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%, with a precision of up to 4 decimal places. 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, increasing energy efficiency and smoothing out the peaks in power consumption.

Terminology

Clock speed is the speed of operation of a building. 250% clock speed means the building will operate 2.5x as fast.

Overclocking refers to setting the clock speed above 100%, and inversely, underclocking refers to setting the clock speed below 100%. Underclocking does not require any  Power Shards.

Obtaining

The ability to change clock speeds can be unlocked in the MAM. Confusingly, the research is named "Overclock Production", but unlocks underclocking as well.

 Clock speed is unlocked via the Power Slugs Research chain in the MAM using:

1

50

50

 Power Shards required to increase clock speeds above 100% can be crafted from  Power Slugs, which can be found in set locations across the world. In Tier 9, Power Shards can be automated by producing them synthetically.

Usage

Purpose

There are multiple reasons for changing clock speeds, especially matching production and consumption rates of machines to make a factory line operate at maximum efficiency, saving space by overclocking, or saving power by underclocking.

For matching production and consumption rates, both overclocking and underclocking are viable. It is up to you to decide whether to overclock using  Power Shards, saving a little space and using a little extra power, or vice versa by underclocking, which does not require  Power Shards.

Clock speed affects production buildings/resource extractors and power generators differently, see below.

Configuration

Clock speed can only be configured in production buildings with configurable recipes, resource extractors and power generators. Other power consumers, such as  Hypertube Entrances,  Pipeline Pumps or  Train Stations, cannot be overclocked.

• Clock speed can be set using a menu within each building's UI, accessed by interacting with menu as follows:
  • PC: Use E.
  • Console (Controller): Use or to select overclocking section, and then use (Hold) or (Hold) to bring up building or machine UI.
•  Power Shards can be inserted into this menu, increasing the maximum allowed clock speed by 50% up to 3 times.
  • PC:
    • Using and clicking on Relevant Items in Inventory, or by dragging Power Shard from your Inventory over to slot, to place.
    • Drag Power Shard from slot to your Inventory to remove.
  • Console (Controller):
    • Provided you have one or more Power Shards in your Inventory, press or to place.
    • Press or to remove.
• There are multiple ways to set a clock speed in this menu:
  • Dragging the slider, changing values.
    • PC: Can change values in 1% increments.
    • Console (Controller): Use or to set overclocking up to 2 decimal precision.
  • Entering a percentage or target production rate directly.
    • PC: Click Overclocking or Target Rate, and enter value, or entering a formula similar to the in-game calculator accessed using quick search N, which will be evaluated left-to-right.
    • Console (Controller): After placing Power Shard, press or to bring up a more detailed overclocking menu.
• Additionally, recipe and clock speed configuration can be copied and pasted between buildings of the same type. If  Power Shards are required, they will be automatically inserted into the building if there are enough in the inventory.
  • PC: Use Ctrl+C to copy, followed by Ctrl+V to paste.
  • Console (Controller): Use + , or + to copy, followed by + , or + to paste.

Buildings underclocked to have active power consumption below the idle rate of 0.1 MW will still use 0.1 MW while idle.

Power usage

Production buildings will use more power when overclocked and less power when underclocked. However, the relationship between clock rate and power usage is not linear. A machine at 50% clock speed will not use 50% less power.
The table below shows some noteworthy power consumption rates depending on the clock rate.

Clock speed	Power usage (Percent of base power)
10%	4.76%
50%	40%
100% (Default)	100%
150%	170.91%
200%	250%
250%	335.77%

A production machine at 50% clock rate will therefore use 40% of its usual power (2.5x less), while a machine at 200% clock rate will use 250% of its usual power (2.5x more).

For more info on how to calculate the power usage, see Advanced clock speed

Example usage

The first 4 images are "paired" to show the formula used and the result, while the last is combined on one image:

• 

  PC Only example of using formulas in clock speed to calculate the exact input value desired.
• 

  PC Only example of calculated result of formula showing 46 Heavy Oil Residue input per minute.
• 

  PC Only example of using formulas in clock speed when overclocking. This would set the input per minute to 103.155.
• 

  PC Only example of calculated result of formula showing input per minute at 103.155.
• 

  PC Only example of using formulas in target production rate to calculate the desired value which also updates clock speed.

Precision

The result configuration is always stored as a percentage with four decimal spaces of precision. Internally, the exact values calculated from the configured clock speed are used. However, the user interface often rounds or truncates values, thus listing inaccurate results.

For example, a  Constructor producing 15  Concrete/min can never be set to produce precisely 5/min. The closest clock speed of 33.3333% will produce 15 × 0.333333 = 4.999995/min, despite the UI rounding it to exactly 5/min.

This level of inaccuracy is negligible for most players; one way to reduce the occurrence of infinitely repeating decimals is to use a so-called 45-81 rule: If a recipe's production rate is a multiple or fraction of 45/min or 81/min, its clock speed likely won't have repeating decimals. 81 applies to most Oil recipes, 45 to most other recipes. This does not apply to all recipes.

For example, instead of producing 100  Plastic/min using the Diluted + Recycled loop, 81 + 20.25 = 101.25/min would be produced.

Tips

• Although a target ingredient consumption rate can't be entered directly, the percentage field's functionality as a calculator can be leveraged to achieve the same outcome. For example, if a recipe consumes 140  Screws/min at 100% and you want to feed it 120/min, enter 120/140*100, resolving to 85.7143%.

See also

• Advanced clock speed
• Production amplifier

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%
• 

  The slightly nonlinear relationship between clock-rate and power usage for a Constructor

History

• Patch 0.8.2.0: Fixed issue where keyboard input was lost after manually entering text when Overclocking
• Patch 0.7.0.0
  • Reduced the energy cost of Overclocking production buildings (including Extractors) to a lower exponent
    • Changed production building and extractor exponent from 1.6 to 1.321928
  • Made overclocking of power generators match the operating rate with the clock speed
    • The basic mechanic of Overclocking remains largely unchanged, but the exponential power cost change has been lowered. This means that Overclocking is less expensive than it was before, and Underclocking is not quite as cheap.
    • Generators are the only exception to this rule: They Over- and Underclock completely linear.
• Patch 0.6.1.1
  • Overclocking now has a visible text box so you can enter percentages or numbers manually
  • Manufacturing buildings should now preview the overclocked per minute stat on each input and output before the new overclock is applied on the next cycle
• 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