Alt recipe

[El Presidente]

I want stitched plating but every time I reload and try scanning to get new recipes I keep getting the exact same choices. How do I get different choices?

[Wolfgang]

Well, if you have the harddrive already in the MAM then you won't get any other ones. They are rolled the moment you are putting the harddrive into the MAM.

[kimba-rip]

collect hard drives and shove them in the M.A.M to unlock new recipes...

[Caz]

Originally posted by kimba-rip:

collect hard drives and shove them in the M.A.M to unlock new recipes...

Pretty sure he's already figured that part out. Ya know, based on actually reading his post.

[PhailRaptor]

If you're trying to save-scum the Hard Drives, then you need to save before you insert the Hard Drive. That's the point when the options are decided for that Hard Drive. The 10 minute waiting period is mandatory, no way around it.

[dj8472]

You can use cheat engine speed hack to speed up the game, set the speed to 50 times and tie drive will finish in ~10 sec

[Tenebris]

Originally posted by dj8472:

You can use cheat engine speed hack to speed up the game, set the speed to 50 times and tie drive will finish in ~10 sec

If you're gonna cheat like that, may as well just use the online save editor and unlock the recipes you want. A lot easier than messing around with Cheat Engine

[TheFreaknd]

Either go exploring for more HDs or cheat your dirty lil ass off.

[kLuns]

just get more hard drives

[Mogges]

In all of my previous play-throughs I figured out, that most of the alternative recipes come too late or in inconvenient situations, where everything is already settled and built. E.g. screws: the great recipe, iron ingots -> screws, replacing the step via iron rods. I already built a huge screw factory with the old recipe, overproducing the demand for all needs of screws, then i find the alternative recipe. Why should I dismantle my factory and replace it by a new one? Why should I build a 2nd factory producing the same items with much more output? The same with recipes for quartz oscillators or computers. Why switching to the alternative caterium version of a computer, when the standard one works fine and everything is already built and functioning? You can start your real exploration only when you have the jetpack; this is +/- midgame. But at that point, most of your recipes and buildings are already finished and used, in routine and mass production. So for me alternative recipes are in most of the cases useless.
It is of course different if you are one of those players who produce only to produce; producing 50 heavy modular frames / min, simply because; they can! But I am not that kind of player.
Long story short: do you re-plan and re-construct your factories only because you found an alternative recipe?

[XistenZ]

Originally posted by Mogges:

Long story short: do you re-plan and re-construct your factories only because you found an alternative recipe?

Yes.

[Mogges]

Why? More output, simply fun with building new factories? What´s the reason when you have a (over)producing and functioning factory?

[Wolfgang]

Originally posted by XistenZ:

Originally posted by Mogges:

Long story short: do you re-plan and re-construct your factories only because you found an alternative recipe?

Yes.

I second that.

Originally posted by Mogges:

Why? More output, simply fun with building new factories? What´s the reason when you have a (over)producing and functioning factory?

If it is saving on resources then it will get rebuild. And since the output should be the same you can then recalculate the needed input. So you aren't keeping the input the same but the output. Meaning that you can either downclock (saving on energy) or use the freed up resources for something else.
For Cast Screw it is simply a saving on space and energy since you can now make screws in one step with less machines than in two with more. And you only need to calculate the machines in this case since the iron to screw ratio is the same.
Diluted fuel is simply to get much more energy. When I replaced the Residual fuel with diluted fuel I got about 5GW more energy (due to my factory being smaller back then).

[Mogges]

That is surely true, but is it worth the effort? You have unlimited space, the map is huge, at a certain point you have more than enough energy and you have unlimited resources / nodes. So why should I spend 10 hours and more to re-construct a ton of material, resources, belts, lifts, collect 10.000 of material in containers? I talk about the point in the game, where 50% of the work is done, midgame, end of tier 5 or 6. I have a functional screw fabrication for 200 hours at this stage, why should I dismantle it.......for even more screws?

[PhailRaptor]

Originally posted by Mogges:

Why? More output, simply fun with building new factories? What´s the reason when you have a (over)producing and functioning factory?

Not with all recipes, but some of the are actually very important for efficiency. A great example is the Cast Screws alternate, making Screws from Iron Ingots directly instead of Iron Rods. You cut out a whole step from manufacturing, saving you power and space. Later on you get Steel Screws, letting you turn 5 Steel Beams per minute into 260 Screws per minute. You'd need 6.5 Constructors working the standard recipe to match that (plus a bunch more to make the Iron Rods), or 5.2 constructors doing the Cast Screws alternate. And considering how many Screws are needed to make Computers, and how many Computers you need for everything Oil and Trains...

Another example is Oil to Fuel. The standard recipe turns 60/min Crude into 40/min Fuel (and 30/min Polymer Resin). You're losing 1/3 of the mass in the conversion. If you use some extra steps and some alternate recipes you can do much better. The Heavy Oil alternate recipe turns 30/min Crude into 40/min Heavy Oil Residue. This can then be used in 1 of 2 following alternates, depending on what tech you have available. You can use Packagers to create Packaged Water, and run that into a Refinery with the Heavy Oil to use the Diluted Packaged Fuel recipe, or just push the Water and Heavy Oil into the Blender for the Diluted Fuel recipe. The first uses 30/min Heavy Oil (and 60/min Packaged Water) to make 60/min Packaged Fuel (which goes into another Packager to go back to pipes). The second uses 50/min Heavy Oil (and 100/min Water) in a Blender to make 100/min Fuel. Both of the recipes double the volume you start with. This comes with the initial Heavy Oil Residue also producing an extra 10/min. Compared to the default recipe that makes you lose 1/3 of the input for what you get on the output.

Still relating to Oil, there's a pair of recipes that make the most efficient production of Plastic and Rubber. The standard recipes for Rubber and Plastic both use 30/min Crude to make 20/min Rubber or Plastic (and 10/min Heavy Oil). The Recycled Plastic and Recycled Rubber recipes both take in 30/min of the opposite resource and 30/min Fuel to make 60/min of the desired recipe. Once you initially set this up, you only need to supply the system you create with the necessary amount of Fuel -- half the outputs will feed the opposite inputs. And as we discovered previously, you can make a huge profit on Fuel using alternate recipes for extremely efficient conversion of Crude. While Rubber doesn't have as heavy of a demand, there's a *lot* of mid to late game products that require Plastic (like Circuit Boards and Computers), so making a lot of it efficiently is really beneficial.

[LostME]

Originally posted by Mogges:

That is surely true, but is it worth the effort? You have unlimited space, the map is huge, at a certain point you have more than enough energy and you have unlimited resources / nodes. So why should I spend 10 hours and more to re-construct a ton of material, resources, belts, lifts, collect 10.000 of material in containers? I talk about the point in the game, where 50% of the work is done, midgame, end of tier 5 or 6. I have a functional screw fabrication for 200 hours at this stage, why should I dismantle it.......for even more screws?

You should not. The game gives different options and how to play is decided by the player himself. No one bothers to immediately open the necessary alternative recipes. Or build temporary factories to quickly open the milestones and only then build good factories.