Every crash site holds exactly 1 Hard Drive (Desc_HardDrive_C) in its freighter drop-pod → 118 Hard Drives on the map. They do not respawn, but from Tier 8 – Particle Enrichment the AWESOME Shop sells them for 100 Coupons without limit; a 119th drive comes from the FICSMAS calendar.
How to find them
- Scanner mode Radio Signal Scanning in the MAM Quartz tree (100 Crystal Oscillator, 100 Motor, 1 Object Scanner) adds crash sites to the Object Scanner (250 m) until their drive is taken.
- A Radar Tower (MAM Quartz – Radar Technology) shows Hard Drives within its fixed 1 km radius.
- All 118 sites are listed with coordinates and unlock requirements on the crash sites page and drawn on the map (Collectibles → Hard Drive).
Opening a crash site
The drop-pod is locked in one of three ways (counts over all 118 sites):
| Requirement | Sites | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Power | 23 | 10, 30, 40, 40, 60, 60, 70, 70, 85, 90, 100, 100, 100, 120, 120, 120, 150, 200, 256, 300, 300, 400, 420 MW; 3 241 MW in total; 10 sites above 100 MW; maximum 420 MW. Power is only needed temporarily – Biomass Burners or an Alien Power Augmenter on site work; if you connect the main grid, disconnect it afterwards because the pod keeps drawing power |
| Items | 67 | 30 different items, 1 107 pieces in total (table below); the items are consumed |
| None | 28 | The handle works immediately |
The wiki's prose says “7 sites above 100 MW, maximum 400 MW”; the wiki's own site table and the interactive-map markers give 10 sites above 100 MW with a maximum of 420 MW – the per-site values are used here.
Items needed to open (sum over all sites)
| Item | Pieces | Sites |
|---|---|---|
| Steel Beam | 150 | 2 |
| Electromagnetic Control Rod | 84 | 4 |
| Rubber | 70 | 3 |
| Silica | 70 | 2 |
| Cooling System | 65 | 3 |
| Quickwire | 63 | 2 |
| Plastic | 60 | 3 |
| Alclad Aluminum Sheet | 57 | 1 |
| Heat Sink | 54 | 3 |
| Turbo Motor | 41 | 4 |
| Copper Sheet | 40 | 4 |
| Modular Frame | 37 | 5 |
| High-Speed Connector | 35 | 1 |
| Quartz Crystal | 32 | 3 |
| Motor | 30 | 1 |
| Encased Industrial Beam | 30 | 2 |
| Rotor | 27 | 4 |
| Heavy Modular Frame | 26 | 4 |
| Screws | 25 | 1 |
| Crystal Oscillator | 20 | 2 |
| Computer | 16 | 3 |
| Circuit Board | 15 | 1 |
| Aluminum Casing | 15 | 2 |
| Fused Modular Frame | 12 | 1 |
| Stator | 10 | 1 |
| Solid Biofuel | 10 | 1 |
| Iron Rod | 5 | 1 |
| Reinforced Iron Plate | 5 | 1 |
| Black Powder | 2 | 1 |
| Superposition Oscillator | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 1 107 | 67 |
Scattered components lie around every wreck (identical in all saves, v1.0.1.4) – 41 063 items in total, e.g. 4 786 Quickwire, 2 110 Rubber, 1 891 Alclad Aluminum Sheet, 1 890 Circuit Board, 1 130 Computer, 1 074 Heavy Modular Frame and a single Supercomputer. Often the item required for another pod lies right there, and early Computers and Circuit Boards from wrecks enable Smart Splitters or the Production Amplifier before Tier 5/6. Since 1.1 an emptied crash site can be dismantled for its parts.
What a Hard Drive gives
- Research in the MAM takes 10 minutes per drive. Afterwards you choose from 2 alternate recipes (or an inventory expansion). A drive can be re-rolled once (up to 4 options). The Hard Drive Library lets you postpone the choice; stored drives shrink the pool of new scans.
- Only recipes whose prerequisites (milestones, MAM research, other alternates) are already met are offered.
- The 1.2 game data contains 106 alternate production recipes; the wiki lists 106 alternates plus a few alternates unlocked through MAM Sulfur research instead (Compacted Coal, Turbofuel, Nitro Rocket Fuel …). The full list with links is on the alternate recipes page.
- Balance: 118 drives → 106 alternate recipes (Distilled Silica comes with Quartz Purification) + 2 inventory expansions + 4 MAM Sulfur researches = 111 needed. Two “Inflated Pocket Dimension” inventory upgrades (+6 slots each) cost 1 drive each – the second only from Tier 6.