Clock speed

Production and power buildings, such as the Constructor or Biomass Burner, can have their clock speed set to any integer 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, more or less power can be produced at the cost of increased or decreased fuel burn time.

Usage

Changing clock speed requires completing the Power Slugs Research at M.A.M..

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 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 a integer percentage value.

You can also set the clock speed by desired item production per minute, and the game will automatically convert it to nearest percentage. Where the clock speed percentage results in a decimal value, the results are automatically floored down to the nearest integer percentage, take note this may lead to some efficiency loss. Hence engineers are advised to ceil up the overclocking percentage instead.

Clock speed for production buildings

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 four different clock speeds on a Constructor, for example, producing Iron Rod that takes 4 seconds.

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.

Clock speed	Craft time	Power required	Energy per iron rod
10%	40s	0.1 MW	4 MJ
50%	8s	1.3 MW	10.4 MJ
100% (Default)	4s	4 MW	16 MJ
200%	2s	12.1 MW	24.2 MJ

The formula for power usage is:

(power usage) = (initial power usage) × (clock speed% / 100%)1.6

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 buildings

For power generation buildings, both power capacity and burn time of the fuel are changed polynomially by clock speed but are inversely proportional to each other. The effect of this is that the energy produced per fuel item, or Fuel Value, stays the same at all clock speeds. The table below shows three different clock speeds set on a Coal Generator.

Clock speed	Fuel burn time	Power capacity	Energy per coal	Max coal per minute
10%	23.55s	12.75 MW	300 MJ	2.75
100% (Default)	4 s	75 MW	300 MJ	15
250%	1.976s	151.8 MW	300 MJ	30.4

The formula for fuel burn time is:

(fuel burn time) = (initial fuel burn time) x (clock speed% / 100%)-0.77

The formula for the multiplier to power capacity is:

(power capacity) = (initial power capacity) × (clock speed% / 100%)0.77

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