Hard Drive



The Hard Drive is an item resembling a heavy duty carrying case that can be found inside Crash Sites.

It currently can be researched in the M.A.M., and results in a choice of one of 3 alternate blueprints, chosen from the pool below. See Below

There are 67 Crash Sites. This means a total of 67 Hard Drives could theoretically be obtained. 8 however require materials not currently available in early access.

2 Hard drives will be used for character Inventory expansions, leaving 65 for alternate recipes.

Alternate Recipes
Alternate recipes generally cost only about two thirds of the original recipe, both in time and required material, but often require different input materials than the original.

The set of blueprints to choose from is picked randomly at the time the scan has completed. Because of this, the player can keep re-rolling to get a desired blueprint by saving the game before opening the M.A.M. UI to check the analyze results, then loading the save if the choices are undesirable.

The recipes that show up depend on the current tier and what other Milestones have been unlocked. For example, researching Caterium opens up multiple new possible alternate recipes that involve it.

However, some alternate recipes also seem to also require that previous alternate recipes are unlocked in order to appear as one of the three random options presented at the time the scan is complete. This means that if a player builds a factory that requires certain alternate recipes which they have not yet unlocked, they may need to find more hard drives than the amount they anticipated in order to unlock their intended alternate recipes. Two examples (but not all) of these are the alternate recipes for Silica and High-Speed Connectors. (This page is incomplete regarding these requirements and regarding the complete list of alternate recipes which require other alternate recipes in order to be shown after the scan is complete. Please help improve this page by indicating which alternate recipes do not appear as one of the three random options until another alternate recipe was unlocked and which alternate recipes they require).

Note: Alternate Recipe: Uranium Cell appears to require at least Turbofuel. Turbofuel requires Compacted Coal.

Important Notes

 * The Hard Drive research is repeatable.
 * Researching a Hard Drive alone does not unlock new recipes. The player is required to complete the necessary Milestones at The HUB. It is a 2-step process.
 * If you research a Hard Drive, and there is nothing more to unlock, the Hard Drive will return to your inventory. "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. "

Best alternate recipes

 * "Alternative Steel Ingot", "Encased Industrial Beam", "Modular Frame", and "Heavy Modular Frame" recipes are a good combo.
 * "Alternative Screw" and "Reinforced Iron Plate" recipes are a good combo.
 * "Stitched Iron Plate" and "Iron Wire" recipes are a good combo, when combined they use even fewer iron ingots than the other "Alternative Reinforced Iron Plate" (6 and 2/9ths of an iron ingot per plate instead of 8).
 * "Alternative Caterium Wire" and "Iron Wire" recipes can be used where no Copper Node is within close range.
 * "Alternative Iron Ingot" and "Stitched Iron Plate" recipes are useful where Copper Nodes are abundant.
 * "Alternative Quickwire", "Caterium Circuit Board", and "Caterium Computer" recipes are a good combo, as only a small amount of Caterium is needed and greatly reduces the raw material required for all other ingredients.

Worst alternate recipes

 * "Alternative Rubber Cable", consumes rubber which requires an oil refinery without saving much copper ore.
 * "Biomass Coal", and "Wood Coal", serve little purpose unless you really enjoy cutting down forests and manually feeding them to your coal power plants.
 * "Alternative Screw", and "Steel Screw" are useless once you have the alternatives for: "Iron Plate", "Heavy Modular Frame", "Computer", and "Rotor".