Alternate Recipes Worth Chasing
How the Hard Drive alternate-recipe system works, what the trade-offs are, and why a first run does not depend on it.
At a glance
| Where they come from | Hard Drives, recovered from Crash Sites and researched in the MAM. |
| How many | 118 Crash Sites on the map, one Hard Drive each, 118 total. |
| The choice | Each Hard Drive offers one of three randomly-rolled alternate recipes. You pick one. |
| The trade | Alternates are not strictly better. They swap between raw material use, power, space, and complexity. |
| First run | Optional. A clean first run does not require any alternate recipes. |
How the system works
- Find Crash Sites with the Object Scanner after researching Radio Signal Scanning in the MAM.
- Recover the Hard Drive at the site.
- Research the Hard Drive in the MAM. It rolls three alternate recipes and you keep one.
- Unselected Hard Drives can stay pending while you research others.
The roll is set when the scan starts. Some players save before researching and reload to re-roll a choice they do not like.
What the trade looks like
Alternate recipes change the inputs of a part to shift the bottleneck. Two commonly cited examples from research:
| Alternate | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Cast Screw | Makes screws directly from iron ingots, skipping iron rods |
| Iron Wire | Makes wire from iron instead of copper |
Both ease a specific resource pinch. Neither is mandatory. Picking alternates well is a real optimization layer, but it is one you can add after a first run rather than chase from the start.
Do this in order
- Get the MAM running in Tier 1.
- Research Radio Signal Scanning so the Object Scanner can find Crash Sites.
- Collect Hard Drives as you explore, but do not detour heavily for them early.
- Research a Hard Drive only when you see an offered recipe that solves a bottleneck you actually have.
Watch out for
- Over-investing on a first run. Hard Drives are an accelerator, not a requirement.
- Treating every alternate as an upgrade. Each one trades something away.
- Forgetting pending drives. You can research them later when a useful roll matters more.
Related: Factory Ratios for the standard recipes alternates replace, and MAM, Exploration, and Hard Drives for the research track in full.