Hard Drive/Alternate recipe analysis

Diluted Packaged Fuel cycle
This combination uses Heavy Oil Residue -> Diluted Packaged Fuel to increase the Crude Oil -> Fuel conversion ratio by 4.5x. Combining this fuel conversion with Compacted Coal to yield Turbofuel greatly improves energy generation, allowing a single oil node to supply over 11x as many Fuel Generators at maximum usage, compared to the normal Crude Oil to Fuel recipe. Even relative to directly using the Fuel produced by the Diluted Fuel combination, Turbofuel increases the number of generators that can be supplied by 2.78x, at the cost of requiring Coal and Sulfur input for the Compacted Coal. The final ratio is 148.15 Fuel Generators (22,222 MW) for 300 Crude Oil and 480 Sulfur and Coal per minute, which can be accomplished, via overclocking, off of a single Oil node of normal or pure quality, and a single node each of Sulfur and Coal at pure quality, or two each at normal quality, using Miner Mk.2s.

The Blender's Diluted Fuel recipe skips the packaging-unpackaging steps, making the process simpler and more energy saving.

Recycled Plastic/Rubber
In addition to power generation, combining the above recipe with Recycled Plastic and Recycled Rubber will improve your ratio per crude oil. The idea is to have half the output of Recycled Plastic feeding the Recycled Rubber production, and vice versa. This does require the system to be "primed" which can be sped up by sending the full output of one side to the other initially. With the system equalized you can achieve 12 resources per crude oil ( [2.667 recycled plastic + 3.333 residual plastic] x 2 for the rubber ). The original recipes yield 0.667 resources per crude oil, and no Heavy Oil Residue is wasted, thus no longer require continuous removal of the Heavy Oil Residue.

A major benefit of this recipe: If one resource of the combined recycler system is not fully utilized, the usable output of the other will increase as the unused side overflows. Thus, there is no need to build the system asymmetrically.

Uranium Fuel
The base conversion rate of Uranium to Uranium Fuel Rods is 100:1. Uranium Ore converts to Encased Uranium Cells at 2:1 and Encased Uranium Cells convert to Uranium Fuel Rods at 50:1. In total, this allows a single normal Uranium node (600/min using a Miner Mk.3 at 250%) to supply 30 Nuclear Power Plants, for a total of 75,000 MW of power. The alternate recipes Infused Uranium Cell and Uranium Fuel Unit drastically improve this ratio. Infused Uranium Cells convert Uranium ore to Encased Uranium Cells at a 5:4 ratio, and Uranium Fuel Unit converts Encased Uranium Cells to Uranium Fuel Rods at a 100:3 ratio. This increases the number of fuel rods generated by 2.4x, allowing a single normal Uranium node to supply 72 Nuclear Power Plants, for a total of 180,000 MW of power. This increases the maximum uranium power output from 262.5 GW to 630 GW (as of Update 4, there are 3 normal and 1 impure Uranium nodes on the map for a total of 2100 Uranium per minute).

Plutonium Fuel
The base conversion rate of Uranium Waste to Plutonium Fuel Rods is 225:1. The standard recipes for Non-fissile Uranium and Plutonium Pellets both consume Uranium Waste in a 3:1 ratio, meaning to fully convert all Uranium Waste, 75% should be allocated for Non-fissile Uranium and 25% should be allocated for Plutonium Pellets. Uranium Waste produces Non-fissile Uranium in a 3:4 ratio, Plutonium Pellets are produced in a 10:3 ratio (consuming 25% of the initial input Uranium Waste), Encased Plutonium Cells are produced in a 2:1 ratio, and Plutonium Fuel Rods are produced in a 30:1 ratio. When fully utilized, a single normal Uranium node produces between 300 Uranium Waste/min on the standard recipe chain or 720 Uranium Waste/min on the most efficient recipe chain, which respectively produce 1.5 and 3.6 Plutonium Fuel Rods/min.

The standard recipe chain maximizes the use of Uranium Waste and minimizes other resources required to create Plutonium Rods. This makes this recipe chain ideal for creating a zero-waste Nuclear Power setup (meaning all Plutonium Fuel Rods are deposited in an Awesome Sink and not used in Nuclear Power Plants). The alternate recipe chain for Plutonium Fuel is more oriented towards maximizing the production of Plutonium Fuel Rods.

Using all of the alternate recipes ("Fertile Uranium", "Instant Plutonium", and "Plutonium Fuel Unit") the conversion rate of Uranium Waste to Plutonium Fuel Rods is 75:2. However, "Fertile Uranium" requires input Uranium, which means some of the original Uranium harvested must be withheld without being refined into Uranium Fuel Rods. This fact, along with the limited amount of Uranium available on the map currently, makes this recipe sub-optimal for maximizing power. Using all of the alternate recipes for Plutonium Fuel Rods and Uranium Fuel Rods, except for "Fertile Uranium" produces the most Uranium waste-free Nuclear power possible, at 340 GW for a single normal Uranium node (160 GW of additional power from Plutonium) or 1190 GW (630 GW from Uranium and 560 GW from Plutonium) for all of the Uranium on the map. This recipe chain has a conversion rate of Uranium Waste to Plutonium Fuel Rods of 225:2.

This is as compared to a maximum of 1050 GW (286.4 GW from Uranium and 763.6 GW from Plutonium) for all of the Uranium on the map if "Fertile Uranium" is used in combination with all other alternative recipes. Fertile Uranium also produces more permanent Plutonium Waste then the standard recipe.

Solid Steel Ingots
Using the normal recipe, one Steel Ingot is produced per Iron Ore and Coal input. Using Solid Steel Ingot combined with Pure Iron Ingot can increase this yield to 39 Steel Ingots for 14 Iron Ore and 26 Coal input. This is 2.79x as efficient with regards to Iron Ore, and 1.5x as efficient with regards to Coal.

Compacted Steel Ingot combined with Compacted Coal can be used instead to ease the demand on Coal at the cost of overall yield (relative to the Solid Steel Ingot recipe) and Sulfur. It provides 10 Steel Ingots for six Iron Ore, three Coal, and three Sulfur. Relative to the normal Steel Ingot recipe, this is 1.67x as efficient on Iron Ore, and 3.33x as efficient on Coal. Relative to the Solid Steel Ingot recipe, this produces only ~60% as many Steel Ingots per Iron Ore input, but requires only 45% as much Coal *per Ingot* at the cost of requiring an equal amount of Sulfur.

As part of the Heavy Encased Frame chain, use Pure Iron Ingot -> Solid Steel Ingot -> Encase Industrial Pipes -> Heavy Encased Frame to see the cascading effect of resource-saving. See Heavy Modular Frame for more info.

Iron Wire
Best paired with Stitched Iron Plate.