4X on Fire: Recycling

Recycling
What happens to things you need
once you don't need them

Simple:
In the simplest version of Recycling, obsolete/destroyed things are simply gone. The resources and effort used to create them are simply gone from the game.

Medium:
In the next more complex version, a specific fraction of every recyclable object is recycled and that fraction of the the resources (but probably not manufacturing effort) used in creating them are returned.

Complex:
    In the most complex version of this option, quite a few things happen when an obsolete or destroyed object is to be recycled.
    Most obviously, the recyclable object must be at one of your settlements for recycling to take place. It's pretty difficult to recycle a robotic space ship when it's halfway across the galaxy, for example. (It might be possible for a ship en-route to recycle itself into a more advanced ship, in some very high-technology instances, however.)
    The technology of recycling has pretty much always been around, but developing it further is nontrivial. Each type of material to be recycled (metals, plastics, gases, crystals, etc.) will require a different type of recycling technology which will presumably be differently developed.
    The fraction of minerals which are returned upon recycling will depend on both the development level of the recycling technology used, as well as the amount of effort put into the recycling effort.
    Two proposed formulae for determining the amount recycled is:

D^aE^bor (kD)^a(gE)^b
    Where:
       D is the development level translated into a number between zero and one; with zero being no development, and 1 being infinite development.
       E is the amount of effort expended for this particular recycling; zero corresponding to no effort used, 1 meaning infinite effort.
       a, b, k, and g are numbers used to make the universe of one game different from that of another. Increasing a and k make development more powerful, increasing g and b make expending effort more valuable.

    The development of a particular recycling technology is a permanent investment in the technology of recycling, which makes all future recycling of that kind of material more effective. Development of recycling technologies will also be important contributing factors to the development of self-sustaining habitats.
    The effort put into recycling a particular type of material will obviously depend on how valuable it is to you. For example, it could be argued that it is easier to recycle copper than to recycle gold. A far larger fraction, however, of gold is recycled than that of copper. The difference is that there is so little gold around and it is therefore so valuable that recycling even a small amount of it is worthwhile. Copper, however, can be found in vast quantities and is thus not nearly so highly valued. The effort expended on recycling should also count as "experiment" effort for that recycling technolgy; so things which are valuable to you will have more effort expended and thus you will get better at recycling.
    A special case is recycling of stolen or scrapped alien technology. Such things are used as "alien artifact" research locations until such time as they clearly have nothing left to teach, and then are recycled normally (or might even be usable outright, if still functional).
    Depending on how old the technology of the recycled object is, parts of it might still be usable. This is represented by a portion of the manufacturing effort used in creating it the first time being made available upon recycling. For example, a space ship which cost 1000 minerals and 2000 manufacturing to create might return 500 minerals and 350 manufacturing upon its eventual recycling. The more thorougly obsolete a used-up object is, however, the less of its components will still be useful, and the less manufacturing effort is returned.
    One obvious omission so far is what happens to materials which are not successfully recycled? The standard answer of "they vanish" is just silly. In the real world, such things are usually piled up and have dirt thrown over them (landfilled), tossed into the ocean and spread out, or simply stored (example: nuclear waste). An on-off option is to have unrecycled material simply added to the total material available on the planet, but in such a way that it doesn't make mining any easier. Generally discarded materials are not easy to turn into raw materials (if they were, they would have been recycled). So the total mass of discarded material is added to the total available on the planet, but the difficulty of mining is increased such that the difficulty of mining RIGHT NOW remains unchanged. This is intended to reflect the fact that when technologies are far enough advanced, old landfills can be mined for raw materials, ocean sludge can be dredged and used, etc.

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