Are hard drives recipies RNG or not ?

[starman01]

Hi all,

I'm currently a bit confused with the hard drives. I found no clear answer for it too so far.

Playing in experimenal btw. In the research tree there are now two recipies that require me to sacrifice a hard disk. And I have FOMO to sacrifice one, since I don't know what recipe i might miss out on because of this.

Are the recipies generated in the MAM RNG based, or do hard drives have fixed recipies in them ?

The reason I'm conflicted is, because in my starting area (south west, green lush) I always get the two hard drives first, and they always have the same two recipies in them, mostly the alternate screw recipe.

So why is that ? Are recipes fixes, or am I just always getting my screw recipe because i do not have any tiers unlocked at the start of the game, which is also an information I found.

Would be happy if someone could clear that out too me... It's a pain to save scum to check if the hard drives contains crap so that I can sacrifice it for the turbo fuel recipe.

Thanks :)

[kLuns]

Not sure how it exactly works but you get all recipes in the game before the map runs out of drives.
Don't load your save when the wrong recipes are there.
They will be offered again in the future and once chosen they can't be one of the unwanted recipes on the next scan.

And there are parts in the tiers where you need over 20 drives to unlock all alternates.

[starman01]

OK, thanks. I wasn't sure about it, because I only found posts on the web that are 2 years old. In that case I just go with the flow. 10 min waittime is too painful for save scumming for me :)

[starman01]

OK, thanks :) That's why I always get the screw recipe first.... Couldn't live without it at the start, screws are a pain :)

[steventirey]

The recipes are random, but only for things you can currently make. If you scan a hard drive, but you don't qualify for any more alternate recipes at the moment, you won't get anything at all but can use that hard drive again later once you do have more items unlocked.

[Die Hand Gottes]

There are more disks than recipes there are 97 of them are two inventory extensions.
At some point you will have all the alternative recipes and hard drives left, and one or two hard drives are needed for research, which must also be sacrificed.
The recipes are also random.
There are recipes that are as unnecessary as the Pope his *****
you can also reload and try again, but then it comes back at some point.

[SkiRich]

The way it works ....
The moment you click scan HD, all non discovered Alt recipes are rolled and one is selected randomly. Then an artificial timer runs for 10 minutes and displays the result.
Your choice is literally done at the moment you click and its RNG.
This leads to the following interesting harvesting technique I use for HD's.
Save the game before you scan a HD.
Scan a HD. If you like the result keep it, if you want something else, reload save from 10 minutes ago and re-roll. Repeat as needed.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by SkiRich:

This leads to the following interesting harvesting technique I use for HD's.
Save the game before you scan a HD.
Scan a HD. If you like the result keep it, if you want something else, reload save from 10 minutes ago and re-roll. Repeat as needed.

One should never do this.

Reloading your save means you've wasted 10 minutes of your time. One is always better off simply finding another HD during the 10 minute research period, and simply researching again if you don't get something you want.

[SkiRich]

Originally posted by cswiger:

Originally posted by SkiRich:

This leads to the following interesting harvesting technique I use for HD's.
Save the game before you scan a HD.
Scan a HD. If you like the result keep it, if you want something else, reload save from 10 minutes ago and re-roll. Repeat as needed.

One should never do this.

Reloading your save means you've wasted 10 minutes of your time. One is always better off simply finding another HD during the 10 minute research period, and simply researching again if you don't get something you want.

Nah. I research HD's when I'm burnt out building and was planning on going out exploring.
I'm never "wasting" any time. I toss it in and go read something online for 10 minutes.
If you really wanted to not wait the 10 minutes, you could roll your computer time back 10 minutes, start the scan, save, exit, roll time to current and reload save.
Thats a pain but same effect minus the 10 minute wait.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by SkiRich:

Nah. I research HD's when I'm burnt out building and was planning on going out exploring. I'm never "wasting" any time.

If you reload an old save, you've wasted all of the time spent after the save was created-- regardless of whether you spent that time exploring or building.

[SkiRich]

Originally posted by cswiger:

Originally posted by SkiRich:

Nah. I research HD's when I'm burnt out building and was planning on going out exploring. I'm never "wasting" any time.

If you reload an old save, you've wasted all of the time spent after the save was created-- regardless of whether you spent that time exploring or building.

Agreed, Thats why I dedicate some time to doing this and dont do anything else in the save.
The key here is there are several extremely valuable resource saving alt recipes that if you can get early on, will save a ton of time, machines, resources and electricity. Once I get those, (steel screws for example), I can continue my save.

I've gamed this out over several saves for almost 3000 hours of play time. I know all the recipes and how best to use the alternatives and frankly dont want to waste my time building in vanilla recipes just to have to rebuild or retro fit a factory to use alt recipes.
Instead, I'll go out at certain points, get a bunch of HD's, come back and game the scan until I get the recipes I want, then go and continue building.

[DthBlayde]

Originally posted by steventirey:

The recipes are random, but only for things you can currently make. If you scan a hard drive, but you don't qualify for any more alternate recipes at the moment, you won't get anything at all but can use that hard drive again later once you do have more items unlocked.

For as long as I have been playing, I never realized this is how it worked..... huh.... nice.

[=Z=]

all alternatives recipes more effective than initial
p.s. map got more HD than currently available recipes.

[Vectorspace]

Originally posted by =Z=:

all alternatives recipes more effective than initial

Depends how you define "more effective". They all offer some trade-off. E.g. maybe they need less Y, but now they also require X and a bigger machine.

[kLuns]

Originally posted by =Z=:

all alternatives recipes more effective than initial
p.s. map got more HD than currently available recipes.

Sometimes the regular recipe wins.

[kLuns]

Originally posted by SkiRich:

Agreed, Thats why I dedicate some time to doing this and dont do anything else in the save.
The key here is there are several extremely valuable resource saving alt recipes that if you can get early on, will save a ton of time, machines, resources and electricity. Once I get those, (steel screws for example), I can continue my save.

I've gamed this out over several saves for almost 3000 hours of play time. I know all the recipes and how best to use the alternatives and frankly dont want to waste my time building in vanilla recipes just to have to rebuild or retro fit a factory to use alt recipes.
Instead, I'll go out at certain points, get a bunch of HD's, come back and game the scan until I get the recipes I want, then go and continue building.

You could have spent the waiting time building a temporarily factory. Once the unwanted recipe is ruled out it won't come back. And given the fact the map doesn't run out of drives or even nodes you can have a setup in the meantime providing something. By the time you go to world scale production you can allways rebuild the inefficient production lines.