Please don't forget that you can under clock machines! So many comments about "can't use this until tier 3 belts" but you could, you just under clock it down to your max belt speed.
For some things that makes sense, but the recipes that use extra screws in exchange for being faster lose some their upside if you can't run them at full speed. I'm not sure how they compare on power with needing extra screws but fewer assemblers, though.
@@Br3ttMDepending on what you are trying to use the recipe for, underclocking could be your goal since it would use less power for the same item output. Early game that would put less strain on your power grid the same way a recipe that reduces the number of machines does.
@@Br3ttMset them up immediately, underclock to the belts you have, and then expand the inputs and clock them back up when your belts can handle it. Less effort than rebuilding everything.
One thing to note about steel, items which use beams typically will have an alternate which uses pipes instead and are more efficient. The only production items which actually need steel beams are versatile frameworks, and maybe steel screws if you use that. The rest are buildables. Hence when picking alt recipes prioritize the pipe ones and don't overproduce beams early on.
@@theangryotaku3361 you oviously havent seen an expert do his work (Let's Game It Out) platforms are completely unessary to make tornadoes or weives or a spider web
From the get go I build on every limestone node I can find. Stockpile as much concrete as you can make as once blueprints are unlocked you will go through it fast!
@@Bullminator I mean, yes, but it's also straight up bugged. For some crash sites, you can stand directly in front of them and the Scanner won't find anything.
@@Bullminator I think he is referring to the fact that much of the time it doesn't even detect a hard drive you are standing right next to and looking at. I found that saving and reloading the save while right next to the container with a hard drive in it makes it work for a little while and helps find the next hard drive container. Unfortunately, it eventually stops working again. Hopefully, they are fixing this bug soon.
More than just that, I saw a crash site and worked my towards it, and the scanner didn't pick it up, and I got confused because I didn't remember searching this site yet, and sure enough it had a hard drive in it, but at no point, even right on top of it, did the scanner go off@@Bullminator
@@Bullminator You misunderstand. I was literally standing next to it with the scanner open and it wouldn't detect the hard drive (literally did the "nothing in range" indicator). I've seen reports from others as well to show it was not just a me issue. It's really inconsistent when it does and does not work. I'm not even sure the bug reports know why this is the case.
I straight up refused to make steel parts until I got Solid Steel. Ignoring the output numbers, being able to easily split into 40s is enough for me lol.
Iron pipe is good. Takes coal out of the equation entirely and just has steel pipes from iron ingots. *edit* meant iron pipe, not molded pipe (facepalm)
The really cool part about the steel rotor recipe is that pipes and wire are also what stators are made from (just in slightly different quantities). So it massively simplifies setting up a motor factory (especially if combined with the iron pipe recipe; there's several spots on the map with a lot of iron and also some copper nearby).
On the iron alloy I think you miss understood the purpose. You can now use lot of iron to make wire and pipes.. so with just a bunch of copper you can boost your ingot production for wire and pipes. That imo is a great one to use
Well if you need that much iron mate, then you aint in early game either .... which this video is all about. Except a few mid game. So seems like it you that misunderstood. Since iron needs like that is late game.
I'm in the Dune Desert. I just got coal and found my 1st HD. I dunno how you get a coal factory going with water so scarce. I had to go all the way down south to a pure coal node next to a lake with 2 other coal nodes nearby. But it's a helluva run. So, back at the hub, I just unlocked basic steel so I scanned the HD and, oh look, Iron Pipes! With all the garbage iron nodes in the Desert, they become little steel pipe factories. No coal needed. GREAT recipe.
My rule of thumb is use is: if a hard drive has two recipes i want to use, claim one right away so the other one goes back into the pool. If its one recipe i want and one i dont, dont claim it until i want to use it. If its two i dont want, reroll or keep it unclaimed.
Two unwanted recipes - don't claim yet. It takes those two out of the pool, so the next hard drive has better chances. Reroll becomes stronger when you have a bunch unclaimed, but you might not need to.
Stitched plates. Early on, screws are in massive demand, while copper wire is not used for any production line. With stitched plates, you can forgo screws for making reinforced plates, and use copper wire instead. Screws can then be used for rotors.
I want to offer a quick correction here. You CAN find the recipe after you have opened too many. You have to use the search tool and it will filter them down to what you're searching for. I use words like Iron, Copper, Oil, Pure, and more. Eventually you'll come across any that have a refresh and be able to choose them.
My opinion on some of the recipes changes drastically with the new somersloop tech. Being able to double output on the same input can mean 30 per minute reinforced plates off of 250 screws. So mk3 belts and getting a lot out of a single machine. This gets even better later when you can do ore quadrupling instead of ore doubling
You wouldn't want to use somersloops on machines processing ore. You can achieve a much more pronounced affect for each somersloop by starting at the top level chain of production and working your way downwards. For example if you want to make 20 motors per minute you might consider supplying only enough for 10 motors per minute then just somerslooping the assemblers making motors. It might even save you power because you don't need to build all those extra smelters, constructors, etc.
@@skillfulfighter23 I mainly use them on stuff like making power shards and processing remains. Still trying to decide how to use them in a more permanent setting. Probably saving them for high tier items.
@@skillfulfighter23this depends on the full construction chain and recipes used. Some recipes use more machines, making somerslopes less effective. Then there's the number of somerslopes used to consider. Manufacturers will use 4 somerslopes per machine, for example
Came here to say this. Recipes that have high numeric output are better with Somersloop boosting. So much free stuff! Double a 5/min recipe gives 5/min free. Double a 15/minute recipe, that’s 15/min free for the same power consumption.
Iron Pipe is AMAZING. I'm currently working on (actually done, just testing) an iron and limestone only Heavy Modular Frame blueprint. It DOES require the Mk 3 blueprint designer, but that's easy enough. Just make a "creative" save (using advanced settings), and make the blueprint there. You can then copy the blueprint to your regular save. You don't need access to the Mk 3 blueprint designer to use blueprints made in it. You just need to have unlocked blueprints in tier 4. The reason? There is plenty of coal on the map now, but there aren't a heck of a lot of places where they are close together along with limestone. I'm also thinking of making a similar blueprint for motors, but as I've already completed my (first) motor factory in my regular save, there's not a lot of urgency for that.
Awesome information and I got cast screws on my first hard drive I researched. I was stoked! Loving 1.0. Been playing since they released the keys. Have loved the ride and can't wait to get into the later game. Thanks for your work on this, marvelous.😁👍
Thank you for listening to our suggestions for this video! Love love love it!! Many are definitely situational (I've already found a close pure caterium node, so recipes that use caterium instead of iron or copper are great), but some are for sure better than others. I'd love to see mid game (steel to aluminum recipes) rated shortly. Great job!!
I did start my first playthrough in the Grassy Fields , but while exploring found the Blue Crater which was much better than the starting Zone cause of the abundance of Mycelia to fuel the biomass burners. Which also let me unlock the Parachute early to avoid those nasty critters. Blue Crater is insane i just unlocked Coal / advanced Steel Production the other day , so with the Miner mk2 and the mk3 Belts first thing i did was to build my first 240 coal plant with 1200 MW capacity. i still have 240 coal ready for steel production and i also have access to about 1200 in Iron without overclocking , but just a measly 120 in copper without overclocking ... Now i just need to get my hands on all of those Iron alternative recipes you mentioned. And some of those alternative recipes that mix in concrete or limestone of which i have more than i could possibly use for Phase 2. I guess all those cool recipes exist because some like me made the weird choice to start the game in this terrifying zone.
Hey man, thanks for the video. In fact I think your earlier "Top Alt Recipes" videos were how I found your channel in the first place. I love hearing your thoughts because you don't only say "this is good" or "this is bad", but "this is good and here's why" (for example "it's nearly always a good idea to mix more common stuff in to get rarer stuff, and nearly always a bad idea to use rarer resources to get more common resources"). Certainly make a follow-up to this.
The only downside is that you're using Screws. Which is mandatory in the beginning, but by Tier 5 (at latest, I think) you can stop using Screws altogether (except for Equipment and the like) which makes it something of a dead recipe at that point.
Also agree on the iron wire recipe... It's great This is what makes mass stator and rotor production (and thus motors) possible with just iron and coal. You'll also want the steel rotors alt recipe, because any recipe that needs screws will just screw you over. And you don't want to make stators with the quickwire alt recipe (even though it looks ok because more stators), because you want to keep that for circuitboards, high speed connectors, AI limiters and computers (maybe)
You can save scum the rescans if you want to quickly reroll for the recipe you want. You can of course save scum the initial results, but that requires waiting the 10 minutes each time; the rescan is instant.
If I do not have much copper I use alloyed iron ingots into iron wire. Or alloyed iron ingots into solid steel. The one thing I would need for copper is copper sheets.
On my 1.0 playthrough I've been debating on Iron Alloy or Basic Iron Ingots. I decided on Iron Alloy for two reasons. First, you can have Iron Alloy and Copper Alloy ingots in the same facility, improving logistics especially in the early-mid game. Second, the concrete needed at this stage to produce a large number of ingots (Mk.4 Belts) basically resembles screws. 1200/m Iron Ingots requires like 940/m Concrete, or something like that. Also, you can use concrete for Molded Pipes and Beams, which can be put together in another facility together. And using 1200/m Steel Ingots in this factory would require another 776/m Concrete. Concrete for Encased Industrial Beams, too. Late game Basic Iron Ingots are definitely better with the higher availability of Limestone and higher speed belts, but early on you can use the concrete elsewhere for other Alts.
Thanks for the video, very helpful. It's worth a mentiom that you can get the +6 Inventory slots from the harddrives too. I was lucky enough to get on my second scanned harddrive. I do not yet have remote storage, so super useful.
Pre-1.0 I had a motor factory that ran off iron and coal only using iron wire and a few steel recipes to make it easier and alternate recipes are a game changer to simplify production or need to make less item types and increase production rates all at the same time
There are very few recipes I consider must have. Cast Screws, Solid Steel, Sloppy Alumina, a few others that fit categories. I build with the resources I have on hand in mind, not with the drives and recipes I might have in mind. I believe in you do you and for me placing much emphasis on alt recipes takes away from the basic game. I believe it has been said that you can complete the game without ever having a single alt recipe. If I get one and can use it I will. Cast Screws for instance. But even without that alt recipe I need to get Rotors built so will set up my factory to build rotors.
I'm sure you're aware, but for viewers that might not have caught the recent dev stream: Scrolling the scanned hard drive list is a known issue (be it a bug or omission), and it being looked into. Should hopefully be possible soon.
It's quite a game breaking bug because it limits you bring able to build because you can't plan for the alt recipes. The scrolling wouldn't be an issue if you could select the alt recipes, but in my list of 10drives scanned, there's no option to confirm the recipe...so I can't clear the list. What a stupid bug.....
@@geplayer that isn't the issue I was referring to though. That's a different it additional kind of bug, and that's actually game breaking. Being unable to scroll the list is an inconvenience, but not game breaking (I'm able to pick recipes just fine).
I definitely would love to see a video of mid-game alt recipes in this format at a later date. Especially recipes that use the refinery and the blender.
With caterium wire (and some other alts) you can ser up a very efficient caterium + oil electronics factory. Combine it with an uploader and you are set up for building with boards, comps and hightspeed connectors for your playthrough.
Great explanations, thank you !! You've cleared up this part of the game for me, which has always been something of a mystery, as to what to choose. (I've never been mid- or late- game, but I expect future videos like this one would be useful to many)
would love a follow up. was really hoping on hearing your thoughts on the fuel ones. awesome video tho. very informative. i was just staring at a list of 30 recipes with a blank look on my face... now i at least have some ides lol thanks man for doing what you do
The reroll alternate recipie has also a random input so it's not seeded, if you really want a specific recipie, you can research then save then reroll if you don"t have what you are looking for then reload the save then try another reroll until you have the good one =)
Quick correction on the rotors: rotors are all iron by default, so the Steel Rotor recipe itself isn't useful. BUT it is such a simple setup to have Iron Pipe and Iron Wire recipes combine with Steel Rotors and default stators to have motors made with only two iron-based components. (Default uses iron rods and screws, steel pipes, and copper wires; several steps and 3 node types) Iron pipe and Iron Wire do the heavy lifting though; eliminating node types.
Honestly, Iron Pipes is a really cool design decision that I appreciate. For standard runs, it is the best alternate recipe. For early-mid game, it doesn't compete with your power source; coal. Mid-late game, it eliminates the logistics of coal as ANOTHER resource to bring in to a factory; and pipes can be used for almost everything. Only in the post-game does it taper off from being good. It epitomizes the main trade-off of this game; theoretical efficiency vs quick and dirty.
Thank you so much for doing this! It is great to validate the choices I've made and am planning to make. I'm currently at Tier 5 as well, so this is perfect timing. Please do the similar video for higher tiers as well. Side note: I must've scanned more than 10 hard drives and am currently holding on to 8 of them, but the game has still not given me the "Solid Steel" recipe :(
Also the alt 2 recipes aren’t rolled when you first scan the hard drive. This means that scanning a different hard drive still has access to all the available alt recipes. It also means you can reload a saved game right before you select a reroll. No more waiting 10 min for it to scan.
Can confirm. Rerolled one of my oldest library drives way later (in tier 5/6) and got an alt recipe for a fuel which it definitely would not have had at the point when I first scanned it.
I started in the northern forest near 5 (6) iron nodes, 4 concrete nodes and 1 copper node - thus, I was hunting the iron wire even more than for cast screws
I didn't really use alternate recipes much in early access but I'm going to make the most of then in 1.0 for sure. Some of these will speed up the progress through the tiers by insane amounts.
Just looked it up, stitched plates with iron wire is about 10% less assemblers than normal plates, 25% less power and only uses about 65% less iron. Unless you need the compactness of bolted plates, this is the better default plate option. Adhered iron plates of course have their place where iron is tight and oil is plentiful
Steel rotor is great but dont do iron-only motors. I did iron+coal and it got me about 3 times more motors/minute to add in a bit of coal. A 270 belt of iron is like 5 motors per minute. A 270 of iron and a 270 (140 but t3 belt anyway) of coal gets you 15 per minute.
having just unlocked solid steel ingots and steel screws makes me super happy because i can make heavy modular frames without tearing all of my hair out
Before steel , cast screws with steel solid steel ingots. And yes I’d like to see tier 5/6 vid. I wonder tho, are there enough HDDs for all alt recipes?
If you really want to get the desired alternative recipe, then instead of abandoning them at the beginning of the game, you can simply abuse the save by loading, clicking on rescan and loading if you don’t like the result The game generates new recipes every time you study them again, which allows you to repeat the rescan until you get what you need, for example +6 inventory cells at the start of the game
I started in the dune desert this run, so I'm not concerned with saving coal early game. There is coal near iron but far from water, and other deposits on the coast for power. For grassy fields replacing coal is can be good, though.
@7:12 ... i must have read this recipe (i dont have it) because when I unlocked steel i read it then went out to open up a bunch of iron nodes and set down smelters to have bars fed back to base ... to find out i needed . . raw ore.... Practice Runs!!
Isn't Iron Alloy Ingot better if you're using iron wire from it? In the grasslands, i noticed the Normal copper node balanced perfectly over three normal + 2 impure iron nodes using that recipe, which i used to make a rotor+stator+motor plant+automated factory. That factory used iron wire, steel rotors and iron pipes recipes. Edit: also, i guess basically I'm replacing coal with copper due to the conversion rate. I don't know what's considered more valuable, coal or copper now, given you need both copper powder and diamonds (from coal) late game.
One issue I run into. If I make a central storage, I can get everything in there easily, but then it gets messy when trying to utilise it and take stuff out. How much do you use central storage for a light place to hold some items or do you tend to ship items from factory to factory.
funfact, if you dont really care about the balance of the game you can save and reroll a hard drive until you get the recipe you need, if you dont get it you can just reload the save, i personally only recommend it for getting cast screws from your first hard drive and then never again cause it feels too scummy
Rotor - Uses screws (Iron) and rods (Iron) so, using three alternative recipes you can make it an iron only recipe! LOL PS (20+25)/4) vs (40+16.6)/5 = 11.25 vs 11.32 So standard recipe is 0.07 iron less per rotor! But it needs 3.3 (Roughly) constructors vs 1.5 (Roughly)
@@TotalXclipse You mean for stators? That's true, but really 4 iron per 1 pipe vs 1.5 (1 if you use double smelting) and if you use concrete (1.6 per) you can lower it to the 1 or 0.6666.. respectfully. Of course it uses coal, but it is an equal part so 0.6666... coal per pipe it pretty low. Of course coal delivery is a problem, and ability to do that is good. On other hand I got my two power augmenters early, and survived without needing more power for now. so coal is relatively free.
Thanks for the info, really appreciate your input and WHY you think the recipes are good/bad/meh. I would definetly look forward to another vid on the higher tier recipes, or a tier list vid. I'm wondering, what do you do with lines when you get alt recipes ? Do you rebuild them, or do you keep them as they are ? Thanks for the great content, keep up the good work. Greetings from Belgium.
Unless I'm desperate for resources, I don't switch to alternate recipes until I expand or need to switch to different end products. Once you unlock blueprints, rebuilding is a lot more convenient, though.
As far as I'm concerned, any alt that replaces something wth raw limestone or concrete is automatically at least A-tier, if not S. Limestone is almost as abundant as iron with far fewer use cases, so it will NEVER be a limiting factor and you may as well put it to work for you.
I don't disagree, but it should be noted that Limestone's value has increased rapidly (probably the most increased resource) because of several new recipes that do this.
I just wanted to say thanks for the overview of early m/midgame hard drives. Too many tier lists look at it from a mathimatically optimization stand point like you are post endgame and not from a utility standpoint for where you are now.
you will need to completely get rid of screw production as early as possible because the amounts you need gets very rediculous very fast. 1000/minute screws for just 4 bolted iron plate assemblers is crazy to me, that means you need minimum mk3 belts to just run one assembler efficiently. the faster you get rid of screws the better, even if you go steel or cast screws
I started my factory back up yesterday broken due to the loss of the alt recipe for iron plates. It was adhered steel plates the one that uses steel and plastic
The point whihc is usually not taken into account - there are very little "best" alt recipes. Most of them are trading one resource for another or complexity for resources. And the catch is that you are almost never constrainted by input ores. For example Pure ingots - they reduce amont of ore required, so they look likr "best" alternative. But it is just much-much easier to bring anither conveyor of ore and use simple smelters that build huge array of refineries (unless you arr min maxing the whole map ehich is not the case for mostly everyone).
I'll have to see how performance is once I get larger factories in the later tiers, but before 1.0 I was realizing lag was more of a limiter than ore, so reducing buildings was better than saving material. Pure ingots also take up a huge amount of space, which can be an issue depending on where you are building.
I'm having a mandela effect moment because I absolutely swear there was an alt quickwire recipe were you can make it directly from iron ingots. I spent some hours today attempting to get that alt recipe for a computer build and have been frustrated about it. Now I know for sure it doesn't exist and I am crazy, the spheres and loops are getting to me.
What's your favourite early game Alt recipe and should we do one for the higher tiers?
Cast screws has to be the best early game, right?
For sure cast iron screws
Cast screws is the Goat of course. Definitely would love more of these videos.
Steel Screws for sure. :3
And yes please. :)
maybe the screws, but i like the stitched reinforced plates, with iron wire
Please don't forget that you can under clock machines! So many comments about "can't use this until tier 3 belts" but you could, you just under clock it down to your max belt speed.
That's a fair point
For some things that makes sense, but the recipes that use extra screws in exchange for being faster lose some their upside if you can't run them at full speed. I'm not sure how they compare on power with needing extra screws but fewer assemblers, though.
@@Br3ttMDepending on what you are trying to use the recipe for, underclocking could be your goal since it would use less power for the same item output. Early game that would put less strain on your power grid the same way a recipe that reduces the number of machines does.
@@Br3ttMset them up immediately, underclock to the belts you have, and then expand the inputs and clock them back up when your belts can handle it. Less effort than rebuilding everything.
Fair point, but you don't even have to do that. Feeding 120 screws to an 150 recipe is not 100% FICSIT approved, but it works just the same.
One thing to note about steel, items which use beams typically will have an alternate which uses pipes instead and are more efficient. The only production items which actually need steel beams are versatile frameworks, and maybe steel screws if you use that. The rest are buildables. Hence when picking alt recipes prioritize the pipe ones and don't overproduce beams early on.
You should overproduce beams though for crafting / belts / construction / milestones, in moderation.
A container or two of beams for space elevator milestones doesn't hurt
I just got iron pipes + pipe encased beams, right before I was gonna build my steel factory lmao. It's so nice.
@@achillesa5894see if you can get the solid steel recipe as well, it’s a 2/3 instead of a 1/1 and lets you make tons of steel with less resources
That 2500x Versatile Frameworks to get to Tier 7 is going to hurt without a lot of Beams.
6:10 "if you're producing more concrete than you need" NEVER! 😜 Those bridges to the other sides of the map don't build themselves 😉
i cant build a beautiful pile of spaghetti if i dont cover the entire playable area in foundations first
I'll say that there are several new (and good) alternate recipes that use Concrete or Limestone, so I'd say it's more valuable now.
@@theangryotaku3361 you oviously havent seen an expert do his work (Let's Game It Out) platforms are completely unessary to make tornadoes or weives or a spider web
From the get go I build on every limestone node I can find. Stockpile as much concrete as you can make as once blueprints are unlocked you will go through it fast!
@@SusannaSaundersI mine a couple and over clock it and leave that Game on all night 😂
Just a warning. The scanner upgrade that allows you to scan hard drives doesn't work half the time.
It has range limit.
@@Bullminator I mean, yes, but it's also straight up bugged. For some crash sites, you can stand directly in front of them and the Scanner won't find anything.
@@Bullminator I think he is referring to the fact that much of the time it doesn't even detect a hard drive you are standing right next to and looking at. I found that saving and reloading the save while right next to the container with a hard drive in it makes it work for a little while and helps find the next hard drive container. Unfortunately, it eventually stops working again. Hopefully, they are fixing this bug soon.
More than just that, I saw a crash site and worked my towards it, and the scanner didn't pick it up, and I got confused because I didn't remember searching this site yet, and sure enough it had a hard drive in it, but at no point, even right on top of it, did the scanner go off@@Bullminator
@@Bullminator You misunderstand. I was literally standing next to it with the scanner open and it wouldn't detect the hard drive (literally did the "nothing in range" indicator). I've seen reports from others as well to show it was not just a me issue. It's really inconsistent when it does and does not work. I'm not even sure the bug reports know why this is the case.
I straight up refused to make steel parts until I got Solid Steel. Ignoring the output numbers, being able to easily split into 40s is enough for me lol.
Fair
I have done the same... Least to say I should never gamble because that took 4 hours... but worth.
Iron pipe is good. Takes coal out of the equation entirely and just has steel pipes from iron ingots.
*edit* meant iron pipe, not molded pipe (facepalm)
Underclock it for 80% and live happily ;P
Just build it as if you had Solid Steel Ingot, and temporarily connect the iron miner to the foundries. You can easily fix it later.
I am still upset that there is Not an acchievment "screw you" for crafting 1000 screws by hand
The really cool part about the steel rotor recipe is that pipes and wire are also what stators are made from (just in slightly different quantities). So it massively simplifies setting up a motor factory (especially if combined with the iron pipe recipe; there's several spots on the map with a lot of iron and also some copper nearby).
On the iron alloy I think you miss understood the purpose. You can now use lot of iron to make wire and pipes.. so with just a bunch of copper you can boost your ingot production for wire and pipes. That imo is a great one to use
Well if you need that much iron mate, then you aint in early game either .... which this video is all about. Except a few mid game. So seems like it you that misunderstood. Since iron needs like that is late game.
Yes, a follow up would be good. The overall efficacy of alternative recipes is too important not to review.
I'm in the Dune Desert. I just got coal and found my 1st HD. I dunno how you get a coal factory going with water so scarce. I had to go all the way down south to a pure coal node next to a lake with 2 other coal nodes nearby. But it's a helluva run. So, back at the hub, I just unlocked basic steel so I scanned the HD and, oh look, Iron Pipes! With all the garbage iron nodes in the Desert, they become little steel pipe factories. No coal needed. GREAT recipe.
You'll still need coal, but that's a great recipe.
Go east and make your coal power there. Get mk 2 miners and will be finde with 4 coal power plant setups 8:3 coal and water
Up north east there’s a few coal nodes with that whole sea there for a water source, it’s also a good flat area on the water to build a plant
I'm actually building there right now! I call this area Sodapop Lake.
Because it's carbon-ated
There are pure coal nodes to the north of dune desert start, I then belted those to the lake to the east
My rule of thumb is use is: if a hard drive has two recipes i want to use, claim one right away so the other one goes back into the pool. If its one recipe i want and one i dont, dont claim it until i want to use it. If its two i dont want, reroll or keep it unclaimed.
Two unwanted recipes - don't claim yet. It takes those two out of the pool, so the next hard drive has better chances.
Reroll becomes stronger when you have a bunch unclaimed, but you might not need to.
That's what I wanted to say, you need to claim one if you get 2 good recipes, so it can go back in the pool.
Stitched plates. Early on, screws are in massive demand, while copper wire is not used for any production line. With stitched plates, you can forgo screws for making reinforced plates, and use copper wire instead. Screws can then be used for rotors.
I want to offer a quick correction here. You CAN find the recipe after you have opened too many. You have to use the search tool and it will filter them down to what you're searching for. I use words like Iron, Copper, Oil, Pure, and more. Eventually you'll come across any that have a refresh and be able to choose them.
I LOVE the alt steel pipe recipes, I feel like so many things used pipes, and now they're SO much easier to make.
Always have a ton of untapped iron nodes laying around. Could finally put them to work making steel pipes. Was awesome
My opinion on some of the recipes changes drastically with the new somersloop tech.
Being able to double output on the same input can mean 30 per minute reinforced plates off of 250 screws. So mk3 belts and getting a lot out of a single machine.
This gets even better later when you can do ore quadrupling instead of ore doubling
You wouldn't want to use somersloops on machines processing ore. You can achieve a much more pronounced affect for each somersloop by starting at the top level chain of production and working your way downwards.
For example if you want to make 20 motors per minute you might consider supplying only enough for 10 motors per minute then just somerslooping the assemblers making motors. It might even save you power because you don't need to build all those extra smelters, constructors, etc.
@@skillfulfighter23 I mainly use them on stuff like making power shards and processing remains. Still trying to decide how to use them in a more permanent setting. Probably saving them for high tier items.
@@skillfulfighter23this depends on the full construction chain and recipes used. Some recipes use more machines, making somerslopes less effective.
Then there's the number of somerslopes used to consider. Manufacturers will use 4 somerslopes per machine, for example
Came here to say this. Recipes that have high numeric output are better with Somersloop boosting. So much free stuff! Double a 5/min recipe gives 5/min free. Double a 15/minute recipe, that’s 15/min free for the same power consumption.
@@MasterOfDeviousness that's the dumbest thing I've read thus year
Iron Pipe is AMAZING. I'm currently working on (actually done, just testing) an iron and limestone only Heavy Modular Frame blueprint. It DOES require the Mk 3 blueprint designer, but that's easy enough. Just make a "creative" save (using advanced settings), and make the blueprint there. You can then copy the blueprint to your regular save. You don't need access to the Mk 3 blueprint designer to use blueprints made in it. You just need to have unlocked blueprints in tier 4.
The reason? There is plenty of coal on the map now, but there aren't a heck of a lot of places where they are close together along with limestone. I'm also thinking of making a similar blueprint for motors, but as I've already completed my (first) motor factory in my regular save, there's not a lot of urgency for that.
I would love another video like this for the next phases of the game
Iron Pipe is one of my favourite new recipes. Iron only Motor factories are insane.
Awesome information and I got cast screws on my first hard drive I researched. I was stoked! Loving 1.0. Been playing since they released the keys. Have loved the ride and can't wait to get into the later game. Thanks for your work on this, marvelous.😁👍
Thank you for listening to our suggestions for this video! Love love love it!! Many are definitely situational (I've already found a close pure caterium node, so recipes that use caterium instead of iron or copper are great), but some are for sure better than others. I'd love to see mid game (steel to aluminum recipes) rated shortly. Great job!!
I think Cast Screws was one of the first recipes my best friend and i found - changed our early game significantly. Amazing recipe
I did start my first playthrough in the Grassy Fields , but while exploring found the Blue Crater which was much better than the starting Zone cause of the abundance of Mycelia to fuel the biomass burners. Which also let me unlock the Parachute early to avoid those nasty critters. Blue Crater is insane i just unlocked Coal / advanced Steel Production the other day , so with the Miner mk2 and the mk3 Belts first thing i did was to build my first 240 coal plant with 1200 MW capacity.
i still have 240 coal ready for steel production and i also have access to about 1200 in Iron without overclocking , but just a measly 120 in copper without overclocking ...
Now i just need to get my hands on all of those Iron alternative recipes you mentioned. And some of those alternative recipes that mix in concrete or limestone of which i have more than i could possibly use for Phase 2.
I guess all those cool recipes exist because some like me made the weird choice to start the game in this terrifying zone.
Hey man, thanks for the video. In fact I think your earlier "Top Alt Recipes" videos were how I found your channel in the first place. I love hearing your thoughts because you don't only say "this is good" or "this is bad", but "this is good and here's why" (for example "it's nearly always a good idea to mix more common stuff in to get rarer stuff, and nearly always a bad idea to use rarer resources to get more common resources"). Certainly make a follow-up to this.
If I've done the math correctly, cast screw is purely advantageous.
You get screws faster and with less power at the same material cost.
Yeh, it's same cost just half the energy hence why the no trainer early
The only downside is that you're using Screws. Which is mandatory in the beginning, but by Tier 5 (at latest, I think) you can stop using Screws altogether (except for Equipment and the like) which makes it something of a dead recipe at that point.
Also agree on the iron wire recipe... It's great
This is what makes mass stator and rotor production (and thus motors) possible with just iron and coal.
You'll also want the steel rotors alt recipe, because any recipe that needs screws will just screw you over.
And you don't want to make stators with the quickwire alt recipe (even though it looks ok because more stators), because you want to keep that for circuitboards, high speed connectors, AI limiters and computers (maybe)
You can save scum the rescans if you want to quickly reroll for the recipe you want. You can of course save scum the initial results, but that requires waiting the 10 minutes each time; the rescan is instant.
If I do not have much copper I use alloyed iron ingots into iron wire. Or alloyed iron ingots into solid steel. The one thing I would need for copper is copper sheets.
If you make circuitboards and AI-limiter out of plastic & Quickwire, the only thing copper sheets are needed for is your plumbing
On my 1.0 playthrough I've been debating on Iron Alloy or Basic Iron Ingots. I decided on Iron Alloy for two reasons. First, you can have Iron Alloy and Copper Alloy ingots in the same facility, improving logistics especially in the early-mid game. Second, the concrete needed at this stage to produce a large number of ingots (Mk.4 Belts) basically resembles screws. 1200/m Iron Ingots requires like 940/m Concrete, or something like that. Also, you can use concrete for Molded Pipes and Beams, which can be put together in another facility together. And using 1200/m Steel Ingots in this factory would require another 776/m Concrete. Concrete for Encased Industrial Beams, too.
Late game Basic Iron Ingots are definitely better with the higher availability of Limestone and higher speed belts, but early on you can use the concrete elsewhere for other Alts.
Iron pipes is so great. I just built a heavy module frame factory on pure iron and limestone. No coal needed!
Love iron pipes, suddenly had a use for all those untapped iron nodes always laying around.
Thanks for the video, very helpful.
It's worth a mentiom that you can get the +6 Inventory slots from the harddrives too.
I was lucky enough to get on my second scanned harddrive. I do not yet have remote storage, so super useful.
Pre-1.0 I had a motor factory that ran off iron and coal only using iron wire and a few steel recipes to make it easier and alternate recipes are a game changer to simplify production or need to make less item types and increase production rates all at the same time
There are very few recipes I consider must have. Cast Screws, Solid Steel, Sloppy Alumina, a few others that fit categories. I build with the resources I have on hand in mind, not with the drives and recipes I might have in mind. I believe in you do you and for me placing much emphasis on alt recipes takes away from the basic game. I believe it has been said that you can complete the game without ever having a single alt recipe. If I get one and can use it I will. Cast Screws for instance. But even without that alt recipe I need to get Rotors built so will set up my factory to build rotors.
Would definitely love to see the next tier of alternate recipes. Thanks for all the great info.
Thank you, would love to see a video on Tiers 5 and 6 alternate recipes.
One thing I’ve found is that re-rolls aren’t predetermined so you can load a save, re-roll again and you’ll get a different recipe
I like compacted coal and turbo fuel, because you need a hard drive, but don't have to rely on chance to get the recipe.
I would love it if you took a look at all of the alternates and did a tierlist
Definitely on the cards
@@TotalXclipseplease do
I'm sure you're aware, but for viewers that might not have caught the recent dev stream: Scrolling the scanned hard drive list is a known issue (be it a bug or omission), and it being looked into. Should hopefully be possible soon.
It's quite a game breaking bug because it limits you bring able to build because you can't plan for the alt recipes.
The scrolling wouldn't be an issue if you could select the alt recipes, but in my list of 10drives scanned, there's no option to confirm the recipe...so I can't clear the list.
What a stupid bug.....
@@geplayer that isn't the issue I was referring to though. That's a different it additional kind of bug, and that's actually game breaking. Being unable to scroll the list is an inconvenience, but not game breaking (I'm able to pick recipes just fine).
@@TheCreat hmm, I wonder what I can do? Perhaps I can rebind recipe confirmation to ENTER
@@TheCreat okay, here's a work around.
Options > User Interface > [exp] HUD scaling...set it to 0.5
This was just fixed in a patch today
I definitely would love to see a video of mid-game alt recipes in this format at a later date. Especially recipes that use the refinery and the blender.
I got cast screws as my second blueprint. 😁
@@thaphreak Nice. I managed to get it as my first, was pretty happy. Iron pipes was my third.
got mine as first
With caterium wire (and some other alts) you can ser up a very efficient caterium + oil electronics factory. Combine it with an uploader and you are set up for building with boards, comps and hightspeed connectors for your playthrough.
Iron wire + iron pipe + steel rotors = motors made of 100% iron = absolute GOAT
Don't forget Encased Pipes > HMFS and with various Alts you can do Nuclear pasta without Coal :D
Big thanks to your channel and this Satisfactory content. It has been a huge help to me getting my factories humming along smoothly.
Lots of recommendation to alternate into iron only production but not recommended to use iron alloy? So... Eliminate copper but don't use it?
Great explanations, thank you !! You've cleared up this part of the game for me, which has always been something of a mystery, as to what to choose. (I've never been mid- or late- game, but I expect future videos like this one would be useful to many)
If you don´t have the Mk.3 belts unlocked, you can underclock the machines to fit the inputs/min.(unlock over/underclocking necessary 😅)
would love a follow up. was really hoping on hearing your thoughts on the fuel ones. awesome video tho. very informative. i was just staring at a list of 30 recipes with a blank look on my face... now i at least have some ides lol thanks man for doing what you do
I like Cast Screws early on, but try to get rid of screws altogether when I can.
Same, so glad they took screws out of the computer recipe they were a huge pain
The reroll alternate recipie has also a random input so it's not seeded, if you really want a specific recipie, you can research then save then reroll if you don"t have what you are looking for then reload the save then try another reroll until you have the good one =)
11:46 - Energy is not a restricting factor, but belt bandwidth really screw me up early mid-game
My current rotor/motor factory is entirely iron; love the iron pipe and iron wire recipes.
I would like to see a review of mid-game alternative recipes. This video was very helpful.
That holding tip is awesome! Thanks
Quick correction on the rotors: rotors are all iron by default, so the Steel Rotor recipe itself isn't useful. BUT it is such a simple setup to have Iron Pipe and Iron Wire recipes combine with Steel Rotors and default stators to have motors made with only two iron-based components. (Default uses iron rods and screws, steel pipes, and copper wires; several steps and 3 node types) Iron pipe and Iron Wire do the heavy lifting though; eliminating node types.
Honestly, Iron Pipes is a really cool design decision that I appreciate. For standard runs, it is the best alternate recipe. For early-mid game, it doesn't compete with your power source; coal. Mid-late game, it eliminates the logistics of coal as ANOTHER resource to bring in to a factory; and pipes can be used for almost everything. Only in the post-game does it taper off from being good. It epitomizes the main trade-off of this game; theoretical efficiency vs quick and dirty.
Thank you so much for doing this! It is great to validate the choices I've made and am planning to make. I'm currently at Tier 5 as well, so this is perfect timing.
Please do the similar video for higher tiers as well.
Side note: I must've scanned more than 10 hard drives and am currently holding on to 8 of them, but the game has still not given me the "Solid Steel" recipe :(
Also the alt 2 recipes aren’t rolled when you first scan the hard drive. This means that scanning a different hard drive still has access to all the available alt recipes. It also means you can reload a saved game right before you select a reroll. No more waiting 10 min for it to scan.
Can confirm. Rerolled one of my oldest library drives way later (in tier 5/6) and got an alt recipe for a fuel which it definitely would not have had at the point when I first scanned it.
I started in the northern forest near 5 (6) iron nodes, 4 concrete nodes and 1 copper node - thus, I was hunting the iron wire even more than for cast screws
I didn't really use alternate recipes much in early access but I'm going to make the most of then in 1.0 for sure. Some of these will speed up the progress through the tiers by insane amounts.
Just looked it up, stitched plates with iron wire is about 10% less assemblers than normal plates, 25% less power and only uses about 65% less iron.
Unless you need the compactness of bolted plates, this is the better default plate option.
Adhered iron plates of course have their place where iron is tight and oil is plentiful
This is an excellent reference video. More like this, please.
Steel rotor is great but dont do iron-only motors. I did iron+coal and it got me about 3 times more motors/minute to add in a bit of coal. A 270 belt of iron is like 5 motors per minute. A 270 of iron and a 270 (140 but t3 belt anyway) of coal gets you 15 per minute.
Thanks for the video. Need all the alt recipe help I can get!
having just unlocked solid steel ingots and steel screws makes me super happy because i can make heavy modular frames without tearing all of my hair out
Before steel , cast screws with steel solid steel ingots. And yes I’d like to see tier 5/6 vid. I wonder tho, are there enough HDDs for all alt recipes?
Yes there are. They said you can unlock every single alt. So no need to save your hard drives.
According to the wiki, their is 4 more hard drives than alt-recipes/inventory upgrades.
Don't know how up to date that is, though.
In a steel factory "solid steel" ingots seems peculiar. Very few recipes will call for an iron ingot, and coal plus iron ore is more direct.
If you really want to get the desired alternative recipe, then instead of abandoning them at the beginning of the game, you can simply abuse the save by loading, clicking on rescan and loading if you don’t like the result
The game generates new recipes every time you study them again, which allows you to repeat the rescan until you get what you need, for example +6 inventory cells at the start of the game
I started in the dune desert this run, so I'm not concerned with saving coal early game. There is coal near iron but far from water, and other deposits on the coast for power. For grassy fields replacing coal is can be good, though.
I would love a part two if you decide to do it! 💙
@7:12 ... i must have read this recipe (i dont have it) because when I unlocked steel i read it then went out to open up a bunch of iron nodes and set down smelters to have bars fed back to base ... to find out i needed . . raw ore....
Practice Runs!!
I would definitely like a guide for the next phases.
Isn't Iron Alloy Ingot better if you're using iron wire from it?
In the grasslands, i noticed the Normal copper node balanced perfectly over three normal + 2 impure iron nodes using that recipe, which i used to make a rotor+stator+motor plant+automated factory.
That factory used iron wire, steel rotors and iron pipes recipes.
Edit: also, i guess basically I'm replacing coal with copper due to the conversion rate. I don't know what's considered more valuable, coal or copper now, given you need both copper powder and diamonds (from coal) late game.
rubber concrete + molded steel pipe + heavy flexible frame might be interesting if you have plenty of rubber
Great vid, pls continue with such technical information
One issue I run into.
If I make a central storage, I can get everything in there easily, but then it gets messy when trying to utilise it and take stuff out. How much do you use central storage for a light place to hold some items or do you tend to ship items from factory to factory.
I know you're busy but a tier list would be amazing!!
funfact, if you dont really care about the balance of the game you can save and reroll a hard drive until you get the recipe you need, if you dont get it you can just reload the save, i personally only recommend it for getting cast screws from your first hard drive and then never again cause it feels too scummy
More Alt Recipe reviews sounds great!
Rotor - Uses screws (Iron) and rods (Iron)
so, using three alternative recipes you can make it an iron only recipe!
LOL
PS
(20+25)/4) vs (40+16.6)/5 = 11.25 vs 11.32
So standard recipe is 0.07 iron less per rotor!
But it needs 3.3 (Roughly) constructors vs 1.5 (Roughly)
Yes but you'd still need coal for the motors 😉
@@TotalXclipse You mean for stators?
That's true, but really 4 iron per 1 pipe vs 1.5 (1 if you use double smelting) and if you use concrete (1.6 per) you can lower it to the 1 or 0.6666.. respectfully.
Of course it uses coal, but it is an equal part so 0.6666... coal per pipe it pretty low.
Of course coal delivery is a problem, and ability to do that is good.
On other hand I got my two power augmenters early, and survived without needing more power for now. so coal is relatively free.
If you saved too many hard drives the buttons for picking and rerolling are off screen you can scale down the UI in options to workaround that bug.
please make a tier list and higher tier recipe choices :) , really love ur videos
One thing I found, you can re roll a harddrive and if it is not the recipe you need, you can reload and re roll and get two different recipes.
Thanks for the info, really appreciate your input and WHY you think the recipes are good/bad/meh.
I would definetly look forward to another vid on the higher tier recipes, or a tier list vid.
I'm wondering, what do you do with lines when you get alt recipes ? Do you rebuild them, or do you keep them as they are ?
Thanks for the great content, keep up the good work.
Greetings from Belgium.
Unless I'm desperate for resources, I don't switch to alternate recipes until I expand or need to switch to different end products. Once you unlock blueprints, rebuilding is a lot more convenient, though.
I tend to leave the current built lines unless I really need the resources.
Instead I will plan and build a dedicated setup to the new resources 🙂
Would love you to do a Tier Ranking of all recipes!
All hail the grand Cast Screw! The greatest of all early Alternate Recipes!
Iron Pipe my beloved!
I would love a part two. But it'd also be helpful if you could zoom in on the numbers area when you're talking about them. Hard to read on a phone.
As far as I'm concerned, any alt that replaces something wth raw limestone or concrete is automatically at least A-tier, if not S. Limestone is almost as abundant as iron with far fewer use cases, so it will NEVER be a limiting factor and you may as well put it to work for you.
Its biggest issue is that there are some big areas where it gets scarce like the blue crater, bauxite forest, and the western coast
I don't disagree, but it should be noted that Limestone's value has increased rapidly (probably the most increased resource) because of several new recipes that do this.
I just wanted to say thanks for the overview of early m/midgame hard drives.
Too many tier lists look at it from a mathimatically optimization stand point like you are post endgame and not from a utility standpoint for where you are now.
You can scroll through your Hard Drive Library you just have to keep clicking down or up the list. You can't scroll past the selected recipe.
Yes, yes! Do it for mid and late too!
Early Game Players: Why would i even need Copper if i can substitued it with iron everywhere?
Lategame Players: Copperpowder 0-0
you will need to completely get rid of screw production as early as possible because the amounts you need gets very rediculous very fast. 1000/minute screws for just 4 bolted iron plate assemblers is crazy to me, that means you need minimum mk3 belts to just run one assembler efficiently.
the faster you get rid of screws the better, even if you go steel or cast screws
Another comment in favor of a proper tier list, as well as one for midgame.
Thank you for this!
After the latest update you can now scroll down the hard drive menu
I started my factory back up yesterday broken due to the loss of the alt recipe for iron plates. It was adhered steel plates the one that uses steel and plastic
I’ve never seen the appeal in using that recipe, it’s only efficient if you have two much of both steel and plastic in relatively close proximity
The point whihc is usually not taken into account - there are very little "best" alt recipes. Most of them are trading one resource for another or complexity for resources. And the catch is that you are almost never constrainted by input ores. For example Pure ingots - they reduce amont of ore required, so they look likr "best" alternative. But it is just much-much easier to bring anither conveyor of ore and use simple smelters that build huge array of refineries (unless you arr min maxing the whole map ehich is not the case for mostly everyone).
I'll have to see how performance is once I get larger factories in the later tiers, but before 1.0 I was realizing lag was more of a limiter than ore, so reducing buildings was better than saving material. Pure ingots also take up a huge amount of space, which can be an issue depending on where you are building.
Please follow this up for later tiers :D
I'm having a mandela effect moment because I absolutely swear there was an alt quickwire recipe were you can make it directly from iron ingots. I spent some hours today attempting to get that alt recipe for a computer build and have been frustrated about it. Now I know for sure it doesn't exist and I am crazy, the spheres and loops are getting to me.
Iron wire, stitched iron plates, and iron pipe really let me progress in a different way in 1.0.
Once you have too many hard drives scanned you'll become unable to select any. As a workaround you can temporarily reduce UI scaling in the settings.
I've actually never messed with alt recipes and I made it past oil in .7 I should probably hunt down some hard drives finally. haha