Hard Drive/Alternate recipe analysis

Alternate Recipe Analysis

Item	Recipe Name	Resource Saving	Power Saving	Space Saving	Less Complex	Combo Recipes / Remarks
	Iron Alloy Ingot	No	No	Yes	No
	Pure Iron Ingot	Yes	No	No	No
	Steel Rod	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Steeled Frame or default Screw
	Coated Iron Plate	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Plastic Smart Plating
	Steel Coated Plate	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Plastic Smart Plating
	Automated Miner	NA	NA	NA	NA	The only way to automate this recipe.
	Copper Alloy Ingot	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
	Pure Copper Ingot	Yes	No	No	No
	Caterium Wire	No	Yes	Yes	NA
	Fused Wire	No	Yes	Yes	No
	Iron Wire	Yes	Yes	No	NA	Stitched Iron Plate
	Coated Cable	No	No	Yes	No
	Insulated Cable	No	Yes	Yes	No
	Quickwire Cable	No	No	Yes	No
	Fine Concrete	Yes	No	No	No
	Rubber Concrete	Yes	No	No	No	Heavy Flexible Frame
	Wet Concrete	Yes	No	Yes	No
	Cast Screw	NA	Yes	Yes	Yes	Pure Iron Ingot
	Steel Screw	No	Yes	Yes	No
	Adhered Iron Plate	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
	Bolted Iron Plate	No	Yes	Yes	NA
	Stitched Iron Plate	Yes	Yes	Yes	NA	Iron Wire
	Steamed Copper Sheet	Yes	No	Yes	No
	Copper Rotor	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Steel Rotor	No	Yes	Yes	No	Default Stator, Default Motor
	Bolted Frame	No	Yes	Yes	No
	Steeled Frame	No	Yes	Yes	No	Steel Rod
	Plastic Smart Plating	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Coated Iron Plate
	Biocoal	NA	NA	NA	NA	This recipe can never be fully automated.
	Charcoal	NA	NA	NA	NA	This recipe can never be fully automated.
	Pure Caterium Ingot	Yes	No	No	No
	Fused Quickwire	Yes	No	No	No
	Cheap Silica	Yes	No	No	No
	Pure Quartz Crystal	Yes	No	No	No
	Crystal Beacon	No	Yes	Yes	No	Infused Uranium Cell, Uranium Fuel Unit
	Insulated Crystal Oscillator	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
	Compacted Coal	NA	NA	NA	NA	The only way to produce this item.
	Fine Black Powder	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
	Coke Steel Ingot	Yes	No	Yes	No	Heavy Oil Residue
	Compacted Steel Ingot	No	No	No	No
	Solid Steel Ingot	Yes	No	No	No	Pure Iron Ingot
	Flexible Framework	Yes	No	No	No
	Encased Industrial Pipe	Yes	Yes	Yes	NA	Solid Steel Ingot
	Quickwire Stator	No	Yes	Yes	NA
	Electric Motor	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
	Rigour Motor	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
	Automated Speed Wiring	No	Yes	Yes	No
	Heavy Encased Frame	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Encased Industrial Pipe
	Heavy Flexible Frame	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Rubber Concrete
	Diluted Fuel	Yes	Yes	No	No	These recipes form a cycle for improving oil product yield. Once Blender is unlocked at Tier 7, switch over from Diluted Packaged Fuel to Diluted Fuel to simplify the process.
	Heavy Oil Residue	NA	NA	NA	NA
	Recycled Plastic	Yes	No	No	No
	Recycled Rubber	Yes	No	No	No
	Diluted Packaged Fuel	Yes	No	Yes	No
	Polyester Fabric	NA	NA	NA	NA	The only way to automate this recipe.
	Polymer Resin	NA	NA	NA	NA	The only way to mass-produce Polymer Resin.
	Caterium Circuit Board	Yes	Yes	Yes	NA	Caterium Computer (allows production of Computers without Copper)
	Electrode Circuit Board	No	No	No	NA
	Silicon Circuit Board	No	Yes	Yes	NA	Crystal Computer, default Crystal Oscillator (allows production of Computers without oil)
	Caterium Computer	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Caterium Circuit Board (allows production of Computers without Copper)
	Crystal Computer	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Silicon Circuit Board, default Crystal Oscillator (allows production of Computers without oil)
	Coated Iron Canister	Yes	No	No	No
	Steel Canister	No	No	No	No
	Turbofuel	NA	NA	NA	NA	The first recipe unlocked for this item.
	Turbo Blend Fuel	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Diluted Fuel, Heavy Oil Residue
	Turbo Heavy Fuel	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Heavy Oil Residue
	Silicon High-Speed Connector	No	Yes	Yes	NA
	Instant Scrap	No	No	No	No
	Sloppy Alumina	No	No	No	Yes	Sloppy Alumna and Electrode-Aluminum Scrap produce the most efficient Bauxite conversion rate. Pure Ingot has an inferior conversion rate but allows the process to proceed without involving Silica.
	Electrode-Aluminum Scrap	Yes	No	No	No
	Pure Aluminum Ingot	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Alclad Casing	Yes	No	No	No
	Radio Connection Unit	No	No	No	NA
	Radio Control System	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Classic Battery	Yes	No	No	No
	OC Supercomputer	No	No	No	NA
	Super-State Computer	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Electromagnetic Connection Rod	No	No	No	No	Quickwire Stator (1:1 production:demand). Recipe allows Control Rods to be made without AI Limiters.
	Infused Uranium Cell	Yes	No	No	No	Paired, produce Uranium Fuel Rods with much higher efficiency, as well as eliminating the need to recycle waste Sulphuric Acid.
	Uranium Fuel Unit	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
	Heat Exchanger	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
	Cooling Device	Yes	No	No	No
	Heat-Fused Frame	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
	Turbo Electric Motor	Yes	Yes	Yes	NA
	Turbo Pressure Motor	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
	Fertile Uranium	No	Yes	Yes	NA
	Instant Plutonium Cell	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Most efficient way to produce Plutonium Fuel Rods if using them for power. Undesirable if only using Plutonium to dispose of Uranium Waste.
	Plutonium Fuel Unit	Yes	Yes	Yes	No

Detailed analysis and powerful combinations

Diluted Packaged Fuel cycle

This combination uses Heavy Oil Residue -> Diluted Packaged Fuel to increase the Crude Oil -> Fuel conversion ratio by 4.5x. Combining this fuel conversion with Compacted Coal to yield Turbofuel greatly improves energy generation, allowing a single oil node to supply over 11x as many Fuel Generators at maximum usage, compared to the normal Crude Oil to Fuel recipe. Even relative to directly using the Fuel produced by the Diluted Fuel combination, Turbofuel increases the number of generators that can be supplied by 2.78x, at the cost of requiring Coal and Sulfur input for the Compacted Coal. The final ratio is 148.15 Fuel Generators (22,222 MW) for 300 Crude Oil and 480 Sulfur and Coal per minute, which can be accomplished, via overclocking, off of a single Oil node of normal or pure quality, and a single node each of Sulfur and Coal at pure quality, or two each at normal quality, using Miner Mk.2s.

The Blender's Diluted Fuel recipe skips the packaging-unpackaging steps, making the process simpler and more energy saving.

Recycled Plastic/Rubber

In addition to power generation, combining the above recipe with Recycled Plastic and Recycled Rubber will improve your ratio per crude oil. The idea is to have half the output of Recycled Plastic feeding the Recycled Rubber production, and vice versa. This does require the system to be "primed" which can be sped up by sending the full output of one side to the other initially. With the system equalized you can achieve 12 resources per crude oil ( [2.667 recycled plastic + 3.333 residual plastic] x 2 for the rubber ). The original recipes yield 0.667 resources per crude oil, and no Heavy Oil Residue is wasted, thus no longer require continuous removal of the Heavy Oil Residue.

A major benefit of this recipe: If one resource of the combined recycler system is not fully utilized, the usable output of the other will increase as the unused side overflows. Thus, there is no need to build the system asymmetrically.

Nuclear Power

Uranium Fuel

The base conversion rate of Uranium to Uranium Fuel Rods is 100:1. Uranium Ore converts to Encased Uranium Cells at 2:1 and Encased Uranium Cells convert to Uranium Fuel Rods at 50:1. In total, this allows a single normal Uranium node (600/min using a Miner Mk.3 at 250%) to supply 30 Nuclear Power Plants, for a total of 75,000 MW of power. The alternate recipes Infused Uranium Cell and Uranium Fuel Unit drastically improve this ratio. Infused Uranium Cells convert Uranium ore to Encased Uranium Cells at a 5:4 ratio, and Uranium Fuel Unit converts Encased Uranium Cells to Uranium Fuel Rods at a 100:3 ratio. This increases the number of fuel rods generated by 2.4x, allowing a single normal Uranium node to supply 72 Nuclear Power Plants, for a total of 180,000 MW of power. This increases the maximum uranium power output from 262.5 GW to 630 GW (as of Update 4, there are 3 normal and 1 impure Uranium nodes on the map for a total of 2100 Uranium per minute).

Plutonium Fuel

The base conversion rate of Uranium Waste to Plutonium Fuel Rods is 225:1. The standard recipes for Non-fissile Uranium and Plutonium Pellets both consume Uranium Waste in a 3:1 ratio, meaning to fully convert all Uranium Waste, 75% should be allocated for Non-fissile Uranium and 25% should be allocated for Plutonium Pellets. Uranium Waste produces Non-fissile Uranium in a 3:4 ratio, Plutonium Pellets are produced in a 10:3 ratio (consuming 25% of the initial input Uranium Waste), Encased Plutonium Cells are produced in a 2:1 ratio, and Plutonium Fuel Rods are produced in a 30:1 ratio. When fully utilized, a single normal Uranium node produces between 300 Uranium Waste/min on the standard recipe chain or 720 Uranium Waste/min on the most efficient recipe chain, which respectively produce 1.5 and 3.6 Plutonium Fuel Rods/min.

The standard recipe chain maximizes the use of Uranium Waste and minimizes other resources required to create Plutonium Rods. This makes this recipe chain ideal for creating a zero-waste Nuclear Power setup (meaning all Plutonium Fuel Rods are deposited in an Awesome Sink and not used in Nuclear Power Plants). The alternate recipe chain for Plutonium Fuel is more oriented towards maximizing the production of Plutonium Fuel Rods.

Using all of the alternate recipes ("Fertile Uranium", "Instant Plutonium", and "Plutonium Fuel Unit") the conversion rate of Uranium Waste to Plutonium Fuel Rods is 75:2. However, "Fertile Uranium" requires input Uranium, which means some of the original Uranium harvested must be withheld without being refined into Uranium Fuel Rods. This fact, along with the limited amount of Uranium available on the map currently, makes this recipe sub-optimal for maximizing power. Using all of the alternate recipes for Plutonium Fuel Rods and Uranium Fuel Rods, except for "Fertile Uranium" produces the most Uranium waste-free Nuclear power possible, at 340 GW for a single normal Uranium node (160 GW of additional power from Plutonium) or 1190 GW (630 GW from Uranium and 560 GW from Plutonium) for all of the Uranium on the map. This recipe chain has a conversion rate of Uranium Waste to Plutonium Fuel Rods of 225:2.

This is as compared to a maximum of 1050 GW (286.4 GW from Uranium and 763.6 GW from Plutonium) for all of the Uranium on the map if "Fertile Uranium" is used in combination with all other alternative recipes. Fertile Uranium also produces more permanent Plutonium Waste then the standard recipe.

Solid Steel Ingots

Using the normal recipe, one Steel Ingot is produced per Iron Ore and Coal input. Using Solid Steel Ingot combined with Pure Iron Ingot can increase this yield to 39 Steel Ingots for 14 Iron Ore and 26 Coal input. This is 2.79x as efficient with regards to Iron Ore, and 1.5x as efficient with regards to Coal.

Compacted Steel Ingot combined with Compacted Coal can be used instead to ease the demand on Coal at the cost of overall yield (relative to the Solid Steel Ingot recipe) and Sulfur. It provides 10 Steel Ingots for six Iron Ore, three Coal, and three Sulfur. Relative to the normal Steel Ingot recipe, this is 1.67x as efficient on Iron Ore, and 3.33x as efficient on Coal. Relative to the Solid Steel Ingot recipe, this produces only ~60% as many Steel Ingots per Iron Ore input, but requires only 45% as much Coal *per Ingot* at the cost of requiring an equal amount of Sulfur.

As part of the Heavy Encased Frame chain, use Pure Iron Ingot -> Solid Steel Ingot -> Encase Industrial Pipes -> Heavy Encased Frame to see the cascading effect of resource-saving. See Heavy Modular Frame#Tips for more info.

Iron Wire

Best paired with Stitched Iron Plate.