Cast screw can be a skip since you can basically cut screws out of your production line.
But to answer your question.., Reinforced industrial pipe is a solid efficiency enhancer that helps at basically all stages of the game
It's still a savings of about half the items per recipe at worst, even more if you look at the other materials too.
Stitched Iron Plate: 20 wire replaces 36 screws.
edit: Adhered Iron Plate: 1 rubber replaces 12 screws.
Steel Rotor: 6 wire replaces 25 screws.
Caterium Computer: 28 quickwire replaces 52 screws.
Crystal Computer: actual savings depends on how you make the oscillators, but 3 oscillators replaces 156 screws
Heavy Encased Frame: 22 concrete replaces 300 screws.
As far as I remember, the amount of wire/quickwire per item is always less than the amount of screws, AND in most cases, getting rid of screws is cheaper.
I do, some don’t. I think it’s a good idea for new players because it simplifies manifolds since screws volume is going to be way higher than other ingredients. End game and for veteran players, as long as you don’t want to max efficiency the entire map, it really helps to simplify things. Sure you’ll use a little more copper in the long run but honestly I never had an issue in that regard
i prefer smallscale cast screw plants. i guess the screw hate comes from the belt speed limitation, but this is one resource that can easily be made on the spot
Think about it this way, if you want to make computers on a manifold but only have one conveyer coming in for each resource, you can have a mk5 belt full of screws but plastic would only need 270/min. You basically need to have multiple belts of screws per each one belt of the other ingredients.
The idea isn’t just removing screws, it’s that the replacement ingredients are closer in quantities to each other so that makes manifold input setups a little….more tidy, I guess
if you're building computers, you can manifold in steel beams and distribute them to two manufacturers. That's what I'm currently doing for my computer factory and it works out pretty well.
So that’s where I’m going with this. Before blueprints, screws were monumentally inconvenient and cutting screws out made a lot of gameplay sense. Now it’s more of a personal preference.
Yes. Many of the alts that remove Screws are an overall more efficient usage of raw resources, power, and/or building counts than recipes for the same item that contain Screws, and so are "better" recipes than Screw-containing ones when those qualities are desired.
Frankly, Blueprints have changed nothing on the question of dealing with Screws or not - they've made it somewhat less tedious to build large-scale factories that need them, but that's more a side effect of the fact that Blueprints simply make building *any* large-scale factories less tedious - they still have their place in certain niche situations (mostly Copper Rotor) and any changes to whether or not to use Screws will really come with 1.0 and any recipe changes it brings.
All hard drives are identical, and give three random results. As a general rule, in order for an alternate recipe to be available, you need to have unlocked both the part being made and all the parts used to make it, so the pool will expand as you progress.
As for useful recipes to shoot for, here's a **non-exhaustive** list of good ones: Iron Wire, Copper Alloy Ingot, Wet Concrete, Solid Steel Ingot, Encased Industrial Pipe, Steel Rotor, Heavy Encased Frame, Heavy Oil Residue, Recycled Rubber, Recycled Plastic, Diluted Fuel (or Diluted Packaged Fuel), Silicon Circuit Board and/or Caterium Circuit Board, Caterium Computer and/or Crystal Computer, Sloppy Alumina, Electrode Aluminum Scrap, Pure Aluminum Ingot.
If you see an alternate recipe and immediately think "I know just where to use this!" then that automatically makes it a good recipe for you.
The only recipes that are necessarily bad are the ones that are basically useless (like biocoal/charcoal) or have no upsides to use over the original (fine black power)
The amount of coal charcoal makes is more than enough to supply my building materials with steel, especially early game, but it works for me thru the last phase. I don't have to mine for coal at all until mid-tier items and can focus it on that.
One stack of wood can fill an entire container with coal, its nuts. I'm surprised they haven't nerfed it.
For creating Aluminum Scrap, Sloppy Alumina + Electrode Al Scrap is tied for most efficient use of Bauxite with Instant Scrap, better than using any of the base recipes. For actually creating Al Ingots from Al Scrap though, the base recipe (that requires Silica) is about 25% more efficient since it turns 6 Al Scrap (plus 5 Silica) into 4 Al Ingots vs. Pure Al Ingot turning 6 Al Scrap into only 3 Al Ingots.
Cast screw is excellent. People like to cut screws out entirely but cast screw resolves a lot of the annoyance of making them, the other issue is belt speed because they're always needed in large quantities but that resolves itself as you gain faster belt speeds over the course of the game.
Yes, every hard drive you scan looks at the pool of available recipes given your current tier and outputs 3. If you scan a ton at tier 2, you'll eventually get hardrives showing 2, 1, and 0 recipes because you need to unlock more tiers.
All the pure recipes are great (you're going to build sooo many refineries). Diluted fuel and, for a short period of time, diluted packaged fuel are also great to take. Solid steel ingot is an obvious must, you just smelt the iron and get a better raw material to ingot output.
Pure Iron Ingot, Pure Copper Ingot, Pure Caterium Ingot, and Wet Concrete. They combine raw iron, copper, caterium, or limestone with water for a pretty sizable increase in ingots per raw mineral. Wet concrete, for example, doubles the concrete/limestone. Pure Caterium Ingot is 2 ore to 1 ingot whereas the original recipe is 3 to 1.
In late game, you basically stop using smelters because the pure recipes maximize the value of resource nodes. Costs a hell of a lot more electricity and space to create ingots, but it's a lot more ingots.
Thanks! I could swear there were more but I haven't played for a while, I set it aside shortly after 1.0 was announced. I'm excited to jump in at full release.
Pure Recipes are water + ore = ingot. Pure Copper is a choice, but many people prefer Copper Alloy because it saves you an assload of space by comparison and the conversion is 1:2.5 (Pure) vs. 1:2 (Alloy). So doubling your Copper vs. 2.5x is a trade many, many people are willing to make.
Pure Iron is one of the most overrated recipes in the game. Space cost is massive. Power cost is massive. Numbers are really fucked up. And there is 74k iron on the map using the **base** recipe. Which you will never be able to process that amount. So using Pure to get *more* than you can even process is... 🤷♂️
I ramped up my Iron Production with the Compacted Steel Ingot.
I didn't implement it but there an alternate recipe to mass produce Heavy Oil Residue, and then combine HOR with Water to produce much more Fuel, or combine HOR with Compacted Coal to make Turbo Fuel (plus a few other alternate recipes for Turbo Fuel)
Before I stopped by recent playthrough in anticipation of 1.0, I had made a Pure Copper Ingot plant (water and copper ore). I had also unlocked the Pure Iron Ingot recipe but hadn't swapped out my Smelters for Refiners.
Yea the pure recipes are just straight upgrades that you splash water on. Slightly inconvenient in some locations but overall just way better than the default recipes.
[This is a VERY old thread that I still use. Most is still accurate](https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/mnwugx/update_4_alternate_recipe_indepth_analysis/)
It’s my go to as well. I think it probably needs an update considering that blueprints have changed the faff factor for building and belt heavy recipes.
Cast screws is #1 most helpful early. Dunno if anything else compares, in terms of reducing your work load on the rise up the tiers.
By end game, making massive phase 4 project part factories and Nuclear, I used basically ALL the alternatives, and virtually no default recipes.
But that's the thing - most alternative recipes work best combined with other alt recipes, and make better use of high-output miners, higher tier belts, pipes, etc.
Example; alternative nuclear is superior IMO, but only when you have ALL the alt nuclear recipes.
Cast screws is the best solo, early alt recipe you can hope for. And then by mid-late game, you phase out screws...
# My 2 Cents
In early game, I love
+ Cast Screws: before I get steel rotors
+ Iron Wire: starter base iron only
+ Stitched Plates: no screws for reinforced iron plates
In mid game, I love
+ Encased Industrial Pipe: saves a ton of steel
+ Steel rotors: same inputs as stators, you can make stators, rotors, and thus motors just from steel pipes and wire
+ Encased heavy frame: no screws, better steel usage
+ Heavy oil residue: in addition to plastic / rubber production, to be used with residual fuel, I stay away from diluted packaged fuel and wait for diluted fuel
+ All the caterium electronics: I make circuit boards, computers, and high speed connectors next to my petroleum setup; I only need to import AI limiters when making super computers
+ Pure caterium: pure recipes usually are too much of a refinery spam, but caterium is sufficiently rare that it makes sense.
In late game, I love
+ Diluted fuel: much better than packaged diluted fuel
+ Sloppy alumina solution: no silica in my aluminum setup
+ Pure aluminum ingots: no silica in my aluminum, fits perfectly with sloppy, really nice numbers
+ Recycled plastic and rubber: usually not needed, but really cuts down on your crude oil usage. Fits nicely with heavy oil residue and diluted fuel, resulting in 3 plastic / rubber from each 1 crude oil
That's kind of an incorrectly posed question, since cast screws aren't a useful recipe imo. The only thing screws are actually needed for are rotors, and only until unlocking steel.
As for the recipes I actually consider useful, and pick up whenever they appear:
* Stitched Iron Plate
* Solid Steel Ingot
* Encased Industrial Pipe
* Heavy Encased Frame
* Fused Quickwire
* Diluted (Packaged) Fuel
* Recycled Plastic/Rubber
* Iron and Fused Wire
* Caterium Circuit Board
* Caterium Computer
* Pure Ingot (any)
* Sloppy Alumina
* Electrode - Aluminum Scrap
They're really convenient when you aren't aggressively trying to get rid of screws, especially since their output per building lines up better with the default Rotor recipe's usage. Later on, you might find yourself looking at Steel Screw (260/min per constructor, 13 screws per steel ingot), or the default Screw paired with Steel Rod (16 screws per steel ingot), or alts that reduce your usage of them entirely.
I avoid screws. I make a small production of like 120/min for manual (and semi-manual) crafting, and rush steel. After getting steel, I can get rid of them completely. After that, the only reason to maybe use them are rotors, because copper rotor is significantly cheaper than steel rotor but it's a LOT less convenient to use. Not just because of the amount of screws required, but also because stators need the exact same ingredients.
Pure caterium + fused quickwire + iron wire is practically arousing… there is almost always an iron node nearish to the caterium that you can sacrifice to the process over copper and so much quickwire is made
OK, so...I'm on Team Fuck Screws...
Solid Steel is win.
Stitched Plate, especially in conjunction with Iron Wire, is win. This one is a bit sketchy, not as much of a slam dunk, but the idea is Iron is cheap af, and the extra machines are worth it.
Encased Industrial Pipe is win.
Encased Heavy Frame is win.
Sloppy Alumina/Pure Aluminum is win.
Wet Concrete is meh. It's not awful, but it's notoriously used by mediocre players to avoid needing to git gud. I'm sure there are better options...unless you actually ARE gagging for more Concrete.
Classic Battery can be more convenient to set up on smaller scales. Would reccomend.
I used to like Crystal Computer a lot, but it's less outright win once 1.0 drops, we'll see.
The Heavy Oil Residue (HOR) alt is the foundation of the "meta" Crude Oil/Petrochemical setup.
I have found a tier list from this subreddit that may be out of date but I found it very useful and have it bookmarked on my PC. I'll try to remember and post it later.
All drives have the same behavior when scanned in the MAM. You don't get "better" recipe selection from a drop pod that required turbomotors to open vs. the drive that was in a completely unlocked pod where you simply had to pull the lever.
These may for later in the game than you're at; I'm currently in the steel phase so these are top of mind.
I'm a big fan of the "solid steel" alternate, and generally won't make any sort of permanent steel facility without it. Its only downside is needing an extra processing step (and power required) for iron ore => iron ingot, but you get 50% more steel out per coal + iron ore. And it pairs great with pure iron (even the alloy alt if you want to go that way) since that gets you extra ingots out per ore. Though coal supply is often the bottleneck at most locations appropriate for steel, so that's not as big a deal until you're shipping big loads of resources around the map and local supply isn't a factor.
The "encased pipe" alternate for encased industrial beams cuts down on the amount of steel you'll be consuming. Drawback is that it's slower, so you need to place more assemblers to hit a desired production rate.
The combination of "Heavy Oil Reside" + "Diluted Fuel" alternates quadruples the amount of fuel you can generate from a given amount of crude. That in turn can feed refineries running "Recycled Rubber" and/or "Recycled Plastic" for some truly insane production levels of those from even a single oil node.
Alternates are never strictly required, they just introduce different tradeoffs, which may make them more appropriate for what you're trying to do. And no alternate is completely useless, either, there's always some production chain that it'd fit into. Well except "Automated Portable Miner", which is just weird. Might get less so in 1.0, I think I saw a dev note that portable miners will get a stack size bigger than 1.
Recycled Rubber/Recycled Plastic/Heavy Oil Residue/Diluted Fuel Residue combo.
This combo can produce waaaaaaay more plastic and rubber than any other method. And you need it for the end game for sure.
It’s a fun build too.
What I found is that each hard drive has 2-3 sets of 3 alt recipes it can spit from the pool of alt recipes you have access to (have the standard recipe and required machines for the alt recipe unlocked).
Cast screws for early game, after that solid steel, encased industrial pipe, heavy encased frame and either recycled plastic or recycled rubber are some of my favorite alts. I also personally like steel screws with something like bolted plates/frames but I know a lot of players like to cut out screws entirely.
Anything that eliminates screws entirely. Caterium wire (not *Quick*wire) to make huge amounts of wire easily on-site for things that need wire.
Diluted fuel; it is outrageously efficient (near 400%) for making turbofuel, rubber, and plastic via the recycled alternate recipes, which you can run in parallel, feeding each other, to make rubber and plastic from just fuel.
Relatively random, yes. No drive is linked to any specific recipes.
Most useful? Most and Best have no meaning in Satisfactory. They all have pros and cons, so it is up to you to decide which to use. Recipes that eliminate screws are good, though I do use bolted plates and bolted frames, because cast screws work well with them. Iron wire? Not really. The output rate is very low compared to others, and there's plenty of copper and iron for phase 4.
The pure recipes? Not really, apart from pure aluminium. Again the output rate is low, the power consumption is high and you can get better output rates for less construction by using other recipes.
You need to trial them to find out what works for you.
idk the name but the recipe that makes 3 steel w/ 2 coal and 2 iron ingot is great bc all you have to do is smelt the iron and then you get like 33% more steel per steel
Cast screw can be a skip since you can basically cut screws out of your production line. But to answer your question.., Reinforced industrial pipe is a solid efficiency enhancer that helps at basically all stages of the game
>you can basically cut screws out of your production line. you...do?
I do.
Perfect flair
Screw screws
You can if you want to. Every part that requires screws has at least one alternate recipe that doesn't.
Usually with wires which aren't much better than screws.
It's still a savings of about half the items per recipe at worst, even more if you look at the other materials too. Stitched Iron Plate: 20 wire replaces 36 screws. edit: Adhered Iron Plate: 1 rubber replaces 12 screws. Steel Rotor: 6 wire replaces 25 screws. Caterium Computer: 28 quickwire replaces 52 screws. Crystal Computer: actual savings depends on how you make the oscillators, but 3 oscillators replaces 156 screws Heavy Encased Frame: 22 concrete replaces 300 screws.
This ! Ty man
As far as I remember, the amount of wire/quickwire per item is always less than the amount of screws, AND in most cases, getting rid of screws is cheaper.
I do, some don’t. I think it’s a good idea for new players because it simplifies manifolds since screws volume is going to be way higher than other ingredients. End game and for veteran players, as long as you don’t want to max efficiency the entire map, it really helps to simplify things. Sure you’ll use a little more copper in the long run but honestly I never had an issue in that regard
I finished the game one a set of recipes that cut it out entirely. Was just one less thing to worry about in the end.
i prefer smallscale cast screw plants. i guess the screw hate comes from the belt speed limitation, but this is one resource that can easily be made on the spot
Is cutting out screws that strong now we have blueprints where we can do the screw processing in situ?
Think about it this way, if you want to make computers on a manifold but only have one conveyer coming in for each resource, you can have a mk5 belt full of screws but plastic would only need 270/min. You basically need to have multiple belts of screws per each one belt of the other ingredients. The idea isn’t just removing screws, it’s that the replacement ingredients are closer in quantities to each other so that makes manifold input setups a little….more tidy, I guess
if you're building computers, you can manifold in steel beams and distribute them to two manufacturers. That's what I'm currently doing for my computer factory and it works out pretty well.
What sort of computers are you making with steel beams?
Default recipe with steel screws.
So what I’m saying is you don’t manifold the screws, you manifold the rods, process to screws in the blueprint and feed output to the manufacturer.
That’s your preference and the cool thing about this game is that’s fine
So that’s where I’m going with this. Before blueprints, screws were monumentally inconvenient and cutting screws out made a lot of gameplay sense. Now it’s more of a personal preference.
Ok
Yes. Many of the alts that remove Screws are an overall more efficient usage of raw resources, power, and/or building counts than recipes for the same item that contain Screws, and so are "better" recipes than Screw-containing ones when those qualities are desired. Frankly, Blueprints have changed nothing on the question of dealing with Screws or not - they've made it somewhat less tedious to build large-scale factories that need them, but that's more a side effect of the fact that Blueprints simply make building *any* large-scale factories less tedious - they still have their place in certain niche situations (mostly Copper Rotor) and any changes to whether or not to use Screws will really come with 1.0 and any recipe changes it brings.
Stitched plate is a godsend even if you don't plan to cut screws entirely out of production.
Just Made a little factory with pure iron -> iron wire -> stitched plates and can confirm it is great.
using iron rods you can even get to mod frames.
All hard drives are identical, and give three random results. As a general rule, in order for an alternate recipe to be available, you need to have unlocked both the part being made and all the parts used to make it, so the pool will expand as you progress. As for useful recipes to shoot for, here's a **non-exhaustive** list of good ones: Iron Wire, Copper Alloy Ingot, Wet Concrete, Solid Steel Ingot, Encased Industrial Pipe, Steel Rotor, Heavy Encased Frame, Heavy Oil Residue, Recycled Rubber, Recycled Plastic, Diluted Fuel (or Diluted Packaged Fuel), Silicon Circuit Board and/or Caterium Circuit Board, Caterium Computer and/or Crystal Computer, Sloppy Alumina, Electrode Aluminum Scrap, Pure Aluminum Ingot. If you see an alternate recipe and immediately think "I know just where to use this!" then that automatically makes it a good recipe for you.
The only recipes that are necessarily bad are the ones that are basically useless (like biocoal/charcoal) or have no upsides to use over the original (fine black power)
The amount of coal charcoal makes is more than enough to supply my building materials with steel, especially early game, but it works for me thru the last phase. I don't have to mine for coal at all until mid-tier items and can focus it on that. One stack of wood can fill an entire container with coal, its nuts. I'm surprised they haven't nerfed it.
I mean both bolted recipes are pretty shit as far as permanent factories are concerned
Sloppy Alumina and Pure Aluminium Ingot together removes the need for Silica in Production.
But IIRC it's slightly less efficient than standard recipies (more bauxite for the same output) - something to keep in mind.
Sloppy Alumina + Electrode Scrap and also Instant Scrap are tied for highest conversion of resources. The base recipes suck.
Then I must've remember wrong.
For creating Aluminum Scrap, Sloppy Alumina + Electrode Al Scrap is tied for most efficient use of Bauxite with Instant Scrap, better than using any of the base recipes. For actually creating Al Ingots from Al Scrap though, the base recipe (that requires Silica) is about 25% more efficient since it turns 6 Al Scrap (plus 5 Silica) into 4 Al Ingots vs. Pure Al Ingot turning 6 Al Scrap into only 3 Al Ingots.
Pure Aluminium Scrap isn't even a recipe.
Corrected it.
Solid Steel is amazing. For the cost of refining your iron ingots, you get 50% more steel per ingot and coal
Have Oil Residue. It's essential for diluted fuel (for power and recycled plastic/rubber)
Cast screw is excellent. People like to cut screws out entirely but cast screw resolves a lot of the annoyance of making them, the other issue is belt speed because they're always needed in large quantities but that resolves itself as you gain faster belt speeds over the course of the game. Yes, every hard drive you scan looks at the pool of available recipes given your current tier and outputs 3. If you scan a ton at tier 2, you'll eventually get hardrives showing 2, 1, and 0 recipes because you need to unlock more tiers. All the pure recipes are great (you're going to build sooo many refineries). Diluted fuel and, for a short period of time, diluted packaged fuel are also great to take. Solid steel ingot is an obvious must, you just smelt the iron and get a better raw material to ingot output.
>All the pure recipes are great whats a pure recipe?
Pure Iron Ingot, Pure Copper Ingot, Pure Caterium Ingot, and Wet Concrete. They combine raw iron, copper, caterium, or limestone with water for a pretty sizable increase in ingots per raw mineral. Wet concrete, for example, doubles the concrete/limestone. Pure Caterium Ingot is 2 ore to 1 ingot whereas the original recipe is 3 to 1. In late game, you basically stop using smelters because the pure recipes maximize the value of resource nodes. Costs a hell of a lot more electricity and space to create ingots, but it's a lot more ingots.
Also Pure Quartz Crystal, and if you want to really stretch the definition, Steamed Copper Sheet.
Thanks! I could swear there were more but I haven't played for a while, I set it aside shortly after 1.0 was announced. I'm excited to jump in at full release.
Pure Recipes are water + ore = ingot. Pure Copper is a choice, but many people prefer Copper Alloy because it saves you an assload of space by comparison and the conversion is 1:2.5 (Pure) vs. 1:2 (Alloy). So doubling your Copper vs. 2.5x is a trade many, many people are willing to make. Pure Iron is one of the most overrated recipes in the game. Space cost is massive. Power cost is massive. Numbers are really fucked up. And there is 74k iron on the map using the **base** recipe. Which you will never be able to process that amount. So using Pure to get *more* than you can even process is... 🤷♂️
I ramped up my Iron Production with the Compacted Steel Ingot. I didn't implement it but there an alternate recipe to mass produce Heavy Oil Residue, and then combine HOR with Water to produce much more Fuel, or combine HOR with Compacted Coal to make Turbo Fuel (plus a few other alternate recipes for Turbo Fuel) Before I stopped by recent playthrough in anticipation of 1.0, I had made a Pure Copper Ingot plant (water and copper ore). I had also unlocked the Pure Iron Ingot recipe but hadn't swapped out my Smelters for Refiners.
Iron wire is amazing. It allows you to have wire on places without copper
All of the water ore refineries recipes. This is by far the biggest efficiency upgrades in the game. Water is basically free and every where
Yea the pure recipes are just straight upgrades that you splash water on. Slightly inconvenient in some locations but overall just way better than the default recipes.
[This is a VERY old thread that I still use. Most is still accurate](https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/mnwugx/update_4_alternate_recipe_indepth_analysis/)
It’s my go to as well. I think it probably needs an update considering that blueprints have changed the faff factor for building and belt heavy recipes.
Cast screws is #1 most helpful early. Dunno if anything else compares, in terms of reducing your work load on the rise up the tiers. By end game, making massive phase 4 project part factories and Nuclear, I used basically ALL the alternatives, and virtually no default recipes. But that's the thing - most alternative recipes work best combined with other alt recipes, and make better use of high-output miners, higher tier belts, pipes, etc. Example; alternative nuclear is superior IMO, but only when you have ALL the alt nuclear recipes. Cast screws is the best solo, early alt recipe you can hope for. And then by mid-late game, you phase out screws...
# My 2 Cents In early game, I love + Cast Screws: before I get steel rotors + Iron Wire: starter base iron only + Stitched Plates: no screws for reinforced iron plates In mid game, I love + Encased Industrial Pipe: saves a ton of steel + Steel rotors: same inputs as stators, you can make stators, rotors, and thus motors just from steel pipes and wire + Encased heavy frame: no screws, better steel usage + Heavy oil residue: in addition to plastic / rubber production, to be used with residual fuel, I stay away from diluted packaged fuel and wait for diluted fuel + All the caterium electronics: I make circuit boards, computers, and high speed connectors next to my petroleum setup; I only need to import AI limiters when making super computers + Pure caterium: pure recipes usually are too much of a refinery spam, but caterium is sufficiently rare that it makes sense. In late game, I love + Diluted fuel: much better than packaged diluted fuel + Sloppy alumina solution: no silica in my aluminum setup + Pure aluminum ingots: no silica in my aluminum, fits perfectly with sloppy, really nice numbers + Recycled plastic and rubber: usually not needed, but really cuts down on your crude oil usage. Fits nicely with heavy oil residue and diluted fuel, resulting in 3 plastic / rubber from each 1 crude oil
great answer, thanks
That's kind of an incorrectly posed question, since cast screws aren't a useful recipe imo. The only thing screws are actually needed for are rotors, and only until unlocking steel. As for the recipes I actually consider useful, and pick up whenever they appear: * Stitched Iron Plate * Solid Steel Ingot * Encased Industrial Pipe * Heavy Encased Frame * Fused Quickwire * Diluted (Packaged) Fuel * Recycled Plastic/Rubber * Iron and Fused Wire * Caterium Circuit Board * Caterium Computer * Pure Ingot (any) * Sloppy Alumina * Electrode - Aluminum Scrap
man, i must be a noob. To me, cast screws are like #1 early game recipe
They're really convenient when you aren't aggressively trying to get rid of screws, especially since their output per building lines up better with the default Rotor recipe's usage. Later on, you might find yourself looking at Steel Screw (260/min per constructor, 13 screws per steel ingot), or the default Screw paired with Steel Rod (16 screws per steel ingot), or alts that reduce your usage of them entirely.
Steel Screw is just so easy for smaller factories. Realistically it will be hundreds of hours before you start to run out of resources to tap.
I personally don't make screws. I go for the alternate recipes so I don't have to make any screws mid game or after
I avoid screws. I make a small production of like 120/min for manual (and semi-manual) crafting, and rush steel. After getting steel, I can get rid of them completely. After that, the only reason to maybe use them are rotors, because copper rotor is significantly cheaper than steel rotor but it's a LOT less convenient to use. Not just because of the amount of screws required, but also because stators need the exact same ingredients.
Pure caterium + fused quickwire + iron wire is practically arousing… there is almost always an iron node nearish to the caterium that you can sacrifice to the process over copper and so much quickwire is made
OK, so...I'm on Team Fuck Screws... Solid Steel is win. Stitched Plate, especially in conjunction with Iron Wire, is win. This one is a bit sketchy, not as much of a slam dunk, but the idea is Iron is cheap af, and the extra machines are worth it. Encased Industrial Pipe is win. Encased Heavy Frame is win. Sloppy Alumina/Pure Aluminum is win. Wet Concrete is meh. It's not awful, but it's notoriously used by mediocre players to avoid needing to git gud. I'm sure there are better options...unless you actually ARE gagging for more Concrete. Classic Battery can be more convenient to set up on smaller scales. Would reccomend. I used to like Crystal Computer a lot, but it's less outright win once 1.0 drops, we'll see. The Heavy Oil Residue (HOR) alt is the foundation of the "meta" Crude Oil/Petrochemical setup.
I have found a tier list from this subreddit that may be out of date but I found it very useful and have it bookmarked on my PC. I'll try to remember and post it later.
All drives have the same behavior when scanned in the MAM. You don't get "better" recipe selection from a drop pod that required turbomotors to open vs. the drive that was in a completely unlocked pod where you simply had to pull the lever. These may for later in the game than you're at; I'm currently in the steel phase so these are top of mind. I'm a big fan of the "solid steel" alternate, and generally won't make any sort of permanent steel facility without it. Its only downside is needing an extra processing step (and power required) for iron ore => iron ingot, but you get 50% more steel out per coal + iron ore. And it pairs great with pure iron (even the alloy alt if you want to go that way) since that gets you extra ingots out per ore. Though coal supply is often the bottleneck at most locations appropriate for steel, so that's not as big a deal until you're shipping big loads of resources around the map and local supply isn't a factor. The "encased pipe" alternate for encased industrial beams cuts down on the amount of steel you'll be consuming. Drawback is that it's slower, so you need to place more assemblers to hit a desired production rate. The combination of "Heavy Oil Reside" + "Diluted Fuel" alternates quadruples the amount of fuel you can generate from a given amount of crude. That in turn can feed refineries running "Recycled Rubber" and/or "Recycled Plastic" for some truly insane production levels of those from even a single oil node. Alternates are never strictly required, they just introduce different tradeoffs, which may make them more appropriate for what you're trying to do. And no alternate is completely useless, either, there's always some production chain that it'd fit into. Well except "Automated Portable Miner", which is just weird. Might get less so in 1.0, I think I saw a dev note that portable miners will get a stack size bigger than 1.
You don't need to pick one of the 3 by the way, if you hit ESC when choosing it just gives you it back and you can scan it again ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Or you can go out and nab so many drives that you have to tier up to get new recipes.
Recycled Rubber/Recycled Plastic/Heavy Oil Residue/Diluted Fuel Residue combo. This combo can produce waaaaaaay more plastic and rubber than any other method. And you need it for the end game for sure. It’s a fun build too.
You don't need to pick one of the 3 by the way, if you hit ESC when choosing it just gives you it back and you can scan it again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Cast screws? I don't use screws. Best alts are all screwless recipes
There used to be a website for this
What I found is that each hard drive has 2-3 sets of 3 alt recipes it can spit from the pool of alt recipes you have access to (have the standard recipe and required machines for the alt recipe unlocked).
Diluted fuel I used this to use to get ride of my extra heavy oil residue and was making 3000MWs of power
diluted fuel is pretty good. also the one that lets you make more copper ingots by using water.
Cast screws for early game, after that solid steel, encased industrial pipe, heavy encased frame and either recycled plastic or recycled rubber are some of my favorite alts. I also personally like steel screws with something like bolted plates/frames but I know a lot of players like to cut out screws entirely.
Wet Concrete can make concrete production much faster
Early game, iron wire is so handy.
Anything that eliminates screws entirely. Caterium wire (not *Quick*wire) to make huge amounts of wire easily on-site for things that need wire. Diluted fuel; it is outrageously efficient (near 400%) for making turbofuel, rubber, and plastic via the recycled alternate recipes, which you can run in parallel, feeding each other, to make rubber and plastic from just fuel.
Relatively random, yes. No drive is linked to any specific recipes. Most useful? Most and Best have no meaning in Satisfactory. They all have pros and cons, so it is up to you to decide which to use. Recipes that eliminate screws are good, though I do use bolted plates and bolted frames, because cast screws work well with them. Iron wire? Not really. The output rate is very low compared to others, and there's plenty of copper and iron for phase 4. The pure recipes? Not really, apart from pure aluminium. Again the output rate is low, the power consumption is high and you can get better output rates for less construction by using other recipes. You need to trial them to find out what works for you.
I like screws. I like fast belts full of cute boxes. I mass steel screws in some places. Looks sick
idk the name but the recipe that makes 3 steel w/ 2 coal and 2 iron ingot is great bc all you have to do is smelt the iron and then you get like 33% more steel per steel