Atmospheric conditioners or ringworlds?

[dbt1949]

In the game I'm playing now I had already developed ringworlds and was running out of things to research.That's when I researched up to atmospheric conditioners.
It just looked to me that it should be developed before ringworld as it affects so much more of your empire.
I mean like in the case of a large gas planet.It normally only has slots for 5 facilities but after the atmospheric conditioner does it's thing it goes to 25 facilites. You convert 5 of these and you've made a ringworld(equivilant).