obtain high-quality asteroid items. Each reprocessing recipe returns items at an 80% rate, which is far higher than the 25% return rate of a recycler. Because reprocessing cycles chunks repeatedly until they reach higher quality tiers, setups using Crushers can be tuned to generate large numbers of rare and legendary chunks for crafting desirable items. Key practical points for planning Crusher-based reprocessing systems:

• Throughput ratios: Oxide reprocessing recipes run twice as fast as the Carbonic and Metallic reprocessing recipes; therefore, for the same quality tier you need about half as many Crushers processing oxide chunks as you do for metallic or carbonic chunks.
• Module effects: Adding quality modules to Crushers increases the number of Crushers required to reprocess higher-quality chunks. Example optimal ratios differ sharply depending on module quality (the wiki gives sample ratios for setups with two normal quality modules and with two legendary quality Module 3s).
• Ratio calculation: The Crusher reprocessing ratios can be computed with the provided recursive formula C_q = (0.9 C_{q-1} + 0.09 C_{q-2} + 0.009 C_{q-3}) * Q / (Q + (1-0.8)/0.8), where C_q is the number of Crushers processing quality q, and Q is the combined quality value of modules in the Crushers. The legendary output per cycle follows I_4 = (C_3 + 0.1 C_2 + 0.01 C_1 + 0.001 C_0) * 0.8 Q.
• Recipe selection caveat: Because some recipes share outputs, item signals alone may not uniquely identify a desired recipe; use explicit recipe signals on the circuit network when precise control is required.
• Design recommendation: Arrange Crushers so chunks can be cycled through successive quality tiers efficiently; balance numbers of Crushers per tier according to their processing speed and module setup to avoid bottlenecks.

Typical Crusher recipe outputs include, for metallic chunks, iron ore (and in advanced crushing also copper ore); for carbonic, carbon and sulfur in advanced recipes; and for oxide, ice and calcite for advanced crushing. Reprocessing recipes split a single chunk into one chunk of each type (Metallic, Carbonic, Oxide) and are unlocked by Asteroid Reprocessing research. Use Crushers as the backbone of any asteroid-derived resource pipeline and tune the machine counts and module composition according to the formulae above to maximize legendary yield.