Alternative Recipes are a big part of making efficient production lines in Satisfactory. They are kind of dull to grind out but worth it once you unlock alternative recipes in the tier list. This guide will focus on the alternative recipe tier list while explaining why they are useful.

What are Alternative Recipes

Alternative recipes are primarily used for creating a product with a different set of materials required to produce them. It gives more flexibility and unlocking the best ones are one of the most important things to do when trying to set up a big production facility or a factory.

How to Unlock Alternative Recipes

The only way to unlock Satisfactory alternative recipes is through researching Hard Drives that you have found. It takes about 10 minutes to research a single Satisfactory Hard Drive and after the research, you will have to choose between 3 different alternate recipes. The location of where the Hard Drive was acquired does not affect the selection of alternate Satisfactory recipes after the research.

How to Find Hard Drives

Hard Drives can be easy to find since they are located in crash sites and inside drop pods. The only difference is that most crash sites and drop pods will need requirements to be opened before getting the hard drives. These requirements can range from just requiring the pod to be powered with a cable through a power line all the way up to a bunch of Supercomputers.

The best way to make yourself prepared when exploring for crash sites is to visit the interactive map in the Satisfactory Calculator website. The Hard Drives are not only pinpointed to their exact location but also the exact requirements needed to open them.

Alternative Recipes Tier List – What to Prioritize

p/m – parts per minute*

Early game Tier 1-4

For the early game, these alternate recipes will be the most useful ones.

Casted Screw

Casted Screw – Iron Ingot (12.5 p/m) turns into Screw (50 p/m)

Removes the Iron Rod production in a layout which can potentially save more space and also increase the rate of production compared to the original Iron Rod to Screw recipe.

Bolted Iron Plate – Iron Plate (90 p/m) and Screw (250p/m) turns into Reinforced Iron Plate (15p/m)

At a cost of producing more screws, you can increase the Reinforced Iron Plate production significantly especially for the early stages.

Stitches Iron Plate – Iron Plate (18.75p/m) and Wire (37.5p/m) turns into Reinforced Iron Plate (5.625p/m)

An extremely efficient way to produce Reinforced Iron Plates at an additional cost of using Copper Ores for Wires.

Copper Rotor – Copper Sheet (22.5p/m) and Screw (195p/m) turns into Rotor (11.3p/m)

Rotor is hard to produce as the original recipe only goes at a rate of 4 p/m. This increases it by adding a copper resource to the recipe. There is an abundance of copper throughout the game and this will greatly help you produce Rotors and eventually Motors.

Bolted Frame – Reinforced Iron Plate (7.5p/m) and Screw (140p/m) turns into Modular Frame (5p/m)

Another recipe that increases the rate of production on a slow producing material.

Compacted Coal – Coal (25p/m) and Sulfur (25p/m) turns into Compacted Coal (25p/m)

This is only useful if you have the other alternative recipes such as Gun Powder, Compacted Steel Ingot, Turbo Fuel and Turbo Heavy Fuel.

Mid game Tier 5-6

Cheap Silica

Cheap Silica – Raw Quartz (11.3p/m) and Limestone (18.8p/m) turns into Silica (26.3p/m)

There are too many Limestone nodes in the game and if you can use any of these nodes as a substitute for any other resource, it will surely be efficient as you are making something out of nothing.

Polyester Fabric – Polymer Resin (80p/m) and Water (50p/m) turns into Fabric (5p/m)

This is the most important one as you need this to automate Gas Filters for your Gas Mask as well as your Iodine Infused FIlters for Hazmat Suits. The original recipe for Fabric cannot be automated as it requires Biomass and Mycelia which are all manually farmed.

Silicone Circuit Board

Silicone Circuit Board – Copper Sheet (27.5p/m) and Silica (27.5p/m) turns into Circuit Board (12.5p/m)

Another must-have alternative recipe. It removes the need for the Plastic which is involves the Refinery. Anything that takes the Refinery out of the production line will be easier to manage especially for an item that will be used heavily.

Caterium Computer

Caterium Computer – Circuit Board (26.25p/m), Quickwire (105p/m) and Rubber (45p/m) turns into Computer (3.75p/m)

Best computer production alternative. The 1.25 p/m increase will help tremendously as there are many uses for the Computer.

Polymer Resin – Crude Oil (60 cubic meters per minute) turns into Polymer Resin (130p/m) and Heavy Oil Residue (20 cubic meters per minute).

Getting Polymer Resin through byproducts alone is going to be inefficient for making the alternative recipe for Fabric. It is better to use this recipe instead and just figure out a way to use the Heavy Oil Residue.

Late game Tier 7

Pure Aluminum Ingot – Aluminum Scrap (144p/m) turns into Aluminum Ingot (36p/m)

This is only useful because it removes the requirement of the Raw Quartz. It does have a significant decrease in production so only use it when Raw Quartz is not available.

Turbo Rigour Motor

Turbo Rigour Motor – Motor (6.56p/m), Radio Control Unit (4.68p/m), AI Limiter (8.43p/m) and Stator (6.56p/m) turns into Turbo Motor (2.8p/m)

This is the hardest material to produce and also yields the highest Awesome Points when sunk in the Awesome Sink. This alternative recipe is essential to making an end game Turbo Motor factory for sinking.

Insulated Crystal Oscillator – Quartz Crystal (18.75p/m), Rubber (13.12p/m) and AI Limiter (1.875p/m) turns into Crystal Oscillator (1.875p/m)

Another efficient alternative recipe in improving production rate on materials that is hard to produce at a high rate. It is far harder than the original recipe but if you want to create this at a high rate, you have to use this alternative recipe.

Nuclear Fuel Unit – Encased Uranium Cell (10p/m), Electromagnetic Control Rod (2p/m), Crystal Oscillator (0.6p/m) and Beacon (1.2p/m) turns into Nuclear Fuel Rod (0.6p/m)

This recipe is important if you want to create multiple Nuclear Power Plants and have a surplus in Crystal Oscillators.

Heat Exchanger – Alclad Aluminum Sheet (37.5p/m) and Copper Sheet (56.25p/m) turns into Heat Sink (13.12p/m)

Amazing alternative recipe just because it removes the Rubber production and lessens the Refineries.

Conclusion

There might be times where you cannot find the alternative recipe that you are looking for and you desperately need it like the automated Fabric production. You can use the MAM trick when trying to efficiently farm and research Hard Drives.

For the other alternative recipes in the list, you can always take your time in finding them first before creating a factory-type building. You will be able to unlock every alternative recipes available once you start farming them through the interactive map.