Tiberium refinery (Tiberian Dawn)

The Tiberium refinery was the primary resource building for Tiberium harvesting during the First Tiberium War.

Background
The arrival of Tiberium on Earth caught the attention of scientists all over the world, trying to learn more about the alien crystal and how it might be used to benefit humanity. When it became known that Tiberium can be refined into elements that can be used for financial benefit, both GDI and Nod devised a system for Tiberium to be harvested on the battlefield to fund military operations.

For both factions, it was necessary to deploy Harvesters to collect Tiberium and bring it back to the Refinery for processing. The refinement operations would then produce funding for further base construction and the mobilising of new weapons for combat,

Tiberium Refineries are characterised by their tall docking stations for Harvesters to unload and two large vats of liquid used in the refinement process.

Game building
The Refinery is the primary means of acquiring money in the game, which then allows the player to build new structures and units. Though an expensive structure to build, each Refinery comes with a Harvester, which will start harvesting any nearby Tiberium automatically (unless there is no Tiberium visible in the revealed part of the map, in which case the Harvester will sit idle and wait for orders).

Refineries are prime targets for Engineers, as not only will any stored Tiberium be transferred to the new owner on capture, if there is a Harvester docked with the Refinery then the Engineer will hijack the Harvester for the capturing faction’s use.

A Refinery is capable of storing 1000 credits of refined Tiberium, which is just under one and a half Harvester loads. When this runs out, the player will be prompted to build Tiberium Silos with EVA speaking a “silos needed” message. Refined Tiberium is stored evenly between all Refineries and Silos and any Tiberium that a Harvester deposits at the Refinery when there is no storage space is wasted.

Selling the Refinery will only refund 50% of the difference between the cost of the Refinery and the Harvester, which equals 300 credits at normal difficulty. This is likely to prevent exploitation (e.g. acquiring extra Harvesters for less money).

Trivia

 * Although the sidebar text for the Refinery in Remastered indicates that the Refinery requires 30 power units to run, for unknown reasons the Refinery drains 40 power units and generates 10 so requires 30 overall. The usual rule of power output being linked to the health of the generating structure still applies, meaning the Refinery can actually drain 30 to 40 units of power depending on its condition.