Clock speed

Production and power buildings, such as Miners, Constructors or Biomass Burners, can have their clock speed set to any percentage between 1.0000% and 250.0000% with four decimals. 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.

Unlocking

Clock speed is unlocked via the Power Slugs Research chain in the

MAM using:

50

Usage

To change a clock speed, interact E 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 Clock speed or Target production rate.

Setting the clock speed by desired item production per minute rounds to 2 decimal places, while typing in a percentage rounds to 4 decimal places. Typing in an arbitrarily high value will be rounded down to the nearest valid value (such as 250%), while non-numeric inputs are ignored. Simple equations can be input and will be evaluated, then rounded to 2 or 4 decimal places. However, keep in mind just like the calculator available in quick search it evaluates right to left so multiple step equations may not give the expected result. Setting clock speed below 1% will result in 1% clock speed instead; this is visible when the machine UI is re-opened.

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 (N=1.6). 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.

Clock speed power consumption graph — The ratio of power consumption per craft based on clock speed. The ratio is compared to the amount of power for each craft at default clock speed.

Overclocking graph — The ratio of power consumption or production for buildings based on clock speed.

Clock speed	Craft time	Power required	Energy per iron rod
10%	40s	0.1 MW	4 MJ	25%
50%	8s	1.3 MW	10.4 MJ	66%
100% (Default)	4s	4 MW	16 MJ	100%
150%	2.67s	7.7MW	20.4 MJ	128%
200%	2s	12.1 MW	24.2 MJ	151%
250%	1.6s	17.3 MW	27.7 MJ	173%

Overclocking screen — Overclocking can be given any value, but the game will automatically clip it to between 1% to 250%.

The formula for power usage is:

$power\ usage = initial\ power\ usage \times \left( \frac{clock\ speed}{100} \right )^{1.6}$
where ${\displaystyle clock\ speed }$ is a number with up to 4 decimals between 1 and 250, and
both $power\ usage$ and $initial\ power\ usage$ are measured in MW.
For relative energy usage per item produced, subtract the exponent factor by 1, that is,

$energy\ usage = initial\ energy\ usage \times \left( \frac{clock\ speed}{100} \right )^{0.6}$
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. For example, 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.

Clock speed	Coal burn time	Coal per minute	Energy per coal	Generator capacity
10%	23.51s	2.55	300 MJ	12.76 MW	17%
100% (Default)	4 s	15	300 MJ	75 MW	100%
250%	1.98s	30.35	300 MJ	151.76 MW	202.35%

The formula for fuel burn time is:

${\displaystyle fuel\ burn\ time = initial\ fuel\ burn\ time \times \sqrt[1.3]{\frac{100}{clock\ speed}} }$

where ${\displaystyle clock\ speed }$ is a number with up to 4 decimals between 1 and 250, and
both ${\displaystyle fuel\ burn\ time }$ and ${\displaystyle initial\ fuel\ burn\ time }$ are measured in seconds.

The formula for power capacity or fuel consumption rate is:

${\displaystyle power\ capacity = initial\ power\ capacity \times \sqrt[1.3]{\frac{clock\ speed}{100}} }$
where ${\displaystyle clock\ speed }$ is a number with up to 4 decimals between 1 and 250, and
both ${\displaystyle power\ capacity }$ and ${\displaystyle initial\ power\ capacity }$ are measured in MW.
replace ${\displaystyle power\ capacity }$ and ${\displaystyle initial\ power\ capacity }$ with ${\displaystyle fuel\ consumption\ rate }$ and ${\displaystyle initial\ fuel\ consumption\ rate }$ measured in parts per minute or m³/min to get the fuel consumption rate.

The formula for finding the clock speed to set a power generator to for a desired operation rate is:

${\displaystyle clock\ speed = 100 \times \left( \frac{operation\ rate}{100} \right )^{1.3} }$
where ${\displaystyle clock\ speed }$ is a number with up to 4 decimals between 1 and 250, and
${\displaystyle operation\ rate }$ is the desired percentage of the normal operation rate.
${\displaystyle operation\ rate }$ can be gotten by dividing the desired ${\displaystyle power\ capacity }$ or ${\displaystyle fuel\ consumption\ rate }$ by the ${\displaystyle initial\ power\ capacity }$ or ${\displaystyle initial\ fuel\ consumption\ rate }$ and multiplying by 100.

Examples:

At 150% clock speed for a fuel generator burning normal fuel, the burn time would be ${\displaystyle 5 \times \sqrt[1.3]{\frac{100}{150}} = \ \sim3.66029\ seconds }$ (rounded to 4 digits)
At 250% clock speed for a fuel generator, the multiplier for power capacity and fuel consumption rate would be ${\displaystyle \sqrt[1.3]\frac{250}{100} =\ \sim2.0235 }$ which would mean that power capacity is ${\displaystyle 150 \times \sim2.0235 =\ \sim303.52814\ MW }$ and fuel consumption rate is ${\displaystyle 12 \times \sim2.0235 =\ \sim24.2823\ m^3/min }$ (all rounded to 4 digits, multiplier used up to 13 digits)
To achieve 200% operation rate of a normal generator, the clock speed would be: ${\displaystyle 100 \times \left( \frac{200}{100} \right )^{1.3} =\ \sim246.2288% }$ (rounded down to 4 digits, gives you 199.999948% operation)
To achieve 75% operation rate of a normal generator, the clock speed would be: ${\displaystyle clock\ speed = 100 \times \left( \frac{75}{100} \right )^{1.3} =\ \sim68.7986% }$ (rounded to 4 digits)
If you wanted to burn 4 fuel per minute for a fuel generator using normal fuel, you would need an operation rate of ${\displaystyle \frac {4}{12} \times 100 = 25% }$
If you had 246m³/min fuel to burn you would need $\frac {246}{12} = 20.5\ generators$ which means you would need 20 generators at 100% operation rate and 1 generator at 50% operation rate.

Nuclear Power Plants

Nuclear Power Plants scale differently with overclocking. They use 1.321928 instead of 1.3 as the exponent and root number. 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 0.4.0.3: Changed the number of decimals in overclocking from 1 to 4
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

An underclocked Constructor. A value can be entered into the percentage, items per minute or adjusted using the slider.
An overclocked Miner. Power Shard(s) is required for overclocking beyond 100%.