Production amplifier

Production amplification (dubbed slooping or overslooping) is a mechanic that allows select factory buildings to increase their output without increasing their input cost, at the cost of inserting Somersloops and a huge increase in power demand.

Obtaining

Production amplifier is unlocked via the Alien Technology Research chain in the

MAM using:

1

100

50

Somersloops required for production amplification can be found in set locations across the world. There are a total of 106 Somersloops as of Patch 1.0, so as such they are a non-renewable resource.

Usage

With Somersloops being limited in quantity, it is recommended they primarily be used for production amplification at the end of a production chain, instead of in one or more intermediate productions, but the pioneer is free to use them wherever and however they wish.

Non-idle buildings and machines that are actively producing items, and have production amplified can be identified by the use of a purple glowing power nub along with purple smoke exhaust and purple sparks all over. If building is idle (not producing items) the production amplification indicators won't appear.

Amplification slots

Production amplification increases the amount of products produced by a given machine, or in other words reduces the cost to produce a given part. Buildings that are being amplified will produce a low droning noise and emit red and purple steam when active.

The following machines can have their production amplified:

Amplification slots	Buildings
1	Smelter, Constructor
2	Assembler, Foundry, Refinery, Converter
4	Manufacturer, Blender, Particle Accelerator, Quantum Encoder

Other buildings, such as Miners, Water Extractors, Oil Extractors, Resource Well Pressurizers, or the Packager cannot be amplified.

If a given building has multiple amplification slots, then filling only some of them will cause a partial amplification. For example, if there are 4 slots but only 1 has a Somersloop inserted, then the amplification only provides a 25% boost, not a 100% boost.

Amplified production cycles

A machine cannot output fractions of items, so the game has to use output patterns to deal with 25%, 50% or 75% boosts.

The output of a machine without Somersloops is always an integer (displayed above the number of items/minute), if you multiply an integer by 1.25 the decimal part of the result will always be .25, .5, .75 or .0 (another integer).

If $n$ is the integer part of the boost and the decimal part is not 0, the game will need to output $n$ items on some cycles, $n$ +1 on others, and will use the following patterns:

Displayed output	Number of n+1 cycles	Output pattern
$n$ .25	1/4	$n n n n$ +1
$n$ .5	2/4	$n n$ +1 $n n$ +1
$n$ .75	3/4	$n n$ +1 $n$ +1 $n$ +1

For instance, using the Radio Control System recipe which outputs 3 items, the following patterns will be created depending on the number of Somersloops:

Somersloops	Displayed output	Number of n+1 cycles	Output pattern
1	3 x 1.25 = 3.75	.75 -> 3/4	3 4 4 4
2	3 x 1.5 = 4.5	.5 -> 2/4	4 5 4 5
3	3 x 1.75 = 5.25	.25 -> 1/4	5 5 5 6

Notes:

Ouput patterns may start at any step in the sequence, depending on when you put Somersloops in the machine and/or which cycle the machine is in, but after seeing 4 consecutive outputs they will repeat in a regular loop.

This variable output fits the "chaotic alien technology" theme of the game perfectly and can have consequences. For instance, temporarily exceeding the capacity of your conveyor belts if too many machines are on their $n$ +1 cycles at a given moment, or not providing enough resources on their $n$ cycles. The differences between $n$ , the displayed output and $n$ +1 can become significant when the number of machines is large.

Power usage

The power usage of an amplified building increases with the following formula:

$P o w e r m u l t i p l i e r = (1 + F i l l e d s l o t s / T o t a l s l o t s)^{2}$ $P o w e r u s a g e = B a s e p o w e r u s a g e \times P o w e r m u l t i p l i e r \times {(\frac{C l o c k s p e e d}{100})}^{1.321928}$

This results in 4 times the power usage for a fully amplified machine.

The power increase with increased clock speed is multiplicative. This means that a fully amplified and 250% overclocked machine will consume 13.431× its base power usage.

Somersloops are tools

Somersloops are very useful temporary tools and, provided you have enough power available, can be moved around without disturbing anything to:

Temporarily increase the production of an item you need.
Correct miscalculations on something you have just built and don't want to rebuild right away.
Kickstart new buildings or manifolds by allowing them to fill up twice as fast, or more if you use overclocking at the same time.

This is so useful you should always keep some Somersloops in your inventory to use as tools.

When used as temporary boosts it is also advisable to keep track of them, for instance using building coloring or signs, to be able to get them back later more easily.

Production amplification favors small buildings

Production amplification favors small buildings like Constructors because they have only one amplification slot:

Their output can be doubled using only one Somersloop,
Their power usage is very low, so 4x power usage is still low (4 MW for constructors, 4 x 4 = 16 MW for an amplified constructor).

You can think of Somersloops as virtual machines converting MW into items: inserting a Somersloop in a constructor is like adding a virtual machine next to it, producing the same output, needing no resources and consuming 12 MW ( $16 \times 3 / 4$ ).

Note: When you add one Somersloop to a constructor, the total power is multiplied by 4. So, if the constructor uses 4 MW initially and you add a Somersloop, the total power usage is now 16 MW, this means the Somersloop uses $16 - 4 = 12$ MW. So 1/4 of the total power is consumed by the constructor and 3/4 by the Somersloop.

With that in mind, you can have another look at alternate recipes having valuable input resources and/or outputting lots of items:

Steel Screw: one Somersloop will convert 12 MW into 260 Screws/min and the constructor will output 520 Screws/min.
If you don't like screws, using Caterium Wire, one Somersloop will convert 12 MW into 120 Wires/min and the constructor will output 240 Wires/min.
Using Aluminum Rod, one Somersloop will convert 12 MW into 52.5 Iron Rods/min and the constructor will output 105 Iron Rods/min.

In the standard recipes, these ones are also worth mentioning:

Aluminum Casing: the constructor will output 120 Aluminum Casings/min.
Ficsite Trigon: the constructor will output 60 Ficsite Trigons/min.

As these buildings are small and their power usage is low, you can easily overclock them: an amplified fully overclocked constructor at 250% clock speed will use 53.7 MW which is less than the power usage of a Manufacturer (55 MW).

Applying a 250% overclock to the examples above, we have the following results:

Steel Screw: one Somersloop will convert $53.7 \times 3 / 4 \approx 40.3$ MW into $260 \times 2.5 = 650$ Screws/min and the constructor will output 1300 Screws/min (yes, it's higher than what a Mk.6 Conveyor Belt can carry).
Caterium Wire: one constructor and one Somersloop will output 600 Wires/min.
Aluminum Rod: one constructor and one Somersloop will output 262.5 Iron Rods/min.
Aluminum Casing: one constructor and one Somersloop will output 300 Aluminum Casings/min.
Ficsite Trigon: one constructor and one Somersloop will output 150 Ficsite Trigons/min.

These are the outputs of a single constructor, so it may change the way you think of and organize factories. Keeping in mind the limited number of Somersloops available, one of these constructors in the right place can considerably simplify your setups.

The same kind of computation can be made for recipes using other types of buildings (for buildings having 2 slots, power usage for 1 Somersloop is 2.25x instead of 4x and the building will produce 1.5x more items instead of 2x, see the preceding chapters). You can also use Somersloops in 4 slots buildings, but due to their high power usage they should generally be kept at 100% clock speed or underclocked (see Somersloop underclocking ("underslooping")).

Another good use for Somersloops is for products that are valuable and at the end of a chain, especially if they are produced by a small building. In this category, some of the bests are Assembly Director System and Pressure Conversion Cube because they are made by Assemblers which need only 2 Somersloops to double their production and have a reasonable power usage.

Recipe selection

Buildings having all of their Somersloop slots filled and set at 250% clock speed:

Produce the same output as 5 buildings of the same type (2x from the Somersloops and 2.5x from overclocking, $2 \times 2.5 = 5$ ).
Use only half of the resources 5 buildings would need (because of the Somersloops).

So the most interesting recipes to use are those which:

Produce lots of items (because the output is multiplied by 5),
And/or have valuable input resources (because the input is divided by 2).

Here are some examples and comparisons:

Recipe	Ingredients	Produced in	Products	Power usage	Comment
Steel Screw	12.5 Steel Beam / min	Constructor	1300 Screw /min	53.7 MW	You have to underclock it slightly because of these slow Mk.6 belts.
Caterium Wire	37.5 Caterium Ingot / min	Constructor	600 Wire /min	53.7 MW
Fused Wire	30 Copper Ingot / min 7.5 Caterium Ingot / min	Assembler	450 Wire /min	201.5 MW	Assembler example, you can use it if you don't have enough caterium, but 450 wires for 201.5 MW is way worse than Caterium Wire which produces 600 wires for 53.7 MW, and in addition uses only one Somersloop instead of two.
Aluminum Rod	18.75 Aluminum Ingot / min	Constructor	262.5 Iron Rod /min	53.7 MW
Aluminum Casing	225 Aluminum Ingot / min	Constructor	300 Aluminum Casing /min	53.7 MW
Alclad Casing	375 Aluminum Ingot / min 187.5 Copper Ingot / min	Assembler	562.5 Aluminum Casing /min	201.5 MW	You can use it if you're short on aluminum ingots and have a good amount of copper, but it cannot beat 2x Aluminum Casing, which produces 600 aluminum casings for 107 MW (2 Somersloops are used in either case).
Pure Aluminum Ingot	150 Aluminum Scrap / min	Smelter	150 Aluminum Ingot /min	53.7 MW	Smelter example, if you're short on aluminum ingots the Somersloop makes Aluminum Ingots = Aluminum Scrap instead of half of it, you can use one on occasion, but as the output is rather low you will probably still need several smelters and this can deplete your Somersloops very fast.
Ficsite Trigon	25 Ficsite Ingot / min	Constructor	150 Ficsite Trigon /min	53.7 MW	The output may not seem great, but saving half of the Ficsite ingots, produced by Converters, is.
Copper Alloy Ingot	125 Copper Ore / min 125 Iron Ore / min	Foundry	500 Copper Ingot /min	214.9 MW	The input/ouput numbers look nice, but foundries in general are hard to recommend because they only process basic resources and their power usage is high.
Petroleum Coke	100 Heavy Oil Residue / min	Refinery	600 Petroleum Coke /min	402.9 MW	Refinery example, note that Aluminum Scrap recipes will overshoot Mk.6 belts capacity and Sloppy Alumina will overshoot Mk.2 pipes. Also, with refineries power usage is very high, this may not be worth it except in rare cases.

Tips

If unlocked early by finding Circuit Boards in Crash Site wreckage, amplification can be utilized in these early-game production lines. If the recipe is changed within a single machine, only 1 Somersloop is required:
- Alien Remains → Alien Protein → Biomass → Solid Biofuel for 8× the Solid Biofuel to use in Biomass Burners.
- Alien Remains → Alien Protein → Alien DNA Capsule for 4× the Alien DNA Capsules for AWESOME Sinks.
- Power Slug → Power Shard for 2× the Power Shards to use in overclocking.
- Project Assembly parts, to halve the cost of Space Elevator phases.
Amplifying machines producing the final product results in the greatest material gains.
If you don't intend to amplify all machines producing a given item, then spreading the Somersloops equally between them will lower the power demand without affecting the boost amount. However, keep the following tip in consideration:
Combining overclocking and production amplification results in the greatest utilization of each Somersloop, as the amplification applies to increased clock speed. This means that the boost is effectively applied to 2.5 machines, not just 1 machine.
- However, this results in by far the highest power demand, for a 250% clock speed power usage is multiplied by 3.36 (see Clock speed § Remarkable clock speeds).
- The Quantum Encoder's power usage peaks at 2,000 MW by default. With a maximum overclock and amplification, it will average at 13,431 MW and peak at 26,862 MW.

Gallery

Assembler that is using Production Amplification (note purple power nub and purple exhaust smoke)

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