Modular Frames and Heavy Frames in Satisfactory

Frames are where the cost of a part stops being intuitive. A Modular Frame is 24 units of raw ore; a Heavy Modular Frame is 420. That is seventeen times the cost for one step up, and it is why the tier above steel feels like a wall.

Modular Frame

Recipe	Output	Ore per unit	Inputs
Modular Frame	2.0/min	24.0	3 Reinforced Iron Plate + 12 Iron Rod
Alternate: Steeled Frame	3.0/min	18.0	2 Reinforced Iron Plate + 10 Steel Pipe
Alternate: Bolted Frame	5.0/min	25.0	8 Reinforced Iron Plate + 140 Screws

All in an Assembler at 15 MW.

Steeled Frame wins on ore — 25% less — and produces 50% more per machine. It needs steel pipe, which by this point you have.

Bolted Frame is the throughput pick at 5/min, two and a half times the base recipe, but it costs slightly more ore and wants 140 screws per minute. That screw demand is the real cost; without a Steel Screws or Cast Screws alternate behind it, this recipe will eat your screw line.

Heavy Modular Frame

This is the one that matters, because Heavy Modular Frames gate most of the late game.

Recipe	Output	Ore per unit	Inputs
Heavy Modular Frame	2.0/min	420.0	10 Modular Frame + 40 Steel Pipe + 10 Encased Industrial Beam + 240 Screws
Alternate: Heavy Encased Frame	2.8/min	262.0	8 Modular Frame + 9 Encased Industrial Beam + 34 Steel Pipe + 21 Concrete
Alternate: Heavy Flexible Frame	3.8/min	392.0	19 Modular Frame + 11 Encased Industrial Beam + 75 Rubber + 390 Screws

Heavy Encased Frame wins on both measures at once, which is rare. 38% less raw ore and 40% more output per machine, and the extra ingredient is concrete — the cheapest material in the game.

If you take one alternate in this entire chain, take that one. The saving is 158 units of raw ore per frame, and Heavy Modular Frames are consumed in the hundreds.

Heavy Flexible Frame produces the most per machine at 3.8/min but wants 390 screws per minute. Same caution as Bolted Frame, scaled up: it is a screw-line decision disguised as a frame recipe.

Radio Control Unit: both alternates are worse on ore

Worth its own section as a caution against assuming alternates improve things.

Recipe	Output	Ore per unit
Radio Control Unit	2.5/min	199.0
Alternate: Radio Control System	4.5/min	230.5
Alternate: Radio Connection Unit	3.8/min	232.9

Both alternates produce considerably more per machine and both cost more raw ore per unit. They are throughput upgrades, not efficiency upgrades.

Take them when machine count or space is your constraint. Do not take them expecting to stretch your nodes further, because they do the opposite.

The savings compound downward

The 420 figure for a base Heavy Modular Frame already includes the ore inside its Modular Frames, steel pipes, beams and screws.

So improving the Modular Frame recipe improves the Heavy Frame figure too, before you touch the heavy recipe at all. Stack Steeled Frame underneath Heavy Encased Frame and the compounded saving is larger than either change suggests.

The practical order in any deep chain: fix the upstream recipe first. Every improvement there flows through everything above it.

Sizing a heavy frame line

Work backwards, because the numbers are unforgiving.

At the base recipe, one Manufacturer produces 2 Heavy Modular Frames per minute and consumes 10 Modular Frames, 40 Steel Pipe, 10 Encased Industrial Beam and 240 Screws per minute.

Ten frames per minute means five Manufacturers, 50 Modular Frames per minute behind them (which is 25 Assemblers at the base recipe, or 17 with Steeled Frame), plus the steel, screw and beam lines feeding those.

The visible machine is a small fraction of the build. This is the chain where a factory most often turns out to be node-limited rather than machine-limited, and finding that out after building 25 Assemblers is a poor use of an evening.

Encased Industrial Beam is the quiet dependency

Both heavy frame recipes want it, and it is steel beams plus concrete.

That connection is worth noticing while planning: a healthy concrete line makes the heavy frame chain materially easier, both directly through Heavy Encased Frame and indirectly through the beams. Concrete is the cheapest material in the game and the one most often under-built.

Where heavy frames actually go

Understanding the demand shape prevents both over- and under-building, because it is bursty rather than continuous.

Building costs. Nuclear Power Plants, Blueprint Designers, Drone Ports, Resource Well Pressurizers and most large machines list Heavy Modular Frames. This demand arrives in lumps — nothing for hours, then twenty for one building.

Space Elevator phases. Requirements step up sharply between phases rather than growing smoothly, and later phases consume the same parts in much larger quantities than the phase screen showed you.

Higher assembled parts. Fused Modular Frames and the tier above consume them continuously.

The right shape is a modest continuous line running into a storage container. The line covers ongoing demand and the container absorbs the bursts, so you are never waiting on frames to place a building.

Do not dismantle the line when a phase completes. Later phases want the same parts in larger amounts, and rebuilding at a bigger scale costs far more than leaving it running into storage.

A worked comparison

Ten Heavy Modular Frames per minute, at the base recipe against the best pairing:

Base recipes throughout: 5 Manufacturers, 50 Modular Frames per minute behind them from 25 Assemblers, and 4,200 units of raw ore per minute at the top of the chain.

Steeled Frame plus Heavy Encased Frame: roughly 3.6 Manufacturers, about 29 Modular Frames per minute from 10 Assemblers, and around 2,600 units of raw ore per minute.

Same output. Roughly 38% less ore and less than half the Assemblers, for two hard drive picks and a concrete line you should have anyway.

That comparison is the argument for chasing specific alternates rather than taking whatever a scan offers. In a chain this deep, two good recipes are worth more than any amount of extra machinery.

Common mistakes

Taking a throughput alternate expecting an ore saving. Both Radio Control Unit alternates cost more ore than the base recipe.

Optimising the heavy recipe before the Modular Frame recipe. Upstream changes flow through automatically.

Adopting Bolted or Heavy Flexible Frame without a screw line. 140 and 390 screws per minute respectively.

Under-building concrete. It gates Encased Industrial Beam and the best heavy frame alternate.

Reading the 420 figure as the frame alone. It includes everything inside its ingredients.