You have this change

"Refined concrete has had its water requirement replaced with lubricant"

I see you said to balance out usage for game purposes, but what's the thematic reasoning behind this?

It gives further use for heavy oil, and in reality the better types of concrete do use oil products in them to help strengthen the bonds. To be honest, I’m not sure if it should have been heavy oil directly or lubricant, but the suggestion made by kbk linked in the description said lube. It is something I’m open to suggestions on.

Note too that this is only refined concrete. Regular concrete still uses water.

I was just looking through some stuff and realized a balancing mistake. I replaced water in refined concrete directly without adjusting the amount consumed. This results in 100 lube needed for each piece, which is expensive (rocket silo was changed to use this, also without changing the quantity, so 1000 reinforced concrete x 100 lube = 100k lube required (4 storage tanks worth). And tiling the ground, if you did a full 32x32 chunk, would be just a little more).

I'll be making an update changing the quantity to only a 10th of what was being used before.

For the record, and you may still decide to use the lube for balancing, but I don't believe there's any scientific backing for the idea that petroleum products can be useful for making concrete. Concrete relies on water binding to the materials, and in theory, any amount of oil will interfere with that process. A search through scientific sources regarding petroleum products and concrete reveal volumes of data determining not how oil can be used to make concrete but rather what limits of oil contamination concretes of various types can bind through reliably without losing strength as a function of the type of oil. I do not believe there is ever any reason to add oil to a concrete mix, and I can't find anything in the literature or the wikipedia articles that suggests I'm wrong. Like I said, decide for yourself the playability aspects, I'm just offering you the scientific perspective as a reference.

I saw an article asking about how long it takes for diesel to be effective in curing concrete, so I assumed that there was some backing for it

Here. https://www.concreteconstruction.net/how-to/no-recommendation-of-diesel-oil-for-curing_o

And there is a patent for it. https://patents.google.com/patent/US4475952A/en

Ahh, yes, for curing, diesel fuel is sometimes used (in places that aren't too hot) to COAT concrete while it is formed. It is just applied as an outer coating of the concrete to both retain moisture inside the concrete and to prevent the concrete from sticking to the mold. It wouldn't replace water or anything like that.

By the way, in this usage, it is often called "releasing oil".

Edit: Ahh, I see you found some sources. :)

I thought I had found one article at one point saying that petroleum products can be used in better concretes as the binder instead of water, but I'm having trouble tracking that down again. :/ Course, it may have been referencing asphalt concrete? I'll have to do more searching when I have time.

I don't think you will be able to find that. :) I know of cases where light oil is used in concrete mixes to reduce thickness, but it has to be done very carefully, since oil generally has a strongly detrimental effect on water cement binding (usually portland cement).

And yes, you're right, asphalt is different. Asphalt is a cement that is made from petroleum. Generally speaking, concrete from portland cement lasts longer, but asphalt is cheaper. Asphalt also has other properties that make it, sometimes, preferable to portland for use in automobile roads, for example, it absorbs sound better.