Clock speed

Production and power buildings, such as Miners, Constructors or Biomass Burners, can have their clock speed set to any percentage between 1% and 250%. For production buildings, this allows them to operate slower or faster at the cost of greatly reduced or increased power usage. For power buildings the maximum power output and accompanying fuel consumption can be increased in tandem, granting more utility from a single building. Overclocking and underclocking both have utility in optimizing a factory, helping to synchronize production, increase energy efficiency and smooth out the peaks in factory power consumption.

Terminology
Clock speed is the speed of operation of a building. 200% clock speed means the building will operate twice as fast, 50% means half operation speed, however, this is not the case for power generators, see below.

Overclocking refers to setting the clock speed above 100%.

Underclocking refers to setting the clock speed below 100%. Underclocking does not require any Power Shards.

Usage
To change a clock speed, interact with a building and look at its lower left of the UI. Underclocking can be done freely, however overclocking requires Power Shards, which are crafted from Power Slugs. Up to three power shards can be placed into a building, each allowing the maximum clock speed to be increased by 50%. The clock speed can be changed in increments of 1% using the slider or by directly typing in the desired value for either Clockspeed or Target production rate.

Setting the clock speed by desired item production per minute rounds to two decimal places, while typing in a percentage rounds to the nearest percent. Typing in an arbitrarily high value will max out production, while non-numeric inputs are ignored. Setting 0% Clock speed will result in 1% clock speed instead, this is visible when the machine UI is re-opened.

Where desired item production per minute results in a percentage with decimal, the game will automatically floor it to the nearest percentage. Take note as this may lead to some efficiency loss, engineers are advised to ceil up the overclocking percentage instead.

Clock speed for production buildings
Overclocking Miners and Oil Extractors is highly beneficial. For production buildings, the craft time is directly proportional to the clock speed, but the power required changes polynomially. As the item production rate increases, the ingredient consumption rate increases as well. The table below shows five different clock speeds on a Constructor, for example, producing Iron Rod that takes 4 seconds.

The formula for power usage is: where  is an integer  between 1 and 250, and both  and   are measured in MW. For relative energy usage per item produced, subtract the exponent factor by 1, that is, Underclocking Constructors and Assemblers in early game is highly beneficial. It can yield considerable fuel (Biomass) savings. With Splitters and Mergers available, fuel savings can be accompanied with zero loss to production rate. Miner Mk.1 with two Smelters operating at full clock speed can produce over 570 ingots from normal node with the energy of one stack of leaves. Miner Mk.1 with nine Smelters operating at 22% clock rate yields to over 900 parts with same amount of energy. Net production rate will be virtually identical and the energy saved can be used elsewhere.

It should be noted that production buildings use the full calculated value, and as such the rounded value listed in-game is not always accurate.

Clock speed for power generators
Overclocking of all types of power generators provides no benefit other than saving building space. For power generation buildings, both power capacity and fuel consumption rate are increased at the same rate. The effect of this is that the energy produced per fuel item, or Fuel Value, stays the same, so one piece of Coal is always worth 300MJ of energy regardless of clock speed. The table below shows three different clock speeds set on a Coal Generator. Note that a 250% overclock does not give 250% power as the in-game target MW value suggests. The true production values are listed with the generator's fuel.

The formula for fuel burn time is:

where  is an integer  between 1 and 250, and both  and   are measured in seconds.

The formula for the multiplier to power capacity is:

where  is an integer  between one and 250, and both  and   are measured in MW.

On the, overclocking a generator to 246,23% makes it operate exactly twice as fast as on 100%.

Note: If more accurate calculations are needed, use 1/1.3 instead of 0.77.

Nuclear Power Plants scale differently with overclocking, as they use 1/1.321928 instead. At 250% clock speed, one operates 2.00000009951 times faster compared to 100% clock speed.

History

 * Patch 0.4.0.4: Fixed overclocking not showing the correct value when pasting settings in some situations
 * Patch 0.4.0.0: It is now possible to set decimal percentages as clock speed, the game no longer rounds it to the nearest whole percentage

Gallery
Overclock des bâtiments Clock speed/ko Ускорение