Hard Drive

Hard Drives are special parts obtained from Crash Sites used to unlock Alternate Recipes (see below). Crash Sites can be located using Object Scanner after Radio Signal Scanning has been researched in the MAM.

Each Hard Drive can be researched in the MAM and results in a choice of one of three alternate blueprints, chosen from the pool below. '''There is currently a bug that can result in lost hard drives if the player is modding the game. See Current Issue below for details and solutions.'''

There are 96 Crash Sites, which means a total of 96 Hard Drives can be obtained. Two Hard Drives can be used for pioneer inventory expansions, and 4 can only be obtained using Quantum Computers and Superposition Oscillators only obtainable during the timed event FICSMAS. This leaves 90 for alternate recipes without the event and 94 with the event. Currently, there are 89 Alternate Recipes, leaving 1 Hard Drive unused; 5 unused if the save participated in the FICSMAS event.

Alternate recipes
Alternate recipes generally require different input materials than the original, trading between raw material consumption, space, power, simplicity, and availability of material.

The set of blueprints to choose from is determined randomly at the beginning of the scan. Because of this, the player can keep re-rolling to get the desired blueprint by saving the game before researching a hard drive, then loading the save and waiting for another 10 minutes if the choices are undesirable. The recipes are determined at the beginning of the scan and are only shown to the player after the research concludes.

The selected alternate recipes are unlocked immediately after it is chosen. All alternate recipes can be only used in factory buildings, none in the Craft Bench; therefore, parts like Compacted Coal cannot be hand-crafted.

To allow an Alternate Recipe to be shown up after a Hard Drive research, the prerequisites as shown below must be fulfilled, whether it is Milestone, Research, or other Alternate Recipe. This means if a player builds a factory that requires certain alternate recipes that they have not yet unlocked, they may need to find more Hard Drives than they anticipated to unlock the prerequisites blocking their intended alternate recipes.

Note: It appears that several alternate recipes can be unlocked at Tier 3, Tier 4, or through the MAM, but cannot actually be made until Tier 5. These either involve a fluid (Water) or 3-4 parts, requiring the Refinery or Manufacturer respectively, both Tier 5 machines. Likewise, the two Alloy Ingot recipes are available by default but require Tier 3 Foundry.

In the table below, the Prerequisites are the conditions that are required for a recipe to be able to appear in the research result choices, while the Milestone in italic is the additional requirement that the recipe can actually be automated in a machine.

Non-recipes from Hard Drives
Besides Alternate Recipes, two inventory expansions can be unlocked:

Important notes

 * The Hard Drive research is repeatable, as long as there are remaining alternate recipes to unlock.
 * Each alternate recipe can only be unlocked once, it will never appear in the selection screen again once it has been selected.
 * If a Hard Drive is researched, and there is nothing more available to unlock (either due to every recipe being unlocked or no more recipes being currently available due to milestone/MAM research progress), the Hard Drive will be returned after it is analyzed with the following message: "The analysis of Hard Drive is completed! No new research is available. Try again later after further progress. Your Hard Drive has been returned to you.".
 * The game does not list what recipes were unlocked in one place, the Codex has to be searched for that.

Alternate recipe analysis
The previous alternate recipe analysis has been replaced by a more mathematical approach and transparent calculation. Refer to the individual item pages (e.g. Iron Ingot) for more detail. Some of the notable parameters are:
 * Weighted Point: the weighted consumption rate which is calculated by: . The lower the better.
 * For example, if a certain recipe path requires 10 Iron Ore / min, and the max mining rate of Iron Ore is 70380 / min, then
 * . The 10,000 multiplier is arbitrary chosen to make the numbers more readable, since most of the WP values fall in 1e-4 to 1e-5 ranges.
 * As water is almost everywhere, it is set to WP = 0.
 * A low WP indicates low amount of weighted resources is needed.
 * Energy per item: how much power is consumed for the entire production chain. The lower the better.
 * Energy is the product of Power and time. It is the summed every steps involved, normalized at 60 / min of the final product.
 * The energy spent for mining each type of ore or raw resources is also included in per-ore basis. Each ore has a specific mining energy, calculated as if the entire map is fully mined with appropriate overclocking.
 * The energy for extracting water is also included.
 * If more than 1 alternate recipes are involved to produce the upstream ingredient, the energy for that alternate recipe path is included in the calculation.
 * Space: refers to building space, excluding belts and pipes. The lower the better.
 * It is summed for all buildings for every steps involved for the production, including all alternate recipes. The building space, or building area is calculated by L x W, in m, which can be found in individual building page.
 * The areas for belts, pipes, Power Lines, etc are not included since they are subjective to player's design.
 * The areas for miners and extractors are not included.
 * Alternate recipes for ingredient: if there are multiple ways to produce its ingredient, the recipe with the lowest WP is chosen.
 * For example, to craft Iron Wire, Pure Iron Ingot is chosen.
 * If exception is to be made, it will be mentioned under this section.
 * This is when the reduction in WP is too small compared with the increasing complexity, or if large amount of rarer resources are involved.
 * For example, Quickwire Cable has the lowest WP, but the default recipe will be used nonetheless, when Cable is used as an ingredient for other items.
 * The best trait for each of the recipe will be highlighted in bold for visibility.
 * The crafting speed of a particular alternate recipe is not considered, as it can be breakdown into space saving or power saving when the production rate is normalized at 60 / min.
 * If there is only a sole recipe, whether it is alternate or not, to automate a certain product, then analysis will be skipped for that item, unless new recipes are added for it.
 * Similarly, alternate recipes for coal will not be analyzed as both recipes can never be fully automated.

The old articles are archived here: Alternate recipe analysis (archive)

Tips

 * Research within the MAM continues regardless of a MAM being present on the map, also multiple MAMs may be constructed. Therefore, when a Hard Drive has been acquired, the player may build a MAM at the crash site, load the Hard Drive in, and then remove the MAM, continuing their search for further drives without building a backlog of Hard Drives to research (or, if they acquire drives faster than a rate of one per 10 minutes, can significantly reduce the amount of drives in their backlog). Only one Hard Drive can be researched at a time, meaning multiple MAMs cannot be used to research more than one Hard Drive at a time.

Current issues

 * If the player is modding and the game is saved while a Hard Drive is being scanned, loading that save will result in the Hard Drive disappearing from the MAM without giving any recipes or inventory upgrades.
 * It is advised to not quit the game while a Hard Drive is being scanned to avoid losing any Hard Drives.
 * If a Hard Drive has been lost this way, they can be edited into the save using a save editor.
 * Using a save editor can allows the user to spawn as many hard drive as the user intended, into a spawned container, or
 * Using the save editor to instantly unlock desired, if not all, alternate recipes.
 * Details on a permanent fix should be directed at the modding community.

History

 * Patch 0.4.0.0:
 * Rebalanced alternate recipes in Tier 7
 * Implemented new alternate recipes: Alclad Casing, Automated Miner, Classic Battery, Cooling Device, Diluted Fuel, Electric Motor, Fertile Uranium, Heat-Fused Frame, Instant Plutonium Cell, Instant Scrap, OC Supercomputer, Plutonium Fuel Unit, Radio Connection Unit, Radio control System, Silicon High-Speed Connector, Sloppy Alumina, Super-State Computer, Turbo Blend Fuel, Turbo Pressure Motor
 * Removed Radio Control System
 * Both Inventory expansions now give 6 slots instead of 5
 * Patch 0.3.6:
 * Introduced two alternate recipes for the Empty Canister
 * Can no longer be trashed with the inventory trash slot
 * Patch 0.3.1.0: The 30 new alternate recipes added in 0.3 can now actually be unlocked
 * Patch 0.3:
 * Almost all recipes (including alternate recipes) have been adjusted
 * 30 new alternate recipes have been introduced (but aren't properly implemented and cannot be actually unlocked)
 * Renamed Expanded Pocket Dimension to Inflated Pocket Dimension, unlock requirement is now Tier 5, not Tier 5 - Industrial Manufacturing
 * Patch 0.2.1.1: Clients should be able to see Hard Drives in Drop Pods again
 * Patch 0.1.14: Introduced a few alternate recipes
 * Patch 0.1.7:
 * Adjusted the Alternate Recipe for Compacted Coal
 * Old: 2 Coal + 2 Sulphur
 * New: 3 Coal + 3 Sulphur
 * Adjusted the Alternate Recipe for Turbo Fuel
 * Old: 5 Fuel + 2 Compacted Coal
 * New: 5 Fuel + 4 Compacted Coal
 * Patch 0.1.5:
 * Introduced several new alternate recipes
 * Alternate recipes can no longer be hand-crafted
 * Fixed the milestone cost of the Alternate Heavy Modular Frame
 * Reduced the Quickwire cost of Quickwire alternate recipes
 * Patch 0.103: Fixed the Hard Drive research crash
 * Patch 0.1: Adjusted a few alternate recipes
 * Patch Closed Alpha 4: Now researchable and gives Alternate Recipes