Better Odds

[Jeff]

Maybe this is common knowledge, but what if it isn't? So here goes:

Your save is kind of new and getting the better recipes are much more important up front. Well instead of accepting recipes from researching hard drives on the MAM, waiting ten minutes only to get Bio-coal, beacon, portable miner, etc., you can roll the dice again on the same hard drive. Just close the window of your three choices and research the same hard drive again. You can keep on re-rolling until you get the alternate recipes you want.

[Wolfgang]

That is not working unless you have saved before you put the harddrive in and then are loading that save and wait 10 more minutes, check the recipes and do this again until you have what you want.
Unless I completely misunderstood your post.

[Halliwax]

Eh, that's just tedious. All they need to change is to fix the pre-requisites. Too many alternate recipes can be unlocked before they can actually be used.

[DthBlayde]

Originally posted by Wolfgang:

That is not working unless you have saved before you put the harddrive in and then are loading that save and wait 10 more minutes, check the recipes and do this again until you have what you want.
Unless I completely misunderstood your post.

Might have been changed in experimental, but can confirm OP's claim. I re-rolled the same HD 3-4 times until getting a recipe I wanted (steel alt, iron ingot+coal) without having to reload any saves; just had to wait the prerequisite 10 minutes each time.

[MetalDad]

Originally posted by DthBlayde:

Originally posted by Wolfgang:

That is not working unless you have saved before you put the harddrive in and then are loading that save and wait 10 more minutes, check the recipes and do this again until you have what you want.
Unless I completely misunderstood your post.

Might have been changed in experimental, but can confirm OP's claim. I re-rolled the same HD 3-4 times until getting a recipe I wanted (steel alt, iron ingot+coal) without having to reload any saves; just had to wait the prerequisite 10 minutes each time.

Same here. I accidentaly closed the window before selecting a recipe. I was able to research the same HDD again, but now with a different outcome.

[Alaskan Glitch]

With Update 8 Experimental you can include all the Alternative Recipes at the beginning of the game, without researching any Hard Drives. It also makes collecting Hard Drives unnecessary, which is handy if you have already collected all the Hard Drives in a previous save and do not want to repeat that experience.

[Jeff]

Originally posted by Morsk:

There is another way without RNG. If you get 5 Hard Drives before progressing the MAM or HUB, you are guaranteed Cast Screw, Iron Wire, and Stitched Iron Plate, and +6 Inventory. There are only 6 initial recipes, and 3/6 of them are very good, and the N+1st (7th in this case) recipe is always +6 Inventory. As we get a choice of 3, the 5th hard drive will offer #5, #6, and #7 letting you take the +6 Inventory.

I'll pick up 2 more Hard Drives to use on Compacted Coal and Turbofuel in the MAM, but I won't play Hard Drive RNG at any point. When I have Jetpack and Gas Mask I will clear the map of all hard drives and unlock everything. I just don't like RNG.

I tried the Iron Wire recipe once. Had 6 machines @ 250% and still couldn't keep up with demand. Then I switched to Caterium Wire on three machines @ 100% and had more than I needed.

[Wolfgang]

Originally posted by DthBlayde:

Originally posted by Wolfgang:

That is not working unless you have saved before you put the harddrive in and then are loading that save and wait 10 more minutes, check the recipes and do this again until you have what you want.
Unless I completely misunderstood your post.

Might have been changed in experimental, but can confirm OP's claim. I re-rolled the same HD 3-4 times until getting a recipe I wanted (steel alt, iron ingot+coal) without having to reload any saves; just had to wait the prerequisite 10 minutes each time.

Haven't played experimental so that is possible that CSS changed it.

[kLuns]

With Pure Iron Ingot, Iron Wire is all I make, but in T4 copper alloy ingot + copper wire is a nice combination

[JuggernautOfWar]

I can confirm both in U7 and U8 you can "reroll" the hard drive choices by tapping Esc while in the menu where you pick between the three options. Pressing Esc will "refund" you the hard drive into your inventory where you can then research it again for 10 minutes to get a different set of three choices. Found this out by complete accident, and at first I thought I wasted a drive by pressing Esc.

[Wolfgang]

Originally posted by JuggernautOfWar:

I can confirm both in U7 and U8 you can "reroll" the hard drive choices by tapping Esc while in the menu where you pick between the three options. Pressing Esc will "refund" you the hard drive into your inventory where you can then research it again for 10 minutes to get a different set of three choices. Found this out by complete accident, and at first I thought I wasted a drive by pressing Esc.

Really? I thought that was final unless you reloaded from before you put the harddrive in.
Did CSS really never state that this was a thing they changed?

[JuggernautOfWar]

Back in the day of Update 2/3 I remember them talking about changing this behavior as it was considered an exploit. I guess it may be still on their to-do list, not sure. Could also be they've decided to keep it in intentionally.

[Jeff]

Originally posted by JuggernautOfWar:

I can confirm both in U7 and U8 you can "reroll" the hard drive choices by tapping Esc while in the menu where you pick between the three options. Pressing Esc will "refund" you the hard drive into your inventory where you can then research it again for 10 minutes to get a different set of three choices. Found this out by complete accident, and at first I thought I wasted a drive by pressing Esc.

This is exactly how I found out about this

[Seb]

Not a big fan of the hard drive thing, seems like something they added to get us to explore the map they designed for us. If not for the hard drives there are areas we would never visit. It is a quite beautiful map so i guess i get it.
I'd prefer some different mechanic where we can research it somehow. Like sink the finished product a couple hundred times until a machine figures out, hey we could craft this thing a different way.

[Jeff]

Originally posted by Seb:

Not a big fan of the hard drive thing, seems like something they added to get us to explore the map they designed for us. If not for the hard drives there are areas we would never visit. It is a quite beautiful map so i guess i get it.
I'd prefer some different mechanic where we can research it somehow. Like sink the finished product a couple hundred times until a machine figures out, hey we could craft this thing a different way.

After playing Update 8 for the last 80 hours, I have seen an extensive amount of new map areas (has grown by three times). The challenge is, since they didn't add any more alternate recipes, they just re-scattered all of the hard drive sites across the larger map. So finding them is no easy task as it was before.

[ChaoticBolt]

Hard drive sites are nice change of pace and oportunity to use crafted equipment which would be useless otherwise but RNG sucks.
How about RNG only industry type (iron,copper,oil,mixed...) and then unlocking recipees one by one from basic parts to advanced? Also downgrade recipees recipees like encased industrial pipe would need higher efficiency cause they render hard drives useless and annoying.