Talk:Reticulian Med Lab

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Up to 900mc last time I checked, plus food and supplies But you need to empty your cargo hold each turn to convert the full amount next turn. Because the Med lab stops converting natives once its cargo hold is full of food / supplies.

Example: 400,000 natives could yield 35,000mc of cash, but would take a single London about 40 turns to convert.

Tim's help pages say "300 natives of any type, other than Chupanoids, will yield 3 food, 10 supplies, 30 med, and 30 mc." That's similar to my experimental findings, but may be slightly inaccurate (please let me know if it is).

The RML is good for getting a moderate yield quickly, which allows you to quick-start colonies. (Typically with a government centre, so you can get the mc generated into your central account as quickly and safely as possible.) But it is not as efficient at converting natives to food as the Sloane Ranger (ground unit), whose Protein Converters process 20 "bodies" (natives or prisoners) to 1kT of food - about 5 times the yield of a Ret Med Lab, but unlike RML, no supplies or mc are created.

So in practice, once the Sloane Protein Scoops were coded, people stopped using the RML much, and shipped natives home to be processed into food, which is more valuable for IMT.

Another difference between RML and Protein Scoop is, the RML only works on natives outside bases. The Scoop works on both, but is less efficient while chasing wild natives. The chasing process leads to wastage of peripheral items such as limbs, heads etc, but the "noble sport" of chasing wild natives is generally preferred by IMT crews. Allegedly as it is more sporting. Ie, you get to roar around native streets and farms at 40 km/hr in a tank, demolishing buildings like James Bond, scooping up hapless stragglers.

Neither the RML or Protein Scoops work on Chups. -Doc Devious