Satisfactory Alternate Recipe Tier List

This tier list is not purely based on efficiency like other ones out there, and also factors in things like convenience of implementation. Some of the most efficient methods are also the most annoying to add, and having the most efficient factory is never necessary when you can grab more materials, so a balance between ease of use and efficiency must be considered. Rarity of materials is also a factor, as something that is highly efficient in general but consumes lots of rare materials is still worse for the average player, and something that is very inefficient but mostly consumes incredibly cheap/common materials is better.

Recipes are alphabetized within each section for easier searching. You are welcome to comment if you believe I made an error in my judgement and a certain recipe is better or worse than mentioned here. This guide is intended to only be used with the default game modifiers, and recipe tiers may change drastically if modifiers are used.

It is recommended to hold unnecessary recipes so that they will not come up in future hard drive searches and only redeem ones that will help you right away. Depending on your factory location and construction, a recipe may be slightly better or worse than stated; this is not meant to be taken as gospel. What's most important is that you like using a recipe (though with F-Tier ones, you should really, really think about it...)

There are certain parts in factories that can be entirely phased out. Your best alt recipes will depend on whether or not you do this, making it similar to a branching path of sorts. This is because choosing not to phase something out will necessitate an alt recipe for making it down the line, and different recipes to utilize it.

These paths will largely depend on whether or not you wish to stop using Screws, but there are other independent decisions that can be made. When something is marked "optional", it means it's even less helpful, but still makes things easier and may be worth it to some.

Screws (not recommended to phase out, but harder early on)
Advantages: Phasing out Screws will make it easier early in the game, because they are extremely hard to make in large numbers until you have Steel (Phase 2). You will also be using less Iron.
Disadvantages: Screws are virtually free when you have Aluminum Beam. Later game, you will have far fewer issues transporting enough Screws.

If you phase out Screws, you will want, at a bare minimum:

• Fused Wire
  
• Heavy Encased Frame
  
• Stitched (if you're sane) or Adhered (if you're not) Iron Plate
  
• Steel Rotor (Phase 2)

If you do not phase out Screws, you will want, at a bare minimum:

• Steel Screws (Phase 2)
  
• Steel Rod (Phase 2) (optional, not recommended)
  
• Bolted Frame
  
• Molded Beam (Phase 2) (optional)
  
• Aluminum Beam (Phase 4)
  
• Aluminum Rod (Phase 4) (optional, recommended)

Warning: Cast Screws is a "noob trap". I recommend avoiding it, as it only saves slight power and space. Even if you don't phase out Screws, waiting for Steel Screws is the best option. A simple alternative beforehand is 1 Smelter > 2 Iron Rod Constructors > 3 Screw Constructors, or 1 Smelter (underclocked to 50%), 1 Iron Rod Constructor, 1 Screw Constructor (overclocked to 150%).

Iron Rod (not recommended to phase out)
Advantages: None, but it happens naturally when you phase out Screws.
Disadvantages: Less efficient late-game once you get Aluminum Beam (for Screws) and Aluminum Rod

If you phase out Iron Rods and Screws, you will want, at a bare minimum:

• Steel Rotor (Phase 2)
  
• Steeled Frame (Phase 2)

If you phase out Iron Rods and NOT Screws (not particularly suggested), you will want, at a bare minimum:

• Steel Rotor (Phase 2) or Copper Rotor/Steamed Copper Sheet (Phase 3)
  
• Bolted Frame

If you do not phase out Iron Rods, you will not need anything, but Aluminum Rod may be preferable late-game.

Copper Sheet (recommended to phase out)
Advantages: Plastic AI Limiter is so much better you may want it anyway. Saves Copper, which is good for Phase 4 and beyond when you need Copper Powder. Even Steamed Copper Sheet is low-output compared to Recycled Plastic, Recycled Rubber and Petroleum Coke.
Disadvantages: Copper Rotor and Silicon Circuit Board are both high-output recipes. No need to waste a drive or have to wait for Heat Exchanger. Even if you use Screws, you can completely and utterly phase out Iron Rods.

If you do phase out Copper Sheets, you will want, at a bare minimum:

• Caterium or Electrode Circuit Board
  
• Plastic AI Limiter
  
• Heat Exchanger

If you do not phase out Copper Sheets, you will want, at a bare minimum:

• Copper Rotor (if Steel Screws used)
  
• Steamed Copper Sheet (Phase 3)

High-Speed Connectors
I would recommend always phasing out High-Speed Connectors besides purely for construction usage, and, if applicable, Homing Rifle Ammo, as, even with Silicon High-Speed Connector, all the recipes that use them have more efficient, or, at least, convenient, alternatives. If you phase out High-Speed Connectors, you will want:

• OC Supercomputer/Super-State Computer
  
• Plastic AI Limiter (to make Control Rods)

Recipes unlocked from the MAM that cost a hard drive to unlock. Typically, players will always want these. While none of them are incredible on their own, they are needed for Nitro Rocket Fuel and to get the achievement for all research.

Given they are not very useful outside of Nitro Rocket Fuel, it's entirely possible to ignore them and use Diluted Fuel until you reach nuclear power. But, I would not typically recommend it since you will lose out on useful things like Rocket Fuel, Turbo Rifle Ammo, and Ionized Fuel for the jetpack/drones.

• Compacted Coal
  
• Turbofuel
  
• Rocket Fuel
  
• Ionized Fuel

Items in this tier are foundational recipes that are "redeem now, think later". I wouldn't wait to get them, and I certainly wouldn't reroll them.

• Dark Matter Trap - Effectively halves the SAM needed to make Dark Matter Crystals with no downsides besides using a bit more electricity. While somewhat unnecessary early on, it becomes practically a given once you start cranking out Singularity Cells and Ballistic Warp Drives.
  
• Diluted Fuel - Drastically boosts the fuel you can make from a given Crude Oil node. This is not only useful for power generation, but also makes the Plastic and Rubber "recycled" recipes much, much better. This makes it one of the game's most useful recipes overall.
  
• Electrode Circuit Board - This recipe is special, since you can get the ingredients for it solely from the waste Heavy Oil Residue produced by making Plastic and Rubber. This makes it highly convenient compared to the others, which all need some form of metal. The Heavy Oil Residue alt recipe allows it to keep being good even if the player swaps to a Recycled Plastic/Rubber loop. Most players will only ever need this recipe, and to ship their Circuit Boards alongside their Plastic/Rubber if they are making it far from their factory.
  
• Fused Wire - For a pittance of Caterium Ore that can even be loaded by hand, it drastically boosts your Wire production, which is especially great early on when you can only bring Caterium to your base with something limited like a MK1 belt. Caterium Wire may eventually exceed it later in the game when you have no Caterium bottleneck, but there is not all that much reason to switch over.
  
• Heavy Encased Frame - This is a tremendous upgrade to the default recipe by swapping screws for concrete. It also consumes less Modular Frames, and is the most efficient recipe in the game from a stat-based standpoint, making it a must-have for essentially everyone. Even if you use Steel Screws, it's still better than the default, which is really nuts and makes it worthy of a top spot.
  
• Heavy Oil Residue - Its main use early on is making Residual Fuel, which is worse than Diluted Fuel but is a useful stopgap before reaching Rocket Fuel. Later on, it becomes even more useful to make Diluted Fuel as well as Petroleum Coke if you have swapped to a Recycled Plastic/Rubber loop. It can even help make Coated Cable, though I don't particularly suggest using that recipe. For its many uses and lack of any real substitute that is even close to as efficient, it tends to be a must-pick recipe and one of the best in the game.
  
• Molded Steel Pipe - Most people will find Molded Steel Pipe highly useful in one way or another, even if just for making Stators and Heavy Modular Frames. It's also much less resource-consuming than Iron Pipe, making it one of the game's most powerful recipes. The only real downside is that you'll want Fine/Wet Concrete to avoid running low on Limestone.
  
• Nitro Rocket Fuel - If you've gotten this far in the MAM fuel tree, there is no reason NOT to get this recipe. It consumes more Nitrogen Gas than the default recipe, but also requires far fewer buildings. The ease of construction will outweigh the slight additional consumption.
  
• Pure Caterium Ingot - It's so good mostly because there's no Alloy version to compete with it. Being far more flexible than Tempered in terms of where you can use it makes it easily come out on top and be a must-grab recipe.
  
• Sloppy Alumina - A pure upgrade in every way - more Alumina Solution is always going to be more valuable than extra Silica, especially if you are using Pure Aluminum Ingot (which you should be). Its output can be a lot tougher to try to work out the balance math for, but you can just use VIP junctions, or this[ibb.co] exploit-free method with Electrode Aluminum Scrap to perfectly balance your machines. Packaging water and using priority mergers to prioritize the wastewater before unpacking it directly into the machine also works.
  
• Solid Steel Ingot - The best Steel Ingot recipe for a large chunk of the game, if not the whole game. Not only does it reduce Coal used, but the use of Iron Ingots rather than ore allows you to use an additional alt recipe to reduce Iron consumption. The most obvious early available good one is Iron Alloy Ingot, but even waiting for Pure Iron Ingot and using the default Iron recipe, it will save a lot of Coal.

Items in this tier are rarely ever a bad idea to choose. They are likely to be immediately beneficial to you in various ways. In most cases, they are also insta-redeems, but aren't necessarily the best in every situation.

• Aluminum Beam - A great recipe that makes the formerly resource-heavy Steel Beams incredibly cheap to manufacture. This makes those recipes a lot more viable, and is one reason I suggest getting Steel Screws and not getting Encased Industrial Pipe.
  
• Aluminum Rod - With Bolted Frame being a thing, its sole use is really Rotors. But, it's actually quite good for this one purpose, letting you make Rotors purely from Aluminum, how convenient! This is why I suggest skipping Steel Rod - it just becomes totally obsolete.
  
• Bolted Frame - Even when using Steel Screws, Steeled Frame starts out slightly better, assuming you also have Molded Steel Pipe. But, it's worth getting Bolted Frame instead for how much better it becomes late-game. With Aluminum Beam, it's unequivocally the best Modular Frame recipe.
  
• Coated Iron Plate - A solid recipe that lowers iron needed with relatively minimal plastic investment and high output. It's typically worth skipping Steel Cast Plate for this, despite it not being that massive of an upgrade.
  
• Copper Alloy Ingot - "Why is this so highly-ranked if it uses more than 2x the resources of Pure Copper Ingot?" you may ask. Well, for one, you get it earlier, letting you drastically boost Copper production much faster. It has a much smaller footprint due to its huge output, and Iron tends to be so common that consuming extra makes little difference. It even gets better over time as your mining capabilities increase, culminating in it making limitless Copper Powder from Dune Desert.
  
• Crystal Computer - Literally just a better version of Caterium Computer when you really think about it. It uses many of the same materials, but the addition of Quartz makes it consume drastically less of them. This makes it rather tough to recommend Caterium Computer.
  
• Fine Concrete - How early you can unlock this makes it very powerful for building big as early as Phase 2, making it more handy than one might think, even in the face of the later Wet Concrete.
  
• Flexible Framework - Halves the Steel Beams you need, trading it for Rubber. Pure upgrade over the default.
  
• Insulated Cable - Its incredibly high output and compatibility with Fused Wire gives it an edge as one of the best Cable recipes, despite its slightly lower efficiency. When using Recycled Rubber, it consumes about the same amount of Crude Oil as Coated Cable, but makes drastically more Cable.
  
• Iron Alloy Ingot - This does deserve props for being so good, so early. It's competitive enough with Pure Iron Ingot that you can use it for the entire game instead and be fine, while also being a fairly large boost to your early-game production. While Pure is still a bit better, there's nothing wrong with grabbing this instead if you want an early head-start. A nice bonus is that it fits neatly in front of a Solid Steel Ingot foundry without needing to make a separate factory.
  
• Oil-Based Diamonds - This recipe is surprisingly good for how simple it is. A single pure Oil node can fuel 3 of these, which is a heck of a lot of Diamonds for no work. It will put out a lot more Diamonds than the default recipe when in an Oil-rich area.
  
• Pink Diamonds - Probably the single most efficient Diamond recipe. It's about on par with Oil-Based, if a bit more complex to set up. This one will also make more Diamonds than you can ever need.
  
• Plastic AI Limiter - Very powerful if you are using Insulated Crystal Oscillator (most people should), and even more useful if you are using nuclear power given that it's the most convenient way to make Electromagnetic Control Rods. This makes it a top-tier recipe, if not necessarily useful for everyone.
  
• Pure Aluminum Ingot - Despite its higher Bauxite usage, not needing Quartz makes it easier to make Aluminum factories next to Bauxite nodes, which can be convenient to cut down the amount you need to transport. Aluminum Casing is typically made at a 3:2 ratio and has double the stack size as Aluminum Ingots or Bauxite, canceling out the 25% "raw" efficiency loss with a 200% transport efficiency gain. Alclad Sheets have a 100% higher transport efficiency, which is still sizable.
  
• Pure Copper Ingot - Unlike Pure Iron Ingot, it's easily the most efficient Copper Ingot recipe. But saving Iron usually isn't necessary, and it has a way smaller output than Copper Alloy Ingot. Building these is a bit of a pain for not very much gain.
  
• Pure Iron Ingot - Iron Alloy Ingot is so competitive with this recipe that it isn't quite top tier. With the small amount of Copper ore becoming a rounding error the later in the game you get, it may often be worth it to unlock Iron Alloy Ingot earlier and ignore Pure Iron Ingot.
  
• Pure Quartz Crystal - Due to Silica's lack of usefulness, this tends to be better than Quartz Purification, not to mention far simpler and capable of being built in more places. It is boring in comparison, but highly effective to make things like Crystal Oscillators, Synthetic Power Shards and Pink Diamonds. It's only not S-tier because it offers such a small improvement to the default.
  
• OC Supercomputer - It makes Supercomputers a fair bit more convenient to make. I heavily recommend using the Crystal Computer or Radio Control System alt recipe if you pick this, as it will otherwise be quite a bit worse.
  
• Plastic Smart Plating - Anything that lowers the Rotors you need is great in my book.
  
• Polyester Fabric - Largely needed to make unlimited gas filters.
  
• Recycled Plastic/Rubber - They will become the unequivocal best way to make Plastic/Rubber if they are placed in a loop along with Diluted Fuel. Before that, however, they're pretty unnecessary.
  
• Rigor Motor - Given the rather low resources needed to make Crystal Oscillators, this is undoubtedly the best Motor recipe, and a shoo-in as a replacement for the default one. A downside is that it can be pretty space-intensive, since Manufacturers are so large.
  
• Steel Screws - An excellent all-around recipe that makes multiple Screw-based recipes far more useful and viable. While it can be ignored in favor of non-Screw recipes, I do not suggest doing so because of how good it becomes late-game when you get Aluminum Beam.
  
• Stitched Iron Plate - A pretty fantastic recipe for Phase 1-3, especially when combined with Fused Wire. By the time Phase 4 comes around, Aluminum Beam makes Screws so incredibly cheap that Bolted Iron Plate exceeds it. It's still an easy recommendation, and very easy to beat the entire game with if you wanted to.
  
• Super-State Computer - An odd recipe, yet about on par with OC Supercomputer. It consumes Sulfur instead of Nitrogen Gas, which can potentially be easier to mine and transport. The numbers seem wonky, but I HEAVILY recommend underclocking it to output only 2 Supercomputers/minute. This will even all the inputs out, so that it corresponds perfectly to 1 Battery blender, 0.5 AI Limiter assemblers, and 3 Crystal Oscillator manufacturers going into 2 underclocked Crystal Computer assemblers. Overclocking to 1.66667 will double this and can also be a good idea. As a bonus, you can use the same resource stream to make even more Batteries for drones and fuel, where they are decent if you don't want any radioactivity.
  
• Turbo Pressure Motor - The best Turbo Motor manufacturing method. Pressure Conversion Cubes are easier to make than a bunch of Radio Control Units because Fused Modular Frames use more simple parts. Unlike Turbo Electric Motor, it still uses Nitrogen Gas, but this shouldn't be an issue.
  
• Wet Concrete - While the most flexible Concrete-making method, it's unlocked a bit late compared to Fine Concrete. Some may find it more convenient just to grab Fine Concrete instead of waiting.

Items in this tier are broadly good for general use, and there is rarely a downside to them. However, they are also usually only small upgrades on the default, or require other recipes to be good.

• Bolted Iron Plate - It's just a stronger version of the default recipe that consumes more Screws. Pointless for most of the game, but late game Aluminum Beam + Steel Screw make Screws nearly free, making the power savings easily worth the extra ingot or two it consumes.
  
• Caterium Circuit Board - A solid improvement on the default recipe. Not as good as Electrode Circuit Board, but it can prevent you from needing to transport another item to your main factory if you're already bringing Plastic there. Probably an insufficient reason to actually use it, but it is a reason.
  
• Caterium Wire - A bit of a downgrade from Fused Wire for most of the game due to needing a rarer resource. It could be situationally better in places without a Copper supply.
  
• Compacted Steel Ingot - For most of the game, this recipe is straight-up terrible. But, once you get Rocket Fuel, it becomes useful. Rocket Fuel, especially Nitro Rocket Fuel, releases Compacted Coal as a byproduct. That makes it cost essentially no coal, making up for its slightly higher Iron consumption by letting you forge nigh-unlimited Steel. It may still be pointless since you can just transport in more Coal, but, if you hate seeing all that Compacted Coal go into the sink, it could be an option.
  
• Electrode Aluminum Scrap - Needs the Heavy Oil Residue alt recipe to be very good, but it makes your Bauxite go further with almost no downside to speak of. The small amount of Crude Oil it consumes is drastically lower than the Coal consumed by the default recipe.
  
• Heat Exchanger - It's often better to make Heat Sinks in your main factory since Casing is used for a bunch of other stuff, letting you consolidate items transported. And, in this scenario, Heat Exchanger clearly wins due to the larger stack size of Aluminum Casing and ease of Rubber production. But, if you make the Heat Sinks far from your base, it may be completely pointless, so it's not necessarily an immediate must-grab.
  
• Infused Uranium Cell - This is an interesting one, as it's tremendously preferable to pack Uranium into Cells before drone transport compared to just sticking raw Uranium in a drone in order to reduce radiation. When you consider that you would want to build a new packaging facility at each Uranium node, efficiency in Uranium processing lets you make fewer facilities, making this recommendable, if not strictly essential by any means.
  
• Insulated Crystal Oscillator - The efficiency of this recipe is arguably worse than the default when you have good alt recipes. But, it's way simpler, saves a lot of Quartz, and uses far fewer Manufacturers, making it one that I will generally always take as soon as possible. I would heavily recommend using Plastic AI Limiter if you take this one. It's also a good idea to make your Crystal Oscillators alongside your Plastic/Rubber manufacturing, so you can ship them back alongside the Plastic/Rubber.
  
• Quickwire Cable - The single most resource-efficient method of making Cable, but its low output and lack of flexibility isn't really made up for in huge efficiency gains compared to Insulated Cable. This only becomes more true the further you progress in the game.
  
• Radio Control System - Especially if you have Crystal Computer, this recipe is not very critical. But, each one saves at least ~3 manufacturers, so it's fantastic for space and power-saving reasons.
  
• Steel Cast Plate - While this recipe can certainly last you the entire game without issues, its primary sin is that you can unlock Coated Iron Plate so soon afterwards, which is more efficient and higher-output. Most players are better off waiting.
  
• Steel Rotor - If you have both Steel Rod and Steel Screw unlocked, it's a bit worse than the default. But, it's also one recipe less than getting both of those things, making it a solid choice if you wish to phase out Screws entirely in your factory.
  
• Steeled Frame - Best early in the game, remains fairly decent throughout the game, but Aluminum Beam/Rod causes it to become mediocre from Phase 4 onwards. For future-proofing reasons, I would not recommend it unless you really hate Screws.
  
• Uranium Fuel Unit - You'll be making Rotors and Crystal Oscillators in large quantities in your main base anyway, so diverting some of them to make Fuel Rods will be hardly any loss. On the other hand, it's unclear if saving Uranium is even necessary unless you really go heavy into Nuclear, and that's really all this recipe does. I recommend using the Belt Valve to output only what you need onto a Drone and send it to a Fuel Rod factory somewhere you're fine with having intense radiation, then use a Programmable Splitter at the destination to sort it.

Items in this tier are not something most players will likely ever need, but aren't quite as lackluster as D-tier. They can be useful in situational circumstances depending on your needs.

• Caterium Computer - While still a marked improvement over the onerous Plastic requirement of the default recipe, it uses up a significant amount more resources than Crystal Computer with no real upside besides not needing Quartz Crystal.
  
• Cheap Silica - Silica can easily be phased out of Aluminum production, and is not incredibly useful for making parts. While it's still forced to be used in nuclear power, the amounts used in such scenarios are low enough that needing a recipe that saves Quartz is mostly pointless. I could think of scenarios where it would be useful, like if you are building tons of glass structures and need accelerated production, but it's a recipe that will be pretty heavily situational.
  
• Coke Steel Ingot - It may seem like a good way to recycle your waste Heavy Oil Residue. And maybe it is, but how good Solid Steel Ingot is combined with swapping to Recycled Plastic/Rubber make it somewhat redundant and unnecessary.
  
• Cooling Device - Cooling Device only becomes "better" when you have run out of Nitrogen Gas to use. Before then, the default recipe wins very clearly. In most cases, it's better to simply transport more Nitrogen Gas.
  
• Diluted Packaged Fuel - While exactly the same as the blender variant besides a number of extra steps, it's usually not worth the effort to set up Diluted Packaged Fuel compared to just using the inferior but extremely easy Heavy Oil Residue > Residual Fuel method and waiting to reach Phase 4 and blenders. Similar to Turbofuel, it falls under the "good, but more trouble than it's worth" category.
  
• Encased Industrial Pipe - Ultimately becomes obsolete pretty fast, in Phase 4, due to Aluminum Beam being unlockable. While still more efficient than the combination of Somerslooped Molded Beam and Encased Industrial Beam in Phase 3, Molded Beam is more all-around useful for also making Versatile Frameworks, so it balances out. Or, you could just avoid both.
  
• Fused Quickwire - Unlike Fused Wire, this recipe is rather bad early-game. Late-game, it can be decent, but the problem is that not many good recipes use much Quickwire, so there isn't much of a need to augment its supply. In a scenario where you are running low on Caterium, it could have some use.
  
• Iron Pipe - Coal may be a bit more limited than Iron, but I can't envision a scenario where you would suffer from enough of a Coal shortage to necessitate switching to this rather inefficient recipe over something like the highly economical Solid Steel Ingot and Molded Steel Pipe combo. If you are, consider deleting any Coal Power Plants after you get Petroleum Power.
  
• Molded Beam - This recipe is undoubtedly just a stopgap solution until you get Aluminum Beam. If you don't need to, you shouldn't use it. But, there is also no question that it makes things easier, due to its huge output that, when fully OC'd and Somerslooped, saves a ton of machines. There isn't that much harm in grabbing the recipe purely for Phase 2 and Phase 3, but remember that, without Somersloops, it's pretty mediocre.
  
• Silicon Circuit Board - This recipe can put in some work if you want it to, and it has zero Oil dependency, potentially removing the need for shipping. But, with something as extremely simple and elegant as Electrode Circuit Board, it tends to be worth shipping it instead.
  
• Steamed Copper Sheet - I recommend most players phase out Copper Sheets in their factories, they're just bad, so this recipe is unnecessary most of the time. But, taken on its own, this recipe is a distinct improvement over the default in all respects.

Items in this tier have a usefulness that ranges from very small and situational to nearly nil. They often have far better alternatives, or their benefit isn't worth wasting a drive for.

• Adhered Iron Plate - While it's the best way to make Reinforced Iron Plate in terms of resources, it's unlocked so late that you'll probably have already gotten Stitched Iron Plate, Steel Screws, or both. Furthermore, by Phase 4, Bolted Plate's vastly better production capacity leaves this in the dust. Thus, the paradox of a not strictly bad recipe that is nevertheless mostly pointless for anyone.
  
• Automated Miner - You use so few of these that automating them is arguably unnecessary, but it could work for those who hate manually crafting them.
  
• Cast Screws - It uses the same resources as regular Screws, but saves a negligible amount of power that only matters in Phase 1. In this phase, people are better off getting Stitched Iron Plate instead due to its lower Iron Plates cost, making this something of a "noob trap" recipe that people only get because it's the first alt recipe they ever see. Like Fine Black Powder, I wouldn't get Cast Screws unless you've exhausted any other recipe in the game that you actually needed.
  
• Coated Cable - This recipe starts out quite good, since it can use the Residue from Plastic and Rubber production. But, in practice, it's better to just set up Insulated Cable and wait until Phase 4 when you can set up a Recycled Plastic/Rubber loop with Diluted Fuel. If you're hurting for Crude Oil, make your fuel plant somewhere different.
  
• Coated Iron Canister - Steel Canister's worse cousin. Its combination of Iron and Copper is simply less convenient than Iron and Coal, since Coal tends to be common near fuel production. Since you are making 2 ingredients, it also needs more buildings if you aren't making it nearby.
  
• Copper Rotor - It's rather poor when used with the default recipes, and only a small upgrade over the default. Relies on you having both Steel Screws and Steamed Copper Sheets to be good. Since Copper Sheets can be phased out, I think this is the worst of the Rotor recipes.
  
• Dark Matter Crystallization - Can totally eliminate Diamonds from needing to be used. Making and shipping Diamonds isn't exactly hard, and it can strain SAM supplies very late game, so its utility is next to nil.
  
• Distilled Silica/Quartz Purification - The main problem with this recipe combo is that while it's the most efficient to squeeze BOTH Quartz Crystal and Silica from a given amount of Quartz, Silica is not used in any great recipes of note. Due to Silica's major lack of usefulness, Pure Quartz Crystal is usually always better. Still, this setup could be useful if you are using Fine Concrete instead of Wet or skipping Pure Aluminum Ingot (though neither are particularly advised).
  
• Electric Motor - You unlock this a whole 2.5 tiers after Rigor Motor, but it somehow manages to be a significant downgrade in every way that matters. While quite obviously better than the default, Rigor Motor beats it so significantly that any situation this would be needed is surely quite specific.
  
• Electromagnetic Connection Rod - With Plastic AI Limiter, calling it an "upgrade" is iffy at best. Despite Silicon High-Speed Connector helping it, it doesn't make it good enough.
  
• Fine Black Powder - You can set up huge stockpiles of Black Powder quickly, even with the default recipe, making this unnecessary.
  
• Heat-Fused Frame - It uses 50% less Aluminum, but that is so easy to make that I don't think it's worth the corresponding increase in complexity. That it uses Ingots is ironically a downside, since Casings have 2x the stack size during transport, canceling out literally any gains unless your ingots are being made next door.
  
• Iron Wire - Starting out abysmal, it becomes a bit better when Iron Alloy Ingot is unlocked, but the convenience of using Iron Ingots never truly makes up for its very weak production speed. Fused Wire or Caterium Wire are almost always the better recipes to pick, leaving Iron Wire rarely if ever useful.
  
• Leached Iron/Copper/Caterium Ingot - They are only marginally better than the Pure recipes of the same types, while being unlocked very late and consuming an unnecessary amount of Sulfur. I wouldn't recommend using any of them, despite their higher throughput.
  
• Plutonium Fuel Unit - The parts for default Plutonium Fuel Rod are hilariously easy to make in comparison. Transporting three items on the same vehicle or drone may cause issues for the uninitiated if you are making the Plutonium Rods somewhere distant from your base, but, with proper load balancing, it can only load what it needs and avoid backing up.
  
• Polymer Resin - Making Polymer Resin directly is unnecessary for Fabric, since it is a byproduct of Fuel or the Heavy Oil Residue alt recipe, things that the player will find it highly difficult to NOT use at any given time. It combines especially well with Residual Rubber, but is still rendered pointless by Recycled Plastic/Rubber loops and Diluted Fuel.
  
• Radio Connection Unit - Given the lack of utility of High-Speed Connectors, I would not recommend using this over the better Radio Control System. It is still better than the default.
  
• Silicon High-Speed Connector - All the recipes that use High-Speed Connectors are mediocre. While a good upgrade, it's unclear if you will truly need it, especially if you are only making them for your Dimensional Depot.
  
• Steel Canister - If for some reason you don't have access to Plastic where you need canisters, this is the slightly better alternative. Its usage of Steel Ingots means you can use more common materials. Still... just use Plastic.
  
• Steel Rod - Bolted Frame upstages it for making Modular Frames, and Steel Screw for Screws, making its last real use Rotors. It's simply unnecessary for this rather limited purpose, and later becomes obsoleted by Aluminum Rod anyway.
  
• Tempered Copper/Caterium Ingot - These are best described as worse versions of the Pure recipes that need Petroleum Coke instead of water. With how easy it is to find water, they're pretty unnecessary. Coke is better used on other things, namely Electrode Circuit Boards or Electrode Aluminum Scrap.
  
• Turbo Blend Fuel - Standard Turbofuel is still the better option, as you can run it with Diluted Fuel and Compacted Coal output from Nitro Rocket Fuel. That makes the use case for Turbo Blend Fuel pretty small, with its sole advantage being that it doesn't require Coal and also needs less Sulfur.
  
• Turbo Diamonds - Suffers from the same problem as Cloudy Diamonds in that Pink Diamonds is so good that it renders this recipe moot. While not nearly as bad in resource consumption, I still struggle to see why someone would pick this over Pink Diamonds.
  
• Turbo Electric Motor - This recipe confuses me, as it uses more Radio Control Units than the default one, which are the most annoying item to create. Rotors are also harder to make than Rubber, making its utility questionable. It is the sole recipe to not use an iota of Nitrogen Gas to make Turbo Motors, but it just ain't worth it. Wait for Turbo Pressure Motor.

Items in this tier are so poor that another recipe renders them completely pointless, or their tradeoff is never worth the benefits. These are recipes you can never redeem and still be fine. Needless to say, I think the recipes here badly require a rebalance, or to simply be removed.

• Alclad Casing - It saves so little Bauxite that it's nearly useless to take this and expend the extra effort setting up Copper Ingot supply. Really, just don't bother.
  
• Automated Speed Wiring - Despite normal Automated Wiring needing Cable, it kinda evens out when one of the Cable alt recipes is used. And 3.75 less Stators per minute isn't really worth the 1.875/min High-Speed Connector, especially because they aren't particularly useful anywhere else either. People are typically better off running one of the Cable alts.
  
• Basic Iron Ingot - While particularly bad early-game due to the low amounts of Limestone you can extract, there is literally never a point where this becomes better than any of the other Iron Ingot recipes besides the default one. Iron Alloy Ingot renders this obsolete, and is by far the better choice if you want a good Iron recipe early on.
  
• Biocoal/Charcoal - You reportedly get these anyway when researching Compacted Coal, therefore they are less than useless to obtain.
  
• Classic Battery - Offers some minor Sulfur savings, in exchange for using tons of Plastic - it is a lackluster trade, and not worth spending a Hard Drive to get.
  
• Cloudy Diamonds - It's made all but pointless by the vastly superior Pink Diamonds if you are going the Coal route. Suffice it to say, there's plenty of Quartz near most of the game's biggest Coal clusters, such as the one near Titan Forest. Pink Diamonds uses less Coal, consumes less energy, and needs very little Quartz Crystal in comparison, making Cloudy Diamonds a needless waste.
  
• Dark-Ion Fuel - A hilariously poor recipe, perhaps one of the game's worst. It consumes huge extra amounts of (packaged, mind you) Rocket Fuel with nothing to show for it. It is even poor to Somersloop since pipes only go up to 600 cubic meters/min. There's virtually no reason to use this, and the nice part about making Power Shards for the default recipe is that you can divert some to the Dimensional Depot when the Ionized Fuel is not needed.
  
• Fertile Uranium - Lowers the amount of Uranium Waste you need for the same amount of fuel. This is essentially never necessary, since you always want to maximize the amount of Uranium Waste that gets processed.
  
• Fused Quartz Crystal - I'm super confused as to why this recipe even exists. Offers a paltry ~16.6% increase over the default one, while also needing Coal. You unlock Pure Quartz Crystal before you ever need to automate the main use of Quartz Crystal, Crystal Oscillators. Given that the default recipe will be more than good enough in any situation you may need this, it is virtually useless to obtain.
  
• Heavy Flexible Frame - With less onerous requirements, this recipe might have been competitive with Heavy Encased Frame, but, while it's better than the legendarily terrible default, Heavy Encased Frame's ridiculously low requirements make it easily the best whether you are using Screws or not. I don't think there is any point where someone would find Heavy Flexible Frame better for their purposes, so it is essentially dead weight.
  
• Instant Plutonium Cell - Another recipe that consumes less Uranium Waste, which is not what you want given that Uranium rods are far easier to implement as a power source.
  
• Instant Scrap - This recipe's only real advantage is that it's a no-brainer to balance input with output. But, there are numerous ways to balance it easily regardless, as explained in the Sloppy Alumina entry. Therefore, there's virtually no reason to take this Sulfur-wasting recipe.
  
• Petroleum Diamonds - Compared to Oil-Based Diamonds, it's simply worse in almost every way, to the point that virtually nobody will see a major use for it. If you're still making Plastic and Rubber the normal way and have a lot of waste Petroleum Coke, swap to a Diluted Fuel and Recycled Plastic/Rubber loop instead. It will simply use far less Crude Oil, freeing up more for Oil-Based Diamonds, and need fewer buildings.
  
• Quickwire Stator - It's never worth taking this instead of Fused/Caterium Wire and just using the default Stator recipe. The math ain't mathing.
  
• Rubber Concrete - Saves ~30/min Limestone when the output is equalized to Wet Concrete, but I'd gladly trade that for ~18/min Rubber, which is a lot more valuable. Between Fine Concrete (which, even with Cheap Silica, is more Limestone-efficient) and Wet Concrete, there is extremely little use for this recipe. Now, if it made all foundations into jump pads, we might have something here...
  
• Turbo Heavy Fuel - Even if you wanted to use your Heavy Oil Residue waste to make Turbofuel, you can just use Residual Fuel. It's a bit less efficient, but not "waste a hard drive on this" less. Otherwise, this recipe is essentially made obsolete once you get Diluted Fuel, so there's virtually no reason to ever get this.

• Only start scanning hard drives after you have researched Quickwire. Most of the very early recipes are lackluster, and it gives you the most chance to get more useful Caterium recipes.
  
• Use 4 meter foundations for your base layer, it causes the uneven ground to interfere less.
  
• Whether you're building multiple storeys or not, it's usually a good idea to have a 12 meter empty floor below anything you build. This logistical floor makes it far easier to make belts or pipes without the interference of buildings.
  
• Getting the Concrete or Asphalt material from the AWESOME Shop removes the need to expend metal on foundations. While they become slightly more Concrete-intensive, they are nevertheless much easier to build, especially when Wet Concrete is unlocked.
  
• The easiest way to bring Coal for steel back to your base is by fueling a tractor with some of the same coal you're loading onto it. You only have to fuel it on one truck station.
  
• Crystal Oscillators are one of the game's best parts, but take up tons of space for Manufacturers, especially the default recipe. Setting up a separate factory for them and shipping them alongside Plastic/Rubber tends to be a good idea, and prevents you from having to supply your main factory with Quartz at all...
  
• Compacted Coal and Turbofuel, while good on paper due to their higher efficiency, are more trouble than they're actually worth to implement and should typically be skipped when it comes to power generation. I recommend getting Nitro Rocket Fuel before swapping to Rocket Fuel. Ionized Fuel is actually less resource-efficient than Rocket Fuel, and should only be used for the Jetpack/Drones.
  
• Research and craft Power Slugs into Power Shards so you can unlock overclocking as soon as possible. The north middle of the map has the most Power Slugs in the game, and you can use Zipline and Power Towers to get there quickly.
  
• Look up Variable Input Priority (VIP) junctions, as this is useful to recycle waste liquids. If it's not working, you may need to rotate the junction.
  
• Don't spend time making massive amounts of infrastructure or beautification prior to Phase 4. It's best to do the bare minimum for ease of reaching the next phase, as the unlock of the Hoverpack and blenders make setting up certain things drastically easier.
  
• Making Uranium power is fun and a net positive, but never strictly necessary. Plutonium Rods can be disposed of in the sink. It is far harder to justify ever making Plutonium and Ficsonium power besides messing around. It's easier to build nuclear plants near the ocean or on top of it.
  
• Alien Power Augmenters, while cool, are always pointless, even with the Alien Power Matrices being fed into it.
  
• Once you reach a certain point, it's better to use conveyors as a "pipeline" over any decently long distance and send back the empty canisters, *especially* with Nitrogen Gas. The MK6 conveyor can send as much liquid as 2 pipelines with zero fluid dynamics, and as much Nitrogen Gas as 8. But, you can also blueprint large stacks of pipelines if you prefer the aesthetics.